Thanks to the following for their kind responses to the first chapter: MoroTheWolfGod, Kitsune, Jebb, Farflung, Karri, and, of course, Joee. Kitsune and Farflung, you seemed to want a sequel, so here it is!
Anomen, Elrohir, and Elladan had successfully mounted their latest raid and were in the forest celebrating their victory.
"Did you see his face when I leapt out from the other side?" exulted Elrohir.
"Oh, yes," replied Elladan. "He knew it was all over then. There was no way he could deal with both of us simultaneously."
"And, Anomen," continued Elrohir, "he never even saw you coming."
"Or going," added Elladan.
"Yes," agreed Elrohir. "Anomen, your stealth and speed are a great asset."
Anomen grinned, but he did not answer. He was too busy trying to clean the red stickiness from his hands.
"Why don't you just lick them clean?" suggested Elrohir.
Anomen made a face.
"Elrohir, that's disgusting!"
"I don't see why," replied Elrohir. "By the way, there's a lot of it around your mouth, too. You look as if you've been stuffing your face with it."
"How vulgar! 'Stuffing my face', indeed!"
"Oh, very well. 'Devouring', 'gulping', 'wolfing'. There, does that satisfy you?"
Elladan snickered.
"Why, Elrohir, you sound just like Erestor. I did not know that you shared our tutor's love of synonyms! But all of this talk of eating is making me hungry. Do any of the spoils of our battle still remain?"
Elrohir passed him the plate on which sat the remnants of the fruit pie that they had purloined from the kitchen. As Elladan demolished these broken bits, they continued their discussion of the sortie.
"I would say," giggled Elrohir, "that the Cook's efforts to beat back our raid were absolutely 'fruitless'."
"Yes," agreed Anomen, "but you must admit that there was one point at which you were 'in a jam', Elrohir."
"Aye," conceded Elrohir, "when the Cook trapped me 'twixt the oven and the trestle table. I feared then that 'my goose was cooked'!"
"Luckily, the Cook ended up with 'egg on his face'," crowed Elladan, who was responsible for said egg, "and then he looked as if he would 'lay an egg'!"
"The Cook was so furious that he surely wanted to 'skin' us," gasped Anomen, who was now laughing so hard that he could scarcely draw breath.
"Yes," agreed Elladan, "and then we would have been 'in a real pickle'!"
"But," chortled Elrohir, "Anomen shouted, 'If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen'!"
That had been the agreed-upon signal for the elflings to retreat, and off they had scampered, but not 'fruitlessly'!
"You may be certain," giggled Elladan, "that the Cook is 'stewing' over our success."
"And no doubt," added Elrohir, "he is 'brewing' something to pay us back.
"True," said Anomen, "but you know what Men say: 'you can't make an omelet without breaking an egg'!"
All three of them were now rolling upon the ground laughing. At length they calmed themselves. Anomen sat up first.
"I am still sticky," he announced.
"Well," suggested Elrohir, "why don't we go swimming?"
"Yes," agreed Elladan. "Let's. It isn't safe for us to be seen in the vicinity of the Hall, anyway, so we might as well while away the time in one of the ponds."
At that they arose and made their way to one of their favorite bathing places. Once there, carelessly kicking off their boots and stripping off their clothes, they dove into the water and began to splash and duck each other. At last, tiring of their play, they climbed out onto the bank and lounged about in the warm sun to dry themselves.
As he sat basking, Anomen began to muse.
"I have been wondering," said Anomen thoughtfully, "we now know how newborn elflings are nourished, but where do those elflings come from in the first place?"
"Crotches of trees," Elladan answered automatically. His nursemaid had told him that tale long ago, and he'd never thought to question it.
"Don't be silly," scoffed Elrohir. "The only thing that comes out of the crotches of trees is leaf litter."
"I think Elrohir is right," said Anomen. "Remember that Glorfindel told us Elves have somewhat in common with horses and other creatures with fur."
"Ye-es," said Elladan nervously. He suspected he knew where Anomen would be taking this analogy.
"Well, you know that foals slip out of the bottoms of mares, don't you, so—"
"Eeeeeww!" shrieked Elladan and Elrohir in unison. "How could you suggest such a thing!?"
"It's not my fault," said Anomen defensively. "What if it's true?"
"I wonder," said Elladan thoughtfully, "how the foal gets insides the mare in the first place?"
"If it can get out," observed Elrohir, "it can get in. Besides, the foal starts out smaller than it ends up. That would make it easier for it to get in. You know as well as I that the mare's belly swells over a period of time. That must be because the foal is growing inside."
"Maybe the foal doesn't have to get in," suggested Anomen. "Maybe it is inside the mare the whole time and just finally starts growing for some reason."
Elrohir shook his head.
"I don't see how that is possible. The horsemasters are always talking about how such and such a horse has its father's bloodline. They wouldn't say that if the foal came from the mare. So the foal must come from the stallion, and somehow it gets inside the mare."
"No," said Elladan, disagreeing. "The horsemasters talk about the mare's bloodline, too. The foal must come from the mare!"
"I think Elladan is right," argued Anomen. "There wouldn't be any use for mares if stallions had foals inside them. We've got nipples. The stallions must have them, too, somewhere under their coats. If they had the foals already inside them and they have teats, they might as well birth the foals and suckle them. But they don't! That must be why there are mares."
"Maybe," mused Elrohir, "half the foal is in the stallion, and the other half is in the mare. That would explain why a foal resembles both the stallion and the mare."
"That would work," agreed Anomen enthusiastically. "So the foal would start growing whenever the two halves combine!"
"But we still don't know how that happens," observed Elladan with a sigh.
"I think I know," announced Elrohir grandly.
Elladan and Anomen gazed expectantly at him.
Elrohir lowered his voice.
"I think it's the ecthel."
"The ecthel!"
"Yes, I think somehow the stallion's ecthel puts its half of the foal inside the mare."
"Elrohir, an ecthel is for making water!" exclaimed Elladan. "What you suggest is not possible!"
"Oh, yes, it is!" insisted Elrohir. "Haven't you ever noticed what stallions do with their ecthels early in the spring?"
"Ye-es."
"Well, then," said Elrohir triumphantly. "There you have it. And," he continued, "since Elves are like horses, we must do something similar."
"I don't think so," said Elladan doubtfully. "In the spring, a stallion's ecthel becomes very large, and it no longer hangs loosely underneath the horse. Instead, it points up. Come springtime, I have never noticed any such change in my ecthel. Nor in yours, either!"
Anomen looked down at himself. He agreed with Elladan. He was sure that his rubbery, flexible ecthel was nothing like a stallion's. He reached down to prod it.
"Don't touch it!" shrieked Elladan.
"I wasn't going to rub it," said Anomen resentfully. "I was just trying to get a better look. Anyway, I touch it when I make water, and no one has ever warned me against doing that."
Still, Anomen let go of his ecthel and sat with knees drawn up peering down at it. Elrohir and Elladan did likewise. And that is how Glorfindel found them a short time later when he arrived at the pond to bathe after a hot, dusty day on the training fields. So intent were the elflings on their ecthels, that they never heard him draw near. Of course, let it be said in their defense that Glorfindel was an Elf warrior trained in stealth, so even had they been paying attention to their surroundings, they might never have marked his approach.
"Whatever are you doing!?"
Three elfling heads shot up, and three elfling faces blushed to the very tips of their pointed ears.
"Ah, ah, ah," stammered Elrohir, "we were sitting in the sun to dry ourselves, and we thought we would pass the time by looking at our belly buttons."
Glorfindel stared suspiciously at the elflings. Contemplating their navels? Surely only Men would engage in such foolishness!
"Well, stop doing it," he commanded peremptorily, "else you'll grow cross-eyed."
Aghast, the elflings stared at one another. A further threat to their vision! Were there any other means by which they had been unknowingly imperiling their eyesight!?
By now Glorfindel had finished stripping. He waded into the pond, then jackknifed and dove under the water.
"Did you notice," whispered Elladan, "that Glorfindel's ecthel is bigger than ours?"
"Of course it is," scoffed Elrohir. "His everything is bigger than ours."
"No," replied Elladan, offended, "I meant proportionately. Haven't you learned anything at all from Erestor!?"
"No more than I can avoid," grumbled Elrohir.
"I think Elladan is right," declared Anomen. "Glorfindel's ecthel is not only absolutely but relatively larger than ours."
"So there!" said Elladan triumphantly.
"Moreover," Anomen continued, "it looks different."
"Shhhh," Elladan warned frantically. "He's surfacing."
Glorfindel came up for air to find three elflings solemnly observing him.
"You are dry now. Put on your clothes and be off!"
The elflings seized their clothes and scampered away, not stopping to dress until they were nearly to the Hall.
It was lucky that the pie they had filched was a large one, for they got no supper that night. Instead, they spent the dinner hour in the kitchen, under the baleful eye of the Head Cook. There was flour to be swept up, egg to be scrubbed from the floor and the tables, boxes and bowls to be restacked, potatoes to be picked up and replaced in baskets. Above all, there were pots to be scoured. It was very late when the elflings staggered into the room that they shared.
"I'm hungry," whimpered Elladan. "I did not think our Ada would be so exacting in his punishment."
"Nor I," confessed Elrohir. "He seems to become stricter with the passage of time."
"By the Valar," said Anomen sarcastically, "I wonder why he should behave so. You don't suppose the older we get, the better he expects us to behave?"
Elrohir threw a bolster at Anomen, who promptly threw it back.
"I'm still hungry," moaned Elladan.
Anomen drew forth from his tunic three small loaves.
"Anomen," exclaimed Elladan, "wherever did you get those!?"
"You troll-brain," Anomen replied fondly. "We spent the entire evening in a kitchen!"
He tossed each of his brothers a loaf and began to eat his own.
"Anomen," said Elrohir, "now you really are 'stuffing your face'."
"I won't deny it this time," Anomen muttered through a mouthful of bread. "I'm famished!"
Their hunger much reduced, they changed into nightdresses and climbed into their beds. As they lay there waiting for sleep to take them, they resumed their earlier conversation.
"Elladan," said Elrohir, "you said that you thought that Glorfindel's ecthel was proportionately larger than ours, isn't that so?"
"Yes," said Elladan smugly, "and Anomen, who must have been paying attention to the lesson that day, agreed that it was!"
"Well, then," Elrohir pointed out, "if that is so, then a grown Elf's ecthel may be quite different from an elfling's ecthel."
"And your point is?"
"That even if your ecthel doesn't grow larger and stand up in the springtime, mayhap when you are no longer an elfling, it will! Ergo, someday you will behave like a stallion with a mare, and that is how the elfling will get started inside the Elleth! Besides," Elrohir added, "I happen to know from, ah, first-hand experience that even an elfling's ecthel can on occasion grow a little and stick out a trifle more."
Elrohir's logic and evidence seemed irrefutable at first, but soon Elladan perceived a weakness in his case.
"Elrohir, you have seen springtime come and go for many a year, have you not?"
"Ye-es."
"Tell me, in the springtime, have you ever seen an Elleth giving an Elf a pick-a-back ride?"
Elrohir had to confess that he had not. Indeed, Elladan forced him to concede that he had never at any time seen an Elleth giving an Elf a pick-a-back ride.
"So much for your theory," crowed Elladan, "for the mares always give the stallions pick-a-back rides."
At that moment they heard the door creaking open, and each elfling dove under his covers to disguise the fact that his eyes were not glazed over in sleep. Of course, the fact that their quilts were pulled over their heads was itself sign enough to Elrond that his sons were still awake. He drew back the covers and kissed each elfling in turn. Then he adjured them to talk no longer.
"Remember that I have excellent hearing," he warned them as he stood in the doorway. "No more chattering."
With that, the elflings subsided, but of course the matter was not at an end.
The next morning the elflings were delighted to learn that Mithrandir had arrived during the night.
"Oh ho," gloated Elrohir. "Now our question will be answered. Mithrandir is very wise."
"What makes you think that he will tell us anything?" challenged Anomen.
"And why would he not?" Elrohir retorted.
"Because he is not an Elf. I do not think that wizards enter Arda in the same fashion as do Elves."
"It won't hurt to ask," Elladan pointed out.
After being badgered for a time by both Elrohir and Elladan, Anomen reluctantly agreed that they should ask Mithrandir to explain how elflings come to be inside Elleths. They waited until after supper, when the wizard went into the garden to smoke his pipe. (Elrond had lately gently suggested to the Istar that it would be better if he smoked outside whenever the weather permitted.)
Following Mithrandir into the garden, the three elflings stood in a row in front of the Istar and stared at him. No one wanted to be the first to speak. The wizard gazed back at them. He was glad to have the pipe to occupy him, else he would have been laughing helplessly, so timorous the elflings looked. At last he removed the pipe from his mouth.
"Well?" he said.
"Um, Mithrandir," ventured Elrohir, "we have a question."
"So I see. And it is?"
"Uh, we were wondering," Elrohir went on nervously, "we were wondering whether you would explain something to us."
"Perhaps. If you ever get around to asking me something, that is."
"Mithrandir," blurted out Anomen, who wanted to get it over with, "howdobabiesgetinside?"
"What?"
"Howdobabiesgetinside!?"
Mithrandir shook his head in bewilderment. Elladan sighed.
"How. Do. Babies. Get. Inside?"
Mithrandir pretended not to understand the question.
"Until they are old enough to walk, they must be carried inside."
"No! No! No!" clamored the elflings. "How do the babies get inside the mother before they come out of the mother?"
"Oh, that. Well, I must tell you, I don't know nothing about birthing babies."
The elflings stood puzzling over this sentence. Was Mithrandir saying that he did or did not know anything about the process by which elflings entered the world?
"Mithrandir," said Anomen, "do you mean that you know about birthing babies, or do you mean that you don't know about birthing babies?"
Mithrandir had resumed smoking his pipe. Now he once again took his pipe's stem out of his mouth.
"Yes," he said serenely.
The elflings looked at one another. Mithrandir plainly had no intention of speaking, well, plainly. Disconsolate, they retreated from the garden.
The next morning, Elrohir declared that he was going to take up the matter with their tutor.
"He's supposed to be teaching us Natural History."
Horrified, Elladan and Anomen urged him to abandon his plan.
"Don't you remember what happened the last time, when we asked him about nipples?" Elladan said desperately.
"Yes," Anomen chimed in. "You are going to get us all into worse trouble this time!"
"I don't care," declared Elrohir stubbornly. "I don't see why we shouldn't be allowed to ask a perfectly innocent question!"
Elrohir sat patiently through arithmetic, astronomy, grammar, history, and rhetoric. When at last Erestor reached for a tome on natural history, Elrohir boldly spoke up.
"Master Erestor, I have a question regarding Natural History."
"Do you, Elrohir? Good! Good! Curiosity is a commendable quality in a young Elf. Pray state your question."
"What starts an elfling growing in an Elleth?"
Erestor turned pale, then red. Under the tutor's indignant eye, Elrohir felt himself shriveling up as his ecthel did when he plunged into cold water. Then, to the elfling's surprise, Erestor suddenly changed tack.
"I suppose," the tutor sighed, "that you will never attend to your lessons until your curiosity is satisfied. Very well, then. Listen carefully. I am only going to tell you this once."
Erestor cleared his throat.
"When an Elf loves an Elleth," he began.
An hour later three very dazed elflings trooped out of the library and into the garden. Once there, they threw themselves upon the grass and lay staring up at the clouds. It was a long time before any of them spoke. At last Anomen broke the silence.
"So an Elleth has a sheath, and the Elf puts his sword in her sheath."
Elladan shook his head bemusedly.
"Have you ever known an Elleth to wear a sheath?"
"No," said Anomen, "but maybe she only straps on the sheath when the Elf wants to use it for his sword."
"But I do not see," argued Elrohir, "what the connection is between a sheath and a sword and a baby. So an Elf puts his sword in an Elleth's sheath instead of his own sheath. How would that cause an elfling to grow inside the Elleth? Besides, if the Elf left his sword in her sheath, he might not have it when he needed it. What if he encountered an Orc when his sword was in her sheath. That would be very bad!"
Elladan and Anomen nodded their heads vigorously in agreement. Putting one's sword in an Elleth's sheath would be very foolish indeed.
"Also," Elladan put in, "I don't understand why the Elf would talk in such a peculiar fashion. Why would the Elf 'ejaculate'? That is a very formal way to speak, is it not?"
"Yes," agreed Anomen. "It is a very old fashioned verb for the act of enunciating. But then Erestor is a very old fashioned Elf."
"True," conceded Elladan.
Elrohir shook his head gloomily.
"I wonder what he meant by 'water breaking'. How could water break? It can be spilled, but I don't see how it could be broken. Only hard objects can break, really. And," Elrohir went on, "I also am puzzled by the 'room' he kept talking about."
"I don't remember him saying anything about a room," objected Anomen.
"Oh, yes, he did, repeatedly. He said the elfling grew in a room."
"No, he didn't. He said 'womb'."
"Well, I heard 'room'.
"Maybe 'womb' is a synonym for 'room'," suggested Elladan. "Anyway, what I want to know is why he kept repeatedly bringing up the subject of eggs. We didn't ask him anything about cooking!"
"As for me," declared Anomen, "I would like someone to explain why a cord would be needed to connect the elfling to the Elleth. It hardly seems necessary. After all, the elfling can't very well run off!"
"And I don't understand what seamen have to do with the answer to our question," exclaimed Elladan. "We are miles from the ocean!"
"Yes," said Anomen, "but even more nonsensical was his bringing up the matter of contractions. We didn't ask him about grammar or spelling, so why would he need to talk about contractions?
"But not as nonsensical as all that talk about erections!" exclaimed Elladon. "I can't imagine why he thought it necessary to bring up the subject of architecture!"
"And what was the organism that Erestor kept mentioning?" complained Elrohir. "There are a lot of organisms in the world. Whichever one did he mean!?"
Elladan shook his head.
"Do you suppose?" he suggested gloomily, "that he was mainly speaking in metaphorical terms, as is his custom?"
"Wonderful," groaned Elrohir. "That would explain why nothing he said made any sense. Everything was symbolic, probably, or worse, allegorical!"
"We are never," Elladan said sadly, "going to learn where elflings come from. Which means that we will never have any little elflings of our own."
Elrohir and Anomen stared at him.
"Elladan, why ever would you want any elflings of your own?" exclaimed Elrohir.
"Well," said Elladan, puzzled, "why else would we need to know where they come from, if we weren't planning on having any of our own?"
"Elladan," said Anomen, "tell me truly. Would you like to be raising an Elrohir?"
"Oh, no!" exclaimed Elladan, horrified.
The three looked at one another. Suddenly the matter of where elflings came from seemed much less important.
Elrohir was the first to arise.
"I'm hungry," he announced. "Anyone for raiding and pillaging?"
The other two elflings eagerly leaped to their feet. And so, Reader, this story will end where it began—in the kitchen.