Turns out it took a pandemic to get me to focus on this story again. Sorry y'all. Anyway, enjoy the chapter!

Also- please feel free to drop a review- even just a few words, I'm a sucker for constructive criticism and, let's be honest, I just love attention.

Updated author's note about chapter titles (Oct 2020): I know this story's already technically broken the Bechdel test, but Bee's gone too long in Middle Earth without speaking to another female character, so I had to do it. Also, I came up with all these chapter titles while tipsy but now I'm too fond of them to change them.

Chapter 12: Take That, Bechdel Test

"Up you get!" Someone was jostling my bedsheets, and I found myself shaken rudely back into wakefulness. "Come now, Miss—you've already missed the first dinner bell."

I teetered to my feet, stifling a yawn, and blinked groggily at the woman who had woken me up. I hadn't seen a female elf up close before, and was taken aback by how graceful she was—tall and willowy, with the same gleaming golden hair as Lanion and a slender gown the color of rainclouds.

"It is such a pleasure to meet you, Miss," the elf said earnestly, dipping into a curtsey. "My name is Amarien, and I was sent to help you clean up before dinner." She was positively beaming at me, and bounced on the balls of her feet. "Oh, I have so very many questions to ask you, for never in all my centuries have I met a mortal woman!"

"Oh—really? Well, um, thank you?" I stammered, taken aback by her enthusiasm. "I'm Beatrice Smith." I stuck out my hand, which seemed to stump Amarien as much as it had all the others in Middle Earth so far. Does no one shake hands around here? After a moment's deliberation, the elf grasped my proffered hand awkwardly in both her own and bobbed another curtsey, still gaping at me as though I were a particularly interesting zoo animal.

After another moment of awkward staring, she blinked and clapped her hands together. "Oh yes—I nearly forgot! I have prepared a bath for you. You had best clean up now while the water is hot, Miss Smith. My questions shall have to wait until dinner."

Before I could speak, Amarien ushered me to the metal tub in the corner of the room, which was now filled with hot water, little curls of steam rising from the surface. I had never seen anything so inviting in my life, but I hesitated as Amarien swiftly moved a folded privacy screen around the tub and began darting around the room, gathering folded clothes and towels from the dresser and setting out a hairbrush on the little desk by the window. "You don't have to do all that," I protested, picking at a tangle in my hair in embarrassment. "Please, I've never had a maid or anything before—I'm sure I can manage just fine."

"Nonsense, Miss," Amarien said, now smoothing out the rumpled bedsheets. "Now, do hurry and bathe—you are quite filthy, if I may say so, and we shall miss dinner entirely if you continue to stand there."

Maybe it's really common to have maids in Middle Earth, I told myself. But they must know I can't pay her anything! Uneasily conceding defeat, I stepped behind the privacy screen and peeled off my sweaty, grass-stained clothes before sinking gratefully into the tub. It was roomier than I thought it would be, and I wiggled my toes in the warm water, trying to force myself to relax. "Thank you for all this," I said lamely, sinking deeper into the water.

"Think nothing of it," Amarien sang from across the room. "All visitors to Imladris receive help from servants when needed. Besides," she added, "I offered to lend you my services at the request of the guard Lanion, who told me that you would likely have difficulty with elvish clothing and customs."

I felt my face flush and sank further into the water. "Lanion said that?" I pressed my palms against my eyes, groaning with mortification. "He must think I'm completely hopeless—"

"But you came to us in rather a bad way, did you not, Miss Smith? And dressed so oddly too, and with such strange possessions...oh, do bathe quickly! I must know if all the rumors I have heard are true."

Stifling a sigh, I scrubbed at my filthy, sunburned skin, quickly turning the water in the tub a cloudy brown. When I was as clean as I could get, I stumbled awkwardly out of the tub and wrapped myself in a towel.

"You may wear this, Miss Smith," Amarien said, gesturing to a floor-length dress laid out on the bed. "I do hope that it fits. Tomorrow we may have some gowns hemmed for you if need be."

I touched one of the wispy gray sleeves admiringly. "Thank you, that's very gen—wait, what's that?"

"These?" Next to the dress, Amarien was unfolding what looked like a pair of billowy linen shorts. "Why, underclothes, of course, Miss."

"How do I—I mean, why are they so long?"

The elf smothered her laughter with a dainty hand. "Do you mean to say that your people do not wear underthings?" To my horror, she turned and picked up my pile of rumpled, dirty clothing from the floor and began digging through them curiously.

"Ew, stop!" I wrenched them from her arms, wanting to prevent her from a close examination of my old underwear. "We do wear underwear, alright? Just nothing that…big." I set down my old Texas clothes in a huff, scooped up the elvish garments, and ducked behind the screen again to change.

"Let me help you into your gown," Amarien said brightly, moving to follow me.

"I'm sure I can get dressed by myself," I exclaimed, shooing her away. My confidence deflated rather suddenly as I held up the offending underwear and realized I couldn't tell which side was the front. Oh, come on. Fingers crossed, I made my best guess, then slipped the embroidered gray dress over my head. As I hopped around clumsily trying to get the gown's narrow waist over my shoulders, I noticed that another garment had been folded alongside it. I bent to pick it up, but the dress, tighter than it looked, had pinned my arms halfway above my head. "Great," I muttered, shimmying around frantically and only managing to get more stuck. "Freaking great."

"Miss Smith?" Amarien called sweetly. "Is everything alright?"

"Yes," I gritted out. Maybe taking the dress off and trying again would do it—I did my best to wriggle back out, but the dress only grew tighter about my shoulders, the folds of fabric flopping over my eyes and smothering me like a boa constrictor suffocating its prey.

"Are you certain you do not need—ha!" Amarien had clearly stepped around the privacy screen and burst into peals of laughter.

Blindly, I shuffled around to face her, my arms still stuck straight in the air, wrists swinging limply over my head. "Something went wrong," I admitted, my voice muffled under layers of dress.

Still choking on giggles, Amarien wrenched the dress free, and I fell back in a defeated slump. "Lanion was right. You are quite helpless," she said gleefully. "Why did you attempt to fit the gown over your head? And you did not even put on the chemise first!"

I folded my arms across my chest self-consciously. "What's a chemise?"

The elf picked up the second garment from the floor, unfolding it to reveal a thin white shift. "It is what you wear under your dress, of course. Goodness, what uncivilized society must you be accustomed to?"

I flushed as I snatched the shift from her hands and climbed into it, as carefully as I could. There were laces in the back, which gave support to a bra-like structure built into the front, made up of a stiff sort of plating over the chest and down the ribcage. Amarien tied the laces, which were surprisingly comfortable, before helping me step into the silver-gray gown. It had a row of complex little buttons at the front, and I sighed, already longing for the simplicity of zippers.

Next, with more patience than I had expected of her, Amarien went on to braid my damp hair and pin it in a neat bun at the base of my neck, and even showed me how to brush my teeth with a little linen cloth and some kind of paste that smelled like spearmint.

"There you are at last, Miss! Good as new, or nearly so," she said. She pressed a burnished copper hand mirror into my hand, and as I peered into it I saw what she meant—while the bath and wardrobe change had made a world of difference, there were still deep greenish bruises behind my left eye and around my nose, from where Saruman had struck me with his staff. I made a face and set the mirror face-down back on the desk.

"Thank you again, Amarien—you didn't have to do all this for me."

She rolled her eyes and pressed a pair of flat, fabric-covered shoes into my hands. "Thank me again and I shall leave this room at once, Miss," she said firmly. "Then you shall get hopelessly lost in the halls and miss dinner entirely! Besides, this evening has already been far more entertaining than I had hoped."

I felt my ears burn at her teasing, though I perked up at the reminder of dinner, suddenly starving. "Oh, never mind. Let's go—I've been living off berries and roots for three days now!" I stumbled into the shoes and we hurried out the door.

"Living off of roots and berries, you say?" Amarien asked me as she led me down Rivendell's halls. "Did you find them with the Brown Wizard's help? Is it true that he rescued you in the wilderness?"

"Hmm?" I said blankly, only half-listening as I gazed around. Rivendell was even more beautiful now than before, transformed by the thick golden rays of evening sunlight. The air was heavy with the scent of unidentifiable flowers and the far-off sound of rushing water. My feet slowed as I tried to take it all in at once. "Oh—yeah, that's right," I replied at last, forcing myself back into the present. "Radagast helped me get here. Did Lanion tell you that?"

"Yes, but precious little else, as he was in quite a hurry to return to his patrol," Amarien complained, looking at me expectantly. Taking the hint, I sighed and filled her in on my journey to Rivendell. I skipped over a lot of detail out of sheer exhaustion, though I could see from the thrilled gleam in her eyes that I wouldn't escape a more thorough interrogation later.

I was still struggling through the end my story as we entered a wide dining hall. The walls were a pale silvery wood, which fell away on one side to reveal terraced gardens and winding footpaths. "Oh, what a tale this is!" Amarien exclaimed, clapping her hands together as though I had described an action movie rather than a real life-or-death escape. "Magic, betrayal, kidnapping—it is no wonder there are so few people eating dinner now, with news such as this. Lord Elrond must have half the valley in an uproar!"

As I looked around, I saw that Amarien was right; the dining hall was nearly empty, with only a few elves sitting at the long wooden tables. Half-empty water jugs and wine carafes were set out among picked-over plates of roast chickens, greens, and loaves of brown bread. We sat down, and a maid swept over to us, setting out plates and glasses. It seemed that food service wasn't part of Amarien's duties, for which I was glad. I felt awkward about her doing things for me, no matter what she said.

"And to think," Amarien was saying as I piled my plate with food and attacked it with vigor, "I must be one of the first in Imladris to know of such events! Oh, Mirnil and Lhosdess will be so jealous—you must fill me in on every miniscule detail, Miss Smith, for I long to see them turn green with envy!"

I snorted into my plate, earning a shocked look from my companion. "I'm sorry," I said around a mouthful of chicken—I had studiously avoided the vegetables, feeling that I'd eaten enough wild greens under Radagast's care to last a lifetime. "But I didn't know elves were so, uh…gossipy."

Amarien rolled her eyes. "Oh, I beg you not to lecture me about propriety or maturity, Miss Smith. Mistress Halthel—the housekeeper—always says such things to me, and it grows so dull to hear. You must remember, Miss, that I am quite young compared to many of the others in Imladris, and as Halthel often says, these failings of personality will likely go away in time."

"How old are you, then?"

"I passed my second century a few years ago," she said with an airy wave of her fork, "though many of us do not count the years as fastidiously as Men do. I take it my age surprises you?" she added primly, smiling as I gaped at her.

"A bit, yeah," I managed. I remembered from the movie that elves were immortal, but it was another thing entirely to see someone who looked to be about twenty and realize…

"And how old are you then, Miss Smith?" Amarien asked eagerly. "You cannot yet be forty, though I admit I am a terrible judge—Men age so messily, you know, even dear young Estel—"

"I'm twenty-four," I said defensively. "Twenty-five in a few months." Another thought occurred to me. "Hold up, you said you've never met a mortal woman before. How is that possible, if you've lived so long?"

Amarien shrugged, taking a liberal swallow of wine. "Oh, Imladris has seen precious few visitors of late, as travel across Middle Earth becomes more perilous with each passing year. But even so, rare is it that a mortal woman makes her way to the valley. I cannot recall any such woman ever doing so, though such things may have taken place before I was born."

"Oh," I said, turning back to my food. I'd suspected, of course, that women would have fewer freedoms in Middle Earth than they would back home, but now I wondered how far that extended—and if that might make it even harder for me to find out how to get home.

The rest of my dinner consisted of hasty forkfuls of food stolen in gaps in our conversation. It was nice to talk to someone friendly and chatty after spending so many days in relative silence. Amarien seemed to be thrilled to find someone so curious about her, and I was grateful to have a distraction from the events of the previous few days.

Still, whether because of her self-professed immaturity or some natural elvish caprice, Amarien leapt up rather abruptly as I was finishing my last helping of potatoes. "I am weary of sitting here," she declared. "Besides, it is time I find Mistress Halthel and begin my duties for the night. She shall be ever so glad to hear that you found my assistance helpful. You have found it helpful, have you not?" she added suddenly, fixing me with a challenging stare.

"I—oh, yes, of course," I said helplessly.

"Oh, how dearly kind of you to say so," Amarien replied, beaming at me. "Now then—you said you are a musician, correct? Then of course you shall wish to visit the Hall of Fire before retiring for the night. Many of us gather there in the evenings, to sing and share stories," she explained. "I am certain you will find it simply spellbinding! Just follow that corridor there." She pointed with a graceful hand, then patted me on the head and drifted away without another word.

I stood up, shaking my head in confusion. "Elves are weird," I muttered, before downing the rest of my wine and taking Amarien's advice. The corridor she had pointed out was led through several winding halls and courtyards, all bathed in a deep reddish gold from torches that had been lit along the walls as evening wore on.

I heard the Hall of Fire long before I reached it. The ethereal music I had noticed upon first entering Rivendell now flooded my senses again, harps and strings mingled with fey voices, one moment teasing, the next haunting. The hall had been aptly named. An enormous fireplace took up the far end of a cavernous room dotted with overstuffed chairs and little tables, at which several elves were writing, chatting, reading, laughing—and in front of the fire, two elves were singing, their voices bringing sudden tears to my eyes. A third elf stood beside them, playing some kind of violin.

Entranced, I found myself perched in one of the empty chairs and staring at the instrument. It wasn't the same as my violin back home, but it was close—a wider body made of pale wood, no chin rest, a scroll carved gently with a pattern of vining leaves. The bow was elegant, curved outward instead of inward, strung with horsehair that seemed to glow silver in the firelight. My fingers itched at my sides—I hadn't gone so long without playing in years, and I wondered what playing an elven violin would be like.

Sighing dreamily at the thought, I let my mind wander, my exhausted limbs becoming oddly weightless in the unearthly melody. As the elven voices continued in words I didn't understand, my mind slowly drifted up above the roaring fireplace, through the sloping gray rooftops and outward. It spilled over the clifftops and waterfalls encircling the valley, reflecting the golden starlight above, which glittered like pinpricks of sunlight through a deep velvet curtain…

Then a graceful hand was shaking my shoulder. "Wake up, Miss," an elven voice laughed. "It is no good to fall asleep here. Make your way back to your rooms, if you will, for our accommodations are a great deal more comfortable for mortal rest than an armchair!"

It was one of the elves who had been singing. Weight returned to my limbs as I stumbled to my feet, suddenly bone-tired. "What were you singing about?" I asked her eagerly, looking around for the violinist, but he had disappeared.

"Oh, it was only a bit of poetry," she said airily. She spoke Westron haltingly, with a thicker accent than Amarien's. "We sang of Anarrima, whose stars have just shown themselves in the summer sky for the first time tonight. It is a constellation," she added at the blank look on my face, "hung in the sky by Varda before the wakening of the elves, and made from the dewdrops of Telperion, one of the Trees of Valinor."

"Cool," I said blankly. "Uh, I mean—it was really beautiful. And that violin—"

"Yes, yes, it was lovely," interrupted a voice from behind us. "But you promised to perform my newest poem, Mistress Lhosdess, and it would have been a good deal more exciting than another song about the stars."

"Oh, I do apologize, Master Hobbit," Lhosdess laughed, turning to the newcomer. "But we did not wish to sing your poetry while you were sleeping so soundly!"

Hobbit? Suddenly I was wide awake. My first thought was that Frodo must have already reached Rivendell, and I struggled to put together what little I remembered of the movie—but then the hobbit stepped into the firelight, and I knew he was far too old to be Frodo. He was a tiny figure, with wisps of white hair encircling his head like a cloud and a little cane tapping on the tiled floor next to wildly hairy feet.

"Sleeping?" he repeated indignantly. "How often must I tell you all that I prefer to listen to your music with my eyes closed? It helps me to think. Sleeping—sleeping, I ask you…Oh, and who is this?" the hobbit added, noticing me for the first time.

"This is our newest visitor," Lhosdess said knowledgeably. "She arrived in Imladris only this morning from a faraway land, I have heard, bringing news of magic and betrayal." She turned to me, as though to confirm her story. But I was still staring open-mouthed at the hobbit. He certainly wasn't Frodo or Sam, so unless there were other hobbits running around Rivendell who weren't mentioned in the movie, then he must be—

"Bilbo Baggins at your service," the hobbit smiled up at me. "And allow me to say, welcome to the Last Homely House—"

Bilbo broke off, and both he and Lhosdess stared at me in alarm. I realized I'd let out a wild squeak at the sound of his name. "I…uh, sorry," I stammered, feeling my face flush. "You're really Bilbo?"

"Goodness me, I'm quite certain I am," he said, looking rather taken aback.

"Oh my gosh—I mean, I can't believe it's really you!" I stifled another squeak with difficulty, but couldn't stop myself from hopping from foot to foot. It wasn't quite like when I met Gandalf, who I had recognized right away—the hobbit wasn't at all how I'd pictured him. If only I had a copy of The Hobbit for him to sign…

"Er…how is it you've heard of me?" Bilbo asked, now looking rather concerned for my sanity.

"Oh, I've read all about your adventures—they were my favorite stories growing up!" I stammered. "You have no idea—I named my pet cat after you when I was eight!"

Bilbo's wispy eyebrows had steadily migrated northward as I spoke. "Well then! I did not know my reputation had preceded me quite so much. But I am glad to meet you, Miss…?"

"Beatrice," I said, thrusting my hand out toward him. Without missing a beat, he clasped my hand in his own and shook it heartily. "Um, if it's not too much to ask," I added, suddenly starstruck, "could I ask you some questions tomorrow? About your adventures, and everything?"

The hobbit leaned on his cane and smiled. "Perhaps you might take elevensies with me tomorrow, then?" I nodded excitedly, bouncing on the balls of my feet. "I will answer your questions then—but only if you promise to stop hopping like that, Miss," Bilbo added. I stopped bouncing with some difficulty.

The spring returned to my step after I bade Lhosdess and Bilbo goodnight and left the Hall of Fire. Whatever elevensies were, I couldn't wait. Radagast and Lanion had been right—Rivendell was truly magical.