Chapter 13: RIP Legolas's Hair
12. I will not tease Legolas about his preferred hairstyle. And I will most certainly NOT ruin it.
Note: I just realized as I was posting this that they don't exactly tease Legolas. But they do, most certainly, ruin his life :)
12:34am
Merry and Sam were on night-watch. It was the second day since they had left Lothlórien, and the had settled down after a long day of sailing (more like paddling) in some small grove off the shore.
Sam and Merry had immediately opted to take watch (Aragorn insisted the hobbits did it in groups), which was little surprise to the others, seeing as they had opted for every watch together since Gandalf died.
The two of them spent their long nights conveniently ruining the lives of the rest of the Fellowship. Of course, if Pippin ever found out, Merry would be dead, so they blamed most of it (well, all of it), on freak accidents and such.
This time, it was Legolas's turn.
But first they needed to make sure everyone was asleep, which was quite difficult, seeing as Boromir was some sort of insomniac.
Sighing, Merry crawled over to Frodo and rooted through his bag, looking for the "baby Silmaril" (aka the Phial of Galadrial), thinking perhaps he could make shadow puppets with it or something. He could see Boromir watching him silently a few feet away and gave the sleepless Gondorian a thumbs-up. Eventually he gave up his search and slugged off to sit back down next to Sam. Gimli started snoring loudly.
Boromir turned over with an audible sigh.
2:56am
'He's asleep' said Sam defiantly, who'd been staring at a certain Gondorian for the last few hours.
'How d'you know?'
'Hasn't twitched in twenty minutes'
'Oh' Merry didn't really know how to respond, 'Well, then, lets get cracking'
The two of them emptied three bottles of dye (one red, one green, and one greyish), a bottle of hair gel, and slow-acting hair removal cream into the grass. Where exactly they had gotten all the hair products, one can only guess (well, actually, they borrowed them from Haldir). Then they hurriedly snuck down to the boats.
'Find his bag' hissed Merry, looking frantically through the third boat (which held most of the luggage). They could hear Gimli's snores in the distance, and Merry was reminded that any orc group within a two mile radius could probably find them in a matter of minutes.
'Quickly!' he added smarly, pushing aside a huge pile of empty lembas leaves.
'What's it look like?' Sam whispered.
'Elvishy, I would assume. Probably made of leaves or something. Maybe look for a spider-print design...'
Sam, upon locating said bag (Merry had nailed the description pretty well), rooted through it for a second before pulling out the elf's shampoo, conditioner, and four other hair products, as well as a hideous-looking drivers license.
'Woah' said Merry, impressed, 'He carries all that around all day in his purse?That thing must weigh a ton...'
Sam, held up the driver's license, indicating a particularly horrid picture of a certain elf, 'We should hold on to this. Who knows what we may need for blackmail if we're caught?'
Merry agreed, and the two of them began to slowly drain away the majority of each hair-product bottle. They then filled the remaining space with the...other... ingredients, whereupon they snuck away to hide the evidence in the vicinity of wherever Gollum was hiding at that moment.
'Perfect' said Sam, and the two of them sat back down, backs to the tree, to wait out the remaining hour-and-a-half or so until dawn.
5:28am
Dawn.
The two hobbits on guard duty awoke maybe 20 seconds before Boromir; they barely had enough time to look awake and alert before he rolled over and sat up.
The three of them proceeded to kick the rest of the Fellowship minus Gandalf (here on referred to as the FmG) as a wake up call.
Frodo and Pippin each muttered something unintelligible, and attempted to begin to try and get ready slowly. Gimli awoke with an extra-loud snore, and started to get a fire going for breakfast. Aragorn awoke with a start and claimed he hadn't been sleeping. Legolas went off to take a shower.
Our two hobbity heroes exchanged looks, but said nothing.
10 minutes later they sat down to a brief breakfast, then went off to get the boats ready.
6:19am
'Legolas!' called a frantic Aragorn through the trees, 'Where are you? We do need to get going!'
The sound of sobbing reached his ears. Legolas sobbing (which, unfortunately, the FmG had heard roughly two hours of whence they left Lothlórien.
Anyways, after the FmGaL (which I might remind you is the Fellowship minus Gandalf and Legolas) had eaten breakfast and gotten the boats packed, they'd realized that the elf had never come back from his shower. So they had sent out search parties (courtesy of a strangely anxious Aragorn, who seemed to think the Elf had gone and gotten himself into trouble or something)
'I will not laugh' promised Aragorn, who was not stupid, and had realized that Legolas must've been having a hair issue, and was therefore hiding in a tree.
Slowly, a green and brown foot appeared out of the branches of a big oak a few feet away. Followed by an ankle, followed by a leg, followed by another leg, followed by the rest of the Elf in Question.
Aragorn held his breath, preparing himself to not laugh as Legolas's newly...pink, green, and grey beehive-style hair appeared before him.
A quick hesitation. Then...
'What's wrong?' the Ranger asked the elf, pretending to be oblivious to what exactly was wrong.
'You don't see it?' sniffed Legolas, and Aragorn hastily assured him, that, indeed he could see nothing wrong. He lead/dragged the pouting elf back to the rest of the FmG, who had all given up on ever finding Legolas, and were eating marshmallow and lembas s'mores on the beach.
Pause.
Another pause.
Then Pippin burst out laughing.
They tied a hysterical Legolas (who had probably already alerted Sauron to their position with all the racket) to the boat and started on their way.
10:08am
Rest In Peace Legolas's hair (which had started to fall out in clumps by now), and Legolas's sanity, (he had knocked himself unconscious by banging his head on a lembas cracker).
Right...them...
This prob'bly still needs a little editing that I've missed. I'll look at it tomorrow.
