In the Land of the Leprechauns

Eri told herself that she was just a little drunk on wine that night. A slight infatuation, a crush, nothing more. Deep inside she knew that this was not true. It was her cursed bad luck with men that meant that even in her mid-thirties she had not yet made a lasting commitment and probably never would.

In the meantime, Jack had sent a WhatsApp voice message saying that he had talked to the old fairytale lady from Ireland. She would no longer practise magic, she had told him, but if they were so interested that they would even travel from England, she would make an exception for them. There would also be tea and cake if they so wished.

Since it was their only lead, they decided to give it a try. Unfortunately, Jack couldn't get a holiday at work, so Eri and Legolas would make the journey alone. Jack had realised that Eri would have to pay a lot for Legolas' passport, even if she didn't talk about it, so he offered to cover at least part of the costs. Since he could not be dissuaded, Eri finally agreed. They did not say anything about it in front of Legolas so as not to embarrass him even more.

Finally, it was October when Legolas had his passport and they could take the car ferry from Holyhead to Dublin. Eri preferred public transport and taxis in London. For routes outside London she preferred to drive her Bentley.

"And I thought you kept this monster in the garage just for decoration," joked Legolas.

"Do you want to drive in London?" she replied. When he denied this, she added: "You see."

"But I don't want to drive at all," he specified. "I prefer the horseback."

"Horses are only good for goulash," she claimed, "I really had to muck out too many stables in my childhood. The animals stink. Now get in."

Since he was in London, he had avoided using any modern means of transport wherever possible. It was probably something he would never warm up to. A little reluctant, he got in on the passenger side and fastened his seat belt. Eri took a last look into the boot with their luggage, as they had planned at least two overnight stays for this trip. After checking that the front door was locked and the alarm system, which had been replaced in the meantime, was switched on, she sat down behind the steering wheel and started the engine.

"You sit there as if expecting a Balrog under the bonnet at any moment," she stung back.

"I don't think that's funny," he said insulted. "And you don't joke about Balrogs."

"Are you actually aware that you just used the English plural?" she pointed out to him.

"So? Did I?", he wondered. "You see, it's about time I came back home, otherwise I'll lose my mother tongue. Eri!" The last one he exclaimed in horror.

"Man, Elf! Don't scare me like that," she called back and stepped on the brakes. They had just left the driveway and he was already panicking because of a car coming out of a side street.

"So, first rule as a passenger: Shut up," she made clear when the horror had passed. "You don't talk the driver into it. And you don't reach into the steering wheel or anything else to make that clear. Clear?"

"I don't trust this... thing," he said with a frown.

"Fine, then don't," she said dryly. "But if you keep driving me crazy, I'll really end up building another accident and we won't even leave London. That starts out great. Shall we listen to an audio book?"

"Whatever," he sighed. "What have you got there?"

"Various Stephen Kings, the odd business stuffer. Oh! And the Narn. It's read by Christopher Lee. He played Saruman. Let's hear that," she decided, already typing around on her screen in the dashboard before he could even agree.

"Watch the road," he said nervously.

"I'm looking at the road!" she snorted back. "Why do you think I put a touch screen and a hands-free kit in this car? And if you so much as complain that I drive like a hangman, you will walk." Jack did this often enough, which is why when they went somewhere together, he usually insisted on driving.

That made him laugh for some reason. She could not complain, she liked his laughter. Like bright bells ringing.

"I really don't think we'll even leave London if this goes on," he said. "Few of my journeys can compare with this adventure."

Their adventure initially consisted of a five-hour drive to Holyhead, where they would take the car ferry to Dublin. In Dublin itself, they would stay in one of the city hotels, as Eri did not want to take the approximately one and a half hour drive to Ardagh, the destination of her journey, where the old woman lived. Five hours to Holyhead and then the ferry crossing would be enough for her. Besides, they were invited for an afternoon snack and not for dinner.

They had already left London behind for a while, when Legolas probably realised slowly that no Balrog would attack him. Perhaps the English countryside did the rest. At least he gradually seemed more relaxed. Meanwhile, Christopher Lee told them the tragic story of the children of Húrin and made them forget the monotonous time on the streets.

As Holyhead appeared more and more often on the street signs, Legolas took his fake passport out of the glove compartment. He looked at it thoughtfully for a while.

"So this piece of paper is supposed to identify me beyond any doubt?" he asked. "It seems a strange concept to me. And what if, when you check it, you discover that it's not real?"

"Oh, bother, that won't happen," she replied, but mainly to reassure herself. She was nervous, of course. It wasn't every day you travelled to another country with a fake passport, even if it was within the EU. If all went well, she would only have to endure this nerve test once. But that also meant that she would have to make the return journey without Legolas.

She felt a twinge in her heart. She had become so familiar with Legolas in the last few weeks that she wondered why she had always lived alone with her goldfish in that huge house all those years before. How had she put up with that? The thought of soon being without him again seemed terrible to her.

Did she really want him to leave again? Not really. Of course it was a selfish thought, but selfless love only existed in novels. At the same time, she knew that things could not go well with the two of them anyway. He was an elf and she was a mortal human. And he was married ... That was a thought that simply did not want to get stuck in her head. Why did she have to fall in love with the worst possible candidate?

She hung herself on this thought as they approached Holyhead, to cover up her nervousness before passport control. She hoped that he hadn't realised how she felt about him by now, because that would be embarrassing. Eri, the little dummy, fell in love with the first prince she met who fell into her arms. That could have come from a bad comedy.

Holyhead was a sleepy little nest on the coast of England facing Ireland - at least sleepy by London standards. Ever since Eri lived in London, every other town seemed like a one-horse town to her. Holyhead was especially important because of its ferry connections to Ireland, so the port was very busy. Eri cursed extensively about the other drivers, while they probably cursed about her and her Bentley as well.

Legolas watched the hustle and bustle curiously through the window, but Eri asked him to leave it up, as she did not want to hear the noise of the cars and the harbour. Not to mention the smell of fish.

"You're exaggerating", he gently pointed out to her. "The only thing unpleasant here is the exhaust fumes of these monsters."

She sighed and did not even engage in a discussion with him. Instead, she preferred to concentrate on the traffic so they could reach their ferry. Her nervousness increased. She had never gone so far in stretching the law a little. But now there was no turning back. Probably there was no other option than this anyway.

Their worries were completely in vain, they got through passport control unhindered. The official had not even looked as closely as he probably should have. This honestly astonished Eri in these times, but it should be all right with her. Finally the car was parked on the ferry and they could finally get out.

She stretched with pleasure. "Phew, took long enough," she said, "Let's go on deck and watch the ferry leave."

"Really, I would never have thought that, but I'm afraid we'll sink as soon as this ship sets off", joked Legolas. "At first I didn't want to believe that this steel monster was a ship. Let alone that it could swim!"

"It's a pity you'll never see an aeroplane up close," she replied, "I had thought about flying to Dublin at first, but I didn't feel like taking the bus all the way to Ardagh with all those one-horse towns. So car ferry. Steel can not only swim, it can fly! I know the physical principles, but I still find it amazing myself. So: Somehow I can understand you there."

"Once!" he exclaimed cheeringly. "I never thought I'd see this again."

"Your sense of humour is really stupid." She smiled.

They went out on deck together, and she reminded him once more, just in case, that he was Mike for everyone and that he was from Wales. His accent seemed to evoke associations with Welsh in many, and after Eri had thought about it a bit, it didn't seem entirely inappropriate to her either. She remembered that Tolkien had based Sindarin on Welsh; it was more likely that the two languages were related or had close linguistic contact, she thought. So the most obvious thing to say to them was that he was from Wales. After she had shown him a few pictures of the landscape, he thought it might well fit.

"Just too few trees," he had said.

She had not been surprised.

When he arrived on deck, he enjoyed the sea air around his nose. "Ah, much better," he said and leaned against the railing. "The calls of the seagulls, the salty air, the light swell. I never thought all this would ever cast such a spell on me."

He began to hum a soft melody and finally sang a few soft words to it.

.

To the Sea, to the Sea! The white gulls are crying,

The wind is blowing, and the white foam is flying.

West, west away, the round sun is falling.*

.

"Where did you get the English text?" Eri wanted to know.

"If you work all day, I have plenty of time to read," Legolas said with a shrug of the shoulders. "After we had seen the film, I thought maybe I could leaf through the book one day. And before you panic and rip my head off: I didn't look at the appendices as you wished."

"But I hope you haven't touched my first edition or the Folio Society editions," she added. "I'll be angry too, these are treasures."

"I don't know which edition it was," he confessed. "But the book was red and very worn."

"Oh, good. Your luck," she threatened him playfully.

Meanwhile, she noticed a blonde coming towards them, determinedly heading for Legolas. Eri sighed inwardly. Blonde, what a cliché ... There were always some women (and one or two men) who had turned around on the road to Legolas when they had made one of their few trips to the city, but so far they had been spared the embarrassment of one of the ladies throwing herself at Legolas. As it looked, this would change very soon.

"Watch out for that one," she could just say before the other one got close.

Eri felt like she was in a bad comedy.

"Hey, sweetie", the blonde opened the courtship dance.

"Hello," Legolas replied only dryly and gave Eri a meaningful side glance. So he had quickly understood what her visit was all about, and he didn't seem very enthusiastic.

The blonde leaned casually beside him against the railing. "I am Abigail. From America. And you are? All alone in the wilderness?"

Oh, someone was in heat, it crossed Eri's mind. Typical American...

"Neither alone nor in the wilderness," Legolas weakened and pointed to Eri. "My companion Eri also deserves a greeting. I am Mike."

Abigail only glanced at Eri with a disinterested look. "Welsh, huh? Man, how cool."

"Hello ...", Eri just said, making it sound as out of tune as possible. She crossed her arms in front of her chest. She didn't let herself get away with that kind of impudence!

"Am I interrupting something?", Abigail asked, followed by a suggestive wink. When Eri just shook her head, she exclaimed: "Great! Let's have a chat then!" The latter was again only addressed to Legolas.

"We'd still be very grateful if we could have some breathing room," Legolas said in an extremely diplomatic manner. "We've had a tiring journey and are happy about the calm on the crossing."

Eri's eyes shot lightning. What a whore!

Abigail looked back and forth between them. "Hey, why don't you tell me there's something going on between you two," she complained. "You can see that! But first lie, that there is nothing going on. You British have a stick up your ass. I can't even have a nice conversation with you." And she took off with it.

Eri could barely hold out long enough for the American to get out of earshot.

"Nice?" she nagged. "Nice?! What is that bitch thinking?! Arrives here and thinks she can grab anything that isn't in the trees at the count of three and that hasn't had MY fat stamped on its forehead!"

"Take a breath, Eri, she's gone," Legolas gently told her.

"How can you be so relaxed?" she exclaimed. "Did you see how she had thrown herself at you? If it had been possible, she would have torn your clothes off right here and now! And she treated me like air! Argh!"

"Believe me, back home I sometimes deal with much worse people," he assured her. "She was harmless to that. After all, her intentions were obvious and poorly wrapped. Even with such ladies I had enough to do before I married. The worst are those who are only after the crown. Like wolves with the cunning of foxes. You really have to be careful."

She puffed up her anger a few more times. Then she demonstratively hooked up with Legolas and found another place on deck to watch the departure. Legolas seemed to have soon forgotten the incident. When they ran into Abigail again some time later, she had already grabbed another guy. Golf instructor, Eri assessed.

Legolas was fascinated by the ferry and at first didn't really want to believe that it could really go without sails and how quickly they would make the crossing to Dublin.

"Everything goes so fast here," he marveled. "A journey of several days can be covered in a few hours."

"A few hours I see differently," Eri said. "I'll be glad when we finally get there."

He seemed to take particular pleasure in standing at the stern of the ferry and watching the propeller rummage through the water and the seagulls follow the ferry. Eri wondered if she should buy a small ship in a bottle in some tourist shop in Dublin to give him as a present. As a souvenir so that he would not forget her.

What did she actually mean to Legolas? Was she only a fleeting moment in his life of thousands of years? Would he even remember her in a hundred years? Even in a thousand? He was very kind and courteous to her. But couldn't that just be his good manners? The thought that he regarded all this only as a small adventure, which he might soon have forgotten, kept her very busy. For most of the crossing she thought about how she could cleverly ask him what she actually was for him without arousing suspicion. When the ferry docked in Dublin, however, she had not yet found a satisfactory solution to her problem.

She switched on the navigation system and gave the address of her hotel. Good God, she would be happy if they had finally arrived and she could lie down on her bed! For once, her navigation system Sybill guided her correctly.

"Signs and wonders are still happening," she murmured as the hotel appeared in the street signs.

"What do you mean?", asked Legolas, who had been busy marvelling at Dublin at night until now.

"I called the sat nav Sybill because she always talks rubbish and sends me somewhere else," she explained, "After Sybill Trelawney from Harry Potter. She always talks rubbish too."

"Why should you name objects? Even if they can speak ..." he wondered.

"Why name swords," she replied. "And most of them can't even speak."

"That's right, point taken," he conceded.

"Score me every time, you know that," she reminded him.

Eri's savings plans for the near future had not yet taken root in her mind, so she had booked herself into The Marker Hotel in the city centre, a five-star hotel with, as she admitted to herself, too much luxury for just one night, a day trip to Ardagh and one more night (and possibly alone) before she set off on her return journey. She was incorrigible in some things. Legolas noticed, of course, that she had caught "another one of those fancy places" and dropped the odd pointed remark.

After checking in at the reception, however, Eri was expecting the next surprise. After they had received the room key and their luggage had already been taken to their room, she realised that they had been given a single-bed room.

"What the ...?!", she said. "I had booked two beds!"

"What's wrong with this?", Legolas wanted to know innocently and pointed to the room. "I think it offers more than enough to make us want to sleep here, have some breakfast tomorrow and then drive on to ... to ... What was the name of this unpronounceable place?"

"Ardagh. But I want to sleep in separate beds", protested Eri. "Nothing against you, but... well, you know."

He nodded. "Granted, that would be decent, yes."

"Take care of the luggage," she instructed him. "I'm going back down to reception to make a complaint."

"Leave the poor lady in one piece," Legolas called after her.

Only a short time later, she came back snorting furiously. "Shit!" she growled, "I really did book two beds, but they had a bug in the system that indicated the room was free, although it wasn't. So they booked this and wrote an email. And I didn't look in the spam folder, where of course it ended up. Shit!"

Legolas just shrugged his shoulders. "That's all right, isn't it? Then I'll sleep on the floor," he offered.

"What? No, no way!" she said. "Maybe the sofa is a sofa bed or something."

He grinned and seemed generally very unimpressed by her outburst. "You must decide what you want, Eri."

She snorted. But she actually calmed down, his relaxed way of dealing with the situation radiated to her.

The sofa did not turn out to be a sofa bed and probably only a hobbit could sleep comfortably on it. Furthermore, she refused to let him sleep on the floor, no matter how many times he said he wouldn't mind.

"I've paid so much money for an overnight stay, I'll probably let you sleep on the carpet," she claimed. Maybe she just liked the thought of him being so close to her…

Damn it, why couldn't Jack get a holiday? He would certainly have been very useful as a chaperone in this situation. Or had he just claimed he couldn't get a holiday so that this very thing could happen?

Now you're knitting conspiracy theories, Eri ..., she said to herself and shook off that thought.

"What is an infinity pool?", Legolas asked, who, while she was putting her things into one of the cupboards, had explored the room and found a hotel brochure in which he had discovered the pool.

"These things look like they'll end up in nowhere. A pool is a big pool of water for swimming," she explained, "They have something like that here? I should have packed my swimming things. Shit."

"So, Eri, now you've had enough of your whining and you're going to sit with me here on the bed and relax a bit," he said to her. There was an unusual commanding tone in his voice, which for some reason she didn't want to resist. Was it the first time he actually let the prince hang out in front of her?

When she had sat down on the mattress, he sat down behind her and began to massage her shoulders. It crunched noticeably.

"The long journey has taken you," he said. "I understand that, and I didn't even have to steer myself. But then there was our acquaintance Abigail, who still annoys you, I know that, and finally the wrongly booked room and the missing bathing costume - whereby you make far too big a problem out of the latter in particular, as I know you."

She was admittedly startled at how well he knew her by now. He had hit the mark. Yes, she was very angry about all these little things that had ruined her day.

"Just forget about all that," he continued. "Abigail is history, she's long gone, and that hotel room is not the end of the world."

"Forget it, ha ha ... Ow!", she complained, when he suddenly pinched her shoulder muscles particularly hard.

"If you don't relax right now, I'll do it again," he ordered. But she could hear the smile in his voice.

"His Highness has spoken, I must obey," she responded, grateful that he tried to put her mind at rest.

For a while he kneaded her shoulders in silence. She noticed how her muscles loosened quickly and how the exertion of the day gradually closed her eyes. Almost imperceptibly she leaned back and finally cuddled up against his chest. He said nothing and after a short hesitation put his arms around her. But by then she had almost fallen asleep.

*Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, book six, chapter four