Somewhere lost in the Unmarked Wilds of Middle Earth

There is an old hobbit tale, that tells of the strange and oddly shaped creature called the Mewlip. Mewlips were quite different from most of the strange and fantastical creatures that show up in the old legends of Hobbit kind. For one thing the Mewlip, despite its gaping maw, and long crooked teeth, was strangely Elf like – at least at first.

For you see the Mewlip was of the carnivorous kind, it preyed on the flesh of others – though not perhaps in the way a real carnivore would. More in the way that a hobbit with a severe drinking problem would go at one of the old tankards at the Green Dragon. Which these days was let's face it, most hobbits over the age of sixty. The Mewlip craved flesh not for sustenance, but for the high it gave it.

You see the legend went that the Mewlips were once hobbits, or Men, or even Dwarves; yet a lost spirit had wandered into the decaying corpses of those that had not had their proper funeral rights. And as the spirit spent longer and longer in a body that was meant to have died, meant to have remained mortal and returned to the ground the more this craving grew.

Faldo Proudfoot knew this tale well; he had heard it often enough whispered cruelly through the streets he had left barren in his wake. It was a warning many of his prisoners or the exiles whispered…a warning from the tellers of old of what happened when one didn't bury their dead properly. What happened to someone who didn't have the funeral rites of the Ganymen laid upon them.

The Tooks, ever one to take offence at a supposed slight to Elf-kind, decided the tale was blatant anti-elf propaganda – and had forbidden its telling in any of their mead halls. Faldo Proudfoot was an elf, could remember what it felt like to be an elf, to have an elf's body. There were many valid reasons to dislike his people, you didn't need to go making up strange stories of flesh-eating monsters to smear the name of the Elves. Besides Mewlips were quite real, they just weren't as easy to identify as they were in the old tales, and Faldo Proudfoot knew that for a fact…. after all he felt the gnawing hunger of the Mewlip himself.

A dead spirit in a mortal body, could walk the land for generations before being noticed. Faldo hadn't walked it for that long, but he'd thought he'd been doing pretty well until the fecking Sons of the Blarney had gotten in the way. Well, they might have caught and destroyed the others, but even with their magics they had not been able to catch Faldo Proudfoot.

He might have had to run, with nothing to sustain him other then a single bite of flesh he'd managed before they'd ruined the party – but he was still here. Still up and running. And soon he'd reach Gondor's borders and then, well then they'd see then.

Somewhere off the coast of Umbar

Caranthir was small, smaller than he had ever been in life – even as a babe, nestled in his mother's womb, he had been larger than he was right now. It would be difficult for any elf, living or dead, to try and conceive of the kind of torture the son of Fëanor experienced now. For though they could conceive of fëa without their bodies, they could not conceive of a fëa forced into such a small glass sphere.

He'd thought at first when the boy had come at him that he would die then, not just in body, but entirely. His spirit ripped apart and thrown to the wind like so much trash out the window, but that hadn't happened. That hadn't happened at all, and there wasn't a day that had gone by since, that he didn't wish it had.

Are you having fun Uncle?

Caranthir, even though he could no longer speak as himself anymore, pointedly did not answer the child.

What a pity, and here we thought you would approve. After all, placing spirits of unspeakable power and life in tiny glass containers is your bread and butter, as the saying in the Shire goes.

Caranthir curled in on himself – well as much as a half-diminished and shrunken fëa, trapped inside a hollow glass lantern could curl in on himself – and cried. The Boy laughed and swung him back and forth as his small-ish feet clattered over the hard cobble-stones of the Ganymen's temple. Hmm, it was odd the kind of words you heard when you were nothing more than a lantern sitting on a table.

'Frodo-lad? Oh Frodo-lad! You're alive! You're alive, me lad, you're alive!'

Came a voice as deep as the sea, as light as the air, and as warm as his mother's embrace.

'Dad! Dad! Look what we made! Look what we made!'

Caranthir looked up and beheld the most beautiful sight in all the world, or rather what would have been the most beautiful sight in all the world if he had not been imprisoned in a lantern by one of its more psychotic progenies. The larger Silmaril, the brighter Silmaril, looked down at him with his father's eyes, looked down on Caranthir and began to weep.

The King watched his Queen as she slept, her face was peaceful for once, not filled with the loathing that seemed to fill the hearts of everyone the King touched now a days. Well, everyone, who had the sense to know fear when he found something funny.

The King liked his new life, he enjoyed his new wife, his new kingdom, his new crown. Truly it was a grand life he had stumbled upon, full of joy and laughter, even when everyone else didn't feel like being joyful or laughing. His Queen was beautiful, as beautiful as Lúthien had been. The same silky dark hair, the same fair skin, the same apple red mouth, she was Lúthien re-born, re-born and handed to him on a silver platter. Or rather she would have been, had her temper been even, or her mood as gentle as Lúthien's had been towards her husband.

Arwen Undimel was not gentle, nor even remotely pleasant to the man who should have been her lord and master. She walked out on him half-way through the several orders he had tried to give her, she had deliberately disobeyed him by trying to contact the Yellow Bitch's Fool, or one of the other ridiculous people she'd called Hobbits. Oh, the wailing she had done when the Ringbearer and his Sow had disappeared off East before she could give them a proper farewell.

He had no idea what that had entailed, but knowing her it probably had something to do with holding the Ringbearer's face forcibly against her bosom and crying like he had just announced that he was dying. Still, Lúthien hadn't been as easy and loving as the songs and fables made her out to be either. After all, she had knocked out the one who she was really destined to be with – and had run off after her insipid mortal lover! Foul wench, they were all much better off without her.

He looked down at his queen again as she slept, and smirked; what were Beren and Lúthien now but earth for the worms to chew on. What were any of the great heroes of the old tales now? As dead as the foes they had slain or trapped, caged within the blessed realm. What use did he have for such a place now when he had Middle-Earth before him? So rich, so very much alive and in bloom, so unlike himself in that way. The heroes of this world, of the old Elven Tales, were gone and buried, but the Villain still remained.

Curufin was still here.

The Elf Matron in the bed before him stirred and opened her eyes, scowling up at him in the least pleasing way possible.

'Aragorn, I have no wish to see you tonight or any night when you stand over me like a crow waiting for the leftovers. Please leave.'

The King bowed and smiled at his queen. 'As you wish my queen.'