Siege Mentality

Chapter Eighteen

Thanks for all the reviews.

Elf-lords and truly vast quantities of chocolate to Nemis for betaing this.

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The caravan wound its way through the foothills of the Misty Mountains, heading steadily along the ancient routes to Eregion. Gradually, the land rose higher and holly bushes dotted the countryside more and more frequently.

Rhia was left suspended from one such delightful shrub by the tattered remains of her velvet evening gown.

Souifdsofsfnasdas was rather ecstatic when Legolas volunteered to help her remove the thorns from her legs – hotpants provided really rather ineffectual protection against the perils of the wilderness.

Elrond tried to ignore the warm presence tucked against his body – really, this was the most distracting way to ride, not that he wanted to complain – and wheeled his horse round to inspect the straggling line in the hope that they might have lost more fangirls. Alas, they all appeared to be where Legolas had left them, and instead it was his daughter and his foster-son who were missing.

"Glorfindel?"

"Yes?" The Lord of the House of the Golden Flower broke off his heated conversation with Erestor.

"Please could you retrieve Arwen and Estel from … wherever they have disappeared to now. I wish to think upon it no longer." He shuddered.

Celebrían's slender hand caressed his thigh through the heavy fabric of his breeches and he tensed involuntarily. She chuckled appreciatively and did not cease her ministrations. "You cannot blame them."

"Oh?" He was only too aware of the husky quality that had crept into his voice, and of the fact that he no longer seemed capable of caring what his wayward daughter might or might not be doing with Isildur's wretchedly unwashed heir.

"It is not as if we were setting them a particularly abstentious example."

He meant to point out that this was entirely different. He meant to show how displeased he was. In reality, he leaned closer to whisper in her ear. "And what example would that be? Would my lady wish to show a poor ignorant half-elf precisely what she means?"

"There is a grove of trees over there…"

He took her implicit invitation, and slid from the horse, grabbing a blanket as he went. The column drew up obediently, a few fangirls tumbling from their saddles incompetently, whining about their saddle-sores, while others vaulted to the ground, somersaulting as they did so. The Lord and Lady of Imladris paid very little attention to this display of arrogant and irritating virtuosity. Indeed, they paid little attention to most things for the next hour, and only returned from their chosen seclusion with great reluctance, albeit with smiles as wide as the Sundering Seas.

In their absence, the Hobbits had sat down to the third breakfast of the day, which appeared to consist of a roast haunch of venison, rabbit stew, and enough toast with strawberry jam to feed the massed Ainur after a rendition of the Music. Denethor had begun to have thoughts of chargrilled son with a small side-salad and perhaps a nice glass of wine, egged on by Celeborn. Thus Faramir was to be found halfway up an oak tree with the Lady of Rohan, who was looking particularly smug at this turn of events. Arwen and Aragorn had arrived, towed behind an exasperated Glorfindel, who had had to perform this same duty four times in the past week alone. Maglor was creeping around the camp, evidently suffering from the delusion that none could see him, prodding the fangirls with a fork and grabbing whatever Valar-forsaken trinkets they were treasuring. When he had accumulated a fair store of improbable and rather vulgar jewellery, he began to fling pieces at the fire, leaping up and down and whooping in between choruses of the Noldolantë.

With a sigh, Elrond decided that the prudent course of action would be to ignore them all. He propped his back against a mighty tree and tugged his wife into his arms. Celebrían grinned contentedly and fiddled with the fastenings of his cloak. Elladan, his eyes firmly averted, brought them cups of strong, bitter coffee that, once they had picked stray Broaches of Love-Power out of them, they sipped in a peaceful silence.

When the Elf appeared before them, Celebrían rather assumed that she had fallen asleep, so alike was his visage to a framed sketch that hung on the wall of her parents' rooms. Tall, broad-shouldered and slender, with golden hair and intelligent grey eyes set in a fair face, the very image of an Elda of old. What the artist had not depicted, however, was a certain degree of translucency. He smiled at her, and she pinched herself sharply. When that seemed to lend itself to the conclusion that she was, in fact, awake, she pinched her husband for good measure. Elrond yelped and opened his eyes. His injured confusion was rather hastily replaced by an open-mouthed stare as he gaped at the visitor, doing a passable impression of a gasping haddock. The Elf merely continued to wait, and it was still possible to see the gawping fangirls through his torso. Regrettably.

Celebrían recovered her senses first. "Mae govannen, Uncle Finrod."

The smile, which had been a little tentative, suddenly broadened. "You recognise me!"

"My mother has your self-portrait." She rose and went to enfold him in an embrace, but her arms passed straight through him.

"I am not actually here … there. This is a sending. It is most fascinating. I am in my father's halls in Tirion, and yet I appear to be in Ossiriand…" He was obviously making a heroic effort to curb his enthusiasm, and failing miserably.

Elrond regained some semblance of the power of speech, although not much. His eyes were very wide, with the glassy gaze of one who wishes to spend the next six months hibernating in a small dark place, well away from the insanity of a world that has just proved that it not only loads the dice, but shaker as well. "We are honoured by your presence, Lord Felagund."

"The pleasure is mine." Finrod peered at him. "You do look like Lúthien, and yet I can almost see more of Elu Thingol in you."

The peredhel did not know whether to be pleased or horrified by this comparison to his neurotic great-great-grandfather, and so settled for a neutral expression that made him look more like a startled deer than a wise elf-lord. "Ah … well, thank you … So … is this … are you a messenger from the Valar? If so, can you tell me if they are going to do anything about this infestation of fangirls from which we seem to be suffering? They are worse than cockroaches, I tell you, and not nearly as interesting to talk to."

"O Mandos, no, I am not a messenger from the Powers, although they say that you should watch for falling rocks and rabbits. Apart from that, this is more … ah … personal." Extreme embarrassment made itself manifest on the Noldo's face.

"Speak on."

"Well … I was wondering if you could dig a little by your left foot. I would have asked a few eons before, but there was never the chance and then…"

Elrond resigned himself to the fact that no day would ever maintain a semblance of sanity for long. Conversations with relatives who had been killed years before his birth and currently resided in the Blessed Realm were coming to be a staple of his existence, especially if they were entirely unintelligible. Perhaps it was some obscure clause in the Curse which had not been revoked. He would not put it past Fëanor, the mad bastard. Anyone who goes down in history as having catalogued his shoes alphabetically was pretty much asking to be blamed for random acts of peculiarity, especially if they then go on to become murderous psychopaths. "And what am I to look for?"

"Ah… 'tis a golden band, such as one might bear as a token of affection." Finrod ducked his head, his cheeks flaming scarlet. "'Twas given to me by Amarië of the Vanyar." He paused and seemed to listen to some unseen person. "But, melmenya…," he protested, "I swear that it was not so…" He twisted his hands together. "The Lady Amarië has bethought herself that I gave the ring to some doxy in Middle-earth, ever since I told her of the strange beings in outlandish clothing who roamed that land. Only if I can prove to her that the ring was lost and not given away will she bear my betrothal ring." He raised his eyes in mute appeal from one closet romantic to another. Celebrían aided the process by elbowing her husband in the ribs. With a sigh, he gave in.

By the simple means of confiscating one of Sam Gamgee's saucepans and beating it repeatedly against a convenient tree-stump – which unfortunately turned out to be Mithrandir's head – he fashioned a serviceable spade. The irate Istar was not nearly so useful, and the elf-lord's progress was impeded by bolts of vermilion fire that aimed themselves repeatedly at his left eyebrow and could apparently only be diverted with pots of honey. The dig was long and arduous, further impeded by the semi-corporeal Elf hanging over one shoulder, the Dwarf kibbitzing at his feet, and the fangirls taking turns to jump into the hole to see if they could break an ankle and be rescued by Legolas. The ones who jumped in when the hole was a mere six inches deep were particularly disappointed, not to mention grubby and covered in baffled and dazzled earthworms.

At first, it could have been the waning sunlight gilding the water pooling in the bottom of the hole, but Elrond deftly cleared the gloopy mud away, revealing a simple band of butter-yellow metal, intricately inscribed with two names in the Fëanorian tengwar. Jumping lightly back to the forest floor, he dunked the ring in a pot of water to clean it, and presented it to the waiting shade. Finrod's face was a picture of relief mingled with indescribable happiness. His hand seemed to become subtly more corporeal, and he wrapped his fingers around the ring. He bowed deeply to the peredhel lord. "I am more grateful than you can imagine for this, and ever shall be."

He seemed about to depart, but then something happened that no one had expected. Absinthia lunged for the hand that was definitely here as opposed to there, hurling herself bodily across the clearing, her fingers clawing at his. She was bored. Leggy-kins was simply not angsty enough for her tastes, and had merely laughed at her more heartfelt rendition of the lyrics of Avril Lavigne in a voice that would have curdled miruvor. Meanwhile, this stranger's eyes were shadowed with old sorrows, deep with loss as well as laughter. She had to have him; he would be hers. Finrod, while he definitely had contrary ideas about this, was caught off balance and toppled forward, and, before their eyes, became more and more distinctly solid, until no one could doubt that there he was, sprawled in an ungraceful heap on the forest floor.

Absinthia, having netted her prey, rolled him over onto his back and sat on him, clamping her hands around his face and attempting to kiss him sloppily on the lips. So busy was she in this endeavour that she did not notice the fair elf-maiden appear out of thin air and stand over her with an expression of outrage on her face, her small hands curled into fists. The first thing she actually noticed was when her head was yanked backwards by a fistful of mauve hair, and she was tossed away like a used lembas wrapper. Much to her chagrin, she also noticed the way Finrod's face lit up at the appearance of the newcomer as he moved swiftly to envelop her in his arms. Amarië held him off for a moment, searching his face with a penetrating gaze, and then nodded in satisfaction. She took the ring from his hand and slipped it on to his finger. His eyes were briefly questioning, but his joy was too great, and he pulled her close, his lips already warm on her own.

Absinthia made nauseated noises and, stomping away, vowed to never look at anything male again, but no one paid much attention to her. That is, except a small slithery thing that had been the result of one of Morgoth's less successful experiments, and had been repeatedly left behind to guard the baggage train of evil. He now found himself provided with a handy packed lunch at no added cost. Even if her false eyelashes were a little chewy.

"Well." Amarië broke away from Finrod at last, although her fingers were still fondly entangled in the soft hair at the nape of his neck. "Well, Ossiriand is as pretty as you said it was."

"I am glad." He chuckled, as much to cover the emotion of the moment as anything else. "For we seem to be stranded here."

Maglor, finally aware of the situation, stopped trying to bury a long-handled spoon between Lord Celeborn's shoulder blades, and wandered over. "Cousin Findérato!"

"Makalaurë!" Fear and delight warred for a moment in Finrod's face, before he reminded himself that Maglor was not Celegorm or Curufin, and that several Ages had passed since the unfortunate incident in Nargothrond anyway. More to the point, Fëanor's two most … interesting sons, while still madder than drunken orcs, were currently being subjected to a long lecture on 'Correct Behaviour in a Modern Not-For-Bloodshed Environment – Sit Still, You Little Bastard, Or I'll Fry You Alive' by the Doomsman of the Valar. It was safe. One hand still linked with Amarië's, he embraced his cousin. "It has been a long time, and more, since last I saw you."

"Did you have to help that Beren boy?" Maglor cut to the chase with a single-mindedness of which Oromë would have been proud. "It would have been much easier if they had left the Erudamned jewel where it was."

Finrod shrugged. "The price Thingol set was not fair, and I owed his my life to Beren's line."

Amber-Rose nudged her friend Fire-Lily. "Make-whatty? I thought he was called Maglor. Or maybe it was Elros…"

"Naaah, it was Feo-something."

"What are they saying about jewels? D'you think they mean the Ring? I mean, jeez, everyone knows that it doesn't have any jewels. Now, my ring, Adsadsabdaoiya, has rubies and sapphires, and star-stones that have the power of the Gods of Middle-earth…" She broke off, forced to do so as she dodged a tree branch that Tulkas, unseen, had thrown at her, fed up of being mis-designated.

It would be nice to think that this blow to the head brought about a refreshing bout of amnesia, and so changed her attitudes forever. It would also be wishful thinking. She lifted her head from the mud, apparently unaware of the blob of leaf mulch clinging to the end of her nose, and delivered a scathing diatribe on everyone who was not her, a diatribe that broke off only when Legolas knelt down beside her and plastered Caring Smile Number 33B across his face.

The rest of the impromptu army turned away in revolted silence, too jaded even to exclaim.

The Great Mary Sue Seduction rattled inexorably onwards.

TBC

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What? *tries to look innocent* You didn't think that I was going to leave him out, did you?

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