Tales Of Stupidity

Disclaimers- I don't own any of the characters, they all belong to J.R.R. Tolkein or Cassia and Siobhan. Don't sue me as my total income adds up to about £4.50 so there is no point what so ever.

Summary-the twins, Legolas, Estel, Elrond and Glorfindal tell tales of stupid things each of them have done Very Funny

Rating- PG

Spoilers- None that I know of.

I woke up one morning and had a sudden idea for these stories, I thought they were quite funny and so did my sister but I doubt every one will. Oh well hope you like them.

Tales Of Stupidity

"Estel come back here" Elladan yelled angrily

"Yeah, you wait till I get my hands on you," called Elrohir running alongside Elladan.

Laughing Strider sprinted through the trees, ducking the low hanging boughs as he went, the twins in hot pursuit. Suddenly, he ran smack bang into something and fell over in shock, standing in front of him was a tall and lithe blond haired elf.

"Legolas" cried Strider in delight "Its good to see you mellon nim"

then, hearing crashing sounds in the undergrowth behind him he leapt into the trees with a whispered

"Hide me" Grinning Legolas sat down and waited for what he thought would be the twins to arrive.

Sure enough a moment later Elladan, followed by Elrohir, appeared in the clearing. Their faces were angry but when they saw the solitary elf sitting there, there faces lit up into identical grins and they rushed up to him saying

"Legolas I'm glad to see you"

"yeah its been months since we last saw you"

"Estel will be glad to see you" Elladan frowned "speaking of which, have you seen him, we were chasing him in this direction."

"I haven't seen him no, but you know Aragorn, if he doesn't want to be found not many people can see him.

Up in the tree, Strider was struggling in an attempt not to laugh and the branch on which he was balanced shook slightly at his movement. Noticing the trembling bough Legolas quickly diverted the twins attention.

"Why were you chasing him anyway, whats he done this time, though from the mud all down your front I think I've got a good idea"

"we were sitting under a tree fletching some new arrows and unbeknown to us Estel was in the tree above us, first he dropped some mud on our heads then he leapt down in front of us, he ran off and of course we followed him, then all of a sudden we both tripped over something and fell flat on our faces in a pile of mud. The little idiot had put a trip wire across the path knowing we would follow him."

"well I havent seen him, if you carry on looking I'll go straight to Rivendell, I would like to see your father again." " ok see you later Legolas"

As soon as they had left the clearing Strider jumped down and was just thanking Legolas when a handful of mud came flying through the air and hit Strider on the face. Laughing, the twins entered the clearing and flung handful after handful of mud at Estel before stopping and turning to Legolas .

"we knew he was there all along, come on you two Estel, and Elrohir, lets take Legolas to see ada." The three elves walked along laughing at Estel's muddy appearance, but Strider only stalked along furiously, which made them laugh even more. As the reached the house Clebdoril came out and scowled at the sight of the twins and Estel before smiling at Legolas.

"Its good to see you your highness, come in and I'll get you something to eat, you must be hungry after your journey" the other three made to follow but Celebdoril placed himself between them and the door.

"You three can stay out here till I've given a spare change of clothes, there is no way I'm letting you in the house like that"

Knowing better than to argue they sat down and waited while Celebdoril showed Legolas inside. After telling him to go on to the sitting room he turned to get the clothes and Legolas, grinning, went on. In the sitting room he found Elrond reading and drinking a cup of tea. He glanced up when Legolas entered and immediately Elrond stood up to greet the young elf.

"Legolas I'm glad you came to visit again, the house seems much quieter when your not here of course" he mused

"I'm not sure that's a bad thing but my sons enjoy having you here" he looked around and asked

"where are they anyway, have you seen them yet?"

"Yes I have seen them, but they were just a little muddy, so Celebdoril made them wait outside till he had got them some clean clothes, I'm sure they will be in soon"

He broke off hearing voices echoing down the hall. The sons of Elrond were having a heated argument about who's fault it was that they were muddy, they only broke off when they came to the sitting room and saw Legolas and Elrond inside.

"Legolas how long will you be staying for" asked Strider "we've got a lot to catch up on"

"I'll be here for at least two months" replied Legolas "That is if its ok with you my lord" He asked with a questioning glance in Elrond's direction.

"of course, you are always welcome in my home, for as long as you want."

Bowing his head slightly Legolas thanked Elrond and they three younger elves and Strider left the room and went up to Strider's room to talk.

That evening they sat in the hall of fire talking and singing, still remembering the last adventure that the friends had gone on, and how the twins had embarrased him by telling a story of something stupid he had done when he was younger. Strider then decided he would tell Legolas something that the twins had once done. Strider chuckled at the memory of the tale and when Legolas asked why he was laughing he said

"I was just thinking of the time when the twins were showing of to each other when I was only ten"

" it must be funny if you still laugh about it after 12 years" "I don't think the twins found it funny but I did"

The twins had been following this conversation with identical looks of horror on their faces but knowing that nothing they could say would stop Strider, they sat back resignedly and listened.

"Elladan and Elrohir had been showing off for about half an hour and they were becoming more and more adventurous when this happened. They had tied a rope across a distance between two trees that were very high off the ground and had decided to walk across them. Obviously this isn't that hard for elves but to make it more challenging the elf on the ground would be firing arrows trying to hit the rope, so the elf would have to particularly run across. As the oldest, Elladan went first, and he only just made it before Elrohir hit the rope and broke it. Not to be outdone Elrohir quickly tied the rope on again and tried it himself, he wasn't fast enough though, one arrow hit him in the arm, and another one broke the rope and he fell to the ground. Elladan broke his fall, though he also broke his arm, and it was only then that they realised that the arrow in Elrohir arm was an orc arrow and not one of their own ones. They just had time to stand up before the orcs attacked, luckily there were not many of the orcs, and even though they both had a hurt arm, they managed to kill them all before passing out.

"What happened next" Legolas asked between fits of laughter " well ada got worried when they hadnt returned the next day so we went out to look for them. We found them in the middle of a circle of dead orcs, knocked out, one with an arrow in his arm and the other with a broken arm, I thought it was hilarious but you should have seen ada's face, it looked as black as a thunder cloud. The lecture he gave them when they told him what had happened, you should have heard it."

"did it go something like, I cant believe you could be so irresponsible and stupid" said Legolas grinning. "how did you know" asked Strider in surprise.

"it's the same lecture he gave them the first time they visited Mirkwood" replied Legolas

"why, what did they do then"

"No Legolas, don't tell this one" groaned Elladan

"Yeah, what did we ever do to you"

Ignoring them, Legolas started the tale, an impish grin forming on his lips.

"the twins had strange ideas about the Silvan elves, they thought we were prissy and stuck up"

"We still do" muttered Elrohir under his breath, though not quite quiet enough for Legolas's quick ears to pick up.

"I heard that," he said," any way one day when they were there, about a week into their visit I think, we went for a ride in the forest and they were showing of again, I think they were trying and prove that Nolder elves are better than the Silvan race, which was impossible, though not for want of trying. Anyway the decided that we should dare each other to do things and if I won then Silvan elves were better, and if one of the twins won then Nolder elves were. The first few dares were easy, things like jump across the river, it was about 10 feet across, and target shooting, I won both of these events, but then the twins won tight rope walking and swimming. Finally we decided to have a race and whoever won that was the overall winner. It was a horseback race but you had to stand up on the horse. Elrohir fell off his almost as soon as he started, but me and Elladan were so intent on beating each other that we didn't notice that he had knocked himself out in the fall. We were neck and neck most of the way when Elladan got slightly ahead, then a low hanging branch appeared, it was to low for us to duck though Elladan tried, sadly he didn't managed it and knocked himself out, I jumped over the branch and landed back on my horse, and only when I reached the finish line did I notice that my two opponents had disappeared. Turning around I saw them both lying on the ground, well I put them both back on their horses and lead them back to the palace, they had only fell off a few times before I reached the gates,

"A few" growled Elladan "I was black and blue for weeks afterwards"

" well anyway you should have seen Elrond's face, after thanking me for bringing them home safely" Legolas broke off waiting for his laughter to subside before continuing "After thanking me he quickly woke the twins up and gave them the lecture that I described, that was the last time they claimed that Nolder elves were better for a long time."

"So that's why you looked like you were trying not to laugh when I thanked you" they all turned round to find Elrond standing there smiling. "I always wondered what you thought was so funny, I guess I know now, this conversation sounds interesting though sadly I don't have time to stay,"

"oh please stay ada, I was hoping you could tell us more stories about the twins, before I was here to see it."

"well I might have time for one story"

" Hey is it lets all pick on the twins day or something" they protested loudly Ignoring them Elrond started the tale

"Now this happened when they were only around 10 years old, which is very young for an elf. Their mother and I had just given them their first bow and arrows, and a small sword each. They decided that they were old enough to go hunting and snuck out early that morning to try and catch something. Now they hadnt gone very far before they heard a rustling sound in the bushes, they decided they would try and shoot it from the trees as they didn't know what it was, I think they were worried in case it was a bear or something, anyway they scrambled into a tree and sat there waiting. As soon as the thing emerged they both shot blindly in its direction. They heard a yell and looking down they saw Glorfindel with two arrows stuck in him, one in his arm and one in his leg."

"Glorfindel always seems to come out badly in these tales" Legolas interrupted him

suddenly

"I'm guessing your talking about Estel's first hunting trip" Elrond replied before continuing

"anyway the twins were mortified as well as scared, so instead of jumping down and helping him they just ran off through the treetops. Now Glorfindel recognised the arrows after he had pulled them out, and went back to the house trying to ignore the pain in his shoulder and leg. I must say I was rather surprised to see Glorfindel limping back to the house and hurried out to find out was wrong. When Glorfindel told me I found it hard not to laugh but I managed it and sent him off to the healing rooms while I went out with Celebrian to try and find them. The twins meanwhile had run quite far and when they stopped they had reached the waterfall. By that time they were quite worried, and they thought that they would be in loads of trouble when they got home. Thinking this, they decided that they should run away, but being young they actually headed back in the direction of Rivendell. They hid in the bushes as they went, fearing that Glorfindel had sent people looking for them, on the way they saw a lone orc, they managed to kill it between them, but it shook them up even more and they carried on cautiously. We were drawing near them and they heard our voices, for some reason they thought we were another orc, so they hid in a bush and as I walked past they both simultaneously jabbed me in my feet with their swords. I fell over with a yell of surprise and they leapt out with their swords raised before stopping mouths open in surprise. They stared at me sheepishly then Elladan said

"we thought you were an orc"

Now cross as I was, I found that hard to believe, and asked him how they managed to mistake me for one. Celebrian arrived just in time to hear them say they had been attacked by one but had managed to kill it, she was horrified and before I had time admonish them on their stupidity she had picked them up and was carrying them back to Rivendell comforting them whilst leaving me to hobble back to Rivendell, which, may I tell you is no easy feat if you've been stabbed in both feet and are attacked on the way by a group of about five orcs. Then when I got there she was standing in the doorway with a frown on her face asking me what had taken me so long. I told her, but was she sympathetic, no, she just told me not to be a baby and went in to carry on comforting the twins."

Elrond finished his tale and looked round. Legolas and Strider were rolling around in laughter and the twins were sitting there looking mortified. Getting up and smiling he said.

"well I'm glad you found it funny, I had better go now, I've got work to do now, Elladan, Elrohir try and think up some tales to tell about Legolas or Estel as I expect you've been embarrased enough now."

Smiling he left the room while the twins smirked evilly at each other thinking of what tales they could tell. Then rubbing his hands together in glee Elrohir leaned forward and began his tale.

"This stories is about Legolas, it happened before you were born Estel so you wouldn't know it. This time Legolas's family visited us in Rivendell, we decided to get our own back on Legolas for what happened in the story Legolas told earlier. Ever since we heard that Legolas was coming for a visit we had been planning what we were going to do. We decided that we wanted to embarrass him or get him in to trouble with his father. When he first arrived we were nice to him for about a week. We took him for walks and showed him the area until he finally stopped being suspicious of us. Then one day we took him hunting and we told him about the dreaded badoc that dwelt in that part of the forest. Unbeknown to Legolas, Thranduil was walking in that part of the forest, our plan was to scare Legolas and make him fall out of the tree into the lake in front of his father, however it went slightly different from plan. Elrohir was at the top of the tree and when Thranduil was about to enter the clearing next to the lake he made an ear piercing shriek, he almost scared me out of the tree and I knew he was going to do it. Legolas didn't just fall he let fly his arrow which hit his father in the shoulder, his father fell over, and Legolas fell out of the tree and into the water, splashing his father from head to foot.

"The badoc, Legolas even I didn't fall for the badoc story when the twins told me about it" Strider was in hysterics by now,

"what happened next" he asked in between fits of laughter "me and Elladan ran off through the trees before Thranduil could see us and left Legolas to his wrath, we could hear Legolas being yelled at a mile away and you should have seen ada, nana and Legolas mothers face when they got back. Both of them were soaked and Thranduil had an arrow in his shoulder. We were up on the roof when they got back and we were rolling around laughing so much that I'm surprised that didn't hear us."

Legolas grinned suddenly before saying, "they didn't need to hear you though did they" Strider looked up at that interestdly "Why's that Legolas" "This is my story Legolas we don't need to hear that part of it" "I think we do" Legolas replied "The twins were laughing so much that they fell of the roof and landed in the pond below them, they made a bigger splash than I did and soaked Elrond, Celebrian and my mother, those three were less than impressed with the twins and asked them what they were doing up on the roof, you know Elrond, just looking at people can make them tell him what he wants to know, and the twins quickly told him everything, all the grown ups bust out laughing, and they helped Thranduil in to take out the arrow, leaving us three to struggle in with our wet clothes, and we were the wettest out of the group."

"OK so our plan didn't quite go how we wanted it to but it was still funny, your face when you saw that you had shot your own father, you looked horrified."

Strider, the twins and Legolas were all laughing now, and the other elves in the hall looked over in surprise, Glorfindel smiled as he watched the group and made up his mind to go and listen to what they were saying in a while. Elladan composed himself first and thought to himself for a minute. When the others had finished laughing he started his anecdote

"This is also about Legolas."

"That's not fair you just told one about me"

"Yeah well we had three stories told about us, you'll only have two"

"Don't count on it" Strider said grinning evilly

"well anyway we were back at Mirkwood and Legolas was in trouble with his father that morning because he had let his pet ferrets in the house and they had got loose and attacked the furniture. Thinking it would be a good idea to get out of the house he took us, Ranien, and Trelan out hunting, we went far into the forest looking for the white deer that are prized by the elves of Mirkwood, Legolas was in high spirits and was singing loudly. He scared away all the deer and attracted a band of orcs, well we killed them all quickly and then we started teasing Legolas about his singing. He got in a stress and stormed off through the trees, he was going to fast for us to catch him so we gave up. He climbed a tree when he had got a couple of miles away, and sat there singing softly to himself. This time it was the spiders he attracted and they snuck up on him, he killed a few before he was bitten. At once he went into the enchanted sleep that their bites caused and the spiders wrapped him up and left him there to hang for a few days. Meanwhile the rest of us had killed several deer in his absence, me and Ro weren't worried about him, but knowing how angry the king would be if anything happened to him Ranien and Trelan decided they should go and look for him, by this time Legolas had woken up and finding himself hanging upside down wrapped in sticky threads he was not best pleased. We reached the tree were he was hung in time to see what looked like a giant cocoon wriggling around. Me and Elrohir were fascinated, we had never seen a giant spider before let alone one of their victims cocooned in thread. Ranien and Trelan however realised what it was and quickly cut it down, when we saw a very sticky Legolas emerge from it we collapsed into laughter, sadly this attracted more spiders but between the five of us we managed to kill them all, not that Legolas really helped, he staggered around like a drunk dwarf and almost succeeded in chopping several of mine and Elrohir limbs"

"I'm not sure if that was an accident actually" Elladan interrupted thoughtfully

"it wasn't" growled Legolas

"I was trying to cut your arms off"

"well that's not very nice now is it" replied Elrohir

"Temper Temper" put in Strider smirking

"We all went back to the city after the spiders were gone, and as you can imagine Thranduil wasn't to pleased when he heard about Legolas storming off, he told him he should act his age instead of like a stroppy elf maiden, this earned Thranduil a slap from his wife, who didn't like what he was implying. We all started laughing again, except for Legolas who was subdued by his fathers lecture and we went inside Legolas's mother still nagging Thranduil as she went."

"you moan at my singing, I can't believe you attracted spiders and orcs and scared away deer with your singing."

"it was perfectly good singing, it was just loud" replied Legolas glaring at Strider.

"Yeah yeah I believe you" he looked at the twins who were still laughing at the memory

"Don't you want to hear my story" he asked innocently, not looking at Legolas who was scowling at him again.

The twins stopped immediately and listened in anticipation as Strider started his yarn

"This happened on one of the adventures we went on, as we were returning home we came across a band of orcs and slew them quickly, to our surprise we found a three small children, two boys and a girl they were perfectly healthy and they told us who they were, the oldest was a boy named Halidor and was ten years old, next came the girl who was called Rhiannon and was eight, and lastly came Tarcon who was only four, they told us that they had been playing in the woods near their village when the orcs had came upon them, they didn't have anything to defend themselves with and were quickly captured. They told us that the village they had came from was called Etten, a small village in the Ettendales, while the older two had been telling us this Tarcon, the youngest had been standing there staring at Legolas. After about five minutes of his gaze Legolas was beginning to get nervous and was about to ask me if I knew why it was looking at him when all of a sudden the small boy jumped and grabbed Legolas ear. Legolas was dancing around screaming with this little boy hanging on his ear, and I had to pull pretty hard to get him off. Legolas's ear was bright red by then and when we asked Tarcon why he and grabbed it he said

"I wanted to know why it was so pointy" after that Tarcon seemed to take a liking to Legolas and followed him around every where always trying to grab hold of his ears or his hair, he seemed terrified of the boy and as we journeyed back to their village he was forever trying to avoid him. Legolas would hide a way away from camp but Tarcon would always find him and we would hear Legolas screaming as he tried to pull the child off. Every night the child would sleep next to him, much to mine and the other children's amusement and soon Legolas took to hiding in trees to get away from him. After about three days we reached the village much to Legolas relief, but knowing how suspicious these people were of elves I made him wear my cloak to hide his hair and ears. Sadly they were only covered for a few minutes as Tarcon soon pulled it down to reach his ears. We were trying to get to the children's house without anyone else noticing, but Legolas's screams spoiled that plan. Everyone in the nearby houses came running out and saw him having his ears pulled by a four year old. Luckily no fights broke out between Legolas and the villagers, as it had in previous villages, as before anyone had a chance to start anything the children's parents came running out and grabbed their children, although separating Tarcon from Legolas's ear took some doing.

After the parents had expressed their gratitude and Tarcon had had one last tug at Legolas's ears we left the village and the children, much to Legolas's relief and went back to Rivendell."

"Would this have happened after your adventure with the seeing stones by any chance" Asked Elladan while Strider and Elrohir sat there sniggering

"How did you guess" asked Legolas in astonishment

"Well" he said giggling "I thought your ears looked a bit stretched but I decided not to mention it as you also had a lot of other injuries that needed seeing to."

This only started off everyone laughing again, and Legolas decided it was time for Strider to be embarrassed as so far he had escaped any mortification.

" OK I think you've all told enough stories about me now" he grinned at Strider "I think we should tell some about Strider now and I've got the perfect one to start with"

"Excuse me what about the story Elladan told last time we went to Mirkwood" spluttered Strider in indignation.

"That's only one story, the rest of us have had three told about us, you owe us two." Elrohir stated

"Exactly so shh all of you and let me tell you my story. This happened in one of the first visits that Estel took to Mirkwood. Ranien, Trelan and I decided it would be fun to play a trick on him, and it worked better than we expected. He had been playing the usual Estel type tricks, you know buckets of water on our doors, holly in our beds. We however decided to be a bit more original and try and scare him instead of just annoying him. That morning when he went for a walk we followed him, dressed in cloaks to disguise who we were. He sat down in underneath a tree and started reading, that's when we struck. Ranien and Trelan dropped a net on his head and I stepped behind him and put one of my knives to his throat. The look on his face was hilarious and I almost started laughing on the spot. Knowing that that would spoil the effect though, I managed to restrain myself. Hauling him to his feet I tied his hands behind his back and walked on ahead with Ranien and Trelan leading him along behind. He was babbling as we went, I couldn't make out all he said but I think it went something along the lines of HELP and LET ME GO. Not wanting him to attract all the evil beings in the forest, I lowered my voice, and shoving my knife

under his throat, I practically growled at him to shut up.

"Who are you" he yelped

"You'll find out soon enough" Behind me I could hear Ranien stifle a giggle, I think Estel took it to be an evil laugh though and started struggling even more, he stopped when I dug my sword into his throat ever so slightly though and we carried on. Soon we reached a clearing with a lone tree in the middle. (Later this was the tree which they took Gollum to, to climb) we tied Estel to the tree and when we left him there he started yelling, that is until I told him that a band of orcs was nearby and unless he wanted to be found I would recommend that he shut up.

Now we only meant to leave him there for an hour or so, but when we got back my father informed me that we had guests arriving that evening, and he gave Ranien and Trelan jobs that kept us busy for ages, by the time we had finished we completely forgot about him. The guests turned out to be some Lorien elves and as the prince I was expected to stay and make sure they had everything they needed. We were so busy that Ranien, Trelan and myself only remembered Estel when two days later he staggered into the palace, telling us all about three strange people who had kidnapped him and left him tied to a tree in the middle of the forest. From what he said he had finally managed to escape that morning and although he was attacked by spiders on the way he managed to get back in one piece. As we didn't think my father would be to pleased with us, me, Ranien, and Trelan decided not to let Estel know who it was that attacked him in the woods, and till now I expect he still didn't know."

Finishing his story Legolas looked round, the twins were in hysterics, but Estel was sitting

mouth wide open in shock.

"I cant believe it was you that tied me to a tree and left me there for TWO days, I was attacked by spiders and caught the worst cold I've ever had, because you forgot about me"

This was to much for Legolas, he dissolved into uncontrollable giggles and the twins were practically yelling with laughter. Again the elves looked round in surprise, the hall of fire had'nt been this noisy for at least a hundred years and that had been caused by a celebration of at least a hundred elves, this was three elves and a human. Finally the laughter faded away, even Strider had smiled at the end, after all it was funny, and if he had done the same thing to Legolas he would probably find it hilarious.

Now it was Elrohir's turn to tell a story about Strider, he was finding it difficult to think of one that wouldn't embarrass himself, and finally thought of one involving Strider and Elladan.

"about two years ago me, Elladan, and Estel were planning to go hunting, but then the day before I was pushed of my horse and broke my arm, Elladan and Estel decided to go without me and left, as planned, the next morning."

"you can't tell this story" Elladan said indignantly "Its embarrassing for me as well you know." "Oh well, lets call this revenge for pushing me off the horse in the first place. Anyway, they were doing quite well and had killed a couple of deer and some wild fowl before they came to a clearing, knowing that this was a favourite grazing place of the deer, started walking across it looking for game, unbeknown to them, however, some dwarves had been there earlier and laid a trap there. Hidden underneath some dead leaves was a pressurised net. As soon as they stepped on it, the net sprang and they were hoisted into the air. As they were hoisted they managed to drop all their weapons apart from their bows, which weren't really much use without arrows. They were suspended for about an hour when the dwarves returned to check their traps. At the sight of the two very bored looking people suspended above the clearing they burst in to loud raucous laughter, they approached the net and were about to cut them down when they noticed that one of them was an elf. There smiles disappeared and the leader of the group stepped forward.

"what have we got here then, I thought elves were supposed to be good at sensing things, we caught you easily enough though didn't we."

"let us down now" demanded Elladan "and why should we do that, you spoiled our trap, no I think we should leave you here, teach you to mess us" picking up Estel and Elladan's weapons before exiting the clearing.

By this time both of them were getting annoyed, first Estel said it was Elladan's fault that the dwarves hadn't cut them down because he was an elf, then Elladan said it was Estel's fault that they were in the net anyway because he was a human and humans were heavier than elves so Estel's weight had set the trap off. Before long they were yelling loudly at each other, I expect that was what attracted the orcs to the clearing. In about five minutes they had cut them both down and tied Elladan and Estel's hands behind their backs. If ada hadnt been worried that they had been gone a long time and sent Glorfindel and some other warriors out after them then I expect that would have been the end of them. Luckily ada is easily worried and the warriors arrived just in time to kill the orcs and rescue Elladan and Estel. Glorfindel says that they were mortified, apparently their faces were red with embarrassment. That was the last time they went hunting in that clearing for a long time."

Legolas burst out laughing, "You got caught in a dwarve trap, how stupid do you get"

"They covered it with leaves" said Elladan defensively "elf eyes should still be able to detect it, I wouldn't have expected anything less from Estel"

he broke off as Strider cuffed him over the head with an indignant hey!

"but you, Elladan should be ashamed of yourself, honestly, and you call yourself an elf"

This time it was Elladan that hit him and before long the four friends were rolling around the hall wrestling with each other while the other elves looked on in amazement. Some of them were shocked at their behaviour, but most of them, Glorfindel and Elrond included, watched them laughing.

Eventually Elrond decided that they had been fighting long enough, and, going over to them, both he and Glorfindel grabbed two of them and pulled them apart.

"Its getting late, you should probably go to bed now" suggested Elrond though not having much hope that they would listen.

"we'll go if you and Glorfindel tell us one more story each" said Elladan

"yeah tell us about when you to were young" requested Elrohir "If you can remember that far back" said Estel cheekily

"ha ha" replied Elrond "ok if me Glorfindel each tell you a story will you promise to go to bed afterwards"

"we promise" they chorused together.

Unbeknown to them the rest of the elves in the hall were listening eagerly by, now hoping to hear the tale.

"I'll go first" Elrond said "ok this story tells about when me and my twin brother Elros were children, we got into just as much trouble as you lot get into now, and had just as many adventures, one day we decided to go and find a hide out to play in in secret, we tried the trees, but they were to windy. We tried the island in the middle of the lake, but we got to wet, finally we found a suitable cave to use. It was a large one that looked safe and decided to use it. We went home and asked permission to camp out. thinking it would be fun to spend the night there, of course we didn't tell them we were sleeping in a cave, so they agreed after we promised to be careful."

At this Legolas shuddered "You actually wanted to sleep in a cave, you must be mad."

"Maybe we were, anyway we set out with some supplies and reached the cave quickly. We stayed up till about midnight talking, but then we fell asleep tired out, after all we were reasonably young then. Unbeknown to us, the cave was actually the entrance to a dwarve cavern and that night while we were asleep, a hunting group came out of a crack at the back of the cave. Needless to say, they didn't have to go far to catch their first prey, we were trussed up like chickens in about five seconds flat. The dwarves seemed quite pleased with themselves and from what we could hear, they also seemed proud that they had managed to catch two elves unaware, we didn't like to mention the fact that we were asleep and very young elves, which was understandable due to our predicament. They didn't want to kill us though and after questioning us to make sure we weren't spies they decided to leave us in a tree for some other elves to find. So they took us near to our home and left us in a tree to go off hunting. We of course started yelling for help, sadly it attracted a group of orcs to our whereabouts, they came into our sight and started searching for us. Finally one of them looked up and saw us sitting there and grinned evilly.

The orcs had surrounded our tree and one had started to climb it when a group of men rushed in and started fighting the orcs. Only when they had killed them all did they look up into the tree and see us. Again they grinned, though not as evilly as the orcs, they however decided to leave us up there the same as the dwarves. I can only think they did it because they were sure the elves would find us. Anyway 2 days later we were still up there, soaking wet and with very hoarse voices from all our yelling. Finally however, I managed to loose the ropes that tied us, and then I freed Elros. We were stumbling home when we walked blindly into a group of elves. As soon as they saw us they all started laughing and the leader of the group said

"you finally got free then" when we asked him what he meant he said that they had known we had been there all along but had decided to punish us for spending the night in a dwarve cave. Apparently they had been on the way to get us just then as they had decided we had been there long enough. We didn't live that event down for a while, all the other younger elves were still teasing us about it a year after it happened."

Elladan, Elrohir, Legolas, Estel and Glorfindel were laughing at this tale, and five minutes later when they still hadn't stopped, Elrond started glaring.

"Its not that funny you know" he growled.

"Oh ada its hilarious, I cant believe you were left there for two days as a punishment "

"yeah Elrond those elves sound stricter than you"

"I still can't believe you would willingly go into a cave, Aragorn has to drag me in one in most of our adventures, but I would never actually want to go in one"

This started them all off laughing again until Glorfindel said

"when you're ready I'll tell you my story, unless you don't want to see it, in which case I'll just be going now." This stopped them immediately and they leaned forward attentively to find to hear Glorfindel's story.

"Now as you all may or may not know, the first several thousand years of my life were spent not in Rivendell, but in Lorien where my parents dwelt. In Lorien my best friend was an elf named Nenun, we were much like the twins were at that age." "What clever, brave and strong" said Elladan whilst Estel, Legolas and Elrond sniggered. "No" replied Glorfindel "I mean stupid and adventurous, which isn't a very good combination. Anyway, we were forever messing around in the forest, wether it was hunting or daring each other, although we never tried to shoot each other out of trees" he said with a sideways glance at the twins who had both gone red. "Nenun had a twin sister called Nenuniel, she was always trying to join in with us when we were messing around, but we thought that, as she was a girl, she would just spoil our fun. That all changed though on the day that I'm about to tell you about. That day we were supposed to be gathering herbs for the stores but grew rather bored. We decided to sneak off, and after "borrowing" boats from the stores, we decided to go for a sail down the river. We managed to get away from the fellow herb hunters and Nenuniel, who was trying to follow us. After a while we got tired of rowing however and decided to let the boat float along the river. Sadly we fell asleep. and only woke up when the boat almost capsized in the rapids. Quickly we reached for an oar each only to see them floating a way to the left. Stupidly Nenun thought he could swim against the current and reach them. I only just managed to grab him and pull him back in before he was swept over a particularly steep rapid. After that we somehow managed to stay in the boat for the duration of the rapids, though we both received some rather large bruises. By the time we had reached the bottom we were both soaked and feeling rather sorry for ourselves. We quickly sailed to the side and got out, I don't know what I looked like but Nenun looked like drowned rat, and considering his face I would imagine that I looked the same. We both started laughing, I suppose that was what got the attention of the men that were hunting in that area." mused Glorfindel thoughtfully "they quickly surrounded us and tied our arms behind our backs. It was only then that we saw the ship, the men were slave hunters from Umbar and we recognised the sails on their ship. By that time we were worried, the corsairs of Umbar were known to be ruthless and me and Nenun were defenceless. We struggled hard, but the men were to strong and finally we gave up. The ship had only 20 crew members on and they all came off to help load on the other captives. There were about 50 others, and most of them were struggling. About half the slaves had been loaded onto the ship when suddenly an arrow shot out of nowhere and hit the man holding me. It was followed by another and another, until finally only three men were left. They had worked out the direction of the arrows and ran towards it. They disappeared into the bushes and we heard them yell in surprise followed by the clashes of swords. While the fighting was going on we were wondering what this new thing could be that so surprised the fighters. We were soon answered and when we were, we both wished we were still captured by slaves. The sounds of battle quickly ceased, and then emerging from the bushes came a tall slender figure, sword drawn. I blinked in shock and amazement then I grinned.

"Nenuniel, I'm glad to see you, I suppose you came to watch the warriors fight. Where are they anyway." I looked around but when none emerged from the surrounding bushes I looked back to Nenuniel in question.

"There weren't any other warriors, I followed you down the river and I think I arrived here just in time wouldn't you agree?"

Nenun and myself just gaped in amazement and disbelief. Soon however we turned red in amazement.

"your not going to tell anyone about this are you Nenuniel" we asked tentatively as she cut our bonds. Laughing, she went round and started cutting the bonds of the other slaves. We grabbed our swords and other weapons and started to help, all the while pleading with her, but it was to no avail. After we set the other captives free, we made our way back to Lorien. When we got back, not only were we told off and punished by our parents, we were the laughing stock of the other younger elves for ages. Its safe to say we always let Nenuniel hunt and come out adventuring with us after that. Everyone was laughing by this time, including, to the groups surprise, the other elves in the hall. They had been listening to the past stories, and try as they might they couldn't stop the urge to laugh. The whole hall was filled with laughter, while Glorfindel sat there glowering at the memory. Soon however the laughter died down, though an occasional snigger was still heard every now and then. It was then that Elrond reminded them of their promise.

"Don't forget you said that you would go to bed after our stories." grumbling and groaning the four trooped out of the door talking and laughing as they went discussing the tales that they had just heard. After they went the hall quietened considerably and the other elves, drifted out until finally only Elrond and Glorfindel were left.

"I cant believe you were rescued by a girl, in fact, considering how you ignored her, I'm surprised she rescued you at all" said Elrond grinning.

"Well at least my parents didn't leave me in a tree for three days" retorted Glorfindel, though he was also grinning.

"Come, my friend, it almost three in the morning, we had better go now"

Agreeing Glorfindel got up and he Elrond walked out of the hall, leaving the vast room in silence but for the echoes of tales and songs of the past.

The End