Deep In My Heart
A tale of romance and fretful Elves by Ellie in ElfPajamas.
Rating: PG13. Frightening scenes, some things that may be deemed 'suggestive'.
Chapter five: Big Things Come In Small Packages.
Telponnasseo couldn't possibly have looked any more dead to the world than he did right now. Midwinter's Eve had brought all the Elves together for a feast in the halls of fire. It had been about a week and a half since he'd been wounded, and he still wasn't quite back to normal, Elves didn't heal instantly. The silver Elf was near the fire, curled up against Melannen's wolfhound, sound asleep. Glossion's head rested on Telponnasseo's hip, the dog seemed quite content to babysit an Elf. One of Elrond's herding dogs ambled over and nudged its way under Telponnasseo's arm, licking his chin. There was still laughter and games, eating, singing, and the like, just Telponnasseo didn't seem to care, curled on the cushions like that. Erestor slipped by, stuffing a pillow under Telponnasseo's head and throwing a blanket over the tall Elf.
Lindir was listening to Elrond tell the story of how Rinn had become part of the family.
"Celebrian walked in the door with this tiny mudmonster in her arms. I'd just finished scolding the twins for bringing all the strays they could possibly find home. I turned around, and Celebrian is holding this muddy thing out to me. "Aiya! An Orcling!" Glorfindel screamed, grabbing his hunting knife. Celebrian laughed at him and said; "No, silly Elf, it's an Elfling. Albeit one with an orc-like fondness for dirt, but an Elfling just the same." Elladan and Elrohir were clammoring to see it, but Celebrian insisted that it be washed up first. She was such a chubby little baby! She seemed just old enough to be learning to walk."
"I did NOT say 'Aiya, an Orcling', Elrond." Glorfindel protested. "I didn't have anything to do with her."
"So she learned to walk, hanging onto Glorfindel's robes. She called him Gorfy, and she followed him everywhere. It wasn't even until Celebrian sailed that she called me Ada, it was always Gorfy this and Gorfy that. Gorfy took me on a horsie ride, Gorfy hit Elladan with a snowball and it was funny, Gorfy stole 'Stor's diary... You name it. She's always been the little tattle tale, hasn't she, Gorfy?"
"Elrond, you know I detest being called Gorfy."
"So she's not really yours, Elrond?" Melannen mused.
"Well, now she is." Elrond laughed. "Elladan and Elrohir insist so."
One of the rangers who had the good fortune to be under Elrond's care at this time laughed softly, drawing Elrond's attention.
"Look, my lord. Seems that some of your kind weary of tales." the ranger said, a twinkle in his eye. He motioned in Telponnasseo's direction.
Elrond laughed quietly.
"Honestly, Glorfindel, your brother is like a cat, he can sleep anywhere and anytime." Elrond got up and headed in that direction.
He ran his fingers through Telponnasseo's hair, trying to coax the Elf to a semi-waking state. Maybe the day had just been to much for the Elf. Telponnasseo looked at him foggily, awakened from pleasant dreams. Elrond relaxed, letting out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. Elrond smiled and let Telponnasseo go back to sleep. The long silver strands of Telponnasseo's hair shimmered in the firelight, the Elf was warm and comfortable, Elrond had no intention of sending him to bed if it meant waking him up all the way.
Legolas slunk down the hallway. He'd get even with Celebduril. A bucket of icewater was in the young princeling's hand, as he slowly turned the doorknob. Celebduril was sound asleep in the glow of the moonlight through his window. He'd drunk a lot more than his baby brother, and nothing short of a Mumakil charge would have wakened him. Legolas slowly approached Celebduril's head, then, with great anticipation, he tipped the bucket.
The sputter and shreik of surprise that came out of Celebduril's mouth was endlessly gratifying to Legolas.
"That'll teach you not to cheat your own brother at a game of dice!" Legolas cried in triumph.
"Ideally, my Lords, you shouldn't cheat at dice at all. But if you must, do keep it outside family ties." Randir said, standing in the doorway with an eyebrow raised. "Familial retribution is generally frowned upon."
The huge black dog was stalking Erestor for the fun of it. It was well fed, certainly not starving, it was just hunting the Elf for kicks. It had no intent to do him any harm, just shake him up a bit. The dog had large paws with webbing between her toes, her thick, full coat was glossy and warm. Her breed had been accustomed to these conditions long before Elf or man had decided to venture north. Her breed had been there when they arrived. Her breed could contend with the Wolves, in sheer size and power, her breed was more than a match. And her breed could swim. Wolves were not good swimmers.
The dog's heavy, mastiff-like lips parted in a canine grin, as it pounced on the Elf below. With a playful bark, her 200 pounds hit the Elf and threw him to the ground. After being downed four or five times, Erestor realized this animal was playing with him, and wasn't in earnest at all. She wasn't even snapping at him, her belly was full, he was just a toy. But the sheer power of the massive black dog was enough to keep him hitting the ground and keep him from calling for help. She had a white star on her chest, right in the center, like a searchlight. Erestor finally stopped trying to get up, and just played dead. The dog gently nosed his cheek, licking him. The game had ended much too early for her. He continued to fake death, so she grasped the collar of his robes in her massive maw and began to drag him toward the house.
Now Erestor was choking. It was also terribly odd to be dragged through the snow by a dog. She knew where he belonged though, and dragged him straight to the doorstep, depositing him in the snow to scratch at the door and bark. The bark, what a deep, gutterral bark. Erestor was nearly deafened by it, as he tried to breathe normally again. He pulled his collar away from his throat and looked balefully up at the dog.
She licked his face happily. Telponnasseo came to the door. The silver Elf could not contain his laughter at the sight of Erestor in the snow with a dog on his chest. Telponnasseo grabbed the dog's scruff and pulled her back, patting her massive head. The dog put her paws up on his shoulders and licked him. Erestor scrambled to his feet and in the door, ducking behind Telponnasseo.
"What is that?" Erestor asked.
"A Newfoundland dog. Very friendly, just big. She wouldn't hurt you intentionally. They're great dogs for Elflings."
"Elflings? An Elfling would fit in her mouth!"
"Exactly. They're rescue dogs and draft animals. I almost drowned once, but my friend's mother kept one of these, and it pulled me out of the water."
Telponnasseo shivered slightly in the cold. Erestor remembered what Elrond had said about Telponnasseo being vulnerable to the cold for a while, at least until his body compensated for his loss of blood. Erestor pulled the silver Elf back from the door and shut it tight against the winter winds. Telponnasseo fingered the brooch on his cloak, where the cloak hung on a peg on the wall. Telponnasseo carefully removed the gold brooch from the folds of heavy, warm cloth. The rayed sun with the flower in the middle had been skillfully wrought, back in the First Age. It was a beautiful example of the handiwork of the Gondolin Elves. Erestor looked at it from a distance, as it sat glittering in Telponnasseo's hand. The firey yellow stone set in the center of the flower was beautiful to behold.
The dog sat obediently at Telponnasseo's side as the silver Elf looked at the brooch, watching the Gondolin Elf as he was lost in thought. Erestor's brooch on his cloak looked like the feathers of a wing, wrought in silver. He didn't hail from any great household, so it wasn't his family crest, it just looked nice and worked well. He looked away from Telponnasseo's brooch, suddenly feeling very small and insignificant, as he had so many times before, when standing beside Elrond, Gil-Galad, and Glorfindel. He was just Erestor of Rivendell, refugee of Eregion. He turned to walk away from Telponnasseo, but was stopped by Telponnasseo's hand on his shoulder.
"Erestor, you are a shadow Elf. It is what you have become. You are young, you do not hail from a famous house, but you are wise, and a great name is not nearly so wonderful as great wisdom. Remember that. You are quiet, but no lion roars louder when challenged." Telponnasseo whispered. "Besides. Without you my brother would be just as dead as he was when the Balrog got him. It amazes me that the Illuvatar created him without common sense, and then sent him back without correcting His error!"
Erestor smiled in spite of himself.
"Ai, you're right. Glorfindel is rather lacking in common sense." Erestor laughed softly.
"Yes, but at least you and your wife keep him somewhat grounded." Telponnasseo chuckled. "Naneth always said I had more sense than my older brother, I certainly got into fewer scrapes than he."
"And consequently lived a much duller life, brother." Glorfindel zinged, overhearing the remark about his common sense. "At least for me there has never been a dull moment."
"Nor a safe one, either." Telponnasseo replied. "Honestly, that's probably why Naneth wanted me to be a healer."
Faelon fidgeted for the thousandth time in the past hour. He was sitting in a council with the King Thranduil, the princes, and all the generals, as they listened to the latest intelligence from the eaves of the forest. He resisted the urge to sigh in boredom, as he listened to a report as it was read for the fourth time. He rolled his eyes, fidgeting again.
Thranduil sighed loudly, dropping his head to the table.
"If your reports all match, there is no need to read them individually. You want to bore the whole council to sleep before we can get anything done?" Thranduil groaned.
Faelon felt silly, understanding that it was actually a different report, not the same one again! Maybe he should have listened more closely to the sentence structure.
"Read Faelon's report so we can get to work." Thranduil said.
Here Faelon's head hit the table in embarassment and his arms covered his head.
"Lord Faelon reports that Southern Greenwood is fine except for a minor arachnid infestation. Game is plentiful, the sentries are on post, and other than a few scuffles with dwarves, all has been quiet. No Orc attacks reported."
"Good, good. In my experience this is true. I was there last weekend." Thranduil nodded in agreement.
Elrond was red in the face. He had not wanted to hear stories about his childhood told around the fire, and yet, here was Telponnasseo, doing just that.
"And Elrond fell overlike he was dead. Elros lost it, he thought he'd killed Elrond, and he started screaming and crying. All of the guards came running, and my friend, Adaniron, noticed there was no blood anywhere. 'How did you kill him?' he asked Elros, and Elros said he'd stabbed him with his sword. There was no blood on the sword, so Adaniron questioned that too. He picked Elrond up by his ears and scolded him for causing his twin so much mental anguish. Elrond had been playing dead the whole time, had not Adaniron's brother seen Elrond breathing, he might have succeeded in scarring Elros for life!"
Glorfindel was chuckling in the corner, while Erestor was obviously writing these tales down for his in depth history of the sons of Earendil. Melannen was laughing, resting her arms on her stomach. Elrond sat quietly fuming in the corner, dreadfully embarassed. Suddenly he grinned wickedly.
"I seem to remember a captain in Gil-Galad's army being upstaged by a herald in the Last Alliance." Elrond laughed. "We were on the slopes of Mount Doom, and there was a detatchment of Elves ahead of my detatchment, they were all in a confusion, it seems that they had lost their captain. I brought them into my detatchment and led them into battle, I didn't realize they were Telponnasseo's command, at the time. It wasn't as if any of them carried his crest. They were mostly archers with longbows, though, which did strike me as odd, and did narrow down the options of who their captain was. Well, as I'm sure Erestor can show you, those First Age helms were quite clunky, and as Telponnasseo is an Elf of the First Age, and had been raised and trained in that time, he wore one. No one else did, most had abandoned them in favor of the more modern helms. So, after the battle, we came back all bloodied and tired, and this huge figure in an ancient helm comes lumbering toward us. It was dark, we were tired, and because of its weird gait, we thought it was an Orc. I shot at it. Well, aside from being clunky, First Age armor is very hard to penetrate with an arrow. I did manage to bruise my target, though, because it yelped and screamed "PEREDHIL?!?!?!" in annoyance. Here it was Telponnasseo. He'd been hit in the head by a rock thrown by an Orc at the beginning of the battle, and it had knocked him out, concussed him. Fortunately for him, he woke up, but only after I'd walked off with his detatchment, and he'd spent the day fighting Orcs and double vision, while I led my now considerably larger contingent to victory."
Telponnasseo was laughing so hard that there were tears in his eyes. He rubbed his forehead with a grin.
"I remember that! Oh, Illuvatar, of all the things I should like to proclaim ignorance of, I remember that." Telponnasseo laughed. "I still look for Orcs with rocks before going into battle. It did rather throw off my count of kills, though."
Even Erestor was chuckling as he recorded that.
Glorfindel flopped back in the cushions, laughing.
"I seem to remember the Elves in your detatchment calling you 'Little Gil-Galad', Elrond, and half the time we expected you to grow a beard like Ciridan. You acted so old." Glorfindel quipped.
Elrond's cheeks burned in embarassment.
"And let's not even mention how he and Celebrian met. Too many youngsters around to discuss that." Telponnasseo chuckled. "It is not a tale for young ears."
Elrond's eyes blazed.
"Elros put me up to it! It wasn't my fault! You should have stopped him, Silver Idiot!" Elrond exclaimed.
"Do tell, my Lords. This must be an unusually good one." Erestor said wryly, looking up from the pages he'd been writing.
Estel stood straight, groaning.
"I wish I were an Elf." he sighed.
Elladan and Elrohir looked down at the brother, from where they stood on top of the snow. He wallowed in it, waist deep. It was hard work to blaze a trail through snow. But if you wanted to go anywhere with an Elf, that was where you were going to be.
Faelon, being Half Elf, had an odd predicament himself. He didn't sink all the way into the snow, like Estel did, but he didn't walk on top of it either. He sank in about six inches, just enough to be a nuisance.
"Maybe if we held him up, we'd stay on top of the snow and he wouldn't sink?" Elrohir mused.
"No, you'd sink in six inches, just like me." Faelon said, digging around in his pack for something; he muttered: "I need to stop being so forgetful."
He pulled some things out of his pack as the twins hauled Estel up out of the snow.
"Between the four of us, we can probably figure out how to make snowshoes for Estel." Faelon said. "You know, like the feet of that hare that doesn't sink in the snow?"
Elladan smacked himself in the head.
"Ai! We passed a tree five minutes ago that had branches perfect for that!" he said. "I'll go get a few."
"How does this work?" Estel asked skeptically.
"Well, when you spread your body weight out over a wider area, you don't sink in as much. Look at Roh's feet. He doesn't weigh much, but his feet are far from tiny." Faelon said, motioning to Elrohir.
Elrohir looked a mite offended.
"Are you saying I have big feet?" Elrohir asked.
"I'm saying that they're bigger than those of a human your height. They spread your weight out better. For aught I know, Elves have hollow bones like birds." Faelon said, shrugging his shoulders.
"We do." Elrohir said. "Makes us more sensetive to weather changes before they become visible."
"Well there you have it then. Mystery solved." Faelon said, rolling his eyes.
Elladan returned with the branches in hand.
"Dan, do Elves really have hollow bones?" Estel asked the older twin.
"Some of the bones are hollow, yes, but not all." Elladan said, shaping the branch into an egg-like ellipse.
"Just like Roh's cranium, huh?" Estel muttered.
"Exactly." Elladan replied, without thinking.
The snowball in the face then came as a surprise. Elrohir's fuming look was just an added bonus.