Author's note: This is a comedy one shot based on my story The Not Yet Requested Copy. One of my readers claimed we could write a tale on Aragorn's desk, and so I did that. It is however a comedy, and it is supposed to be silly to a certain extent.
Thanks again to Forever Faramir who have once again deciphered my miss spellings and turned them into comprehensible words. Quite a mean feat I tell you. You are the greatest Forever Faramir.
Disclaimer: I do not own Lord of the Ring, I only borrow parts of it and shall return them as soon as I am done. Completely undamaged, as I am certain it will be impossible to see where we glued the pieces back together.
The Desk of Dust
Aragorn regarded the desk as one would an enemy, which he was fairly certain that the desk was. It definitely acted like an enemy. Whenever he left his office where the desk sat it drained the inkwell, and breed papers. There was enough paperwork involved with running a Kingdom without the need for a desk that was always spitting out more of the tedious documents.
At long last he had been able to convince his Steward of the desks enmity. It had taken some time to convince Faramir of the desks antics, but then again, who would believe a desk capable of such evil. One truly had to witness it with ones own eyes.
That was how Faramir had finally been convinced that his King was not crazy, and was in fact telling the truth.
Of course Faramir's reaction to it was not what Aragorn had expected. He had jumped to the task of figuring out how it was at all possible, and then Merry and Pippin had found out about it.
"So if ye put papers in the drawers and leave the room, you get more papers?" Pippin asked curiously.
Faramir nodded absently as he was studying the papers that he had just pulled from the drawer. He was trying to figure out if there was a pattern to it, or if it was entirely random.
"I think that the reason that the ink always runs out is that it somehow is used to making these new documents." He mumbled as the means of explanation to Aragorn. "How it duplicates the papers in themselves I have no idea of."
"I think that I need another desk." Aragorn said ruefully as he watched the two Hobbits run out of the room.
"But what if we can figure out how it works." Faramir pointed out. "We could put all of those tedious documents in it and it would take care of them for us."
Aragorn had to admit that it sounded rather tempting. "But until then it is only making more work for us." He complained with a nod to the papers Faramir held.
"That is a problem." Faramir admitted. "I had not thought about that."
"And what if we can never make it work the way we would want it to. Then all we shall ever have is more work." Aragorn went on. Faramir was beginning to look slightly subdued as he realised just what effect the plan might have.
That was when the two Hobbits came back. Both of them laden down with a heavy burden of food stuff. Merry dumped his share on the desk while Aragorn and Faramir watched in silent curiosity.
Having freed his hands Merry began to empty out the drawers of every single paper that was there.
"Uh, Merry, mind telling me what you are doing?" Aragorn asked eventually.
"If it makes more papers, it should make more food as well." Merry said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"Make sure to put some honey cakes in there as well." Faramir said as he watched the two Hobbits cram the drawers full.
"Who's side are you on?" Aragorn challenged him, thought more teasingly than not.
"If one side might make honey cakes, then it should be obvious." Faramir pointed out to him with all seriousness.
"Right," Aragorn nodded with a smile. "I forgot that there is nothing you won't do for a honey cake."
"So it was really a stupid question." Faramir stated with a grin.
"Well, that's well enough, but we can't put any honey cakes in it if you eat all of them." Pippin declared.
Faramir did his best to look innocent as he hid a half eaten honey cake behind his back.
"Come here Faramir, I think we need to put some distance between you and the honey cakes." Aragorn laughed as he took Faramir's arm and led him to the other side of the room. Faramir followed obediently as he still had the half eaten honey cake and one whole. His obsession with honey was well known by his friends, and they had quickly learned how fast anything containing honey disappeared in the presence of Faramir.
Most likely the Hobbits had brought the large supply of honey cakes knowing that by the time they could pack the food away in the desk, Faramir would have squirreled away a few of them, they usually charmed a supply away from the cooks whenever they were there begging for food, and always a few of those cakes wound up with Faramir.
Aragorn did not release his hold of the arm as Faramir was throwing longing glances in the direction of the rest of the food.
"If you should be fortunate enough that it actually breeds food as well, we need to get Faramir far away from here, or he shall have eaten all the honey cakes before the desk has the slightest chance to multiply them." Aragorn laughed as he tightened his grip on his errant Steward's arm. Faramir was trying to inch closer to the desk again.
"Right, get him away from here." Merry instructed Aragorn.
"You heard him Faramir, you are no longer permitted to be in here." Aragorn laughed, he reinforced his hold on Faramir's arm and pulled him towards the door. "Come along now, there is much work to be done at your desk as well. While those two tries to coax the desk into giving them food, we might be able to do some headway there."
Faramir followed reluctantly as the journey to his own office took him further and further from the honey cakes.
They sat down behind the desk in Faramir's study and began to try and put a dent in the mountain of paper work that was there.
After some time the Hobbits came and joined them.
"How long does it usually take." Merry asked the King as he considered Aragorn the expert on the subject.
"Normally all I have to do is go and discuss something with Faramir." Aragorn told him. "Let us give it an hour or two, that should be more than enough."
So Merry and Pippin wound up waiting for that time, while they amused themselves with trying to distract Aragorn and Faramir from actually getting any work at all done. As it turned out that Faramir was much better at ignoring them then Aragorn was.
"I have years of practice ignoring Boromir as he played the fool when I tried to get something done." Faramir explained. "He would sit telling horrible jokes, or trying to see what he could make into toys. Once he tried to build a tower out of everything that was on my desk. Another time he took down all the books from my shelves and made a labyrinth out of them." He shook his head sadly at the fond memory. "I've lost count of how many times I had to search all over the place to find my quill again after he had hidden it."
"Did you ever do something like that to him?" Pippin enquired. He had learnt about the more playful man who hat tried to rescue them while the Fellowship walked, and the pranks the two brother would have played on each other interested him.
"I did, as means of revenge." Faramir admitted. "I used to sneak into his chambers when he slept and hide away one of his boots. Then once I glued both of them to the floor." He chuckled at the memory. "I was really proud over that one, it took him an hour to get them free and he was cursing the whole time. I could hear him through the wall."
They were walking towards Aragorn's study again, and opened the door with great expectations. However, the surface of the desk was empty.
The two Hobbits hurried inside the room to peer into the drawers. ยจ
"There is nothing more of it." Pippin stated with disappointment heavy in his voice.
"At least none of it has disappeared." Merry stated, trying to find one positive thing with it all.
"I am afraid that it does not work with food then." Aragorn tried to comfort them. "But we still have all this food, and we can still enjoy ourselves eating it."
They took all of the food out of the drawers and placed it on the desk instead. Merry broke apart a bread role to dole out equal shares of it.
"It is black inside." He exclaimed in surprise.
"Let me see." Aragorn reached for one of the pieces. It was indeed black on the inside. He reached across the desk to look into the inkwell.
"It is empty now, and I filled it up just before you came. All the ink must be in the food now." He declared shocked.
Merry and Pippin began looking through the food to see if they could find anything at all that had escaped the ink.
"It is all ruined." Aragorn stated ruefully. "I shall send for some new food from the kitchen." The Hobbits certainly would need some cheering up as the ruined food would be very depressing to them.
The odd thing was that Faramir had not yet complained about the ruined honey cakes. Aragorn looked at where his friend was seated. Faramir had black ink smudges around his mouth, and held a half ink blackened honey cake in his hand.
"Faramir, that thing is more ink than cake." He exclaimed.
This time Faramir was not able to look so innocent, he did however make an attempt and thus only looked partly guilty, even as he swallowed the rest of the honey cake.
"They still taste good." He claimed as he reached for another one.
"Faramir, it can not be healthy to eat ink." Aragorn pointed out.
"I'm not eating ink." Faramir defended himself as he reached for another of the inky honey cakes.
"The honey cakes are full of ink." Aragorn said tiredly. "Look, even Merry and Pippin have sense to leave it alone."
Both of them were eyeing the food longingly, but neither of them had been desperate enough to eat any of it.
"Faramir, stop it, you'll just give yourself a stomach ache." Aragorn was able to grab the plate with a quick move he had learnt as a Ranger. He passed it to Merry to keep it away from Faramir's reach as he did not trust Pippin not to smuggled it back to Faramir.
He then proceeded to take the one Faramir held in his hand. He seriously feared that the ink might be harmful, and by the look of the amount of honey cakes missing from the plate. Faramir would have had to ingested a rather large amount of it.
He managed to get everything but a few crumbs of the cake, it was near a full black colour because of the ink, and it left smudges on his fingers.
Only Faramir would be desperate enough for the honey that he did not care about the ink.
"It is not healthy." He repeated as Faramir swallowed the few crumbs he had managed to keep his hold of.
"It is honey." Faramir claimed.
"It is more ink than honey at the moment." Aragorn tried to convince him. He waved at Merry to remove the plate and was grateful as the Hobbit threw the honey cakes into the fire. Not even Faramir would brave the flames to get to them.
"I will send for some more food from the kitchen to pacify the Hobbits, I will make sure to ask for some honey cakes as well. Shall that satisfy you?"
"Honey cakes." Faramir brightened at the mentioning and Aragorn laughed. Even as impossible to understand as his desk was, there were still a few things that would never change, a few certain things that were all too predictable.
The Hobbits optimism and appetite, and Faramir's love for anything with honey in it.
The End
Here I would like to thank everyone who reads my works, thank you.
Here it must also be said that in the tale "A Two Colour Chain Mail," we started the vote
based on the fact that Sean Bean and David Wenham made the perfect image of two brothers. We also got plenty of agreement on that.
So here it is, if you agree with us and think that they should be real brothers. Say so in your review. It shall be your vote. On my authors page, in the bio I shall keep score.
When the score reaches 100, they shall be declared official brothers. Then on my authors page shall be an official declaration written by Elenhin and Celebrion.
Then the truth can not be denied, they shall be brothers.