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Merry leaned against Pippin’s door. He closed his eyes, listening to the sound of his friend moving on the other side. Turning to Frodo, Merry shrugged and mouthed an apology.
“Pip, we are going downstairs,” Merry said, “come down when you’re ready.”
Pippin listened to his friends whisper until their voices faded into the corridor. He collapsed onto the elven bed and hugged a pillow close to his body. He looked at the clothes strewn about his room. He knew that Merry was worried about him. He knew that he was being unreasonable. Yet still, he had awoken this morning with a wound in his mind and nothing in the world could hide it. Pippin threw the pillow across the room before collapsing onto his back.
Pippin heard a quiet knock at his door and groaned. “Go away, Merry,” he called.
The silence made Pippin pause. He hopped off the bed and approached the door. “Listen, Merry, I know its difficult to imagine but I have better things to do than…”
Pippin trailed off as he opened the door and saw a familiar figure.
“Apologies, dearest hobbit,” Arwen Evenstar smiled at Pippin, “you were missed at breakfast, and I wanted to make sure that all was well.”
Pippin tried to stammer some response. Even after days in Rivendell there was something about Arwen that stopped his heart in its place. It would be wrong to say that she was the most beautiful person he had ever seen, because Pippin did not believe ‘beautiful’ was the right word. Arwen was like the north star, or the moon, or the kingfisher cresting the Brandywine. When Pippin saw Arwen, he could only imagine a world with her in it.
“May I come in?” Arwen asked, peering into Pippin’s room.
Pippin gulped and looked behind him. “I, uh… I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said, fidgeting, “I’ve got… uh… work to do. Important work. Gandalf told me to… check… the work…”
Arwen's eyebrow raised in amusement and crouched to eye level with Pippin. “If you allow it,” she said, “I would like to spend some time with you.”
Pippin looked into Arwen’s eyes. He remembered Uncle Merimac telling him that an elf could weave magic through their eyes. As he looked at Arwen, he had the strangest feeling of recognition. “I would like that,” he murmured.
Arwen followed Pippin into his room. She looked across the strewn clothes and upturned bedsheets. Pippin waited for the snide comment, the cutting remark, anything to remind him how small he was.
Arwen did not say anything. She paced around the room, followed by the deep red and black of her robe. She looked back at Pippin, as if she was considering a hundred different possible outcomes to this moment. She took a deep breath and crossed to Pippin, taking his hands in hers.
“You have very fine hands,” she said, turning Pippin’s hand over in her own.
Pippin felt a warmth in his cheeks. He was very proud of his hands. Even on his worst days he liked the softness of his palms, the pale hairs on his wrist, the way he could control them. He looked back to Arwen, trying to work out how she had known this. Arwen’s gaze had a soft intensity, her finger tracing the lines of Pippin’s palm.
Arwen folded Pippin’s hands in hers and looked at him. Pippin felt himself instinctively look downwards, unable to hold her gaze.
“This may come with some difficulty,” Arwen spoke slowly, “but I would like to help you.”
“I don’t need your help,” Pippin snapped, turning his back. Lashing out felt instinctive at this point, like a trapped nerve firing down his spine. He waited for Arwen to leave the room, an expectation born from years of understanding how best to push people away. When he turned back to look and saw Arwen still crouched there, her eyes having not left him, a softness unfurled inside of Pippin.
“I’m sorry, Lady Arwen,” Pippin crossed to a chair and sat down, “I think I am having a bad day.”
Arwen paused, before standing and making her way to the bed. She traced her hand across the clothes, letting the fabric run through her fingers. Pippin wanted to leap to her side and pull the clothes away form her. She was too beautiful to be around things that made him feel so terrible. Arwen picked up one of the black blouses, one that Pippin had found while shopping with his sisters.
“It doesn’t fit me,” Pippin grimaced, feeling a red heat ignite in the back of his mind.
A strange smile passed across Arwen’s face. “Then it must change,” she said, and in an instant she produced a small pair of scissors from the folds of her dress. Her hand flew across the seams of the blouse, making imperceptible cuts. She finished as quick as she started, and held the blouse in front of her. The shape was hardly changed, yet it seemed entirely new in Arwen’s hands.
Arwen gestured for Pippin to join her. She held the blouse against his body, nodding at her handiwork. When Pippin turned to look at the mirror, Arwen gently placed her hand on his cheek and guided his gaze back to her.
“Not yet,” she murmured, guiding Pippin to a seat near the balcony.
Laughter floated upwards, and Pippin thought he heard the sounds of Merry and Frodo’s voices. He remembered sitting with them in Bag-End, watching Frodo learn the corridors of his uncle’s home. They had been his closest friends for so many years. He felt like a twisted knot, incapable of finding the words to explain why his heart had been breaking for the last decade. A strange bird swooped over the balcony, making Pippin jump. He looked back to Arwen, who had folded and returned his clothes and was now approaching Pippin. She sat opposite the hobbit and produced a miniature wooden case.
“The lady Galadriel once asked who I wanted to be,” Arwen said, sitting in a chair opposite Pippin, “she told me that I would be asking that question for a very long time. She said that each question would lead to a new answer, and each answer would lead to a new question. Who is it that you want to be?”
Pippin looked at Arwen and bit his lip. For the first time in his life Pippin had no words. “I don’t know,” he whispered.
“Neither do I,” Arwen smiled a smile that Pippin recognised. It was the same smile he had seen on himself after long nights in Took Manor, alone with his imagination and the endless possibilities it afforded him for happiness. She opened the wooden case, revealing a small series of lacquers and chalks. “May I?” she asked.
Pippin nodded. Arwen took a small brush, passed it across the colours before leaning forward to look at Pippin. She gently traced the line of his cheekbones, the sensation as soft as gossamer silk. Pippin closed his eyes and felt the smallest crack appear in his heart.
“Galadriel once told me,” Arwen took the brush over Pippin’s nose and brow, “that the smallest choice made the difference between a bad day and my bad day.”
“This Galadriel sounds very impressive,” Pippin murmured, lost in the feeling.
“She is,” Arwen said, her voice filled with memory.
Pippin didn’t know how much time he was sat there with Arwen. He felt as if he could have sat there until the end of time. The sun was still high when he opened his eyes and saw Arwen looking at him. She offered the black blouse, and after Pippin had changed she guided him back to the mirror. Pippin turned to look.
Arwen was stood in the mirror, a picture of radiance. Next to her was a hobbit, taller than Pippin remembered, with a face softened in the warm light. The hobbit was recognisably Pippin, and yet moreso. It was the hobbit that Pippin saw in his mind, a version of himself more truthful than he knew he had the capacity for being.
“Walk with me,” Arwen said, holding out her hand. Pippin took it, and followed Arwen out of his room and into Rivendell.
Elves parted before Arwen and Pippin as they made a long circle around the estate and out into the gardens. As they walked, Pippin felt a strange confidence that he had imagined only existed for people of complete certainty. Elves nodded and bowed at himself and Arwen, but Arwen didn’t seem proud or conceited. She had a simple assuredness that flowed between herself and the world.
“It’s so difficult,” Pippin said as they crossed a footbridge over a small pond, “The good days are when I forget how difficult it is. How do you do it?”
Arwen paused and watched enormous golden fish swim underneath the bridge. “I don’t know,” she said, “I’ve had good days, and I’ve had bad days, and sometimes I forget the difference. To imagine myself as truly myself, I will take the good and the bad days. In both of them, I am still me.”
They turned and walked out into a courtyard. Arwen reached up a plucked a white blossom from a vine, and placed it in Pippin’s hair. Pippin watched the sun trace a line in light and shadow, and all possible spaces in-between.
“Pip?” Merry called out across the courtyard.
Pippin took a deep breath. Arwen looked down at him, and gave a comforting smile. Pippin turned to see Merry, Sam and Frodo sat underneath a cherry blossom tree. He began to walk towards his friends, but Merry rushed towards him and wrapped Pippin in an enormous hug.
“Please, Merry,” Pippin grunted, “you’re crushing my ribs.”
“Pip, I was so worried,” Merry wiped away a tear, “you never miss breakfast, and I thought something awful must be happening.”
“Were you just walking with Lady Arwen?” Sam asked in a hushed tone, approaching Pippin and Merry, “what is she like?”
“Sam, you know you can just speak to the elves,” Frodo sighed, putting his arm over Sam’s shoulder, to which Sam began to explain that Lady Arwen was no regular elf.
Pippin looked to his friends and felt a lightness that he hadn’t felt in a very long time. In a moment he scooped them all into a group hug.
“Thank you,” he mouthed to Arwen, who had turned to watch the four hobbits embrace each other. She nodded to Pippin and turned to continue her long walk in the afternoon shade.