"So how long has the nail-biting been going on for, Celebrían ?" I asked as I poured her a glass of water.
Celebrían gently knocked on the desk with her knuckles as she considered my question.
"Not long," she said after a while. "Perhaps only a few years, really."
Keeping my opinions about what constitutes a long time to myself, I nodded. "Would you say it started around the time you came to Imladris?"
She raised her eyebrows. "Yes, actually, I believe it might have."
"You know, a lot of people bite their nails because they're nervous, bored, angry-- or, in rare cases, because they like the taste. Do you think any of those things apply to you?"
"It… it is hard to say. I seem to do it an awful lot here…" she said uncertainly.
When you're deeply entrenched in a bad habit, it can be quite difficult to pinpoint any specific time you're doing it. Sometimes that can happen because you started doing it in one situation and then it spread to a bunch of other things, too.
Other times it's a sign of a bigger problem, like an anxiety disorder, or obsessive-compulsive disorder. If you're scared all the time, it happens all the time, and after a while, it becomes so ingrained you don't have to be feeling stressed to do it-- but you might end up feeling stressed if you can't do it. I had to rule these possibilities out.
"Hmm," I murmured as I considered her answer. "How are you feeling in general? Are you getting really worried about things that you don't usually worry about?"
She shook her head. "I think I am mostly fine, really."
"How about any unwanted thoughts coming in repeatedly?"
Celebrían blushed and didn't meet my eyes as she sat quietly for a moment.
"I have had repetitive thoughts of late, yes. They can be a little overwhelming at times, but I would not call them entirely unwanted."
I nodded. "So they don't make you distressed when they come to mind?"
Her blush deepened. "Well, no," she said.
Unfortunately, pulling out the checkers board doesn't help to alleviate embarrassment like this. In these moments, it's better to try and ask specific questions to get the exact answers you need to get you to the next step.
"What I'm trying to rule out at the moment is that these thoughts are not of upsetting scenarios like hurting your family, harming yourself, grisly acts of violence, performing acts that would be considered extremely taboo in Elven society, that sort of thing."
Celebrían looked shocked now. "Oh, no, no, nothing like that. Not at all."
"Noted," I said with a nod. "So all in all, are things pretty well as normal for you, then?"
"For the most part, I would say, yes," she said, shifting in her seat a tad as the pinkness started to creep back onto her cheeks.
I had had a longstanding suspicion that Celebrían returned Elrond's affections, which was the cause of the blushing, so I wanted to make room for her to rule it out when she described her wellbeing as 'mostly' fine. That was a little too ambiguous for the purposes of differential diagnosis.
"I mean, there are some things that happen in life that can upset the way we think, feel, and behave for a while, so if we were to exclude things like grief, romance, or, say, wartime, would you be able to say life is as normal?"
"Yes," Celebrían said confidently, giving a nod.
"Okay," I said, noting that down. "Well, the first thing we want to do with a habit like nailbiting is try and identify a pattern of when it happens. For the next three days, what I want you to do is pay attention to what you're doing right before you bite, and write it down, what time you did it, and what you did after that when you get a moment, all right? Then bring it back here, and we'll have a look at what's going on and see if we can't find a way to do something about what brings it on, and how we can change things up a bit." I drew up a small chart with columns for her to use as a template and gave it to her.
"Very good," Celebrían said, taking the piece of paper.
"I think that's about all we need to do for today. We'll work out our next steps in a few days, eh?"
She nodded and got up, and as she made for the door, she stopped and turned around. "Oh, actually, before I go…"
I looked up from her file. "Mmm?"
Celebrían walked back over to me. "Were you telling Elrond that you were going to measure me up for a pair of these… ah…" she gestured at my outfit.
"Oh, these are called 'bib-and-brace overalls.' Yes, that was what Elrond believes you were in here for, yes."
"I don't suppose it would be possible to procure a pair, would it?" she enquired politely. "Only, my robe gets so dirty in the garden, and your overalls seem like such an excellent idea."
Well, I smiled so hard that my eyes almost popped out. "You absolutely can," I exclaimed excitedly. "Have you got time for me to take a few measurements?"
After a few rounds with the measuring tape and a question or two, Celebrían had decided she wanted a pair of green overalls (her favourite colour) and some flowers embroidered up the legs. I was so excited that I would have an overall buddy that I told Glorfindel I couldn't make weapons practice today due to an emergency personal project.
It took me most of the night, but I had Celebrían 's overalls ready by the next day, just in time for our gardening session, and if I may say so myself, they looked fabulous. She was thrilled, and together, we donned our overalls and busied ourselves with the sweet potato harvest.
We ended up working in the garden for a few hours-- the sweet potato had yielded a bumper crop-- and when we were nearly finished, we heard a very loud, "Oh, my!" come from behind us. I turned around and saw Glorfindel bounding over to us.
"Hey there, Glorfindel," I said with a grin, waving a soil-encrusted hand. "What's new?"
"Your outfits, it would seem!" he replied, looking thoroughly intrigued. "So this was your emergency project, hmm? Is there any chance I could procure one of these exquisite monstrosities?"
I put my hands on my hips. "That's a fine way to talk about our overalls when you're angling to get a pair for yourself." I raised an eyebrow at Glorfindel.
He sprawled on the edge of the garden beside me like a beautiful lizard and gave me a warm, carefree smile. "You love me for my honesty, Rhodri," he purred. "You've said so before."
I gave him a gently scolding look. "I do wish you wouldn't make such good points like that."
Glorfindel's smile grew a little in response and he blinked slowly.
"Oh, all right, then," I relented. "I need your measurements, your favourite colour, and what you want embroidered on the legs."
"Oh, you spoil me, Rhodri," he crooned, and informed me of the size, that they should be yellow, and have black suns sewn on them.
Glorfindel kept me company that night as I made his pair, which made the evening go much faster. Swapping stories does have a magical way of speeding time up.
"Oh, they're absolutely splendid!" he sang as he came out of the change rooms donning them. He admired himself in front of the mirror for a moment, and then turned around and said, "Put on your pair, Rhodri, let's go and garden!"
"Now?" I looked outside. The sun had only just started to show signs of coming back for the day. "It's still dark out."
"Have you ever gardened in the dark before?" Glorfindel asked.
"Mmm, I can't say that I have," I shook my head.
"There's a first time for everything!" his eyes gleamed with excitement as he flitted his gaze between me and the door.
"I get the impression you just want to justify putting those on now," I raised an eyebrow at him.
"Of course I do," he said with a cheeky smile, "but I've never gardened in the dark, either, so it's two adventures at once however you look at it."
He had a point. I threw on my pair and we headed down to the gardens.
It's not a wholly unreasonable thing, gardening at night. Lots of people do moonlight gardening. Unfortunately for us, the moon was in its new phase when we went outside which meant that it was much darker than usual. Still, though, neither Glorfindel nor I were ones to throw in the towel, so we clumsily dug and harvested on until the sky got lighter.
We passed the time playing 20 Questions, and at Glorfindel's insistence, I had to include items from my old world when it was my turn to think of something for him to guess. 20 questions ended up becoming an absurdly low estimate for the number Glorfindel asked about any item.
"So it is not alive, larger than a loaf of bread but smaller than a door, it is in the kitchen, and it is used multiple times a day," Glorfindel mused after his 57th question, rubbing his chin pensively. "It is not a stove, nor is it a bench." He shrugged. "I cannot imagine what it would be."
"That's quite fair," I said with a laugh. "You have not seen a microwave before."
"A what?"
I explained the function of the microwave, and Glorfindel looked at me like I'd just told the most ridiculous lie he had ever heard.
"You mean to tell me you put cold food in this box, and with the heat of a thousand suns, it will make your food hot for you in a few seconds?" He laughed so hard and so loud at his own description of the magic hot box that another voice sounded out of nowhere, presumably to scold us for being noisy at such an unsociable hour.
"What on earth—Rhodri, Glorfindel, what are you two wearing? You look absolutely frightful!" said Bregedúr as she strode up to us with her sword slung over her shoulder, her cheeks pink and her face glistening with sweat. She must have been coming back from an early morning training session.
"Why? Do you want a set of your own?" I asked her with a grin.
"Well, of course I do," Bregedúr said as if it were obvious. "If there are matching outfits to be had, I would like to join the fun, however hideous they might be." She half glanced over her shoulder as if she were afraid the fashion police might appear and haul her off for being an accomplice.
I laughed. I didn't think she'd say yes, but if she was serious… "Well," I said, "if you think you can handle the crowds of admirers who will follow you everywhere, all I need are your measurements, favourite colour and design, and by tomorrow, you, too, will be a member of the Bib-and-Brace Club."
Glorfindel's face lit up. "A club, you say! I had no idea. This makes it even more exciting!"
Bregedúr also looked keen at the prospect of membership.
This was getting ridiculous. All I'd done was lie to Elrond about why Celebrían was coming into my office, and now it had snowballed into a secret society for wearers of hideous matching overalls. I'd even given it a name.
Still, though, it was my own fault, and I would just have to ride this whole ridiculous thing out. By the next day, I had a pair of fire-orange overalls with red spirals sewn into the legs ready for Bregedúr, which I quickly shoved into her arms with a nod as we passed each other in the corridor.
I power-walked to my office, keeping my head down all the way, and killed the last ten minutes before Celebrían arrived creating more adventures for my cartoon chicken. Finally, the knock came, and in she walked.
"Hello there," I greeted Celebrían cheerfully as I poured her a glass of water. "How did you go with your habit tracking?"
"Quite well," she answered genially, nodding her head. "I saw that there was an established pattern."
I waited for her to elaborate, but further explanation never came. A hint of redness was appearing on her cheeks.
"Okay, well," I continued, "the way forward from here is to find a way to either cope with the situation, or change the behaviour. I can help you best if you're able to give me a little more information about the pattern you discovered."
Celebrían looked uneasy. "Or," I added, "if you're happy to let me ask the questions I need, I'll do that and you can either answer them or decline and we'll move on to the next question. I don't need very, very specific information- just a very general overview."
This option seemed to relax her a little. "Yes, let's do that," she said with a nod, and with that, the probing began.
"Does the biting start when you get angry or nervous?"
"Nervous," Celebrían confirmed with a nod.
"Are you afraid of the thing making you nervous?"
"Not at all," she shook her head.
"Does the nervous thing make you happy?"
Celebrían nodded.
"I take it that means you don't want to avoid it, then?"
"That's correct."
"Does the nervousness come when you actually are interacting with or doing the thing? Or is it more when you're thinking about it?"
"The latter," Celebrían answered. "When the former happens, I am at ease."
"So it is done in private, yes?"
She nodded.
I drummed my fingers against the desk. One of the simpler ways of changing a behaviour that still occurs under only specific circumstances (in this case, Celebrían sounded like she was biting her nails as she daydreamed about Elrond), is to do something about the nervousness. No nerves, no nailbiting. Unfortunately, I couldn't pinpoint it, so had to simply redirect the behaviour to something a little more constructive—or at the very least, less painful.
"Tell me, Celebrían , do you enjoy biting your nails?"
Celebrían frowned a little. "I would not say that I enjoy it," she said after a moment's thought. "The only purpose it really serves is keeping my hands busy."
"Would you be interested in having something to fidget with instead?" I asked.
"What did you have in mind?"
"Well, a lot of different groups from my homeland, including the one in which I was raised, used beads on a string to help them concentrate, dispel bad thoughts, keep track of prayers, or just to pass the time."
I opened my desk drawer and took out a set of blue prayer beads I had inherited from my grandfather as a child.
"Something like this was what I had in mind," I said, passing her the beads to look at. "Without the cross, of course, as that would be inappropriate, but you could make your own and put whatever decorative thing you wanted on there."
Celebrían examined the beads with fascination.
"Slip your hand through the circle, and pull the beads over your index finger using your thumb," I suggested, demonstrating with my own hand.
She gave it a try and seemed quite pleased with it. "The beads are very smooth," she commented. "They pass quite easily over my fingers."
"Yes," I said with a smile. "It's amazing how much time can slip by when you fidget with them, and they certainly won't hurt your fingers the way nailbiting does."
"This might be just the thing," she murmured as she continued to string them over her finger.
"You should show this to the jeweller and have them make you one of your own," I said. "Use mine in the meantime, and then I'll grab them back off you when yours are ready. How long do you think it would take for them to make something like that?"
"Oh, it couldn't be more than a few days," Celebrían answered. "I'll drop them back at the office as soon as I get them."
"Jolly good," I said with a nod. "In which case, I suggest we meet up again here in about two weeks to see how the habit is going, yes?"
Celebrían smiled and nodded, and with that, she headed out.
To what must have been the delight of the other Elves tasked with the summer harvesting, the Bib-and-Brace Club seemed to meet rather often in the gardens. I know they all enjoyed the outdoors greatly and loved the beauty of the plants growing in it, but I had not seen such a degree of devotion prior to the advent of these unsightly overalls I'd started to make.
The day after Bregedúr got hers and the five of us sat together, playing a round of 20 Questions and shucking ears of corn in one of the garden beds. As we got louder and more pleased with ourselves, Elrond was walking by and stopped in his tracks as he saw us horsing around, looking like a band of disco hillbillies. His eyes were wide as dinner plates, and as he caught sight of Celebrían in her green pair, he blushed a little, and his shocked face turned into a polite smile for all of us. He gave us a small wave and carried on.
I wasn't sure if Elrond turned up the next day while we were gardening to merely get a laugh in or simply to try and process what these poorly-dressed people were doing in his wholesome Elven suburbs, but after watching us for a moment or two, he proceeded on his way. He did the same thing again the next day.
The third day this happened, though, I wasn't standing for Elrond's hovering any longer, and shouted out to him, "The offer's still there for a pair of your own, my friend!"
Elrond came over to us, a small smile on his face, and when he had reached the edge of the garden bed, he leaned down to our level and said quietly, "As a matter of fact, that won't be necessary."
I raised a suspicious eyebrow. "What do you mean?"
"Come up to my study and find out for yourselves."
I checked my watch. It was almost time for Happy Hour.
"I will see you all directly," he said, turning on his heel and walking away.
The five of us exchanged glances, head-shakings and shrugs galore before we gave in to our curiosity, dusted ourselves off, and made for the study.
When we reached the door, I knocked on it and found that the door wasn't latched, so it opened up. This wasn't like him. The door was always closed, so something odd was going on here. We piled in and I closed the door behind us as I looked around. Nobody was in the study.
"Let's check the balcony," I said, and as we went out through the doors, I looked to my right and saw a very smug Elrond lounging in his usual chair, sporting a pair of purple overalls with green leaves embroidered on the legs.
"Who wants wine?" he asked as he glanced up at us. He looked so pleased with himself he was almost fit to burst.
We said nothing for a moment, absolutely thunderstruck, but then we burst into a raucous cheer and took turns clapping him on the shoulder in congratulations and disbelief, welcoming him to the Bib-and-Brace Club. This was going to be a Happy Hour to remember.
