Disclaimer: The Lord of the Rings trilogy is a heartwrenchingly beautiful mythological epic and arguably the greatest literary achievement of the 20th century. If I owned it, however, it would involve gratuitous sex and bawdy humor, and would probably be printed in cheap magazines and sold under the counter at bars. Put two and two together, folks.
A/n: And we're back with live coverage of the Council of Elessar. Rest assured that the bickering has continued unabated during our hiatus and that you haven't really missed anything at all.
Note: Our techies have changed the name of the Blue Wizard "Luinon" to "Alatar" in order to maintain canonical accuracy. Thanks to special ace correspondent Bubonic Woodchuckfor the tip-off.
"This," said Boromir flatly, folding his transparently muscled arms across his chest, "has got to be one of the stupidest things I've ever done in my life. And I'm even including the time Faramir and I got drunk and climbed naked to the top of the Tower of Ecthelion and spent three hours trying to piss on the White Tree."
There was a brief and awkward silence immediately following this proclamation, during which Faramir's ears turned very red and he muttered something unintelligible about the tree having already been dead, anyway.
"For once, I'm inclined to agree with Boromir," frowned Gandalf. "Might I inquire—once again—as to the purpose of this exercise?"
Aragorn sighed with royal patience. "Its purpose," he explained, "is to canvass a wide range of possible solutions to this dilemma, while enabling us to learn a bit more about each other in the process."
"I have absolutely no desire to know any of you better than I do already," said the Green Wanderer emphatically. There was a general murmur of approval.
The King threw his hands in the air huffily. "Well, you know what, then? Fine. Fine! Anyone who isn't going to be cooperative can just leave!"
The faces of the Council members lit up with inexpressible hope. "Really?" they said in unison.
"No."
The buoyant expressions faded away, and there was some muttering of an unpleasant and largely obscene character.
"Now," continued Aragorn, "has everyone given me their slips of paper?"
There was another, somewhat duller murmur of acquiescence.
Aragorn nodded in approval. "Right, let's get cracking, then. Gandalf, your hat, if you please?"
With great resignation, the Wizard handed the article in question to the King, who promptly turned it upside-down and deposited a handful of folded parchments into the makeshift basket. He shook it a bit for good measure. "Right… I'm going to pass this around, and I want everyone to draw a slip at random. No peeking!" he added reprovingly, before closing his eyes and fumbling blindly within the hat to procure a paper for himself.
The passing of Gandalf's hat was conducted among the ranks with surprisingly little commotion and hassle (though it was dropped nearly three times by an incorporeal and supremely vexed Boromir before Faramir chose to intervene), and once all the slips were accounted for and the hat returned to its cantankerous owner, Aragorn cleared his throat and unraveled his paper.
"Right, here's our first suggestion." He paused and squinted. "I think that we should donate the fragments of the One Ring to a reputable dental facility, whereupon they might be melted down and used as fillings for some poor sod's molars. Possibly Gimli's, since he's expendable and has bad teeth, anyway. Well, would anyone like to hazard a guess?"
"A guess?" asked Faramir, bemused.
"Yes, a guess! You're supposed to guess who wrote it!" snapped Aragorn testily. "Honestly, haven't you been listening at all? That's the whole point of the game!"
"I thought that the point of the game was to brainstorm a solution to the problem of the One Ring, which happens to be peppered through my bloody flowerbeds?"
Aragorn paused, opened his mouth, closed it again, frowned, opened it again, and said, "Well, I guess Legolas."
"Curses!" cried Legolas, stamping his delicate foot against the ground petulantly. "What gave me away?"
"Other than the blatant and unwarranted hostility against Gimli?" said Aragorn. "Well, the paper smells like lavender-scented hand lotion…"
"How would you know what lotion Legolas uses?" asked Éomer, suspiciously.
Aragorn glanced about shiftily. "Oh, no reason…"
Gimli, meanwhile, had swelled like an angry bullfrog. Noting that the Dwarf's battleaxe was within throwing distance, Legolas muttered something about the humidity on this side of the terrace being bad for his split-ends and quickly changed seats with Imrahil.
"Er, that's one suggestion down," said Aragorn hastily. "Who's up next? Faramir?"
Faramir sighed and unfolded his slip of paper. "Right, here goes…" He cleared his throat peremptorily. "If I had the One Ring, then I would use it—"
"Boromir," cut in Aragorn.
"At least let him finish reading!" objected Boromir irritably.
"Oh, come now, Boromir, we all know you wrote it!" said Aragorn. "And we all know what the rest of it will say—let us use the weapon of the Enemy against him, it is a gift to the foes of Mordor, not with ten thousand men could you do this, Rangers are half-assed flea-ridden layabouts, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…"
"Well, I personally think that those statements smack of truth and wisdom."
"I resent that!" cried Faramir.
"I meant Northern Rangers, little brother," said Boromir, pacifyingly.
"Well, that's all right, then," said Faramir. "Might I continue reading?" He cleared his throat again. "If I had the One Ring, then I would use it to turn myself invisible so that I could sneak into Arwen's bedroom at three in the morning and put plastic spiders under her pillow, because that would just be plain hilarious."
There was a lengthy silence. Then, Aragorn rounded on Boromir. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
Boromir bristled. "How the blazes would I know?"
"Because you wrote it, you imbecile!" sputtered Aragorn.
"I most certainly did not," objected Boromir. "I'm a ghost, jackass—I don't need a Ring to become invisible. Moreover, why on Arda would I spend my precious eternity playing childish pranks on your wife when I could be enjoying margaritas and footspas in the afterlife?"
Haldir frowned. "They have footspas? Where?"
"Sorry," said Boromir's ghost. "They're for the indisputably canonically dead only."
"Well, if it wasn't Boromir," put in Legolas, "then I guess Merry."
Merry shook his head. "No dice."
"Well, let's move on," said Aragorn.
"But we haven't all guessed yet!" protested Éomer.
"Sorry—only two guesses per suggestion. I made that very clear in the rules," said the King flatly.
"You most certainly did not," said Éomer. "And anyway, I don't think that your guess should count. You made it before Faramir was finished reading. We shouldn't all be penalized for your stupidity."
"Oh, for the love of Eru, it's just a bloody game!" groaned Boromir. "I'm up next. Faramir, would you mind holding up the slip so that I can read it?" He waved his lucent hands explanatorily.
Faramir, who had been sitting in contemplative silence, glanced at him askance. "Were you serious about there being margaritas in the afterlife?"
Boromir nodded. "Of course. Would I have said so otherwise?"
Faramir briefly weighed the notion of suicide in his mind, but presently decided that that sort of thing looked terrible on one's résumé. Sighing, he unraveled Boromir's paper and proffered it for him to read.
Boromir squinted. "What the…? This one says Let us go through the Mines of Moria. Gimli, is that the only suggestion you have to offer during situations of crisis?"
The Dwarf shrugged. "Well, it's as good as anything else that's been said so far."
Boromir, shrugging likewise, was forced to concede the point. "All right, then… who's next?"
Imrahil of Dol Amroth unfolded his slip of parchment. "So the One Ring has been found. Well, what does it matter? Most of us are going to die, anyway, at one point or another. Why should it matter when, or how, or at whose hand? In the end, valor and honor are all just transient, illusory entities. The only two things that are certain in this life are death and taxes, and, where I come from, we don't have either. Or, at least, we're not supposed to. The point is, life's a crapshoot. So whatever." Imrahil frowned. "It seems to continue in this vein for several more paragraphs. Need I continue reading?"
"No, that's quite enough," said Aragorn, blinking.
Boromir rounded on his brother in horror. "Faramir! That wasn't yours, was it?"
"Of course it wasn't!" cried Faramir, somewhat indignantly. "Why would you think such a thing?"
"Well, you've always tended a bit towards maudlin," said Boromir. "And you were contemplating suicide just a minute ago."
Faramir's eyes widened incredulously. "How did you know that?"
"When you're dead, you get a sort of sixth sense about these things," replied Boromir loftily, before glancing around the terrace. "Well, whoever wrote it… someone get that man a beer."
"Sorry, we don't drink alcohol on this terrace."
"Aragorn, I've got a problem," Gimli piped up gruffly. "Mine hasn't got anything written on it. It's just got this weird sort of picture… I can't tell what it's supposed to be." He turned the paper upside-down. "Well, that's a bit better! Say, that looks like you, Aragorn… but what's that?"
Imrahil leaned in his seat to peer at the parchment over Gimli's shoulder. He turned a rather delicate shade of red. "How rude!"
"What? What is it?" demanded Aragorn.
"It's a picture of you, Sire," said Imrahil presently. "With a broom."
"A broom? Well, what's so wrong in that? It's probably alluding to equality of the sexes or the importance of the working class or some other sophisticated social statement. After all, we are living under a d…"
"For the last time, my Lord, it's a monarchy!" hissed Faramir through gritted teeth.
"The broom in the picture," Imrahil went on, "is inserted into a recess of Your Highness's posterior that is not entirely accustomed to that purpose."
"Are you saying…"
"Oh, now I see!" cried Gimli, peering at the illustration. "It's a picture of Aragorn with a broom up his arse! That's the funniest damn thing I've seen since that perm job Legolas got last year! I guess Boromir!"
"Sadly, no," sighed Boromir's apparition.
Aragorn, seething with rage, glared around at the Council members. "All right, who drew that? Out with it!"
There was another lengthy pause.
Then, Éomer shrugged. "Well, I didn't really have a choice. You know Rohirrim can't write."
When the commotion had died down, Aragorn had returned to his seat nursing a black eye, and political relations between Gondor and Rohan had been all but destroyed, the game continued as before.
"I-ay ink-thay at-thay ee-way ould-shay…"
"Not in Pig Latin, please, Elladan," sighed Aragorn, pressing his glass of iced tea to his mottled eyelid.
"You lot have no sense of humor," pouted Elladan before complying. "I think that we should, in the interests of the safety and welfare of the Steward of Gondor, repair to the nearest home improvement terminus, there to purchase a new deck table, twenty-four pounds of mulch, some begonias, and a brand of fertilizer designed for fortification against aphids and the Dark powers. This is certainly the least we can do for having trespassed so gracelessly upon his hospitality, and then and only then can we turn our attention to larger forces at work."
Boromir rolled his eyes. "How subtle, Faramir."
"Oh, yeah, and you're Captain Understatement," grumbled the Prince of Ithilien, slouching in his chair and folding his arms across his midriff bad-temperedly. "I still think I deserve some recompense for damages done to my terrace."
"The crown will bear that in mind," said Aragorn. "Next?"
"Now here's a suggestion I approve of," said Elrohir. "This says I think we should all get fantastically drunk and never speak of this again. Sounds like sage advice to me."
"I'll put my vote in for Pippin," said Éomer.
"I don't think Pippin is capable of writing anything at this stage," countered Boromir, gesturing toward the hobbit in question, who was still sprawled beneath his own chair and largely unconscious. "Merry."
"You're on a roll, Boromir," said Merry, with an affirmative nod. "How do you do it?"
"Oh, luck, that's all," said Boromir with commendable modesty.
"I still don't see why he's winning," muttered Faramir irritably, "given that I'm the one who's supposed to be able to read the hearts and minds of men."
Aragorn, equally disgruntled, intervened. "Are we running a war council or a Boromir fan club on this terrace? Can we get on with it?"
"Get on with what—the council or the club meeting?" put in Merry.
"Dear Eru, anything, so long as you're all off my terrace by eight o'clock," moaned Faramir. "Who's next?"
"Myself," said Gandalf the Green, wrinkling his hoary brows. "If I had the One Ring, then I would use it…"
"Boromir!" cried Aragorn.
"Shut up!" cried the rest of the Council.
"Thank you," said the Wizard, glaring at the Dúnadan in question. "As I was saying… If I had the One Ring, then I would use it to turn myself invisible so that I could sneak into Estel's bedroom at three in the morning and put plastic spiders under his pillow, because that would just be plain hilarious."
"Elladan," said Boromir.
"Nope," said Elladan.
"Elrohir!" cried Faramir. Elrohir miraculously procured and threw a whipped-cream pie in the direction of Faramir's head by way of confirmation, which flew wide and knocked a ceramic pot of petunias off the balustrades. Faramir, however, was far too elated to notice. "I got it right! I got it right! And you got it wrong! Ha! Ha!" he gloated after the singularly irksome manner of younger siblings, and leapt from his chair to perform what uncannily resembled a victory dance. A few moments later, he sat back down, red-faced with exertion and embarrassment, as the rest of the Council of Elessar looked on with mouths agape.
"That," said Boromir fervently a moment later, "was the single-most intricate dance I have ever seen a man perform with his foot wedged in a glass of iced tea."
A/n: Dear God, this fic is on crack. And I'll have to have a fourth chapter after all.