Hyrondal gazed at the plate in front of him in dismay. "Yuai! Please, I cannot eat the same thing every day for the rest of my life.

"I have," Yuai answered. "You cannot go wrong with meat and greens."

"Except my stomach is begging for something else, Yuai!"

"Well, it can go on begging," Yuai said, and picked up his fork.

Hyrondal growled. He finished his lunch at the small square table in Yuai's equally small kitchen. At the double-basin sink under the window facing east opposite the table, he washed the dishes before taking up his wooden sword and cloak and accompanying Yuai out the back door of the cottage toward the training fields.

Hyrondal was late to meet his friends in the kitchen gardens. He found Thranduil lying on his stomach picking a neat pile of grass blades while Ailunai sat on a cloth with her sunshade open above her and Nimrethil and Jailil sat on the two separate benches. Hyrondal grabbed Nimrethil by the shoulders and cried, "Nimrethil, you have to help me! Yuai is trying to starve me out on the blandest meat and greens you ever tasted."

Nimrethil poked Hyrondal in the chest to make him back up. "If you come by tomorrow at decent hour, I will show you the basics of cooking, but I will not slave away to deliver food to you in that dank cottage."

"What is a 'decent hour'?" Hyrondal demanded.

"Who knows?" Nimrethil shrugged. "You better guess right."

"In case anyone cares to know, I am still Avaron's apprentice," Jailil said, swinging his legs off the stone bench he sat on.

"Jailil," Ailunai said kindly. "You are still wearing your healer's belt."

Jailil glanced down at the strip of cloth. "I should have taken it off for a laugh."

"It is not funny to joke about dreams," Thranduil murmured.

"Well, I do not know what is with you," Hyrondal answered. "You have lounged about for the past several days and made yourself tough to chew on."

"Can I help it when all I have to look forward to are council meetings and more council meetings?" Thranduil demanded.

"Where is Harune?" Nimrethil asked. "I have not seen him in the kitchens lately."

Thranduil rolled onto his back. "He spun a tale about my increased responsibility and rode off to stay with Sapphire for a fortnight. I have been abandoned!"

"You choose to be abandoned," Ailunai said. "He offered to take you with him."

"Yes, well," Thranduil said. "It was a question designed to be declined, since I have ada most of the time and Sapphire misses him."

Nimrethil raised her dark purple eyebrows. "How noble of you."

Thranduil flicked a piece of grass at her. "I am noble."

"Why is your hair purple, Nimrethil?" Jailil asked.

"Interested in hair colors now, are we?" Nimrethil demanded. "After you turned Avaron's orange!"

"It faded," Jailil objected.

"The story goes nana drank too much gooseberry tea while she was pregnant with me," Nimrethil said. "Admire the results." She flipped her hair.

"Just wait," Hyrondal interrupted. "When Yuai sees me eating real food, he will realize what he is missing!"

Nimrethil wrinkled her nose. "Coral says some people have no taste."

"Which I am sure is what you tell yourself every time someone does not like your food," Thranduil teased.

The next day Hyrondal sauntered from the palace kitchens to Yuai's thatched cottage. He walked past the training fields with visions of conjuring up a feast worthy of the king after mere hours spent at Nimrethil's side.

It was not a feast Hyrondal produced for dinner, but the new smells and sauces Yuai's cooking lacked excited his tongue. After waiting for Yuai to no avail, Hyrondal sat down to his meal as the dusk settled outside the window behind him.

As Hyrondal picked up his fork, Yuai stepped into the kitchen through the back door at Hyrondal's left and sniffed. He hung up his cloak and sword on the rack by the door and stared at Hyrondal's plate.

Hyrondal let the silence linger before he said, "I do not believe you know what real food looks like. Yours is keeping warm in the oven; I somehow found the heart to cook for you."

Yuai took the warm plate out of the stove in the corner opposite the window and sat down at the table. "I did not know you could cook."

"I learned this afternoon," Hyrondal answered. "You know, Yuai, you could have told me you could not cook."

"A man does not easy admit to his faults," Yuai replied.

Hyrondal laughed. "Compared to my father, not being able to cook is one flaw I do not mind!"

"You ought not speak ill of your parents, Hyrondal. They loved you."

Hyrondal pushed a chunk of meat in circles on his plate. "Maybe."

"There is no maybe," Yuai said. "I command certain levels of respect in this house, and I do not consider hating your father because he spanked you now and again respectful."

Hyrondal stabbed an elusive mushroom on his plate. "Why is it wrong?"

"Because hate breeds darkness," Yuai said. "I was spanked, but I cherish the memories of my family. Looking back, I know all I resented was for my own good and look how I have come."

Hyrondal looked up and met Yuai's eyes. "But I am not looking back, Yuai, and time has not softened my memories. I am living now, and I know how I feel."

"Emotions are traitorous if we do not learn to curb them."

Hyrondal frowned. "Maybe that is how you feel, but you know what my father taught me? He taught me dishonesty. He taught me that, as long as he did not catch me with a sword, he could not punish me. He taught me to listen for his footsteps on the stairs and hide my emotions to avoid being scolded. He taught me that, if I presented to side of me he wanted to see, I could do whatever I wanted when his back was turned."

Yuai's lower lip curled.

"Half of the things I hid from my father I felt guilty about," Hyrondal said. "If I am being perfectly honest, I hated lying to my family. But when no listens to you, does it matter what you say?"

"I am not pleased to know I harbor a liar," Yuai said.

"One of the best things about living with you is I have not had to lie," Hyrondal answered.

Yuai pushed back his chair and picked up his plate. "Dishonesty is not unlearned overnight. If I ever find you have lied to me, the punishments you have suffered in the past will seem like a kindness. Now, please do the dishes."

Hyrondal clattered through the dishes with a frown. It seemed saying nothing would have been better then saying anything, given Yuai's narrowminded mind. When he finished in the kitchen, Yuai was sitting in his chair by the empty fireplace, polishing his sword. Hyrondal tried not to scowl as he walked through the living room and plunged into his small bedroom. He flung back his patchwork blanket and fell face-first onto his pillow.

"Why is it, Thranduil, you are the only one of us who has a parent who listens?" Hyrondal moaned.

If you can kill orcs, his mind said, you can fend off Yuai.

"But I do not want to have to," Hyrondal whispered. He rolled onto his back. "Maybe there is only one thing to do."

Thranduil's face rose up in Hyrondal's mind, chiding, "Hyrondal! You are about to do something stupid."

Sleepily, Hyrondal smiled and murmured, "Thranduil, you need to have more faith in me."

The next day at breakfast Yuai was rudely startled by a sharp crack across his butt. He yelled and jerked around, dropping his coffee mug to grab at Hyrondal, but Hyrondal had already dropped his stick and fled out the kitchen door.

Yuai pursued him to the base of an oak tree at the edge of the small yard. Hyrondal darted up the tree, his palms and knees shifting from branch to branch but, though he climbed quicker then a snake through grass, Yuai's fingers still caught around his ankle and yanked him to the ground.

Falling, Hyrondal flipped around and landed crouched but now all he had to look at was Yuai's angry face. Yuai grabbed his shoulder. "How dare you? What in Mirkwood were you thinking?"

Hyrondal's chest heaved. In his reflection in Yuai's eyes, he saw his own eyes blazing. "You did not like it, did you?"

Yuai tried to twist him around, but Hyrondal resisted, bracing himself for a fight as Yuai used his foot to toss a stick into his free hand.

"What you did was inappropriate and unacceptable!" Yuai snapped. "It is high time you learned respect!"

"Why do something you hated to someone else?" Hyrondal demanded. "Just you like, my instinct every time I was spanked was to defend myself. What makes it wrong if I smack you, but right if you do it to me? Let go!"

"You," said Yuai coldly. "Are not going anywhere until you have learned your lesson!"

The shadow of the stick Yuai held rose with Yuai's arm. Two seconds. Two seconds to think. Hyrondal's back was to Yuai though they stood shoulder to shoulder, making it easy for the boy to crawl his hands up Yuai's back. Before the stick could fall, Hyrondal was on Yuai's shoulders. His leg slid over Yuai's throat and he jerked the elf to the ground, groaning as his back slammed into the earth with Yuai on top of him.

Hyrondal slithered out from under Yuai and scrambled six feet back as Yuai sat up and rubbed his throat.

"Valar above!" Yuai wheezed. "What was that?"

"You tell me," Hyrondal said warily.

Yuai chucked the stick he held into the forest. "I had to know if you would defend yourself."

"There are a dozen countermeasures to that chokehold, and I am sure you know every one of them," Hyrondal answered.

"Eleven," Yuai said as he stood. "There are eleven countermeasures to that chokehold, and I do know all of them. I did not want to hit you, Hyrondal."

"So said my father every time he hit me," Hyrondal retorted.

Yuai shook a finger. "That kind of ungrateful attitude will not carry you far in life. I propose a truce." He held out his hand.

Hyrondal's yellow eyes started to twinkle. "Alright. I apologize for hitting you."

"It was a wretched attack," Yuai replied. "But I accept your apology."

^_^ Relationships are being forged!

A shout-out to: Horsegirl01 for being the hundredth review! Check out her heartwarming stories. I am inspired by each new chapter.

Thanks so much for reading! I love hearing from you.

Next Chapter: All the people we have come to love start to come together.