Laze on the Grass by StarSpray

Chapter 1

It was a warm day, summer not yet fully giving over to autumn. The morning mists lingered into the afternoon in the Withywindle valley, and the breeze sent tiny yellow willow leaves fluttering through the air; the river was full of them, floating lazily along its brown surface as it wounds its way through the Old Forest toward the Brandywine. Late-blooming wild roses grew in clusters twined around old trees, and water lilies still blossomed in the quiet pools found along the Withywindle’s course.

Nellas lay in the grass beside one of these pools, listening to birds in the trees, and the breeze that whispered through the willow leaves, and to the faint sound of old Bombadil as he laughed and sang and leaped out over the Barrow Downs. She had been traveling from Lothlórien to Mithlond, carrying messages to Lord Círdan from Lord Celeborn, but they were not urgent, and so Nellas had stopped to rest a few days by the Withywindle, reveling in the sheer ancientness of the wood. It was not often she got to feel young, anymore.

As the afternoon wore on, Nellas dozed, faintly aware of Old Man Willow getting up to his usual tricks. He couldn’t snare her–she had known him from a slender, pale green sapling–but she hoped there weren’t any hobbits wandering about in the wood. Some of them crossed their hedge, sometimes–younger ones, mostly, she gathered, proving they weren’t afraid of the trees and the shadows beneath them. It was silly and rather foolish, but then hobbits were rather silly and sometimes quite foolish.

Soft splashes roused her, and she rose onto her elbows to see Goldberry sitting among the reeds, her hair shining like gold in the sunlight. “Well met, Nellas!” she said. “Are you going to laze on the grass all afternoon, or will you swim with me?”

Nellas laughed. “I would like to do both!”

Goldberry’s laughter set a lark to singing in a nearby tree. “Then we shall do both, until old Tom comes to fetch us for supper!”