Song of Summer by pandemonium_213

Song of Summer

A haze of butterflies floated lazily around Radagast's head.  He had not summoned them, but here they were anyway, drifting and fluttering in the soft summer air.  Finches twittered in the beech trees and flew from branch to branch as they followed him along the path toward the gardens of the House of Elrond.

Summer in Imladris truly is lovely, he thought.  Here the cool breezes of the mountains tempered the sun's heat.  Although thunderstorms rolled over the valley, they were never as brutal as those on the baked steppes of the East or the humid coastal plains of the West.  The rains fell abundantly but not with destructive force.  And the nights, oh, the nights!  How beautiful they were when the liquid song of nightingales in the woods filled his dreams with mist-shrouded memories of the gardens of Lórien.

Another song caught his attention.  It was not a nightingale's trill but an elf-woman's voice he heard.  He stopped, pricking up his ears to listen, and resumed walking at his accustomed pace, heedless of the sound of his steps.  He rounded a cluster of holly shrubs and emerged from the shade of the trees into the sun on the garden path.  Past the roses, delphiniums, daisies and foxglove, he saw the source of the voice stooped in the kitchen garden.  As he approached, her song became clear: it was in the language of Bharat, a tongue utterly foreign to him. T he bundle on her hip resolved into a tow-headed baby, who would soon grow into his first steps but now sat in a sling tied around his mother's body.  The baby had grabbed her dark plait and chewed on its end although she was oblivious to this while she pulled weeds from the earth.  Their backs were to him, and they were not yet aware of his presence.

He stood silently and watched mother and child from a distance for a while.  He readied to announce himself but reined in his greeting when the woman straightened and lifted her hands over a row of bushy plants whose green globes of fruit peeked out from a screen of serrated leaves.

Her song shifted then.  The timbre of her voice became richer, and he now recognized the words, for she sang in his Valarin mother tongue.  He remained frozen in place, a thrill rippling down his spine when he heard glittering words half-forgotten and recalled a time and place so distant that they now seemed only a dream.

The baby continued to gum his mother's braid while she sang, but Radagast watched silently until she finished her song.  Then he cleared his throat.  Both mother and baby turned to look at him.  The baby rewarded him with a smile of four pearly little teeth, but the woman arched her left brow with an expression half-way between annoyance and amusement.

"Aiwendil!  Sneaking up on me is a hazardous venture, you know."

He picked his way between the rows of vegetables. "Hello, Mélamírë.  Hello, Melu." He tickled the baby under his plump little chin. "I am not too worried about such risks.  You were engrossed in that song."

He eyed the bushy plants that had so enchanted her and, as he observed, that she had enchanted in turn: their green fruits now blushed with color.  Those that had been pink and orange had deepened to lush red.  "That was a Song of Making, was it not?"

Mélamírë's dirt-streaked cheeks flushed pink.  "It was."

"No need to worry.  I am not judging you for it because I trust your judgment when you wield such spells.  After all, another half-blood used the same song for other purposes."

The blush disappeared from his friend's face when she smiled wickedly. "Yes, you are right: Lúthien used the Song to make her hair grow.  I use it to ripen my tomatoes.  It's a matter of priorities, old man."

She leaned over the plants, the baby swinging forward in his sling but still balanced on his mother's hip while she reached for a ripe tomato.  She plucked the fruit from the vine and gave it to him.  Sun-warmed succulence burst in Radagast's mouth when he bit into the fruit; juice dribbled into his beard and over his chin, but he did not care.

"Mmmmm. . .tasty, my dear, very tasty.  The very essence of summer."

"I'm glad you think so.  In this cool climate, they'd never ripen properly if I. . .well, if I didn't add a little something extra to help them along.  Now if you please, take that basket and pick a few more ripe tomatoes, and I'll put them in your curry tonight."

"I'd say your priorities are in the right place."  Then Radagast bent over along with the cloud of butterflies that swirled over his head, and he picked a half dozen of the red ripe songs of summer.