HELLO! I am so sorry about the lack of posting. But I'm back with more chapters now, and I dearly hope you will like them! I have tons of ideas and I just need to put them down on paper. Thank you sooooo much for being so positive about this story. I love to see so many nice comments cos it motivates me soooo much! Thanks guys!

Okay….here goes…

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SHADOW PLAY

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Thirty minutes was all it took for the male giants to turn up and the challenge to be decided upon. With the men, things moved faster, but things were seldom done. With the women, things moved slower, but things were always done. When both would meet, they would combine their strengths, and things moved fast and effectively.

The small Mirkwood party had been ushered into the waiting room; it was enormous and it was pink. Thranduil had remained in a gloomy corner, arms crossed over his chest in complete silence, and Harlette had sat down on the floor, cringing under the rebuking voices of Goldie and Bernard who chided her for having been so bold before the Queen: how could Harlette save Thranduil from anything?

Thirty minutes later, they were brought into the Common Room, and were asked to stand in the middle of the marbled floor, at the center of a bright red circle, so no one would step on them by inadvertence.

Harlette and her companions did not wait long for the vacant seats all around them to be filled, for very soon, the giants made their noisy entrance. Harlette was indeed a miniature in this huge space which held a vaulted ceiling made of bright yellow stone; a stone that reverberated with noise the giants made as they moved to sit in their chairs; most women sat, some women slumped. Most men slumped, some men sat.

The Common Room was divided into two parts; a blue part, where the males were, and a pink part, where the ladies were, opposite the males, on the other side of the room.

There were two thrones at the end of the room, a blue one and a pink one. Queen Aggie sat on the pink throne, and King Bernacus slouched on the blue one, his modest crown of gold tilting lazily to the side of his ginger head. All the men, including Bernacus, whose thick beard kissed the floor, were unshaven and wore ripped blue jeans and white sleeveless undershirts. Some men even had a jug of beer in their hands.

Harlette who had been shifting uneasily on her feet whirled to Thranduil: 'Can't you do anything?'

'We are surrounded, Harlette. And recall, you are to save me,' Thranduil replied coldly, his eyes fixed on everything but her.

'So you are still mad at me?'

'Of course I am, Harlette. Because of the sharpness of your tongue, our lives rely upon you. Do you expect me to be thrilled by such a situation?'

Harlette huffed and grasped his arm. Thranduil did not even flinch. 'I'm sorry, okay. Is there something you can do to get us out of this mess? You did defeat a huge tree back in Mirkwood.'

'I appreciate your fine memory, yet, if I were to battle one giant, the others would rush to the feeble likes of you and threaten your life. What am I to do, then? Forsake you?'

Silence. Bernard and Goldie watched Thranduil incredulously; did the Elven king care for her?

Harlette bit her lip nervously. She released his arm and stepped back. 'You…You are staying for me?'

Thranduil did not respond and simply turned away from her.

'But what about Mirkwood? You are the king and you must be…' her voice faded, drowned in timidity. Indeed he was the king, and somehow, of this fact she had grown forgetful.

Thranduil did not look at her and he did not respond.

The queen's loud vocal artillery exploded: 'Well, well, well! How glad I am to see you all again, little visitors.'

The king, king Bernacus, made to speak, but the queen beat him to it: 'I am sorry to have kept you waiting, despite the wait not having been that long.'

Harlette, Thranduil, Goldie and Bernard hearkened.

The king made to speak, but the queen beat him to it: 'The men have arrived, and the decision for the challenge has been decided.'

The king made to speak, but the queen beat him to it, again: 'Plumpin!'

Everyone in the room froze. Silence.

Queen Aggie's face screwed up in irritation: 'Plumpin!'

The ground trembled beneath Harlette, and when she gawked behind her, she saw a huge, round dog running in her direction. Curiously, the beast had a pink leather bag clenched in its salivating jaws. On its way towards the queen, the dog tripped, fell and rolled across the floor like a football, past a flabbergasted Harlette, till it finally reached its mistress's feet.

'Plumpin! Show more decorum before our guests,' queen Aggie rebuked, grasping the bag from the slobbering Plumpin.

Aggie leaned in the recess of her chair and opened the pink bag. 'Are you familiar with ghosts, small one?' she asked innocently.

'Not exactly,' Harlette answered curiously.

Aggie's lips curled up. The king made to speak, but she beat him to it: 'Surviving a vicious spirit will be your task.'

'Beg your pardon?' Harlette quipped. 'I'm supposed to kill a ghost?'

'Feel free to do so if you can. But all we require of you is to survive it. Let me explain….' she trailed off and suddenly snapped her fingers: 'Plumpin, the lights!'

From the pink bag the dog had brought, Aggie revealed pieces of cardboard. All of them were shaped differently; some had the form of houses and others of human bodies. A skewer had been attached to the back of each cardboard with sellotape. From what Harlette gathered, these objects were puppets.

The dog stood on its hind legs, and stretching out a short paw, turned the lightswitch off.

'Plumpin, the curtains!' Aggie ordered.

Within five minutes, and not without any difficulty, the dog, with its flabby stomach moving independently to the rest of its body, had managed to close the curtains.

All bathed in total darkness. Thranduil's piercing eyes found Harlette's, and she could not help but admire their emerald glow, clearly visible, even in the midst of coal black.

'Plumpin, the lamp!' Aggie was heard saying.

A loud booming noise echoed throughout the blackened room as the wheezing dog bumped into furniture on its way to accomplish what it hoped was its final task.

Eventually, a small lamp illumined the room; the dog had placed it on the floor by its mistress.

At last, queen Aggie held up a cardboard puppet between the wall and the light, and instantly the shadow of the puppet was projected on the wall; it was that of a church.

Adopting a mysterious voice, Aggie began to tell the tale the Mirkwood company longed to hear: 'There is an old, abandoned church here, but no one goes there because of it…it who tears apart all who dare venture in its lair. This it has for name the Respicer!'

The slobby Bernacus held up the puppet of a formless monster with large teeth and long nails.

Queen Aggie continued the tale as king Bernacus made the puppet of the Respicer strut around the cardboard church: 'The Respicer lingers in shadows and midnight is when it is strongest. It is so repulsive in appearance that one look at it causes you to die with eyes eternally lost in panic.' With her free hand, Aggie held up the puppet of a woman in a dress. She shook the cardboard woman violently, as if the latter was victim of a cardiac arrest.

The queen continued: 'But when dawn arises, the Respicer loses its powers. And light can kill it.'

The puppet of the Respicer seemed to shiver and drown. 'So when the first rays filter through cracks in the church's walls, it is your cue to run.' With those words, the cardboard woman skipped away from the Respicer and the church.

Silence.

'Plumpin, hit the lights! Open the curtains! Get rid of the lamp! Put away the puppets but only after reinserting them in the bag.' Aggie commanded.

Thranduil glowered at the queen.

While the dog did as told. The room was bright again.

The queen leaned forward on her throne in a manner she wished to be intimidating, but given her bright pink attires and horrible coiffure, she seemed more ridiculous than intimidating. She addressed Harlette: 'If you manage to get out of the church, you will have survived the Respicer, and you will have saved your small companion. If you fail however, we'll kill him, and naturally, you'll already be dead and so neither of you will be able to attend each other's funeral.'

'How dare you give her such a task?!' Thranduil's voice exploded, and despite him being so small in comparison to the giants, his voice echoed so loudly it made the mirrors on the wall shake and crack.

Aggie fell back in surprise against the recess of her chair. She was speechless with shock, and Bernacus was at last able to speak. 'Who are you?' he asked Thranduil, very well aware that this being was not a common man.

'I am Thranduil, King of the Woodland Realm. I am an elf.'

Gasps burst from every mouth in the Common Room.

'An elf?' Aggie croaked, flabbergasted. 'We thought them to be a legend!'

Thranduil bowed slightly. 'We are not, I can assure you.'

'Is she an elf as well?' the overawed king motioned to Harlette.

'No,' Thranduil told. 'She is human,' he clarified. 'And that is exactly why I will not allow you to bestow upon her such ill fate. She is a frail human who will never stand a chance on her own; she will perish. Best kill us now instead of putting us through such torment.'

Despite Harlette being relieved with Thranduil's protection, the way he had referred to her as a "frail human" sent a flare of fire in her chest.

King Bernacus considered Thranduil's opinion. The queen was quiet, baffled with shock before the being Thranduil was.

'But the challenge has been decided, King Thranduil,' Bernacus spoke calmly. 'We cannot go back on that decision.'

'King Bernacus, your decision was taken without full knowledge of the facts. Now that you know she is but a human girl bereft of any particular power or strength, surely you cannot let her participate in the challenge for it would not be a challenge but an execution.'

Harlette's emotions began to burn. She knew not why, yet somehow, she grew angrier with the minutes. She recalled Goldie's lecture on the spell in Far-Flunga which birthed an urge to quarrel with the opposite sex; Harlette needed to control her belligerent emotion, yet she could not bring herself to it: Thranduil was getting on her nerves and she would not allow his lips to insult her pride once again.

Thranduil carried on: 'if the challenge must take place, I shall not go against it, but then let me take it in Harlette's stead─'

'Why?' Harlette interjected. Goldie and Bernard turned to the irate romantic novelist. 'Harlette, let Thranduil speak,' Bernard advised.

'No, I won't!' Harlette affirmed and she stepped closer to Thranduil, her eyes round with bravado. Bernard meowed in warning, her fur spiking on her back, but Harlette heeded not her cat. 'That challenge was appointed to me, and I will be the one to take it,' Harlette sneered. 'What do you take me for? A coward?' she said, defying the elf.

'She has the right to choose a weapon,' King Bernacus annexed. 'So she can defend herself.'

Harlette smiled smugly at Thranduil. Thranduil rolled his eyes.

'Do you not trust me?' Harlette let out angrily, offended by his absent demeanor.

'As much as I must,' Thranduil offered.

'Why?'

'Harlette, you cannot wield a sword!' Thranduil exclaimed.

'I'm sure she can't even wield a frying pan,' Goldie put in and was elbowed by Bernard.

'When we were in the cave, you said I had a stout heart!'

Thranduil sputtered a laugh of despair and derision. 'Well, my mouth was negligent and betrayed my mind!'

Silence. Harlette stepped away from him. The room grew cold.

She shivered with emotion: 'So you really think me a complete idiot with no strength? An idiot whose only hope for greatness lies in flattery?'

'Harlette, you know nothing about─'

'I've heard enough!' she broke out and whirled to the king and queen. 'I'm ready. Take me to wherever the challenge will be held.'

Bernard jerked. 'Harlette! Are you out of your trolley?!'

'You will die! And he will die! And more importantly, I will die of grief cos of the lost of this hawt, hawt elf! Are you crazy?!' Goldie supplemented in panic.

Harlette ignored her companions and stepped bravely closer to the king and queen.

King Bernacus stood up and clapped. 'Ha! I'm glad that you accept it so courageously.'

The whole room cheered. The men began to place bets on how long she would live, and none thought she would live at all.

The queen shook herself from her previous shock and she declared: 'To the weapon room first!'

Upon those words, two enormous guards dressed in pink and purple gear approached Harlette, inviting her to follow them.

Thranduil's hand flew to grasp her arm. He pulled her to him. 'Harlette, do not give in to such foolishness, you won't stand a chance.'

'Please Harley! Listen to him!' Bernard beseeched.

Harlette glared at both of them and snatched her limb from Thranduil's grasp. 'Talk to my ass 'cos my ears aren't listening!'