Hello Readers,

This is to be another series of drabbles set in the universe of Proud, Beautiful and Strong, since so many reviewers have expressed their admiration for a certain bunny and a royal elk. You don't necessarily have to read P, B, S; just know that Finwë is the bunny and Aglar is Thranduil's elk.

This first story is set right after Thran and Gíl have wed. My inspiration comes from the fact that I live in the Pacific Northwest and we actually have moose occasionally stroll through our campus. One time they put out a campus alert with "moose etiquette" in it, explaining various things you were to do if you should chance upon an elk.
One suggestion was that if the moose charged you, to run around a tree because the moose would have trouble maneuvering around it, "the gangly creature" :) we also were not allowed to feed or pet the moose…

So I suspected that they got these rules from Galion… Here is that story...

Kudos to my sister who wrote half this story while I was fueling her with the craziness in my brain while cleaning my room.

Enjoy!

L'Chaim… Philosophie88

Galion whistled merrily on his way to feed Aglar. Today was a good day. Thranduil had excused him for the afternoon, provided that he first see to the royal mount, and he was sure that he would not be called back to attend the king that evening. The king was newly wed and Gíl-wen tended to her husband at sunrise and sundown, leaving Galion free both to rise later and also to attend the fire circles at twilight.

Ah, the Lady Gíl-wen, thought Galion ...well, Queen Gíl-wen as she now was. How wonderful it was that his friend and king had married her. The Greenwood now had a lady of its own to share the burdens of ruling with its leader– Thranduil no longer had to rely on Galion for dressing himself, getting a second opinion or tempering his irritable moods. Greenwood had gained a queen... and a new royal bunny, for that matter, Galion added in his head as he swung open the door to the stables to happen upon a most curious sight.

Finwë the Bunny had perched himself in Aglar the Elk's antlers for an afternoon snooze. Aglar seemed unperturbed by such turn of events and was quietly munching on hay.

Galion smirked at the scene before him. Erestor had cautioned the butler about Finwë's errant ways, but so far the bunny had been rather fluffily endearing.

"Don't let him get in your way..." warned Erestor, before the Greenwood party had left Imladris. "He likes to upend furniture and nibble on good robes… "

"Admit it, you like him." Galion interrupted.

"You will most likely have to clean his droppings out of cupboards and dressers… "

"You are going to miss him." the butler interjected.

"Don't let him into the kitchens, whatever you do… "

The list went on for a good three minutes with Galion commenting on how the housekeeper and librarian of Imladris would ever survive without his little, friendly, obnoxious rabbit. But here in the Greenwood, the butler still could not understand Erestor's obsession with the bunny's allegedly mischievous nature. He himself was quite fond of the furry little creature, who spent virtually all of his time in the stables with his new-found friend, Aglar the Royal Elk.

A thought came to Galion then. As his master was painfully aware, he had a mischievous streak of his own and often visited it upon his unsuspecting friends. Galion had few friends besides the king, the queen, and Erestor: Aglar and Finwë were definitely included among those few. (A loner? Galion? Who would accuse him of such a thing?) Included in his duties–until recently, that is–was awakening people, i.e. Thranduil, who did not want to be awoken. Galion the butler was keenly aware of the right way to do this and the many wrong ways to do this. He was, one might say, the expert in both areas.

Meanwhile, the lord and the lady of Greenwood the Great were stealing a few moments from their respective duties to spend time in each other's company; however, neither would admit that he or she was neglecting work.

"Why, Thranduil!" Gíl-wen feigned surprise upon finding her husband in the hallway outside his office. "Are you not busy this afternoon?"

The king smiled a smile intended to charm the receiver– it charmed her. "I was just stretching my legs," he told her; what he really was doing was wandering in search of his wife. "I did think that your day would be quite taken up with work."

"Oh, I happened to be heading this way on an errand," she hedged, almost convincingly. "I heard there was a problem in one of the kitchens and was on my way down."

"I actually heard about that as well," murmured Thranduil. Somehow, although neither of them quite knew how it had happened, Gíl-wen was leaning back against the door frame of the king's office and the truant occupant of that office was running his finger along her jawline. His left hand supported him, pressing against the wall as he leaned in towards her.

Her expression was rather coy. "Now, Thran, darling... You should not invent stories in such a disgraceful manner," she admonished him, straight-faced. "How will I teach the children to tell the truth if their father lets his tongue do as it pleases?"

"Well, my tongue generally stays in line with my desires, so I allow it to play around sometimes," was the response. "I have also noticed that the behavior of my tongue frequently pleases the queen. When my tongue has such interests in mind, I see no reason to curb its behavior." As he spoke, his mouth moved successively closer to Gíl-wen's face, suggesting that what his tongue wanted to do was something other than continue the conversation.

Gíl-wen, on the other hand, had decided to tease him a little. "Your Majesty! What is this scandalous behavior?" said the queen, smoothly bringing her index finger up to his lips. "And in public, too. Suppose someone happened to come around the corner and see the king of the woodland realm imposing physical attentions on a woman, whom, I might add, he had backed into a corner?"

"Literally," he snickered, and ended her finger's resistance by biting it.

She snatched it back in a hurry. "Ouch!" she exclaimed, startled. "What was that for?"

"You are no longer an elfling, gíl nin," he said reprovingly. "You should know by now that a king is to be obeyed, not willfully obstructed."

Gíl-wen felt his fingers grip her waist gently but firmly and he took another step toward her. The distance separating them was now completely nonexistent.

"The queen most of all should set an example for her subjects by respecting her king's wishes," he added as he felt her arms slide around his own waist. He bent to brush his mouth against her nose.

Since Gíl-wen's back was pressed against the door frame, Thranduil was facing the office and could see through the room and out the window into the forest beyond. Something caught his eye as he moved his head downward, but he ignored it for a moment. Just before his lips touched his wife's face, the strange scene which had presented itself to his sight registered with his brain. Lifting his head, with eyes slightly wider than they had previously been, the king stared out the window in astonishment.

"Meleth nin," he mumbled, "am I seeing things? Have I perhaps fallen asleep at my desk?"

She pinched him. "Nay, I do not think so," Gíl-wen giggled, as he jumped.

"Now who is behaving scandalously in public?" Thranduil poked her in the ribs. "But seriously, baineth (beautiful one), look out the window." He rotated her whole body until she stood in the doorway itself.

Gíl-wen was speechless. As the royal couple gazed in astonishment, Galion was running around a tree outside the window of Thranduil's office. The king's ostentatious mount looked on in utter confusion, while a petrified Finwë clutched the elk's antlers for dear life.

After a stunned silence, Thranduil asked his wife, "What has that terrible rabbit of yours done now?"

"What!" said Gíl-wen indignantly. "Do you see the expression on the poor baby's face? He is terrified, not terrible!"

Thranduil grinned suddenly. "I am more interested in the expression on the face of my butler," he said, starting to shake with laughter. "Perhaps we should go and save all parties involved from whatever has caused this most interesting scene."

"Which, by the looks of it, is your ridiculous pet," returned the queen, and then gasped as her husband took her hand firmly and pulled her down the hallway. His long steps were leading in the direction of the main entrance.

"Do not call my elk 'ridiculous'," he ordered over his shoulder, indignant in his turn. Gíl-wen smirked interiorly.

The king slowed slightly when he reached the guard at the great doors, allowing her to catch up with him. They passed outside the gate and into the forest. Turning right, Thranduil and Gíl-wen headed towards the tree where the butler, the elk, and the rabbit were in a very strange situation. By this time, quite a few members of the Greenwood Guard had gathered to witness said bizarre situation, and the king and queen had to push past several elves before they were recognized and let through.

"Sire," said Maefaron with a twinkle in his eye, "should we tell your respected butler that the animal has stopped pursuing him?"

Thranduil tried to repress his laughter for the sake of dignity, but it choked him and he had to bend over double. Despite her own extreme amusement, Gíl-wen supported him, fearing that her husband would fall to the ground in agonized convulsions of mirth.

"Yes," he gasped finally, "someone do something!"

The captain of the guard strode over to secure the king's mount, while Gíl-wen, leaving Thranduil to fall or not to fall as he would, hastened to rescue her frightened rabbit.

"My poor, scared darling!" she murmured, stroking his fur gently. The bunny was shaking all over– not unlike her husband, although the source of the shaking was quite different in either case.

Thranduil had somewhat recovered himself after a minute or two, at least enough to straighten up and walk over towards his very dizzy friend. Galion had stopped circling the tree at high speeds but his steps now seemed to indicate that he had imbibed a good amount of Dorwinion.

Thranduil arched an amused brow as his butler caught his breath and stopped shakily before him.

"Care to explain your behavior, butler?" the king tried to be serious but his previous fit of laughter hindered any sternness he tried to convey.

"Sire," gasped Galion, "I went to feed your elk and that confounded rabbit… " he pointed at the somewhat recovered bunny in Gíl-wen's arms; the queen raised her eyebrows disbelieving, the king smiled wryly, and the bunny glared at the butler with beady black eyes, "that confounded rabbit woke up and startled poor Aglar, and the next thing I know he was chasing me!"

"Finwe just happened to wake up?" asked Thranduil incredulously; he knew first hand his butler's rather novel and quite mischievous ways of startling one awake, but Galion determinedly stuck to his story.

"Yes, sire, quite by accident and the next thing I know I was running around the tree to escape."

"You couldn't just climb one?" asked Gíl-wen in all seriousness.

"My queen, if I did that, I have a feeling that Aglar would undoubtedly bite me from behind as I climbed; I felt that running around a tree would get the elk to stop chasing me as he is too gangly to maneuver in such small circles."

"You are quite brilliant, Galion," said an amused Thranduil. "Perhaps you should write a book on moose etiquette." Resounding laughter floated merrily through the trees from the gathered elves.

Galion glared at the king, the queen, the captain of the guard, the rabbit, the elk, and the rest of the Greenwood elves who had chanced upon the scene. Without gracing the king with an answer he scoffed and walked back into the woods, head held high to retain what little dignity he had left. Perhaps Erestor was correct... that rabbit was a nuisance.

As Thranduil and Gíl-wen walked back indoors, Finwë fast asleep under his mistress' arm, exhausted from his afternoon adventures, the queen sought to champion her pet's cause and have him moved as far from her husband's ostentatious elk as possible.

"Thran, dearest, I do think that we should keep Finwë inside with us from now on. The poor baby had quite had an experience with your horse today."

"It's not a horse; Aglar is an elk and he has feelings."

"At any rate, Finwë should be inside from now on… "

"So he can terrorize Galion even more?"

"Precisely."

"If I recall, it was my elk that had him running around the tree… "

"Because my bunny was startled..."

"Come now, gíl nin, Finwë was in Aglar's antlers... hardly counts… "

"Would you like to sleep in your study this night, melethron?"

"Hmmmm... it was undoubtedly Finwë's fault, for sure… "