Disclaimer: I don't own anything, sadly...
A/N: I know, I know... *grumbles* So real life is a real pain in the ass, bite me...
*
Galion, butler to Thranduil, King of Mirkwood, was a brave elf. He faced many things that a Mirkwood elf did not face on a daily basis, fearful things, for example empty wine barrels (oh, perish the thought), many empty wine barrels (quiver at the thought, friends...) and of course, the less evil things such as dwarves in the cellars, hobbits in the stores and the occasional dragon trying to burn the entire forest down.
Yes, Galion was a very brave man. But some things just do not go down with any elf's appetite, no matter how brave he might be. This was one occasion.
It had started off a fairly normal day, peaceful as could be accepted in the times. An hour before dawn he woke the King, helped to get Thranduil dressed and dished out the varying piles of paperwork for the ruler to see to, after which he disappeared to go around the caves. The evil times had caused Greenwood to wither to the point of being known as Mirkwood, and it came with its consequences. Dol Guldur festered in the east, bringing them all sorts of rather pesky problems, namely spiders, orcs, goblins, wargs, trolls and the ilk. Not very pleasant company, but by then Galion was used to seeing members of the Mirkwood guard stumble back with bits of various creatures still stuck to them.
Kicking a bit of warg pelt out of his way, the butler continued his rounds. Everything was per normal. The wine was still stocked, Thranduil was in a good mood, seeing as he had just sent off the Crown Prince, nobody was dying or mortally injured and things were running smoothly.
But just as he was about to finish, disaster struck.
In the form of mortal children and noldor/vanyar elves. Galion could have screamed to be killed by the time the day was through...
*
Glorfindel stopped abruptly at a small, rather insignificant stream. Everyone else nearly crashed into him as a result, but besides that they stayed balanced enough to haul Erestor out before he touched the water. Peeved, Sara glared at the vanya/noldo/elf.
'What was that all about.'
Ren stopped to consider, before finally dredging up memories of "The Hobbit".
'Oh,' she said, 'can we push you in just to find out?'
Sara looked at the waters and edged away slowly. Glorfindel sighed wearily. Three days of little to no sunlight, terrified mortal children, giant spiders that almost approached them, grumpy advisors and really, really bad Quenya was starting to wear on him. This also included the facts that he had nothing but almost stagnant water and dry lembas for days upon days, which did not do well for ones diet or temper. Inez came close to sticking her foot in the water when Gildor pulled her back.
'Do not touch the water.'
Granted, it looked slightly murky, but beyond that, relatively harmless.
'Why ever not?'
Diana grimaced.
'Let's just say that if you don't want a case of magically induced amnesia, you had best stick to the drain water we have in our skins.'
Glorfindel really, really felt like committing suicide. Silei brought up a valid point.
'There's no boat. How are we to get across?'
With a slight startle, Ren realised that the useful little boat that had got Bombur into no small trouble was missing. Galdor withdrew a length of rope. Shu Wen turned slowly to face him.
'You cannot be serious...'
(Twenty Minutes Later...)
Glorfindel and Gildor were already across, having successfully secured the rope "bridge" to a trunk on the opposite bank. Gildor and Galdor remained on the other end, keeping guard. Sara clung onto the two ropes for dear life as she inched slowly across, a la Lorien.
'Haldir,' she muttered, 'I hate you, I hate you, I hate you...'
Haldir smirked from his position at the ropes. The water gushed underneath menacingly.
*
Eventually, they had managed to cross the river without anybody getting a dose of the magical waters or loosing their consciousness, so they set off again. Three days in Mirkwood, though, had set everyone on edge, and it was not just the humans who had their tempers set off after the crossing. Ren was sullen and moody, hating the feel of being closed in by the thick trees, unable to feel either heat of sun or ray of moon. It made her almost claustrophobic and paranoid. Glorfindel was tired of having to lead a bunch of wayward fools around Middle-Earth and everyone else had their own pet peeves. Sara, for one, was trying her best to find a spider while Yvonne was trying her best to stop Sara from getting a giant arachnid to eat them for lunch. Silei was busy cursing the world in general while Diana skulked away grouchily. Shu Wen had repeated the verse of Earendil more times than Erestor could repeat Tra La La Lally, which drove the rest of the company insane.
It was on the fourth day, though, that all hell finally broke loose.
Everyone was in their own individual wonderlands, sullenly trudging along and dragging themselves pace by pace to Thranduil's forsaken hole in the ground when Sara piped up.
'I think I feel a breeze.'
Erestor snorted in disdain.
'We are hours from the nearest break in the forest yet. You must be dreaming. We're virtually trapped under this...' he made vague gestures with his hands, 'arboreal verdance.'
Inez looked up from her Revolutions theories.
'No, wait. I feel it too.'
Glorfindel looked up.
'It feels as if it were coming from above.'
His brow furrowed slightly for a moment before his eyes widened.
'I feel someone here. There is a presence amongst us. It feels like... Manwë?'
No sooner had the reborn elf spoken when there was a slight crashing sound from the branches above and the unmistakable sound of a highly amused vala and an extremely distressed elf. Moments later, the presence fled, and all that was left was the Highly Distressed Elf, otherwise known as Ecthelion of the Fountain, hanging off a tree branch above their heads.
Glorfindel stared, not really believing his eyes. Ecthelion would have stared, too, if he had not been so preoccupied in trying to save his life.
By the time he got down, mayhem had broken out. Glorfindel was almost crying, though no one could really tell if it were out of joy, relief, delirium, stress or just plain frustration. Ecthelion was hanging onto the detached tree branch for dear life, murmuring something about "Now I know why I rebelled against the valar" and shutting his eyes tightly. Diana started cursing in German, and she and Ren went off to read "Peoples of Middle Earth" to see what they could find out about the elf who killed Gothmog.
Everyone else just stood around looking confused.
This continued for some time until Haldir had the brilliant idea that moving might actually benefit them more than standing around in a middle of a forest infested with evil.
The Company plodded on, one new member in tow.
*
'And what happened after Turgon got changed into a rabbit...?'
'You see, Fingolfin went off to plead with Yvanna, but...'
At first it was rather amusing to learn about what was happening in the Blessed Realm. Then it got redundant. Then it got trivial. Now it was utterly mind numbing. Evidently, Glorfindel and Ecthelion were blissfully trying to catch up on the 6000 years or so they had spent apart in a day. The rest of the company felt like throttling them.
As a result, various distractions to save them from insanity came to light.
Erestor and Shu Wen were in a competition. The advisor, driven almost to delirious madness, was going "Tralalalalalalally" with various shifting verses of the old song that they had sung during Bilbo's first stay at Imladris, competing furiously with Shu Wen's "Earendil was a mariner that tarried in the Arvernien". The two were neck and neck, going faster and faster, glaring each other as they went.
Gildor and Sara were engaged in a lively conversation of the most creative way to possibly asphyxiate the First-Age elves in front of them. Gildor was in the lead with his suggestion of stuffing a spider leg down Glorfindel's throat and lighting it like a candle, but Sara had quickly retaliated with the idea of throwing them both into the Magic River with their armour on.
Ren, Diana and Silei were repeating Galadriel's opening lines in the movie just for the fun of it, trying to drown everyone else out with the sound of Sindarin. As a result, there were many outbursts of 'I AMAR! PRESTA! AEN!' [The world is changed] and of course, "Han mathon na NEN! Han mathon na CHAE! A han nostron ned i GWILITH!' [I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, I smell it in the air] coming from the trio until they burst out laughing and started anew, getting louder each time and causing everyone else to increase their tone of voice.
Inez and Galdor were playing scissors, paper, stone (or rock, paper, scissors, depending on where you are from). The tally was Galdor 203, Inez 202. Yvonne went around, tugging various people's hair while shrieking at intervals of rare silence. Haldir, driven into delirium, went around repeating the word "Laurelindorenan" over and over again.
And this was how Galion found some of the oldest and most respected members of elven society.
All he had been doing was innocently checking the magic gates of Thranduil's realm when, up from the path, came a bunch of clearly mental elves and mortals. The blond and the silver haired eldar in the front were busy talking so quickly in Quenya it boggled the mind, while the raven haired noldor and a young, short haired human child were trying to scream their lungs out in a vain attempt of jumbling as many words together as quickly as possible. Behind then came a pair of kinslaying madmen, and behind them still three humans attempting to "smell the air". Haldir o Lorien was grinning disconcertingly, and Galdor and some other child were poking each other with their fingers. And everyone had messy hair.
There are some things in life that butlers just should not have to face...