DISCLAIMER: Just the fighting sisters are mine…
Chapter Three
Archery Lessons
I woke up and frowned at the ceiling.
The sound came again. KNOCKKNOCKKNOCK!
I flung off my covers, snatched up a bathrobe and staggered to the door, still bleary-eyed with sleep. I stubbed my toe on the door and yelped, before bashing my forehead opening the stupid thing. So when I finally got the ridiculous door open, I was not in the best of moods.
"Uh?" I said grumpily when I got the stupid thing open.
"Abby?" said the tall elf that stood there. He was the same one who had been sent to find me my first day in Rivendell.
"Uh?" I repeated.
"Your sister's in trouble."
"Good," I replied. "Let her stay there." I had the door half-closed (for godsake, what did he expect? It wasn't even noon yet!) but the elf stuck his foot in the door.
"I'm afraid I really must insist you come with me," he said. Persistent little—uh—tall fellow.
I gave him a look. "You're being painfully polite." He flushed. Then, in a regal tone I added, "Allow me to don my apparel and I shall be with you as soon as I find it humanly possible."
"Oh, and I'm being painfully polite?" he muttered as I closed the door.
I threw on the first things that my hands touched—namely, my pair of jeans that stunk almost as bad as a manure pile, my shirt that was sticky from the juice I had spilt on it, and my bra that was discolored from the use of several natural deodorants that weren't worth the money because they never worked.
When I came back out the elf hustled me down the hallway, practically running. I was just going along at a leisurely pace, because I knew from experience what I would find when we reached her room.
Indeed, there was Carla, sitting at her desk in a room similar to mine, a stack of sweets the size of Rivendell itself surrounding her, not even looking guilty as she argued--argued!--with Elrond about the removal of them.
"I snatched them from the kitchen fair and fair!" she was complaining. "I should be allowed to keep them!"
There's Carla for you. She can find the kitchen and the sweets before she can find the bathroom or her bed.
"I'm not even going to dignify that with a reply," Elrond replied stiffly.
A handsome elf (OK, OK, they're all handsome) who looked a lot like Elrond and must have been one of his sons, muttered darkly under his breath about "children not knowing their places." Elrond shot him a look that was part amusement and part annoyance and said dryly, "I completely agree." The elf colored slightly.
"As punishment," Elrond said loudly, "I will be turning you over to some of my equipment managers—maybe some hard work will recycle that attitude of yours."
There was a loud groan from behind me that sounded distinctly elvish.
"And you," Elrond added, rounding on me, ignoring the reluctant elves. I gulped nervously and backed up. Elves can be so dang intimidating when they want to! "You will be there with her. I want you to supervise her." His lips twitched sideways. "I can't afford to have all my elves running madly from Rivendell, screaming bloody murder that the Dark-Lord himself has been reincarnated as girl." I choked with laughter; my sister glared at me.
"You will also be learning archery," he added as he turned away. I choked again, this time in horror, and actually inhaled spit. I spent several precious seconds trying to run after Elrond and tell him that the last thing I wanted to do was learn archery while being unable to inhale. The last time my parents had signed me up for archery I had been so bad even the teachers had given up on me. I couldn't even get the arrow on the string, as I remembered, let alone shoot. But by the time I had coughed myself out, Elrond was long gone and I was left with two grim looking elves standing guard over my sister.
I turned to look at her.
"I hate you," we said in unison.
* * * *
I stared in absolute terror at the collection of bows in front of me.
"Well," an elf said impatiently from behind me, "pick one!"
I gulped and picked up the nearest one to me.
"That's too big. Try this one." The elf handed me one a little smaller, and then offered me a sting I suspected must have something to do with the bow. All I could do, though, was look blankly from the string to the bow to the elf and back again.
"String it," the elf said irritably. I glared at her; the woman was so muscular she looked like she could pick me up and throw me across the room if she got mad. When the thought popped into my head I hastily began pretending I knew what "stringing" meant. I looked closely at the bow and hooked the string around the top of it. That was easy, I thought, drawing courage. Then I tried to "string" the bow, and all I have to say is I have immense respect for those of the elven-race who can actually shoot with these things, let alone string them.
I was struggling with the bow for a moment as the elf looked for a quiver for me. I managed to push the bow out slightly with my knee and tried to bend down to hook the string around the bottom of the bow. The bow suddenly snapped in my hands and hit my nose.
"OW!" I yowled, and fell backwards into the bow rack, sending bows flying in all directions. "OW! OW! OW!"
I looked up to see the elf-woman standing over me with her hands on her hips.
"Archery butts," she said calmly.
"Archer butts?" I repeated dazedly. She scowled, as though thinking I had meant that as a joke. And I hadn't! Well. Not really, anyway.
"Move," she said dangerously, and I scuttled out of there.
As I moved out towards the "archery butts" I ran into Frodo. Literally. I'm still not used to looking down at people shorter than my waste line.
"Hi," I said gloomily.
"What happened to your nose?" he asked in response, peering up at me.
"Rogue bow," I answered gravely.
* * * *
When my nameless instructor herded me out to the archery butts, which, if you don't know, is a serious of increasingly alarmingly targets, who was there but Legolas himself, along with his escort. They hit the bullseye every single time they shot. I could not see the point to practicing if you are that good.
I stopped dead. "No way in hell," I said calmly, "am I shooting alongside them."
The woman smiled unsympathetically. "Consider yourself in hell," she replied, just as calmly.
I tried to run but she caught me by the arm and hauled me over to the easiest of the disturbingly faraway targets.
"Try to hit the target," she ordered me, handing me a blunt-tipped arrow and a bow. I scowled, snatched the things out of her hands and tried to fit the little slit-thingy on the back of the arrow onto the string. It took me a good five minutes of increasingly bad language. To keep this at PG, I have censored some of what I said: "This god*CENSORED* *CENSORED* arrow! I hate these god*CENSORED* pieces of *CENSORED*!" Finally I got the stupid arrow on the stupid string and tried to pull the thing back.
It took me a while to figure out how to let go. (This really surprised me, too. I mean, how hard can it be to pull back a string with a stupid arrow on it and shoot? Not that hard, right? Wrong. If you think otherwise you are either an elf or an archer. At the time, I was neither. Besides, I hate bows. They give you calluses on your fingers.) When I finally did manage to let go, the arrow when about four feet and flopped onto the ground. Some elves from Legolas's escort were exchanging amused glances. Red in the face, I marched over, picked up the arrow, put it on the string, and pulled it as far back as I could go—which was only about half what you could fully draw it to.
The string snapped forward and I yelped as it stung the underside of my forearm, dropping the bow on my foot in the process. "OW!" I hollered, grabbing my foot. "Ow goddammit!" The elves—every single one of them, yes, INCLUDING LEGOLAS, gave me a chastising look for swearing. I glared at them all, even my crush, and then turned to see where my pains had gotten me. The arrow flew at the target, and then effective flew over the target, landing somewhere in the forest beyond.
I heard howling laughter from behind and turned to scowl at my sister.
"I'd like to see you do better!" I snarled.
"Fine, then." She smirked, stood up from her leather cleaning, took the bow from my hands and pulled out a second arrow, aimed and fired.
The arrow hit smack-dab in the middle of the target.
"See if you can best that," she sneered, and tossed the bow back to me. I stood, crestfallen for a moment, then snatched up a handful of arrows and began rattling them off at the target.
I think I hit the edge of the target on the tenth time.
My teacher stopped me before I could run myself, or my sister, into the ground, but I was so furious I was about to dunk my sister in the horse trough when I saw her walking over towards Legolas. Horror raced through me, and I bolted towards her.
Legolas turned to greet her…
My sister—" she began, grinning.
"DIE!" I screamed, shocking the party of elves as I flung myself through the air to land on top of my sister. We tumbled to the ground, the elves scattering to avoid us. I got up and managed to sit on my sister, who promptly began trying all sorts of dirty tricks to get me off.
"So sorry," I gasped. "She's delirious. High fever. Must get back to bed!"
I hauled her up and she said, "My sister is obsessing—"
"Over archery!" I interrupted hastily, and kicked her hard enough for her to yelp. "See you later! Buhbye!" Fear giving me strength, I hauled my sister over to the horse trough, and to the horror of the elves, threw her in.
"Now just wait a minute—" a tall, blond elf who was not, for the record, as cute as Legolas, said.
"This doesn't concern you, buddy," I snarled. "Butt out!" The elf looked positively scandalized. I turned back to my soaking wet sister. "Alrighty, you want war? I'll give you war!"
"What war?" someone said behind me.
"I said, butt out!" I snapped.
"Oh?" the voice said again, and I froze.
Slowly I turned and found myself being regarded, not by just anyone, but Aragorn himself; and my body went numb with fear. (PS. If you haven't figured this out, I was TERRIFIED of Aragorn in the books.)
"I don't think we've been properly introduced," the ranger said, dryly.
"My sister thinks Le—"
I clamped a hand over Clara's mouth, and smiled through gritted teeth. "Hi," I said, "I'm Abby, this is Clara. Goodbye." I turned and ran, dragging my sister with me.
I suppose I did deserve some punishment for what I did next, but at the time I certainly didn't think so. (You want me to be honest? I still don't think so.) Okay, okay, I locked her in the basement KNOWING she hates the dark but gods, she was about to give away the one secret I held most precious!
Elrond and the other elves, of course, could hear her shouts much more than I could, so when they finally got her out Elrond was none too happy with me.
So what happens? I end up with punishment work.
And not only that, but she told him! (What do you mean, who? Who do you think?)
My life was the pits.
*?*?*?*?*?*?*?*?*?*?*?*?*?
Much thanks to all the people who reviewed so quickly! Few, I posted it one night, and the next I had nine reviews—thanks everyone! And espeically thanks to ElfWarrior, Emli, and The Mouth of Sauron for their dry comments and younger sibs that made this all possible. And thanks, too, to Nemis, for saving me a heck of a lot of trouble by fixing my italic-upload problem…
