Beleg was whistling as he skipped down the halls of Menegroth. It was wonderful, Turin wasn't angsting or running off into the forest to right some ficticious wrong against the edain, Mablung didn't do anything that would result in Doriath blowing up, Thingol had been laying off the Noldorian impersonations, all it all it was a good week. The fact that Saeros was bedridden with food poisoning from Mablung's cooking might have contributed to the archer's chipper mood, but he was sure that the extended leave wasn't hurting.

He stopped his stroll through the thousand caves when he was Turin brooding over a hastily written scroll.

uh oh

"Hey Turin," greeted Beleg, "got a minute?"

"I've wasted enough of your time captain, we'll have time for personal debriefings later." grumbled the edain

Beleg raised an eyebrow, imploring to his friend to elaborate

Turin indulged him, "You know that Mablung's been spending a lot of time in the hatch with Gene right, milking her every one hundred and eight minutes?"

"ye...ah?"

"Well ever since the sky turned purple Gene's been gone."

"What do you mean by gone?"

"I mean the cow ran away and now Mablung's asked us to help look for her."

"rhaich"

"I know, the poor bovine's probably mostly dead by now."

"well if we're lucky she'll only be somewhat dead"

their unsettling reverie was broken up for a determines looking Mablung clapping them each on the shoulder.

"ready ground team?" the heavy hand inquired?, he continued without waiting for an answer, "good. I won't waste time with hero pep-talks because I don't want to die just when it looks like victory is near to rouse my men and break the promise to return to my love interest. Also, Gene needs up."

He glared the two down with more ferocity then he possessed when hunting the wolf or in the Battle of Unnumbered Tears.

Beleg and Turin could only shoot each other off looks

"hero?"

"love interest?"

"no time...MOVE OUT"

Mablung sprinted away leaving a disgruntled Turin and a mildly concerned Beleg following in his wake.

"and I though it was going to be a quite week."