Once upon a time in a long ago mystic land, there was a lonely elf
named Lego. Poor Lego lived all alone as a hermit in a cave in the
foothills of the Mountain Hull. Some days he occupied himself with
mending the miniscule tears in his clothes, keeping himself and his few
belongings immaculately clean (as was elfishly possible while living in a
cave) with his one bar of soap, or just simply sitting at the entrance to
his cave and watch the weather. Other days he would sit, with his knees
pulled up tight against his chest, in the darkest corner he could find and
wallow in self misery. But poor Lego hadn't always been so alone and
melancholy...
A violent rainstorm roared outside Lego's little cave. Driving winds howled through the cave's entrance, sending little shivers down Lego's back. Torrents of water lashed the mountainside, and created a curtain of water across the cave's opening. The sky above swirled and crashed with varying shades of gray and black thunderheads. And Lego sat curled up in the back of his cave, listening to the storm with detached interest, his mood reflecting that of the storm.
This particular day happened to be a Wallowing Day. And like any other Wallowing Day, he spent it reliving the day that had sent him into his self imposed exile. As he sunk deeper and deeper into the memory of that fateful day, the sounds of the storm gradually faded away. Finally, when he could no longer hear the storm, he was completely alone and he began, once again, to relive the memory...
Lego awoke as the first rays of sun broke the horizon. As usual, he was the first of their party to rise. But this morning was unusual in that he had awoken with a very un-Lego like urge to make mischief, rather that groom his long blonde hair. But he began to brush out the few tangles in his hair anyway, trying to shake the urge. He went about his other morning tasks, but it remained as he put away his bedroll, and as he rekindled last night's fire. As he put a pot of water over the fire to boil, an idea came to him. He had the perfect way to indulge himself and be mischievous without doing anything lasting.
Lego crept back over to his packs and silently removed several bottles and jars of elfish cosmetics. Once he had everything he needed, he surveyed the rest of his sleeping party, carefully picking his victims. His eyes came to a stop on the sleeping hobbits. Lego smiled wickedly, and he crawled quietly over to Pippen. Very carefully, he began to apply make- up to the little hobbits face.
Normally Lego only used the skin toned cosmetics to hide the occasional blemish on his fair face, or to even out his skin tone. After all, he didn't want to appear effeminate; he was the prince of Mirkwood. But now, Lego was using some of his more bold and bright colors on his friend, coloring his eyelid area, his cheeks, and his lips. When he was done with Pippen, he moved on to the other hobbit, Merry, where he did the same thing. Lego rocked back on his heels and admired his handy work for a minute, then returned his cosmetics to his packs.
As he secured the strap on his pack, another idea came to him. Just two days ago he had noticed Eomer's toenails were a very unnatural shade of bright red. At the time he had thought the burly man's sister Eowen had played a cruel prank on him, or maybe it was just Eomer's way of showing his minuscule feminine side. Either way, there was a chance that the burly man still had that particular shade of red polish.
So Lego went to Eomer's packs and began to search carefully for the nail polish. After a minute or two Lego was rewarded for his efforts when he found a small bottle of red paint in a small inside pocket. With a sly grin, he removed the bottle and went back to the hobbits. Red toenails would accent their beautiful faces, he thought evilly.
Five minutes later Merry and Pippen had bright red toenails and the red paint was returned to its special pouch. Lego stood and admired his work again, then got to work cooking breakfast.
An hour later, all the humans and the dwarf of the group were up and moving about groggily. The men were both washing up at the nearby spring, and Gimli the dwarf was sitting on a rock, staring dumbly into the cooking fire. All the while Lego sat and stirred the porridge, bubbling merrily over the fire, every once in a while casting quick glances over at the still sleeping hobbits.
Just as the porridge was about ready to serve, the hobbits woke. Both Merry and Pippen sat up in unison, noses in the air, eyes closed, and faces pointed toward the porridge. Everyone round the fire, except Lego, ignored their antics as this had long ago become the morning routine.
Merry and Pippen scrambled out of their bedrolls, pushing and shoving each other out of the way on their path to breakfast. Merry reached for a bowl, but Pippen wrenched it out of his hands, and began to slop porridge into the bowl. Grumbling, Merry grabbed another bowl, and served himself breakfast.
Lego watched them covertly as he ate his porridge. He was waiting for either the hobbits to notice each other's faces or for one of the others to notice the hobbits. He was quite amazed, though he didn't show it, that no one had noticed yet. They only look like circus clown drag queens, he thought.
Everyone ignored the hobbits completely until the two of them began an argument over who had eaten the most porridge. At that, Gimli dropped his bowl and stood up to yell at them.
"Enough!" He shouted, startling everyone but Lego. "Is it too much to ask for some peace and quiet at—" He stopped shouting at the hobbits when he finally looked at their faces. Instead he just stood there and stared, dumbfounded. Aragorn, the other human, and Eomer followed his gaze, and their eyes widened when they too saw the hobbits faces.
After a moment of shock the three of them started to chuckle, then the chuckle turned into a full blown laugh. The hobbits stood there confused as the others all laughed at them.
"What?" Pippen asked after a moment or two.
Aragorn and Eomer were leaning on each other for support, and Gimli was on his back clutching at a stitch in his side. "What?" Pippen repeated.
Aragorn gained enough control over himself to answer the confused hobbit. "Go... take a look... in the pond."
Merry and Pippen raced to the pond. A moment later the sounds of them laughing reached the group still sitting by the fire. Lego heaved a huge inner sigh of relief. He hadn't known how the two hobbits would have reacted, which is why he'd chosen them for his prank.
When the laughing subsided, the drag queens turned to the taller group. "SO which of you is responsible for this?" Merry asked smiling.
The men, the dwarf, and elf all looked at each other, trying to find the culprit. Gimli shrugged and Aragorn and Eomer looked back at the hobbits. Eomer's eyes widened and Lego guessed that he had spotted the red nail polish. He head snapped around to look at Lego.
"It had to be Legolas," he said, eyes accusing. "He was the first up this morning."
Merry and Pippen, smiling, turned to Lego. "Did you do it?" They asked.
Lego nodded, admitting to his crime. "Yes, I admit. I gave in to a childish urge. And I apologize. And if you spend some time in the pond, the cosmetics will come off." The hobbits shrugged, then turned to each other and began to make silly faces at each other. Aragorn and Gimli watched them, laughing. But Lego caught Eomer glaring at him out of the corner of his eye. Lego suspected the horse man knew where he had gotten the red nail polish. He smiled slightly, he would apologize later.
Eventually the hobbits did wash off the drag queen make-up in the pond. When they were done, everyone broke camp and they set off again. The hobbits kept themselves and everyone else entertained by singing some of the more popular Shire songs as they walked across the countryside. Oddly enough, most of the songs they sang were well known Hobbiton drinking songs. After a while the drinking songs kind of all turned into the same sounding thing, and Lego got pretty tired of hearing whatever it was Merry and Pippen were singing.
As the day wore on Lego kept catching Merry and Pippen casting mischievous looks his way. They were plotting a payback prank, and it was fine with him. In fact, he'd been expecting it from the moment he began to apply the make-up in the first place. As long as whatever they did wasn't permanent, but he trusted them not to be that stupid.
What was left of the Fellowship (the two men, the dwarf and elf, and the hobbits) stopped for the night under the cover of a grove of trees. Aragorn and Eomer went off in search of dinner while Lego sent the hobbits to dig the privy, and he built up a cooking fire. Pippen had begged to be allowed to manage a fire instead of digging the privy, but had refused, reminding him that neither he nor Merry were allowed to tend a fire (they were no longer trusted with a fire as the last, and indeed only time they had had control of a fire, they had burned up their packs, a tree, and set fire to Aragorn's bears, which accounts for his overall state of grunginess).
A good hour later, the men returned with two fat rabbits and an indigenous bird. They all ate as fast as their tired mouths would permit, and then bedded down for the night without much talking. Only Eomer stayed awake, he had volunteered to take first watch. Normally Lego took the first watch, but decided tonight to let Eomer take it. Lego tucked himself tightly into his bedroll, and closed his eyes. Usually he was a light sleeper, but decided not to hold himself back tonight, every once in a while it was okay to sleep deeply. Besides, he didn't want to spoil the hobbits fun. Had he not trusted them to not pull anything permanent or damaging, he never would have allowed himself the luxury of sleeping deeply.
Resolved, Lego turned over onto his stomach in his bedroll and buried his head in his arms and drifted off to sleep. His last thought before he sank completely into the comfortable blackness of sleep was that he hoped Merry and Pippen didn't mess with his hair.
Lego awoke the next morning to the sounds of birds chirping. He sat up and began to check himself and his bags for signs a prank. He felt his face, thinking maybe they had been dumb enough to pull the same prank he had the night before. But his face was clean, his packs were untouched, and his clothes were in the same place they had been the night before. Thinking that he hadn't bothered to do anything, Lego dug in his packs for his comb.
Improvising a mirror, as there was no pond nearby, he filled a small cooking pot with water from his canteen. While he waited for the surface of the water to still, he picked the five or six hairs out of the teeth of his comb. Then he leaned over the pot and looked at his reflection. He saw his hair and froze. After a moment of shocked silence he screamed, a very long high pitched scream.
Startled, every bird within a half mile radius took to the sky as though they had been chased out of their nests by a fiend. Both men, the dwarf, and the hobbits woke instantly and scrambled to their feet grabbing for weapons.
But Lego was still staring at his hair in the water. He still had his two braids that hung down in front of his ears and the under layers still hung down past his shoulders, but that was where the resemblance ended. The middle layer of his hair was shorn off, unevenly, at about chin level, and it stuck out at odd angles from sleeping on it. The top layer was by far the worst; it was cut so that it was now about three inches long. And Lego now had bangs that flopped inconveniently in his eyes. The hobbits, for Lego was sure that's who had done this, had even gone so far as to rub a little watered down gel into the top layer to make it look spiky.
He stopped screaming and became aware of other sounds around him. He whipped around to find the Merry and Pippen rolling on the ground laughing. Aragorn, Eomer, and Gimli were all standing there switching between staring at his hair and staring at the hobbits.
And as if that weren't enough for Lego, Pippen gained enough control over himself to gasp out a sentence. "You... you look...you look like Nicky Six!" At that both Merry and Pippen lost control again. Lego panicked, he couldn't handle hearing his hair being compared to that man's famous mullet.
After that his mind froze, all he knew was that he had to flee, no one could see him with such a horrible hairdo. Acting only on instinct, Lego grabbed the few things that weren't still in his packs and shoved them back into their respective pouches. When it was secure, he took off. He picked a direction and ran, leaving the still laughing hobbits and the men and dwarf shouting after him. He ignored them and kept running. Lego kept going all day, stopping only to catch a quick breather. Finally, at sunset he collapsed behind a small hill at the foot of a mountain.
For the longest time he lay there as his mind slowly began to function again. Slowly he realized that he was now all alone, for it would be near impossible to find the rest of his group as he had no idea where he was or from which direction he had come from. Eventually he got up and tried to figure out where he was. Looking about, Lego saw nothing that even remotely looked familiar. Well, he thought, I might as well find a place to stay the night.
A violent rainstorm roared outside Lego's little cave. Driving winds howled through the cave's entrance, sending little shivers down Lego's back. Torrents of water lashed the mountainside, and created a curtain of water across the cave's opening. The sky above swirled and crashed with varying shades of gray and black thunderheads. And Lego sat curled up in the back of his cave, listening to the storm with detached interest, his mood reflecting that of the storm.
This particular day happened to be a Wallowing Day. And like any other Wallowing Day, he spent it reliving the day that had sent him into his self imposed exile. As he sunk deeper and deeper into the memory of that fateful day, the sounds of the storm gradually faded away. Finally, when he could no longer hear the storm, he was completely alone and he began, once again, to relive the memory...
Lego awoke as the first rays of sun broke the horizon. As usual, he was the first of their party to rise. But this morning was unusual in that he had awoken with a very un-Lego like urge to make mischief, rather that groom his long blonde hair. But he began to brush out the few tangles in his hair anyway, trying to shake the urge. He went about his other morning tasks, but it remained as he put away his bedroll, and as he rekindled last night's fire. As he put a pot of water over the fire to boil, an idea came to him. He had the perfect way to indulge himself and be mischievous without doing anything lasting.
Lego crept back over to his packs and silently removed several bottles and jars of elfish cosmetics. Once he had everything he needed, he surveyed the rest of his sleeping party, carefully picking his victims. His eyes came to a stop on the sleeping hobbits. Lego smiled wickedly, and he crawled quietly over to Pippen. Very carefully, he began to apply make- up to the little hobbits face.
Normally Lego only used the skin toned cosmetics to hide the occasional blemish on his fair face, or to even out his skin tone. After all, he didn't want to appear effeminate; he was the prince of Mirkwood. But now, Lego was using some of his more bold and bright colors on his friend, coloring his eyelid area, his cheeks, and his lips. When he was done with Pippen, he moved on to the other hobbit, Merry, where he did the same thing. Lego rocked back on his heels and admired his handy work for a minute, then returned his cosmetics to his packs.
As he secured the strap on his pack, another idea came to him. Just two days ago he had noticed Eomer's toenails were a very unnatural shade of bright red. At the time he had thought the burly man's sister Eowen had played a cruel prank on him, or maybe it was just Eomer's way of showing his minuscule feminine side. Either way, there was a chance that the burly man still had that particular shade of red polish.
So Lego went to Eomer's packs and began to search carefully for the nail polish. After a minute or two Lego was rewarded for his efforts when he found a small bottle of red paint in a small inside pocket. With a sly grin, he removed the bottle and went back to the hobbits. Red toenails would accent their beautiful faces, he thought evilly.
Five minutes later Merry and Pippen had bright red toenails and the red paint was returned to its special pouch. Lego stood and admired his work again, then got to work cooking breakfast.
An hour later, all the humans and the dwarf of the group were up and moving about groggily. The men were both washing up at the nearby spring, and Gimli the dwarf was sitting on a rock, staring dumbly into the cooking fire. All the while Lego sat and stirred the porridge, bubbling merrily over the fire, every once in a while casting quick glances over at the still sleeping hobbits.
Just as the porridge was about ready to serve, the hobbits woke. Both Merry and Pippen sat up in unison, noses in the air, eyes closed, and faces pointed toward the porridge. Everyone round the fire, except Lego, ignored their antics as this had long ago become the morning routine.
Merry and Pippen scrambled out of their bedrolls, pushing and shoving each other out of the way on their path to breakfast. Merry reached for a bowl, but Pippen wrenched it out of his hands, and began to slop porridge into the bowl. Grumbling, Merry grabbed another bowl, and served himself breakfast.
Lego watched them covertly as he ate his porridge. He was waiting for either the hobbits to notice each other's faces or for one of the others to notice the hobbits. He was quite amazed, though he didn't show it, that no one had noticed yet. They only look like circus clown drag queens, he thought.
Everyone ignored the hobbits completely until the two of them began an argument over who had eaten the most porridge. At that, Gimli dropped his bowl and stood up to yell at them.
"Enough!" He shouted, startling everyone but Lego. "Is it too much to ask for some peace and quiet at—" He stopped shouting at the hobbits when he finally looked at their faces. Instead he just stood there and stared, dumbfounded. Aragorn, the other human, and Eomer followed his gaze, and their eyes widened when they too saw the hobbits faces.
After a moment of shock the three of them started to chuckle, then the chuckle turned into a full blown laugh. The hobbits stood there confused as the others all laughed at them.
"What?" Pippen asked after a moment or two.
Aragorn and Eomer were leaning on each other for support, and Gimli was on his back clutching at a stitch in his side. "What?" Pippen repeated.
Aragorn gained enough control over himself to answer the confused hobbit. "Go... take a look... in the pond."
Merry and Pippen raced to the pond. A moment later the sounds of them laughing reached the group still sitting by the fire. Lego heaved a huge inner sigh of relief. He hadn't known how the two hobbits would have reacted, which is why he'd chosen them for his prank.
When the laughing subsided, the drag queens turned to the taller group. "SO which of you is responsible for this?" Merry asked smiling.
The men, the dwarf, and elf all looked at each other, trying to find the culprit. Gimli shrugged and Aragorn and Eomer looked back at the hobbits. Eomer's eyes widened and Lego guessed that he had spotted the red nail polish. He head snapped around to look at Lego.
"It had to be Legolas," he said, eyes accusing. "He was the first up this morning."
Merry and Pippen, smiling, turned to Lego. "Did you do it?" They asked.
Lego nodded, admitting to his crime. "Yes, I admit. I gave in to a childish urge. And I apologize. And if you spend some time in the pond, the cosmetics will come off." The hobbits shrugged, then turned to each other and began to make silly faces at each other. Aragorn and Gimli watched them, laughing. But Lego caught Eomer glaring at him out of the corner of his eye. Lego suspected the horse man knew where he had gotten the red nail polish. He smiled slightly, he would apologize later.
Eventually the hobbits did wash off the drag queen make-up in the pond. When they were done, everyone broke camp and they set off again. The hobbits kept themselves and everyone else entertained by singing some of the more popular Shire songs as they walked across the countryside. Oddly enough, most of the songs they sang were well known Hobbiton drinking songs. After a while the drinking songs kind of all turned into the same sounding thing, and Lego got pretty tired of hearing whatever it was Merry and Pippen were singing.
As the day wore on Lego kept catching Merry and Pippen casting mischievous looks his way. They were plotting a payback prank, and it was fine with him. In fact, he'd been expecting it from the moment he began to apply the make-up in the first place. As long as whatever they did wasn't permanent, but he trusted them not to be that stupid.
What was left of the Fellowship (the two men, the dwarf and elf, and the hobbits) stopped for the night under the cover of a grove of trees. Aragorn and Eomer went off in search of dinner while Lego sent the hobbits to dig the privy, and he built up a cooking fire. Pippen had begged to be allowed to manage a fire instead of digging the privy, but had refused, reminding him that neither he nor Merry were allowed to tend a fire (they were no longer trusted with a fire as the last, and indeed only time they had had control of a fire, they had burned up their packs, a tree, and set fire to Aragorn's bears, which accounts for his overall state of grunginess).
A good hour later, the men returned with two fat rabbits and an indigenous bird. They all ate as fast as their tired mouths would permit, and then bedded down for the night without much talking. Only Eomer stayed awake, he had volunteered to take first watch. Normally Lego took the first watch, but decided tonight to let Eomer take it. Lego tucked himself tightly into his bedroll, and closed his eyes. Usually he was a light sleeper, but decided not to hold himself back tonight, every once in a while it was okay to sleep deeply. Besides, he didn't want to spoil the hobbits fun. Had he not trusted them to not pull anything permanent or damaging, he never would have allowed himself the luxury of sleeping deeply.
Resolved, Lego turned over onto his stomach in his bedroll and buried his head in his arms and drifted off to sleep. His last thought before he sank completely into the comfortable blackness of sleep was that he hoped Merry and Pippen didn't mess with his hair.
Lego awoke the next morning to the sounds of birds chirping. He sat up and began to check himself and his bags for signs a prank. He felt his face, thinking maybe they had been dumb enough to pull the same prank he had the night before. But his face was clean, his packs were untouched, and his clothes were in the same place they had been the night before. Thinking that he hadn't bothered to do anything, Lego dug in his packs for his comb.
Improvising a mirror, as there was no pond nearby, he filled a small cooking pot with water from his canteen. While he waited for the surface of the water to still, he picked the five or six hairs out of the teeth of his comb. Then he leaned over the pot and looked at his reflection. He saw his hair and froze. After a moment of shocked silence he screamed, a very long high pitched scream.
Startled, every bird within a half mile radius took to the sky as though they had been chased out of their nests by a fiend. Both men, the dwarf, and the hobbits woke instantly and scrambled to their feet grabbing for weapons.
But Lego was still staring at his hair in the water. He still had his two braids that hung down in front of his ears and the under layers still hung down past his shoulders, but that was where the resemblance ended. The middle layer of his hair was shorn off, unevenly, at about chin level, and it stuck out at odd angles from sleeping on it. The top layer was by far the worst; it was cut so that it was now about three inches long. And Lego now had bangs that flopped inconveniently in his eyes. The hobbits, for Lego was sure that's who had done this, had even gone so far as to rub a little watered down gel into the top layer to make it look spiky.
He stopped screaming and became aware of other sounds around him. He whipped around to find the Merry and Pippen rolling on the ground laughing. Aragorn, Eomer, and Gimli were all standing there switching between staring at his hair and staring at the hobbits.
And as if that weren't enough for Lego, Pippen gained enough control over himself to gasp out a sentence. "You... you look...you look like Nicky Six!" At that both Merry and Pippen lost control again. Lego panicked, he couldn't handle hearing his hair being compared to that man's famous mullet.
After that his mind froze, all he knew was that he had to flee, no one could see him with such a horrible hairdo. Acting only on instinct, Lego grabbed the few things that weren't still in his packs and shoved them back into their respective pouches. When it was secure, he took off. He picked a direction and ran, leaving the still laughing hobbits and the men and dwarf shouting after him. He ignored them and kept running. Lego kept going all day, stopping only to catch a quick breather. Finally, at sunset he collapsed behind a small hill at the foot of a mountain.
For the longest time he lay there as his mind slowly began to function again. Slowly he realized that he was now all alone, for it would be near impossible to find the rest of his group as he had no idea where he was or from which direction he had come from. Eventually he got up and tried to figure out where he was. Looking about, Lego saw nothing that even remotely looked familiar. Well, he thought, I might as well find a place to stay the night.