Title: Walking the Deep

Author: Tiamat's Child

Fandom: Lord of the Rings

Rating: G

Summary: Pippin's not the sort to panic when he could swim instead.

Notes: A birthday present for my friend Dana.

Walking the Deep

When Pippin was a child there was a pond he and the Brandybuck children used to swim in. It was deep and cool and full of fish, frogs, and pond life. Once, Pippin dove deep, down to the bottom, in the spirit of the game he and the others were playing. Somehow, he had never been certain just what happened, a strand of the tough, thin plants that ribboned up to the light wound itself around his ankle and bound him to the bottom.

For a moment he stayed there, caught. Fear tangled his guts, freezing him, as if he could turn to something cold and silver, a statue in the deep parts of the pond. But he was a hobbit child, sensible above all else, and he had been raised alongside the Brandybucks, on the banks of the Brandywine. So he kept his head, and brought himself into a ball, and pulled the plant loose from his ankle, so that he could slip free.

He still remembers how green and smooth and golden the world had seemed as he kicked carefully, beginning to glide upward unhindered. It was such a long way away, that lovely sunlight glimmer that was the surface and all around him was nothing but green, just green, sliding around his skin and through his hair. He was afraid he'd not make the surface before he forgot, and tried to breathe, and pulled all that green into his lungs, and choked on it.

But he broke the surface and breathed air, his head thrown back as he floated on the water, too relieved to properly swim.

Now he leans over the parapets of Minas Tirith, watching the armies below, and wonders how long it will take for him to break this surface, and if he ever will.