Deepest apologies for lateness.

And thanks for all the suggestions for Z words, but I couldn't think of anything, so I came up with this. Not a Z word, but it uses the letter Z. That's good enough, right?

Z

"Don't draw on the window, Pip. You'll get marks on it." Pippin sighed, glancing at Merry out of the corner of his eye, then returned to making lines in the steam on the window.

"I'll clean it later then." He had to do something, seeing as Merry was so obsessed with doing the washing up.

"If you're bored, you could finish the drying you started ten minutes ago." Pippin shook his head and shifted slightly on the kitchen counter, still engrossed with the window in front of him.

"No, I'm happy here, thanks." He drew three lines on the window. "Zed."

"What?"

"Here," He said, pointing at the doodle on the pane of glass. "Zed. What begins with zed?" Abandoning the few remaining unclean plates, Merry jumped up to sit on the counter next to Pippin.

"I'm not sure." Merry reached out, and wrote three letters - B, U, Z - next to Pippin's original 'Z'.

"Buzz? How childish, Meriadoc. You know, a zed on it's side is an en."

"Your point?" Pippin sighed again, softly smiling and raised a finger to the window, drawing P I P P I over the 'Z'.

"Oh." Merry smiled.

"Didn't quite work out, did it Pip? Well, Pippiz." Pippin glared at his cousin as he watched him get off of the counter and stand in front of him.

"Haven't you got washing up to obsess over?"