[Child of the 7th Age]

Supper was over at Cami's house. She helped her mother pick up dishes, while her father sat by the light of the blazing hearth as he leaned back to relax, sending lazy smoke rings in the air.
Her parents were chatting back and forth about the young brood of ducks, and a new field that needed harvesting, and a myriad of other details that make up the daily routine of a farmer in the Shire.

Finally finished with her duties and having a precious moment to spend on herself, Cami lay back in front of the open fire, squinting at the pages in a book of tales that Bilbo had lent her that afternoon.

"Cami Goodchild!" Her father leaned over and poked her in the ribs. "There's not enough light in here to read. Put that away now, or you'll end up going blind."

Cami groaned, but she knew better than to argue with her father when he spoke with such authority. She set aside the book, and, thoroughly bored with the way the evening was progressing, began using her fingertips to launch small drops of water from her drinking glass in the general direction of the fireplace. She watched with some interest as the flames hissed and spluttered, turning from red to yellow to blue, and small wisps of smoke began to rise.

"Cami, what are you doing?"

"I dunno," she responded to her mother, secretly wondering why the sprigs of flame changed color when the water hit them.

"Cami, you're twelve-years old. You should be working on something practical. Have you finished the sewing I gave you?"

Cami ran over and got her small box sampler with its lines of very wobbly stiches. Her mother held it up to the light, and shook her head in dismay. "This won't do."

Mistress Goodchild took out a needle and began ripping the last line out stitch by stitch, and then gave it back to Cami. Cami obediently continued sewing for another hour, and produced a second line of stitching that looked quite similar to the first. Then she hid the sampler under the flower pot, hoping that her mother wouldn't find it there.

Just as the fire burned lower, her father stood up from his chair and yawned, "Well, I'm off to the barn now. I'm not sure when Molly will have her foal. The birthing could be tonight, so I'd best sleep there." Molly was the one and only pony that was used to pull the family wagon.

Seeng her one clear chance to escape the house, Cami could not stay silent. "Oh, Da," she ran up to her father and threw her arms about his neck. "Let me do that. You know I love sleeping in the hay, and I'll wake you up whenever Molly gets restless. I promise."

Her father agreed, and Cami trooped down to the barn, armed with a blanket and a small lantern, which she was careful to set on the bare floor far away from the hay and anything else that could easily catch fire. She sat up waiting for several hours, cast a final glimpse at Molly who seemed to be sleeping soundly, and then slipped out of the barn to run across the fields in the direction of the flower-covered earthen mounds just north of Hobbiton, where the hobbits from past ages lay sleeping in the ground.