I Never
"Hullo Legolas," Merry cheerfully plopped down beside the strange Elf as he sat on the edge of a balcony in Rivendell.
"Good morning, Merry," Legolas returned, hiding his surprise at the young Hobbit's approach.
"I don't know if you'd be interested, but Gandalf wants all of us that are going with Frodo to go to some sort of get-to-know-you thing today. There will be food!" Merry grinned exuberantly at the prospect, remembering Pippin's reaction to Gandalf's proposed luncheon.
"I'd be delighted to join you," Legolas smiled back at Merry. "Where are we going?"
Merry grasped the Elf's hand and proceeded to drag him along to the meeting place, where all of the adventurers had gathered in a circle around a heavily laden trestle table, fairly groaning underneath a Hobbit-sized meal for nine.
"Welcome!" Gandalf greeted Elf and Hobbit, and gestured to the spread. "Help yourselves, and we'll get started."
Legolas took a glass of wine that Frodo offered him and a bowl of some sort of mushroom dish which Sam pressed into his hands, and settled down between Aragorn and Merry for whatever Gandalf had in store.
"First things first: Introductions!" Gandalf said, gesticulating wildly, and Legolas wondered just how many glasses of strong wine the wizard had already consumed. "I need no introduction," he continued. "Boromir, you next!"
The first introductions were over quickly, more as a way of ensuring that everyone knew each other's proper names than anything else. Soon, Pippin had suggested a game.
"We often play it when the different sides of the family gather together. It's called I Never."
"And how, pray tell, does one play I Never?" Boromir asked the little Hobbit carefully.
With delight, Pippin explained that it was a drinking game, and you take a sip for each thing you have done before.
"For example," Pippin continued, "I say,' I never met a Dwarf before,' and Gimli drinks - and, well, anyone else who met a Dwarf before coming here to Rivendell. Well, drink! And anyone surprising has to tell the story," he added with a wicked grin and a glint in his eyes.
Gimli took a sip, and Aragorn and Gandalf also did so. Legolas shrugged, and sipped.
"Legolas?" Gandalf started upon seeing Legolas drink. "I'm not sure you understand. You don't drink unless you've met a Dwarf before. This time in Imladris doesn't count, as we all met Gimli and his father."
"But I have," Legolas replied. "I was quite young, and in a bit of distress, so I don't really remember terribly well. But there was one, a Dwarf Prince, who was shouting very loudly at my brother-in-law. But he thought it was my father. It was a very confusing meeting."
"Hmm," Gandalf accepted the answer, though he watched Legolas with one twinkling eye for a few more moments.
"I never had a title," Merry said, when Pippin elbowed him in the ribs to get the game really going. Almost all of the Fellowship drank, and Pippin insisted that each tell his title. "Captain," was the title Aragorn, Boromir and Legolas each claimed, while Sam claimed Frodo to be a Master.
"I never floated down a river in a barrel," Sam said on his turn.
"Like Mr Bilbo and all those Dwarves!" Pippin exclaimed as he took a swig. Merry, Gimli and Legolas did also.
"My old dad was telling the story of the great escape from Mirkwood," Gimli rumbled at the hobbits' prodding. "And so my brothers and I decided to have a try. We had to be rescued by the Men from Laketown, because we didn't realise how fast the River Running really runs."
"Merry and I tried to be like Bilbo, climbing on top of the barrels," Pippin proclaimed proudly. "My arms weren't long enough to get around the barrel, so I kept falling off. My dad had to fish me out of the river." Everyone laughed gaily, imagining the little hobbit on the end of a long stick, getting lectured by his father (which each imagined as his own father with curly hair and furry toes).
Then Legolas had to tell his story. He took a deep breath, and began. "I wasn't imitating Bilbo and the Dwarves. It was long ago, when I was only as tall as Pippin here, and the dragon had come to Rhovanion only the previous year. My friends and I were playing hide and seek in that little cellar, and Brethildíl had the brilliant idea of hiding in the barrels. Tathar, Aldanna and I were in our own barrels when we heard someone come in. It wasn't Brethilríl."
"Who?" Sam asked, then blushed in embarrassment.
"Brethildíl and Brethilríl are sister and brother. They are near my own age, we grew up together. Tathar and Aldanna are my best friends. But the person who came in was actually three elves, with the task of sending the empty barrels back down the river."
"You got pushed in? Just like Bilbo and the Dwarves!" Merry crowed excitedly.
"We got pushed in," Legolas confirmed with a grin, and the whole company roared with laughter. Legolas grinned, for he had long gotten past the fear and anxiety which he had suffered during and after his days in the barrel, and indeed, the story was now all but a legend among the Elves.
Soon Legolas was having a grand old time, as the statements became more and more outrageous.
"I never laughed at an angry parent" soon led to "I never laughed at an Orc" which beget "I never got called an Orc" and many more besides.
"My foster father, Lord Elrond," Aragorn began, blushing brightly, "was telling his twin sons off for being immature and irresponsible. They had just returned from two months of seeking orcs to fight, and I was young. I was so glad to hear someone else being dressed down by my father that I paid more attention to his face than his words. It was then that I realised Lord Elrond has very mobile eyebrows, especially when he's illustrating a point. I ended up sharing the twins' punishment for my insolence," Aragorn finished this last in a whisper, and the four Hobbits, who had crept closer as Aragorn's voice decreased in volume, laughed and rolled backwards like overexcited children, giggling on the grass.
When the laughter died down, Gimli wiped the tears of mirth from his eyes and took up his own story. "I have many brothers," the Dwarf began, "and one sister. Now, my sister is older than all our brothers but for myself, and when she was an adolescent, she started seeing a male dwarf each evening. Two of my brothers, one an adolescent and the other still a child, followed her one evening. My father discovered this fact, upon retiring for the day, and found the pair of them, peering through a crevice into a beautiful communal cave, filled with shatteringly glorious spires of gems, where the light plays charming tricks. It is a common place for young couples to seek a romantic evening, which was exactly what my sister and her beau had in mind.
"Now, as it happened, that entrance to that passageway with the crack was my own path between the training grounds and our home. I watched my brothers get caught by our father, and he punished them severely for insulting our sister's honour by spying upon her! I laughed then, and of course I ended up being punished with them, for I had indeed been spying upon my brothers, which was why they themselves were in trouble!" He then laughed gleefully, and continued, "but it was worth it to see my father punish the boys rather than myself, for I was nearly upon my majority, and had no wish to remain a child in anyone's eyes."
After the laughter died down a little, Legolas sheepishly confessed to having laughed at his father when he had fallen from a tree during Legolas' adolescence.
"I was an adolescent, also, when I laughed at my father. It is not a clever idea to laugh at your father in any case, but my father is the King of the Wood Elves, and widely famed for his unpredictability. However, there was little else I could do other than laugh, considering the situation."
"Well?" Pippin demanded, grinning widely in expectation of another juicy sibling rivalry story.
"My sister and our nieces were still children, and a family outing was planned with a few other families, who had children of the same age as myself or my sister. Lothlomë climbed high in a tree, and refused to come down when the rest of us wanted to eat lunch. It was a day off for everyone, and most of the parents present were members of the Forest Guard, and so climbing trees on their day off was not on any of the wood-elves' minds."
"Did she ever come down?" Sam asked, then blushed when Legolas glanced at him, smiling.
"Not at anyone's request. Even her best friend, Lauruial, couldn't get her to come down, and when Gilloth and Melloth also failed, my own friends volunteered to climb the tree. Aldanna and Brethildíl climbed swiftly, but Lothlomë still would not come down. At that point, my father decided to climb the tree."
"Is that unusual?" Frodo asked, eager to expand his knowledge of any and every Elf he could hear about.
Legolas smirked. "My father is purely Sindarin, and unlike the younger Sindar, did not grow up among Silvans. As such, he is not quite as good at navigating three dimensional space as his children are. He climbed as high as he could, and my mother, standing next to me, tutted and crossed her arms, ordering both her husband and daughter to stop this folly immediately. Of course, this did nothing but spur both to climb higher."
"How high did they go?" Boromir asked, and Legolas noticed that Mithrandir had a twinkle in his eye, as if he knew how this story ended.
"Lothlomë was little, small enough to reach the topmost branches, and she even looked above the trees. Adar, however, is a full grown Elf warrior, and though that particular day he had no armour or weapons, he was still too heavy for the tree to carry him as high as his daughter. We all saw the moment when the tree decided it had had enough, and suddenly my father fell, crashing through the branches to land hard upon the forest floor."
"He fell out of the tree?" Frodo asked incredulously, having difficulty imagining the proud Elvenking from Bilbo's stories falling out of trees.
Gimli chuckled. "Took him down a peg!" he chortled, and Legolas winked.
"He looked ridiculous, in a heap on the ground, shaking his fist as he told the tree off for dumping him in the dirt. We still tease him for it when he takes himself too seriously."
The laughter continued for several minutes, and Legolas decided that he quite liked this motley crew, even the Dwarf, strange as it seemed.
"I never laughed at an orc," Aragorn finally continued, and Boromir was the only one to take a sip.
Boromir had laughed at orcs in Osgiliath after taking the river, and next round Legolas suffered through recounting the time when his sister had found out about the real ghosts at her birthday party, calling him, and all his friends, orcs.
Legolas found that he needed to drink almost every round. "I never kissed a girl," Sam offered, and Legolas - along with Aragorn, Boromir and the more surprising Frodo and Gimli - took a sip.
Frodo blushed as he confessed his short romance with a Hobbit lass, and Gimli muttered something about a Dwarf woman as lovely as a cut gem. Aragorn, to no-one's surprise, mentioned Arwen with a far-off gaze. Boromir told of the young woman in Minas Tirith, whom he meant to marry if he could obtain her father's permission. Legolas confessed that he had once kissed his best friend, but only so that other males would stop pestering her after her coming-of-age. Merry claimed that it was an anticlimactic story, and proceeded to make up a tale involving himself and a barmaid of the Green Dragon. Sam promptly punched the 'lying git' in the mouth, and Merry hushed.
"I never wore silk," Sam stated, thinking of the splendid silk robes he had seen some Elf-lords wearing about Rivendell. Legolas drank, while Boromir and Gandalf thought long and hard before deciding they did not need to drink.
"Silk? I understand that silk is very expensive, and only made in the southernmost part of Gondor. My father possesses but a single silk robe," Boromir questioned the Elf. Legolas shook his head.
"Silk is abundant in Mirkwood. We collect the raw material often, and my honorary aunt, Ladlaurë, is the head seamstress who weaves the silk. We use it for many items of clothing."
"But silk is so delicate," Pippin argued, reddening as Merry gently teased him about snagging Lord Erestor's sleeve the previous morning.
"I have never ripped a silk garment," Legolas returned gleefully, forcing Pippin to drink.
"Are you wearing silk now, then?" Frodo asked, with a teasing glance to his young cousin.
"I am," Legolas answered. "Silk is much more abundant in my home than cotton or wool, though we do use them when they are available."
Boromir, rubbing his side where Merry had elbowed him, brought the game back on track. "I never ate a whole chicken in one sitting," he spluttered. Surprisingly, the only person to drink was Pippin, who stood to take a ridiculously grand bow when he realised he was the only member of the Fellowship to have this great achievement, or so he called it.
"I never met a dragon!" Frodo offered, plainly referring to his uncle's altercation with Smaug. Legolas took a sip, to the surprise of many.
"Smaug once tried to eat me," he found himself explaining his actions. "I was but a child, and did not fully understand what had happened. I thought it a dream at the time."
"I arrived with the Dwarvish host to the Battle of Five Armies," Gimli piped up, "but I never met the worm."
"It wasn't exactly an enviable experience. I was fortunate to escape with my life."
"I never dyed my skin or hair," Gandalf chuckled knowingly. Legolas rolled his eyes and sipped.
"I didn't know I was dyeing it. My best friend swapped my soap and shampoo with blue fabric dye. She also sliced the containers with her knife, so that each one exploded when I attempted to use the contents. I had blue skin for weeks, and blue hair for months." Everyone cracked up laughing, and Legolas had to join in, having long forgiven Aldanna for the little joke. True, his revenge had no doubt played a part in his acceptance of the situation.
The turns continued, with no surprising answers, for a few minutes.
"I never started a war," Boromir said on his next turn. Legolas, and Mithrandir sipped, and the Hobbits all looked, with terror in their eyes, at the Elf.
"Technically," Legolas clarified, "my father started the war to save me, so it wasn't really my fault. It wasn't really a war, anyway – more like a decision to protect our home rather than our allies, who tried to declare war on us, but couldn't wage one. It was all Smaug's fault, anyway."
Gandalf used the Battle of Five Armies as his explanation, but all present knew there was much he was not saying.
A few more rounds passed, and Legolas was feeling very mellow indeed. "I never was stupid enough to play a drinking game with Dorwinion wine!" Gandalf finally said, and Legolas was the only one to take a sip.
"Wait," Groggily, he looked around the circle, trying to focus his vision to its usual perfection, and becoming concerned about the strange wavering Frodo and Aragorn's faces had taken on. "So what are you lot drinking, then?" he finally managed to articulate, only to discover that the rest of the Fellowship was drinking weak human ale. "That's not quite fair," the Elf muttered, refilling his glass - this time with ale.
The very next statement, "I never ate poisonous berries," caused Legolas to taste the ale - which, to his undying horror, he reflexively spat out the moment he tasted it.
Amid gales of laughter, Boromir choked out, "I never spat out a mouthful of good ale!" to which Legolas refused to drink, claiming that the ale in question was the most vile drink he'd ever had the misfortune of tasting - even worse than the wine he and his friends had once tried to make from poisonous berries!