:::

III III III

As it turned out, Anne did not need to have worried. When she returned from the river she was once again given the task of slicing vegetables (at this point she also began to wonder, how much of the stuff they had packed), while Delior, armed with his bow and quiver, went off towards a small copse where he soon vanished between brambles and ash trees. Perhaps an hour later he returned, a dead partridge dangling from his shoulder. He started preparing the bird, and Anne realised that he intended to wait until nightfall before bathing himself.

Her own experience in the river had been every bit as cold and uncomfortable as anticipated. She had adjusted to the water temperature a little better than the last time, it was true - probably because she at least knew what was coming - but it still had taken less than ten minutes for her to lose all feeling in every part of her body that was submerged in the deep green, frigid water of the Anduin's faint current.

She had repeatedly trodden on sharp stones, slipped on slick, moss-covered rocks, or got her numb feet tangled up in seaweed. All the while she had been ducking or crouching, in her fear to be seen from their camping spot. She had been quite alarmed by the fact that she could still make out the glimmer of the fire – although she had not been able to see the Elf in the deepening dusk.

For want of a brush, Anne had scooped up some fine sand from the bank and scrubbed it all over her body before washing it off again. It had not been the most pleasant experience one could imagine, but at least she felt clean now. Near the bank, she had found a plant that might have been mince, as well as a couple of other herbs with a sweet fragrance, whose leaves she had ground between her fingers and then tried to rub her skin with them, and even rubbed some of it into her hair. Belatedly, it had occurred to her that she might very well get a nasty rash from the herbs.

Yes, perhaps this might be considered an attempt at vanity, but Anne probably would not have cared nearly as much, if she had been travelling with some unwashed, greasy-haired slob who stank to high heavens... although, now that she imagined this particular scenario, she conceded that it might not be all that desirable either.

It wasn't exactly like Delior made an obvious fuss about his appearance, especially when she compared him to her memory of Glorfindel, who was, after all, the only other Elf she had met. Indeed, most of the time, he gave the impression that he could hardly care less.

His long, dark hair was unbraided and most of the time unbound, though sometimes he would tie it back while riding or occupying himself with such things as building a fire. While his clothes were worn and mended it places, they were not shabby; in fact, all his garments were of fine weave and texture as far as she could tell, and yet they bore no embroidery of any kind. Also his bow, quiver and other gear were plain and unadorned, save for the knife sheath on his belt, which was engraved with a pattern of intertwining leaves. However, all in all, Anne strongly suspected that the Elf looked a lot more groomed than she did, and that did not exactly contribute to her self-esteem.

So now she was huddled up in front of the fire with prickling skin, clad in the driest clothes she had been able to find and also wrapped in a blanket. The vegetables that she had cut up were already merrily simmering away in the pot and were soon joined by the partridge, which Delior had gutted and carved. Anne was incredibly thankful that he had done it by himself and at some distance from her.

The subject of her slightly disgruntled thoughts was now sitting opposite her on the other side of the fire. He had folded back his sleeves, leaving his forearms bare, and was working on... something. Anne had no idea what exactly he was doing, but it seemed to involve soaking long, string-like objects in something that appeared to be an oil of sorts, then rubbing the oil off again with a rag, before winding them up on a small wooden spool.

Usually, this would have been the time of the evening when Anne became so tired that she nearly fell asleep wherever she was sitting, but since they had made camp much earlier than they normally did, she still felt wide-awake and almost a little restless. She had long since discovered that, whenever she was not either completely exhausted or otherwise occupied with something, she found herself wondering and thinking about this and that while her thoughts were wandering freely.

Which was not a good thing.

Those thoughts tended to address questions and memories which she usually managed to keep somewhere in the very back of her mind. Anne had learned to hate these rare, quiet moments of musing. She did not want to think about certain things or ask herself the same questions over and over again. Most of all, she did not want to think about the day she had left Carrockton. Each time her thoughts timidly approached the memory of that afternoon, she instantly felt like something very cold and very heavy dropped into her stomach, while her throat got tight and her pulse would quicken.

Therefore, right now Anne was doing something she would never have done under normal circumstances: thinking of a way to attempt a conversation with her companion. As it was, there was something that she had been meaning to ask him, but she was not quite sure how to best approach it, as Delior had not appeared all too keen on the topic the last time he had talked about it.

A few minutes of silence passed, only disturbed by the crackling of the fire and the low bubbling of the kettle. At last, Anne cleared her throat.

"Delior?"

He looked up at her, his eyes reflecting the flickering light of the flames.

"Can I ask you a question?" Anne asked, feeling timid for some reason.

The Elf's eyebrows drew together almost indiscernibly. It might have been an expression of annoyance, just as well as one of curiosity.

"I suppose you can," he said evenly.

Anne swallowed - her mouth felt rather dry all of a sudden. How did he do that, she wondered irritably. He could make an art out of it.

"A couple of days ago … when you asked me about Nesta …" she faltered a little when she saw his eyes narrowing very slightly, but decided to stand her ground and hurriedly went on, though she kept her eyes on the fire. "You said that you only knew her father, and that he had never been to Carrockton, but ... was that before she was born? I mean – how long had you known him?" She glanced up at him, mainly to make sure that he was not about to pounce on her any moment. He was still looking at her with narrowed eyes, and his lips had gone rather thin, but he did not exactly seem angry.

"I had known him for almost sixty years," he said after a small pause. "And no, I never met his daughter nor any of his family. Are you satisfied?"

No. No, she was not satisfied at all. sixty years! How was that possible? How old exactly was he? Sure, that might be too blunt of a question, but she probably would have asked him anyway, (and had already opened her mouth to do so) if his voice had not been so clipped, and the expression on his face not quite so cold. Therefore, she held her tongue and instead watched him surreptitiously as he went back to oiling his strings. She had wondered about this before. True, his age was hard to guess, though judging from his face she wouldn't have thought him to be far from her own, with no more than perhaps five years between them - ten at most. Admittedly this assessment was not all that helpful, especially coming from her. Nevertheless, knowing someone for sixty years obviously meant that one had to have lived that long - at least. So, if he had not been pulling her leg just now…

Although Anne's attempt at conversation had been more or less nipped in the bud, it had served the purpose. She was so preoccupied with trying to wrap her mind around the concept of elvish ageing (or rather the lack of it) that she did not once think about the departure of Carrockton during the whole evening. And when, several hours later, Delior muttered something about not 'going to take long' and that she should not 'wander off somewhere in the meantime', before he disappeared into the darkness in the direction of the river, she barely even noticed.

:::

After the crossing of the Anduin, three or four more days of travelling passed in more or less the same manner. Half a day after they had left the large River behind, they came across a second, smaller stream - the Gladden River that has its source in the Misty Mountains and flows eastwards until it meets the Anduin. As it turned out, they would ride alongside the Gladden for several days. Anne felt both relieved and annoyed by this, since it meant that she wouldn't have needed to worry so much about the Anduin being her last chance of having a proper wash and bath for a long time.

The scenery changed little until they reached the foothills of the mountains, where it became difficult to ride. They had left the marshy grassland with its mud, reeds and small pools behind, but now they had to climb hill after hill, which seemed to become steadily higher and steeper, and for a while, they made only very slow progress. It was a clear but cool evening when they finally reached the foot of the mountain range, where they began to follow a narrow twisting path that wound its way upwards and around steep slopes. They soon had to dismount once more, as the road (If one would call it that) was often halfway blocked with debris and small boulders.

Anne was not sorry that she had to walk. It had taken only a couple of hours for her to decide that she did not like serpentines very much, and this way she at least was a little closer to the ground. Twice it almost looked like they might not be able to get the horses across particularly large and treacherous heaps of slip rock, and Peg had to be persuaded for several minutes to step over a rather narrow crevice.

Night had fallen already when they found a spot that was, to some extent, sheltered from the wind. On first sight it appeared to be a mere rock overhang, but was in fact almost a small cave, reaching about ten feet into the mountainside. Anne thought that it looked like someone from long ago had started to dig a tunnel and then given up halfway through the task. Delior declared that this was a better protection than they could have hoped for, and so they unsaddled - at least in Anne's case - and made their camp underneath the rock shelter.

Much to Anne's annoyance Delior refused to make a fire, so as not to 'attract unwanted attention', therefore she had to grope her way around the small cave, trying to roll out her blankets and make her bed in the pitch-black darkness.

She had just finished, and was about to settle herself down, when she felt something small and not very heavy drop into her lap. For a moment she thought that Delior might have thrown her something, which was after all a habit of his, and reached to pick it up.

Her fingers closed over something small, about the size of her thumb perhaps.

Something that moved.

Something scuttling and crawling with many little legs, tickling the inside of her palm.

With a gasp, Anne violently flung her hand, trying to shake it off – whatever 'it' was.

"What is the matter?" she could hear Delior's voice somewhere to her left; the Elf had no doubt not only heard her gasp, but also seen her reaction.

"I – I don't know," Anne muttered, still shaking her hand and closing it a couple of times to make sure that there was nothing on it anymore. "Some kind of insect, I thin-" Then the word caught in her throat.

She felt something crawling up her arm – inside her sleeve!

With a squeal she was on her feet and began staggering around, groping at her sleeve in panic. She felt something move under the cloth – it did not feel quite so small anymore – and she began to screech when she found that she couldn't shake it off, wildly waving her arm about.

Suddenly she felt her forearms being grabbed and pulled apart; somewhere at the edge of her consciousness, she was aware of Delior's silhouette towering in front of her, just visible against the sky outside.

"What in Eru's name has gotten into you?" he hissed.

"There's something on me," she all but shrieked, "get it off, GET IT OFF!"

Delior seemed to be asking her something, but Anne did not hear him, nor did she even try to listen. She squirmed in his grip, desperately trying to free her arms. When she felt the crawling legs of the insect move somewhere down her shoulder and towards her chest, she lost her head completely and attempted to aim a kick at the Elf to break free off him.

It was perhaps understandable that Delior lost his patience with her at this point. He resolved the issue by pushing her rather unceremoniously to the ground. Anne barely noticed being shoved, but she was aware of being held down, which, in addition to everything else, was enough to nearly send her into hysterics. She now perceived the crawling sensation somewhere beneath her breastbone, and with a wail she – at another time - would not have thought herself capable of, she struggled madly against his grip, trying to push off his hands.

"Where is it?" Delior demanded, his voice raised in order to get through to her.

"I don't... I don't -"

While the inability to form a coherent sentence did not help, her desperate attempt to claw at her waist probably told him the gist of it.

Without further ado, he reached underneath her shirt, his fingers swiftly brushing aside the fabric of her undergarment, which caused Anne to screech a few octaves higher. The Elf uttered something in his own tongue that sounded suspiciously like an expletive. Within several seconds it was over. His hand slid over her stomach, to her side and across her ribs, where his fingers closed quickly; he pulled back his hand - there was a sickening crunch - and then he threw something to the side.

It took quite a bit longer for Anne to be assured that the thing was indeed gone. When Delior let go of her, her heart was pounding like a sledge against her ribs and she was shaking all over. Still panting, she scrambled away from him and into a sitting position. She had no idea why, but she was close to tears, and also she had calmed down enough to begin feeling faintly embarrassed about her performance.

"In all my years, I have never seen anyone behave quite so histrionically," said Delior, who, by the sound of it, now sat down against the cave wall once more. "You nearly scared away the horses. Every living creature within this stretch of the mountains must have heard you."

"That … that was disgusting," Anne muttered, feeling irritated that her voice still sounded so shaky.

"It was only a bug."

"Only! It was gigantic!"

"You never even saw it."

"Perhaps not, but I felt it, and-" she paused, nearly gagging at the memory. "And it just fell from the ceiling, too," she finished in an appalled whisper.

"That is precisely the reason why I did not want to make a fire. They would have come in swarms -"

Anne made a strangled sound, shook herself and got to her feet. She had no mind to lie down in that corner again. Who could tell how many more of those things were still lurking here somewhere. Did he have to mention 'swarms'?! Afraid of staying in one place for too long, she stumbled to and fro in the darkness, until Delior hissed irritably, his patience obviously wearing thin again.

"Will you go to sleep already! Or at the very least, stop wandering and sit down."

"I cannot sleep," Anne said, unable to keep the indignation from her tone, though she did stop her 'wandering', not wishing to provoke him into slamming her onto the ground again. "And I will certainly not lie down over there again," she added defiantly. Should he think her foolish all he wanted!

"How can you be afraid of something so harmless?"

"'Harmless …'" Anne echoed faintly. "Apart from the fact that I did not know that... well, that is really not the point!" she sighed and gave up on explaining this to him. She shuddered, remembering the feel of the insect underneath her clothes… followed by the memory of his hand underneath her clothes, which, oddly enough didn't help either.

"Oh dear, this is ridiculous," she heard his exasperated voice. "Fetch your blankets and come here."

Anne stared at him (or at least in the vague direction of the spot where she thought he was sitting). "Why?" she inquired warily, feeling – to her great annoyance – her heartbeat quickening again.

"So I do not have to shout," the Elf said in response to her question. He hardly would have needed to shout, even if she had been at the other end of the very small cave, but as he sounded rather irritated by now, she refrained from arguing any further and did as she was told. He was silent for a minute or two, and Anne was beginning to wonder what kind of harangue she was about to be given, when, at last, he spoke with a sigh.

"I shall tell you a story, you will listen quietly and calm down, and once I have finished, you will sleep."

She just gaped at him. Apart from the idea of him telling her bedtime stories being rather… strange, to say the least – did he really believe that it was that simple? However, her curiosity won.

"What is the story about?" she asked while huddling up and hunching her shoulders so as to provide as little target as possible for potentially ambushing bugs. After another moment of silence, Delior began to speak in a low voice.

"A long time ago, long before the great war, a small creature with the name of Smeagol came to these mountains. He had not simply left his home-"

"I am sorry - what kind of creature?" Anne broke in, thinking this a very vague description. For all she knew, the Elf might be regarding her as a 'small creature'.

The Elf made an irritated sound at being cut short, but then complied. "In those times the name of their race was a different one, but nowadays one would refer to them as Halflings – or Hobbits, as they call themselves. Now, do not interrupt me again."

Anne quickly shut her mouth to prevent the next question from tumbling out. She had the distinct feeling that he was watching her in the darkness, but she could not even see whether his face was turned in her direction. He seemed satisfied with her silence, however, since he continued:

"As I said – Smeagol had not simply left his home, but had been banished by his people. Evil things had happened; some of them to him, some of them because of him, and some terrible deeds he had done to others. So, he was forced to leave, and for many long years, darkness, greed, hate and fear should be his only companions."

Anne began to doubt if this was really a story meant to calm people or cheer them up, but listened, enthralled all the same.

"And yet he found refuge in the never-ceasing shadows deep under the Misty Mountains, where he dwelled on a small rocky island amidst a black lake, hidden from the world he had learned to hate. Smeagol did not have those caves and underground passageways to himself however, but had to share them with Orcs, as one of their greatest dwellings happened to be underneath these mountains."

"Orcs?" Anne spluttered, forgetting about not interrupting him. Well, he had used past tense, so that sure had to mean that this was not one of their dwellings any more, had it not?

"Yes," Delior said, surprisingly lenient. "And although Smeagol feared the orcs, he often managed to trick them, and not seldom a young orc would end up serving him as a meal."

Anne's jaw dropped.

All right, definitely not a bedtime story.

"Many years later, in a faraway land, another Hobbit set out for a great, adventurous quest, accompanied by thirteen Dwarves and a Wizard."

Anne had to suppress a snort of laughter. That sounded so much more like a fairytale.

"It so happened that their road led them to these mountains. One night, they sought shelter from a thunderstorm inside a cave, not unlike this one… and there they were ambushed by a large group of orcs, captured and dragged away." (The smile died from Anne's lips almost instantly.)

"The company offered resistance however, and during the ensuing turmoil, the Hobbit got separated from his companions. For a while, he wandered through the darkness, lost and alone, and near giving up hope to ever find his friends again.

In those dark and desperate hours, he came across the underground lake – and he met Smeagol. The Hobbit, never guessing that he was in fact face to face with one of his kind – however distantly related - told Smeagol of his ill-luck and of losing his companions. But for Smeagol, who had, by then, grown very old and very mean, the Hobbit was barely more than an exceptionally good dinner. He was wearing a little sword at his belt though, which frightened Smeagol. Therefore he offered a bargain; he challenged him to a riddle competition, promising that - should the Hobbit win - he would show him the way out of the tunnels, but also announced that he would eat him, if he, Smeagol, were to win instead.

It turned out that they both had some talent in the game chosen, and for a while, either of them was able to guess the answer to the other's riddle easily. But then, Smeagol became impatient and hungry, and so he tried hard in order to think of something as difficult as possible – this is what he came up with:

This thing all things devours:

Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;

Gnaws iron, bites steel;

Grinds hard stones to meal;

Slays king, ruins town,

And beats high mountain down.

And the Hobbit could not think of the answer, no matter how much he –"

The Elf broke off in mid-sentence. Anne looked up at him, but could, of course, see nothing but his silhouette dark against the starlit sky outside. She immediately thought of orcs, or other evil little creatures creeping up at them, and she wanted to ask him what was wrong, but even as she opened her mouth to speak, he made a shushing noise.

Then she heard it too; a low, strange wailing, like the howling of the wind, ebbing away every other second, only then to flare up once more. Only it was far too regular to be the sound of wind, or even the cry of some beast.

Anne suddenly became aware that she could feel her heartbeat almost in her throat. Within seconds, the sound died away, but they both remained silent for several minutes. Just when she began to feel like she could not take it any longer, Delior spoke again – his voice very low and somewhat deeper than before.

"It is very far away."

Anne wondered whether he, too, had heard it before, and if he associated it with the same terror that she had felt for a moment just now.

"There is no need to worry at for now," he went on. "Though perhaps we should be quiet for the rest of the night. You should try to sleep"

"All right," Anne muttered, and then, in a weak attempt to ease the sudden tension, she added: "It is a shame, really… that story was in fact getting interesting. I cannot help but wonder how it ends."

Delior apparently did not appreciate the sentiment.

"Well, what do you think?" he said, a note of petulance in his voice. "The Hobbit could not solve the riddle and got eaten. Now sleep."

III III III

:::

AN: NO INSECTS WERE HARMED DURING THE MAKING OF THIS CHAPTER

The riddle-quote is from The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien, and I have of course no rights on it whatsoever.

In case anyone wonders how Legolas would be able to recount Bilbo's adventure so accurately and even know about the riddle in question – he was, after all, present at the council where Bilbo told the story in full length, and – I quote – 'did not omit a single riddle'... :)

Also, it might have crossed your mind that Anne's reaction to having an insect underneath her clothes may be a little over the top, but let me assure you - it isn't. I have witnessed worse. ;)

As always: Thanks to everyone who is following this, and especially to the reviewers!