A Better Place - The Hobbit Fanfiction

Alternate Entry Thirty-One - Adulthood

"Mind you she had no business teasing me about my boy's slipping in the mud when her own son tripped in the sod last spring and accidentally speared the neighbor's passing ale cask from Dale. Never mind the fact that he must have had a good arm to start with to even get it that far but it's not as if my Gillard's arm is any better or worse so I've no idea why she feels the need to harass me." Dila grunted as she hefted up her end of the rolled tapestry we'd taken down from her wall. We were working our way out into the crisp, blue spring light to hang it over a tree and beat the dust out of it. It had been five years since the last beating-it was time. This was why I was glad Bofur hadn't brought any tapestries home. Rugs were smaller. They were easier. It was only a true friend who helped you lower, carry and beat out a dusty tapestry.

"I think she's just got a need to belittle," I said as we heaved it out over the grass. "Best to avoid her then, I think. People like that just drain you, I swear."

"Wait," I gasped as we hauled the tapestry up a hill to a tree with a strong enough branch we could reach. "What's Gillard still in training for? I thought he was beyond all that."

"Oh he is. But he's got a severe case of what his captain calls 'Recent Recruit Rockheadedness' so he sent him back to training to deflate him for a bit before it turns terminal. A humbling, if you will."

I chortled. "Well that's what you get when you tell people off for doing their job properly when you don't know what the job is yourself."

"Fully agreed," she grunted. "That branch look good enough for you?"

"I don't think it's tall enough."

"Neither are we."

True story. "We can hoist it piece by piece." I regarded the tree in question. "I can climb up and help move it."

She nodded. "Can you lift it?"

I dug my teeth together. "I got this. You've got to help me out though."

"How'm I going to do that?"

I began hauling myself up the tree, strength of my fists and legs making up for what my arms lacked. "Use that stick there," I said, nodding toward it as I gradually rose. "Prop it up and use it to help me grab it once I get to that branch there."

Dila was rethinking this. "You'll never reach it, sitting up there."

I flung my leg out over the branch in question and crawled to the middle. "I'm not gonna sit on it." I dropped my legs over one side and slipped backward, making Dila shriek.

"What in Arda are you doing, giving me a scare like that?" she demanded, looking ready to beat me with the stick I'd had her fetch.

I grinned at her, upside down. "Sorry, Dil. Forgot you haven't seen me in my element before."

"I've heard enough," she grumped. "I should know better too. Here, you hellion." She grimaced and began angling a corner of the tapestry up toward my hanging hands with the stick.

"Little further." My fingers swirled as though trying to pull in a fishing net. One of the tassels brushed my finger and I wound it into my grip. "All right, got it."

"How are you going to drape it over the branch without falling off?"

I had gathered an armful of the heavy fabric by now and was beginning to curl back up. "Call it a balance of properties."

"A balance of what?"

"Dila don't panic." I righted myself, the bundled fabric over my shoulder, and slid off the opposite side of the branch.