The Secret Lives of Elladan and Elrohir

Hi, I'm Elladan.

Hi, I'm Elrohir. We're twins.

Since this is the first time we're writing in here, we've decided to do a little Introduction of ourselves.

"Do you mind not cutting in Elrohir?"

I wouldn't have if you didn't do it just then!

RULES:

For either co-writers of this account to refer to:

The term 'persons' refers to Elves, Hobbits, Men, Balrogs, Orcs, Goblins, Spiders, Ents, Wizards, Dwarves (shudder), etc. etc.

1) No unauthorized persons may view this journal without seeking prior written permission from either Elladan, son of Elrond or Elrohir, son of Elrond.

2) Neither Elladan, son of Elrond nor Elrohir, son of Elrond may dispense any authorization to unauthorized persons without seeking prior written permission from his co-writer.

"Elladan! You've written two whole rules without letting me at it!"

"Alright, fine, have a go at it then. Here."

3) Co-writers Elrohir, son of Elrond and Elladan, son of Elrond must take turns writing to ensure complete unbiasedness.

One turn meaning One paragraph no more than five lines in big, spaced-out handwriting.

4) From this line onwards, the names of co-writers Elrohir, son of Elrond and Elladan, son of Elrond shall be written and acknowledged simply as Elrohir and Elladan respectively.

"That's a relief, my hand was getting tired. Anyway, only Dad's Privy Council calls us that."

Alright, since we've got those rules straightened out, we may now commence our introduction.

Introduction:

Hi again, I'm Elladan and my twin brother , Elrohir is sitting right next to me trying to hide this from Dad and Erestor and Glorfindel and all other nosy what-not who live in The Homely House of Elrond (you see that name there, that's our Dad and he's sitting right across us reading the newspaper, he's insisting that we sit in plain sight of him so that he can 'watch' us after what we did yesterday). We—

"Ahem."

"I'm not done yet."

"I'll write it then, and if you don't think it's fair, look at rule number three."

"F--"

"Is that a swearword I hear, Elladan?"

"No Dad. Here, take it then Elro."

"Don't call me that Ella!"

Alright, this is me writing now. What Elladan wanted to say just now is that we are, in elf reckoning, seventeen years old, although it is compulsory for all elves to finish university (another one of the Valar's stupid, impractical rules), we do not go to school, we flunked out of Rivendell College last year and now we are 'idle layabouts' if our Gran's judgment isn't buggled up yet. Okay, must stop now, Elladan is glaring.

"I was not!"

"Yes you were, now just take the pen and write before I change my mind about being fair."

Yeah, like Elrohir said, we flunked out of R. C last year, but it's not like we're stupid or anything, we top the class in Lit every so often and anyway we didn't study so it doesn't count. Our hobbies are: reading, making life difficult for people (blasting our music whenever Gran comes over, snagging Gran's tights, training Erestor's precious imported African Grey Parrot to swear and until we stopped school,

"Alright, for just this once, you can finish up this sentence."

"Thanks!"

we used to hide under the bleachers during archery tournaments and say very loud, rude things).

Uh huh, our favourite's the second last one, and since Erestor still insists on being selfish and keeping that bird in his room instead of in the aviary so that we can play with it and therefore cultivate a sense of compassion towards all exotic animals, well, he can't have a moment's rest in his room anymore because the bird swears all the time. Dad calls us anti-social and evil but we think it's all right.

Oh and another thing, when we said we were twins, we meant identical. We look exactly the same. We've both got dark brown hair (waist length, I think) and dark brown eyes (we're not pure-blood High Elves, we don't have a monarchy in Rivendell, it's a Republic and Dad get's all smug about it because he thinks it makes us better than Mirkwood), we're about 189 centimetres long (We're still growing!) and we weigh, hmm, on second thoughts, I shan't divulge that but anyway, we're on the skinny side so it's not that we're fat or anything. We're palish 'cause we don't get out much, Dad's paranoid that we'll get run over by a passing carriage or something and leave our bloody entrails lying all over the road, anyway, whenever we're bored he just tells us to 'go play with Arwen' (that's our little sister and the only games she plays are

"I'll finish this line and then you can have a go—don't keep staring at me like that!"

Monopoly and she cries when she loses—

"Hey! It's not your turn!"

"Boys, is that a fight I hear?"

"No."

"No."

or with her Barbie dolls.

"There, now you can have it Elladan."

"Oh, thank you ever so green-waddly-woddly-womping-wamping muchElrohir."

Also, we forgot all about the rest of our family until now—which shows exactly how important we think they are—so for starters we have a father, we have a mother, we have a sister, we have a grandma, we have a grandpa, we have—

"Oh, just cut the crap and get to the point!"

all sorts of what-not whether in-law or out-law and we all love each other very much

--not actually. I'll have you know Gran doesn't get on with us, that's why Bilbo didn't think it would be very politically-correct / add to our sense of propriety as family of the Greatest Politician Ever and so decided not to include An Episode with Gran in that book of his. There's no other reason, our visits are very colourful and decorated with even more colourful language.

Anyway, this is an account of our lives—without the dates, if there are any numbers and dashes at the top left/right-hand corners of the page, they are very vague. This is to save ourselves the extreme agony of asking dad, he gives you a long round-a-bout answer detailing the merits of having our own calendar instead of just giving us the date.

We always try to remind him that the only calendar remotely recent is the one we get once a year from the bank. And he wakes up early (flipping 4.00am) to be the first to get the mail and snag it. The rest of the year it's our job, and if the letters get soaked because of a freak storm/flood/tsunami that happened to roll by at say……3.00am, it's most definitely our fault for not foreseeing it/being resentful and soooo sulky that

"That's 5 lines."

"Oh, scratch that rule! It sux/sucks! It's……restrictive!!!"

"Well, if you care to remember just who wrote it……"

"It's your fault too, you agreed to it!"

"Alright, fine."

Before we continue:

Amendment to rule number 3:

Co-writers Elrohir, son of Elrond and Elladan, son of Elrond must take turns writing to ensure complete unbiasedness.

One turn meaning One paragraph no more than five lines in big, spaced-out handwriting.

Both Elladan and Elrohir give permission to cancel the underlined sentence above so that it now holds no effect from this point on.

Signed:

Elladan

Elrohir

We refuse to get the mail and therefore inconvenience dad when his documents get wet from being treated to a shower.

and

That line: 'God is crying—we can't do anything about it' never works. And Arwen won't do it either, though she could if she wanted, she wakes up early to slice cucumbers for her eyelid stuff at 5.00am!!! well, it doesn't seem to be helping, she just stinks for the rest of the day, we are lucky—dad likes us to sit on either side of his precious daughter for all lunches. Such fun. Cucumber smell makes me want to hurl, it took me quite a while to hold it in. you can imagine the first time she tried it.

Don't forget—I can't stand it any better than you can. Can you guess what happened?

She got a double-dose of you-know-what. Well I'll just leave it at one word, to be succinct and also kind to others, it would be quite a traumatizing mental image, so, here it is: messy, stinky, chewed-up spitty remains of the breakfasts of yours truly.

If you don't want to think about it we're quite alright with that.

Some more stuff we forgot to write in earlier:

This is an account of our lives, it's quite a nice notebook actually, red and velvety, with large golden letters saying 'ACCOUNTS' on it, like it was just sitting around waiting for us to pick it up……

That's just because it's one of Erestor's spares—you know, for accounts……

You can pretend……

Never mind. And the above was the introduction……or prologue if you like.

I can't really think of anything more to say now....... oh there's this odd little nub on my finger, I can sort of mould it you know……

We'll end the introduction here,

The accounts will be on the next page, the one after this one just in case you didn't know.

"Elladan……the pen broke…"

"Aargh! Go find a new one then—I think Erestor bought some new stationery the other day—yeah, and he never locks his cabinet……go on then!"