[Child of the 7th Age]

Cami had spent the night at Bag-end, sleeping on a bedroll next to the hearth. She hadn't really planned it that way, but, at the time, it seemed like the wisest thing to do.

First, she'd had a long talk with Bilbo and come back to the Dragon, expecting to slip into bed and awake the next morning to start her chores again. But sleep had eluded her. Bilbo's words kept repeating in her mind, despite all her efforts to will the conversation away. Cami had tossed and turned unable to settle for even a single instant.

She reasoned that there was no sense lying awake in bed. Yet, she did't really want to go trooping through the kitchen or front door so everyone would know her business. By chance, one of the workers had been replacing some roof thatching just that afternoon in anticipation of the party. A rickety old ladder had been left standing upright underneath her window. So she'd slowly climbed down, rung by rung, being careful not to plunge headlong to the ground, and then run off towards Bag-end, which lay just ten minutes distant.

Bag-end normally had ample rooms for visitors, but things were a bit more crowded than usual. Sam and Rosie and their thirteen children filled up all the bedrooms, with Frodo and Bilbo assigned to the study and guest chamber. She had sat up half the night talking with the two hobbits, until she'd finally decided exactly what she wanted to do.

Then, she'd declined Frodo's offer of the guest room and curled up quite contentedly on the kitchen floor armed with blankets and pillows, intending just to have a little snooze. To her surprise, Cami hadn't woken until late in the morning and spent much of the afternoon deep in conspiracies and secret plans, then said goodbye to the hobbits and scampered back to the Inn. The ladder seemed to be curiously absent from where she thought she'd left it. Cami slipped behind a large beech tree and scratched her head, wondering what her next move should be.

[ January 20, 2003: Message edited by: Child of the 7th Age ]