What Happened to the Entwives
by Primula
Long and far the Entwives did roam, seeking they
knew not what except that their restless desire for places of peace where
open lands were well-tended and flowers grew in ordered beds drew them ever
North. Slowly they strode past wild wood and rampant stream until they began
to find settlements of Men and Halflings who tilled the good earth deeply,
pulled the noxious weeds from among the sweet flowerings and even planted
young saplings. Did they allow the saplings to spring up whereever some
errant squirrel had buried a nut against Winter's chill? No, instead the
ordered rows of young trees stood in guarded orchards, carefully tended in
orderly rows like schoolchildren at their desks.
How the Entwives throve in these places! How softly
they sang with the sighing breezes in their branches in the evenings, straight
and tall near the borders of the farmlands where they could watch over the
peaceful, orderly harvests and plantings. And so they fell into a doze of
contentment and the tiny flowers of the moss bloomed upon their unstirring
feet season by season.
The day finally arose when the farmers found their
crop of young hobbits needed something to keep them properly occupied after
their chores were finished, the long golden hours of summer days bringing
but mischief to their hands. They devised a fine game to while them away,
and soon the late afternoons rang with childish laughter as they ran, and
threw balls to one another. But great was the woe of these little ones when
they found that the weak sticks of the orchards broke when swung against
a ball. They sought something finer, something stronger and of the finest
quality.
So one by one they gently felled the patient Entwives
and joyfully turned them in sections upon the lathe and the land was filled
with the sweet scent of wood shavings, falling like a golden rain upon the
workshed floors. The pieces were smoothed, and cured and hung like wholesome
sausages along the rafters all through that sparkling winter season. And
when the first bright days of Spring began to warm the frosts and bring out
all the tender tips of green among all the orchard trees, the young ones
took them down and grasped them in their hands, and swung them through the
air with a satisfying *crack* when the ball connected with them.
What a happy and wholesome tale, tra la la la...the Ending of the Entwives as baseball bats.
