Pippin watched with fascination as his great aunt rubbed the inside of a bowl with a smooth, yellow stone. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m polishing this bowl so it will hold water longer without it needing to be glazed,” she explained without stopping the movement of her hands. “Stone polishing smoothes and helps seal the surface, and gives it a nice patina. It’s an ancient technique.”
And your character, too, is being polished even as we speak, she thought. A fine Hobbit you’ll prove once you’ve grown and you have some experience to smooth the edges, I’m thinking.