She

He walked in on her bathing in the river, which, given their respective personalities, wouldn't have been either as romantic or as creepy (depending upon one's perspective) as it sounded, even if Merry and Pippin hadn't done so first and stood there with their mouths hanging open, waiting for something to fly in. Boromir flipped their cloaks over their heads and picked them up by the scruff, one in each hand, without breaking stride – and not a second too soon, to judge by the gruff bellow of “Oy! Hobbits!” from the water fast disappearing behind a screen of trees.

Stewardship

His first memory:

He can't be more than four; maybe three and a half – his mother is well, then, her stomach flat under the graceful fall of her shift. Sometimes he wishes he could better remember her face, more than the curve of her mouth smiling, the sharp bracket of its frown. She smelled of juniper and roses, he remembers. His father always brought her roses. And his grandfather can still pick him up, swooping him off his sturdy little feet to spin him round and round strong bony shoulders.

In the memory, his father is very tall. As childhood memories go, it presents itself in a blur of smell (polished wood, all orange and beeswax; the damp wool of his father's cloak – it must have been winter; the stony scent of ink) and sleepy golden light, which now he knows for candles, with sharp pinpricks of lucidity.