"The Fellowship walked all day then took a short break for something
to eat and started walking again for another several hours, after which
they got 2 hours of sleep and then kept right on walking."
Try it sometime. After an hour or so, I could barely breathe. This was a very intensive fitness workout indeed, although it did have the benefit to it that, unlike my other attempts to lose a little weight, it wasn't something that I would ever have to worry about cheating on. By now, I had seen enough of Mirkwood to be too terrified of losing my companions on the path, even if they were a bunch of crooks.
Mirwold I could understand. He had obviously been corrupted by the power of the ring, being a mortal and everything. Fadrornion and Englas were still a mystery to me. As elves, they should know better then to go along with such an evil scheme to dupe innocent Middle Earth lovers for personal profit! Maybe they didn't realize what was going on. Maybe Mirwold had deceived them as he had obviously done to so many. There was only one problem: I couldn't figure out a way to warn them. If only my elvish vocabulary had more than five words in it, I thought wistfully.
I tried to convey the danger of their situation to them while Mirwold was distracted by a false orc-alarm, but they didn't seem to understand a word I was trying to say. "He mornie," I said desperately, pointing to Mirwold's crouching back, "not melon." Fadrornion looked at me for a moment and blinked. It was becoming increasingly clear that looks were Fadrornion's only asset, except possibly brute strength. Hardly a very elvish kind of trait, I mused. Englas didn't seem much more elvish himself. He didn't even try to listen to me. Instead, he gave me a withering glare and pushed me out of sight behind a tree just off the path, where I stayed until it was discovered that the orcs were actually small, noisy woodland creatures.
The three of them didn't pay much attention to me at all, except when I was particularly in the way. Mirwold, Englas and Fadrornion seemed barely aware of my existence as they set up camp for the night. I was beginning to feel like someone's tagalong little sister, an unusual feeling for me since I have never been anybody's little sister before. I ate a Tic- tac. It made me feel a little better. I stretched out across the forest floor and sighed with relief, beyond caring that I was probably getting dead leaves and miscellaneous forest debris all over me. For the first time that day, I was almost happy.
Then Englas started spontaneously reciting poetry. I had forgotten how much they did that in the LOTR, pages and pages of "fragments" of poems. Sadly, I find epic poetry extremely boring even when it's in a language I can understand. I yawned. Then I noticed the glinty lights of eyes looking out at me from outside the ring of the campfire. I stopped yawning. "They're just giant overgrown flesh-eating squirrels, for the most part," whispered Mirwold helpfully. With this comforting thought in mind, I moved closer to the fire and fell asleep to the sound of Englas' monotonously structured sing-song chant in the pitch dark of Mirkwood and dreamed of fresh produce and baths.
Try it sometime. After an hour or so, I could barely breathe. This was a very intensive fitness workout indeed, although it did have the benefit to it that, unlike my other attempts to lose a little weight, it wasn't something that I would ever have to worry about cheating on. By now, I had seen enough of Mirkwood to be too terrified of losing my companions on the path, even if they were a bunch of crooks.
Mirwold I could understand. He had obviously been corrupted by the power of the ring, being a mortal and everything. Fadrornion and Englas were still a mystery to me. As elves, they should know better then to go along with such an evil scheme to dupe innocent Middle Earth lovers for personal profit! Maybe they didn't realize what was going on. Maybe Mirwold had deceived them as he had obviously done to so many. There was only one problem: I couldn't figure out a way to warn them. If only my elvish vocabulary had more than five words in it, I thought wistfully.
I tried to convey the danger of their situation to them while Mirwold was distracted by a false orc-alarm, but they didn't seem to understand a word I was trying to say. "He mornie," I said desperately, pointing to Mirwold's crouching back, "not melon." Fadrornion looked at me for a moment and blinked. It was becoming increasingly clear that looks were Fadrornion's only asset, except possibly brute strength. Hardly a very elvish kind of trait, I mused. Englas didn't seem much more elvish himself. He didn't even try to listen to me. Instead, he gave me a withering glare and pushed me out of sight behind a tree just off the path, where I stayed until it was discovered that the orcs were actually small, noisy woodland creatures.
The three of them didn't pay much attention to me at all, except when I was particularly in the way. Mirwold, Englas and Fadrornion seemed barely aware of my existence as they set up camp for the night. I was beginning to feel like someone's tagalong little sister, an unusual feeling for me since I have never been anybody's little sister before. I ate a Tic- tac. It made me feel a little better. I stretched out across the forest floor and sighed with relief, beyond caring that I was probably getting dead leaves and miscellaneous forest debris all over me. For the first time that day, I was almost happy.
Then Englas started spontaneously reciting poetry. I had forgotten how much they did that in the LOTR, pages and pages of "fragments" of poems. Sadly, I find epic poetry extremely boring even when it's in a language I can understand. I yawned. Then I noticed the glinty lights of eyes looking out at me from outside the ring of the campfire. I stopped yawning. "They're just giant overgrown flesh-eating squirrels, for the most part," whispered Mirwold helpfully. With this comforting thought in mind, I moved closer to the fire and fell asleep to the sound of Englas' monotonously structured sing-song chant in the pitch dark of Mirkwood and dreamed of fresh produce and baths.