Disclaimer: Lord of the Rings is not mine.

"In any contest between power and patience, bet on patience."
–W. B. Prescott

Chapter Fourteen
Show-offs and Monster Contests

"Why would Aramis have had a Palantir?"

"I don't know, Elrond, but this is one of the seven Seeing Stones. There can be no doubt."

"How long has it been unused?"

"Only Athos would know that. Or Peter. He's the only one who comes here often. Perhaps he has used it."

Elrond shook his head. "If he had used it recently, Saruman would have known, as would Denethor, and Sauron."

"Who is to say they did not?"

"Sauron? Wouldn't he have thought this a much easier place to conquer? No Elven magic, no Elven Rings, no King of Gondor to stop him. He would have attacked here, as well, had he known of this place."

"Maybe that was next."

"Possible, but doubtful. And if Peter and the others had known what was going on, would they not have come to our aid?"

"True, but they have their fair share of enemies here."

"Why does it matter now, anyway, Mithrandir? Sauron is defeated."

"Their enemies are not."

"So, we're going to get involved."

Elrond and Gandalf shared a smile. Gandalf carefully replaced the Palantir in the box, and then the other items. "Let's go," he said.

"His name is Todd. He's a cook here," Morgan explained. "He's on our side, and he's a spy for us. He should be able to get us out without blowing his cover."

"So all we need is a way to tell him we need help?" Faramir asked.

"That's right," Peter said. "Anyone know Morse Code?"

"What's Morse Code?" Sam asked.

"Forget it, anyway," Morgan said. "Todd doesn't know it. He has a good heart, but he's not exactly Einstein."

"Einstein?" Faramir asked.

"Forget it. We need a way to get the gleems in here. They'll open the door. One or two of us will have time to make a break for it. Gleems aren't smart."

"Whoever goes will have to know the way to the kitchen," Peter said. "I admit I don't, and I wouldn't be fast enough, all things considered. Morgan?"

"I think I know the way, and I think I'm fast enough. I run cross-country, remember."

"I'm with you, Morgan," Sam said. "I know food. Potatoes, especially."

"Then you're in the right place. Potatoes are Todd's speciality. One of them. He also makes good stew."

Sam grinned. Maybe after they escaped, they could have a good long whatever-meal-it-was-time-for-by-now.

"Morgan, I know you run, but not in this condition. Are you sure you can do this?"

"If I can't, Sam at least will get out. I know you don't want me to get hurt, Peter, but I'm willing to take the same chances as anyone else in this dungeon, even you. I can do this."

"Yes, Nemo," Peter laughed. "Now we just need a way to get the gleems in here."

Merry smiled. "I think I have an idea."

"Are you sure you've never been bowling before?" Susan asked Glorfindel, who had bowled all strikes and spares so far. "My dad doesn't bowl this well!"

"It's an easy game, really. All you do is aim the ball and roll it."

"It's the aiming most people have trouble with," Susan whispered as Samuel's ball bounced off the bumpers a few times and knocked down only two pins

"You haven't exactly done any better!" Samuel called back, laughing. "I bowl better left-handed than you do right!"

"Samuel, you're left-handed anyway," Susan laughed, rolling her eyes.

"You are?" Glorfindel asked. The Elf had been switching hands every turn, driving Susan nuts.

Samuel nodded. "Your turn, Susan."

"You know who I am, don't you?" Glorfindel asked as the teenager sat down next to him.

Samuel nodded again.

"I met your friends briefly," the Elf said. "Good people"

"Yeah, if you can see past the craziness and the self-inflicted hardships, I suppose so," Samuel joked.

"Elves do that naturally. At least, some of us."

"Why were they in Middle-Earth in the first place?"

"Four of our friends, Hobbits, had been captured. They came to help us."

"Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin?"

"Well, someone knows his Middle-Earth history."

"You have no idea."

"Glorfindel, you're up," Susan sighed. "What are you two talking about, anyway."

"Middle-Earth," Samuel said quickly before Glorfindel could say something different.

Susan smiled. "Finally found someone who understands what you're talking about?"

Samuel nodded. "Totally."

Glorfindel raised his eyebrows, but said nothing as he picked up his bowling ball. Now was not the time for questions.

"Fourteen!" Gimli announced.

"Fourteen what?" Latano demanded from across the field.

"Fourteen monsters he's gotten to fly away," Aragorn explained. "It's this never-ending contest between him and Legolas."

"Yeah. Hope that pointy-eared Elf is counting," Gimli laughed.

"Fifteen!" Legolas called up to Avanwë. The elf was pulling the string on his bow back only halfway so the gleems were only wounded and could still fly away.

"I'm on sixteen!" Avanwë called back.

"You and those bows!" Radagast called to both of them. "Keep up, will you? I'm on eighteen!" he added, whacking another gleem with his staff.

Legolas grinned as a gleem's arrow met his own in the air. "They're not bad warriors," he commented, "but they have no real plan, no real strategy. Their only strength is in numbers."

"That's usually enough," Avanwë said.

"Well, that was before they met the Fellowship of the Ring. You have any rope?"

"No, why?"

"I was going to lasso a gleem and jump on its back, of course."

"Here," Radagast yelled over the ruckus, tossing him some. Then he whistled quietly. A horse came flying down out of the sky, wings open in his own gesture of greeting to the Wizard. His mane had earned him the name Rainbow, but the rest of him was silver-white. His wings outstretched even the gleems', and he had no saddle or reins.

"They'll be easier to lasso from their own realm, the sky," Radagast explained. "There's room for the two of you. Have fun, you crazy Elven show-offs." He turned around just in time to bonk another gleem on the head before he shot the two elves. Legolas and Avanwë mounted.

"This is harder," Balo said, surprised.

"Like I said, you're used to a forest," Noka reminded her. "People have no idea trees make such great cover. The birds helped, too. I hope Rose is okay."

"Who's Rose?" Balo asked. "Girlfriend?"

"No," Noka laughed. "Rose is a robin, and he's a Warrior of the Woods, just like I was. Good friend."

"You miss that?"

"I miss being part of a group whose only goal is to defend the forest, yes. Life used to be so simple. Yet, given the choice again, I wouldn't go back for anything, unless all of you could come with me."

"That is what we all hope for," Tandro agreed, dodging an arrow. "The day when all on the island can call each other brothers and sisters, when we no longer must hide in the shadows, fighting for an impossible cause. I must confess, though, I do not wish to return to glory and honor. Such things aren't for me. I'm by nature a spy, an elf of the shadow of twilight. I am content to be so."

"I, as well," Noka agreed. "I once yearned for the glory of a victorious warrior, but I have seen that victory, and it is bitter, useless even. I do not wish to have people gaze at me like some idol, some great leader or hero, for I, to, am an elf of the darkness of night. The real heroes will always be the ones who have sacrificed their lives, who have died for their cause. They are truly victorious, champions of what is right, yet what honor do they have? Shall all the glory go to the living? Not while I yet live."

Rona smiled. "I think I even prefer this life to the one I led before. Then, I was among peers, relatives, blood relations. Now, I live among friends, family at heart and in spirit. I wouldn't have it any other way. Were all the glory and honor and happiness in the world placed before me at this moment, I would still choose this life, this fate, this path. It is well worth it, to see the smile on one child's face, and to know that you have helped to make it so, to see innocense preserved in the quietest of places, to see some shred of hope undiminished by the gloom that now roams these parts, to hear a real joke, and be able to laugh, because you're not being watched by crowds of people who photograph your every move, to be able to see what is still good and innocent in this world."

Balo paused a moment, and then responded to the others' unasked question with a poem, one Morgan had taught her, one by Robert Frost that had stayed in her mind.

"Two Roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."

"Guys, this has made all the difference. Before, I was just the orphaned daughter of two warriors, the niece of a nurse and of a wandering elf. In their eyes, I may now be less, but in my heart I am more. I know this now, and I'm with you to the end. Besides," she added, "I can't let my uncle die with a bunch of misfits. There has to be someone normal in this crazy group!"

Noka laughed. Everyone else did, too. None of them now met anyone's definition of normal, even, if not especially, their own, and they were proud of it.

"Good one, Eowyn!"

"You're not doing so bad yourself, Bergil."

"This is nothing like the battles in Gondor."

"Yes. The two sides aren't trying to kill each other. One is trying to control the other, the latter trying to drive the former away."

"Is that why we're doing fine with such a small army?"

"That's why. If they'd wanted to kill us, they could've done so, easily. They're not trying to conquer the world as much as the people in it. An empty world is useless to them."

"I guess that makes sense."

"If only everyone in the world thought like a ten-year-old, Bergil. We wouldn't have all these problems."

"You think this will work?" Merry asked Morgan as he and Sam helped the teenager to her feet.

"If it doesn't, we haven't exactly lost anything."

"True," Peter smiled as Faramir helped him up. "Hannon le, Faramir."

The steward smiled. He had caught on that both Peter and Morgan knew very little Elvish, but used what they knew whenever they could. "All right," Faramir said. "Let's give it a try."

"Down a little, Rainbow," Legolas whispered in the horse's ear. Rainbow complied immediately, and Legolas threw the lasso he had fashioned from the rope around one of the gleems. "Hold on, Avanwë," he said, then jumped off the horse, still holding the other end of the rope.

Surprised by the extra weight, the gleem began to drop, but then, realizing what had happened, began to fly around this way and that in an attempt to get Legolas to lose his grip, all the time flying higher so as to heighten the Elf's fall. Avanwë tried her best to stay by her friend, but Rainbow couldn't always follow the gleem's erratic movements perfectly. Down below, a few gleems a ways away from the fight happened to look up and notice. They drew their bows, ready to fire should the Elf and the gleem become separate targets. If Legolas fell, Avanwë realized, it would be to his death amid a torrent of arrows.

Oooooh. Muahahahahahahaha. Suspense. :)