A/N: I'm pleased with how much faster I got this out than usual. I also wanted to mention that I know the last chapter was pretty lore heavy, and I'm sorry if it was a bit much. My beta reader and I agree that this next one is a nice change of pace, so I hope you enjoy it.

As a heads up, we are getting into an almost unprecedented area for the next chapters. I have almost nothing written for them. Part of why I was able to get this out so fast was it was already half written before I even published the last one. But the next couple chapters, almost nothing. I'm going to let this one stew for a minute while I try to let the next ones come to me and figure out how I want them to go. I know what is going to happen, but I'm not entirely decided as to how it's going to happen. So bare with me if it takes a little bit longer to get them out.


Chapter 10: When the Valley's Hushed

...and white with snow….


"Clever work with that announcement," said Orёna as they trod back inside. "After all, it's only a town occupied by a few thousand children. It's not like they're likely to panic or any

thing."

Gilrohir shot her an ugly look. She did not quail beneath it, but she did not speak again either. Carol had disentangled Audrey from Orёna's torso and sent her away escorted by Judy and Abby to relax.

Lydia had remained largely silent during the conversation which had led to these revelations. Her shock, confusion, and dismay were loud on her normally placid face, but beyond those foreseeable emotions, Bernard could hardly read anything from her. She had said nothing while Gilrohir spoke to the wood elves. Standing next to Orёna and hovering protectively near Audrey, she wore the practiced expression of solemnity Bernard had come to expect from the wood elves while their commander was speaking, but as they made their way back inside, she did not fall in step behind Gilrohir and only walked vaguely in the same direction as the rest of them. If the rest of the wood elves were confused and in shock by Gilrohir's proclamation, it had left Lydia merely lost, like a comet pulled from its orbit by two opposing gravities. As Bernard watched her walk aimlessly in their group, he felt an urge to be near her, to touch her hand and feel the same electricity he had felt only minutes before.

They reached Santa's office without speaking to each other. Once there, they resumed their previous positions where his boss had so deliberately placed them. Bernard looked a Lydia and once again found her face unreadable. Yet, both experience and instinct told him that the possibility remained that if Lydia could see her own face and read her own mind, she would find both as indecipherable as he did. If nothing else, she was deeply confused.

"Lydia," he began, but at that moment, Orёna and Gilrohir flooded the room and brought a heated argument with them.

"How exactly do you plan on fortifying this place? It has no battlements, not even a wall surrounding the town."

Whatever reservations Orёna had about raising Gilrohir's hackles had evidently been lost somewhere between the snow and the office.

"Can they evacuate?" asked Elrodan.

"And go where?" countered Scott, settling behind his desk.

"No," agreed Gilrohir. "He will notice a mass exodus."

"Somebody will, anyway," said Scott. "You can't move a thousand-plus elves without somebody getting curious."

"There will be people in danger no matter where they went. Anyone nearby could be collateral damage," added Lydia.

Orёna groaned in frustration.

"They're children, Gilrohir. They can't fight."

Gilrohir closed his eyes in frustration. "I am open to suggestions."

Unfortunately none were immediately forthcoming. Every soul present had suddenly found themselves entirely out of their depth, and every one of them knew it. After a long silence, Quinton suddenly spoke.

"What if we could hide?"

"Where, Quinton?" said Scott incredulously. "Under the giant bed you have stuffed in your closet?"

"Somewhere," continued Quinton, making a visibly effort at patience. "That is not visible unless under a very close inspection. Somewhere secret."

"Like where?" demanded Gilrohir.

Quinton ushered Bernard and Lydia aside. Behind them was a Thomas Kinkade-style painting of a snow-covered cottage beside a lake of ice. Quinton carefully removed it from the wall and lowered it to the floor. Behind that, barely visible to the naked eye, were the fine lines of a narrow rectangular doorway. Quinton turned and stood before it, addressing the crowd like a grand showman.

"When I and the world were much younger, and electricity had yet to be harnessed, and certain technologies were but a glimmer in the eye of humanity, and I was therefore very, very bored, I stumbled across something here at the Pole that had gone uncovered and unexplored by all of us for untold years."

Quinton made a flicking motion with his nimble fingers, and a latch appeared. He turned it, and the door swung open, revealing the dark expanse of a long, narrow passageway.

Scott stood up as his jaw dropped. He and Carol walked slowly around his desk and stared wide-eyed at the open door. Scott tentatively reached his hand into the dark. When nothing leapt out and bit him, he stuck his head through the doorway, but the passage was pitch black. Quinton raised his hand and snapped his fingers, and Scott blinked as warm light washed over the walls of the hallway. The floor and walls were stone and lacked artistry, but they reached so far into the distance in both directions that he could not see where they led. Scott stepped back into his office, and Orёna, Elrodan, and Gilrohir took his place to inspect the passage.

"How long has that been there?" said Scott, jerking his thumb toward the door.

"Quite a long while, sir," said Quinton enigmatically.

"How long is a long while?"

"Long enough that I have no idea how they got there," said Bernard. He crossed his arms and gave Quinton a pointed look.

"You knew about this too?" said Scott, rounding on his Head Elf.

"Some of them," said Bernard with a shrug. "Only he knows where they all are."

Scott shook his head in disbelief.

"I've got a secret passageway in my office and nobody told me?"

"With respect, sir," said Quinton cajolingly. "We had reason not to. We used them to pass messages during, well, during those dark days we previously discussed."

"Why didn't you tell me?" asked Curtis, who had just finished retrieving his jaw from the floor.

"You were in league with the enemy and you have a big mouth!" said Quinton crossly.

Their boss suddenly maneuvered himself between them. "Wait a sec'. You said 'them.' How many of these are there?"

"I've mapped a network all over. One route leads to the lab, and no, Curtis, I'm not telling you where it is. Another leads to the kitchens, one to Bernard's room, another outside, etc., etc."

"You did all this by yourself?" called Orёna from inside the passageway.

"As I said, I was rather bored."

"There's an understatement," said Scott.

"Though I confess, I did not do all the building exactly. I discovered parts of the original network then added to it as time went on. I thought they would come in handy one day."

"And you were right," said Lydia as she stepped into the passage with the others.

"They're vast enough and the entrances well hidden. They might make suitable shelter in a crisis."

"Like a storm shelter," said Carol. "We'd need to plan. Moving all the elves in a hurry would be difficult. Without proper planning, it'd be chaos. Especially if they're panicking. If we're going to do this, I would suggest we try practice runs."

"Like a fire drill?" asked Scott.

"Yes, exactly."

"That would require telling the elves what's happening. Wouldn't that make them panic?"

"They have a right to know what's coming," argued Carol. "Better they face it now then have them panic if and when the time comes. I was a high school principal. I've organized fire drills before. This should be no different."

"I would suggest appointing the department heads as team leaders," said Quinton. He crossed his arms and leaned casually against the desk. "That's how we did it when we ousted your predecessor. It worked quite well."

"So, what?" said Scott. "You had a resistance movement all throughout the Pole using these things?"

"Yes, sir. And I've kept their location a secret until now in case we ever needed them again."

"You mean, in case you needed to stage another coup."

"Exactly. But needs must, I suppose. I can work up a map, if that would be helpful."

"Quinton?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Remind me to never underestimate you again."

Quinton grinned.

"Yes, sir."


The next several weeks somehow passed both frantically and uneventfully. Carol once again took her self-appointed task with the severity of a four-star general, and even Gilrohir was impressed by the near military precision of her drills. She and her husband had debated with the wood elves for many an hour over how much the elves should be told about what the drills were for. Gilrohir was strongly in favor of telling them everything for their own safety. Having seen the gentleness with which Gilrohir tended to deliver news, Orёna and Scott both preferred to keep them in the dark for their own peace of mind. Carol suggested an option somewhere between the two, giving an indication of the threat that awaited them, but leaving out the more "R-rated" details. Bernard listened to their arguments and then shocked everyone, including himself, by more or less siding with Gilrohir.

"Believe me, nobody wants the elves panicking less than me, but with Audrey in the know, and no one thinking to swear her to secrecy, they probably know most of it already. We did already announce it in front of them. And the rumor mill being what it is, they've probably come up with something even worse in their imaginations . And after what we've been through, I think they can handle it."

"I don't know, Number One."

"Sir, I kept a secret like this from them before. I thought I was protecting them too. I was wrong."

In the end, they opted for Carol's approach and gathered the elves on the floor of the factory for an abbreviated debriefing of the Erlking's past, present, and suspected future. Elrodan gave a censored version of his speech from before, this time punctuated by Santa assuring them that it was unlikely anything would actually happen, and if it did, they were taking precautions, and isn't it nice we have all these warriors here with their swords?

While Carol organized drills, Orёna and her apprentice, a young elf maiden named Naurelin, took over the Pole's infirmary. The Pole did indeed have one, but clever workers the elves were, they seldom had a need for it. The young elf physician in charge conceded he was not up to the task of handling battle injuries, and he happily gave Orёna control over the whole operation and offered to act as her assistant. The three of them transformed the infirmary into a proper healing house and triage clinic in timing that would have put Santa himself to shame. Some of the other departments were assigned other extraneous tasks for the wood elves. For most of the young elves though, their task was simple: keep calm, keep working, and if the alarm sounds, go where you're told.

The entire collective mood of the Pole had changed almost overnight. Before all the elves seemed overjoyed to get to know one another. Now the wood elves' demeanor had grown somber and anxious. They would look over their shoulders at any noise, even the lightest footfall, and often instead of some shadowy figure, they would find half a dozen or so younger elves who had left their toy-making and nervously followed their older and stronger counterparts like ducklings. The wood elves could do little more than to take the Hollin children by the hand and lead them back to their stations with hollow reassurances. Gilrohir had sent a long overdue pair of scouts to Elbereth with an update on the current situation and a request for aid, but that did little to alleviate the tension.

There seemed precious little for Bernard to do. Battening down the hatches had left many of their elves, especially the youngest ones, nervous and skittish. Bernard took it upon himself to keep them at their work, occasionally taking a moment to reassure them that the drills were just a precaution and there was nothing to worry about and no, there was not a dragon or a Martian battle fleet or anything like that headed their way. He felt guilty for the borderline lie, but it felt equally wrong to whip them up into a frenzy over something that may never happen. Besides, how could he possibly make real the impending threat when he barely understood it himself?

Apart from his own nerves, he could no longer deny the real truth to himself. He missed Lydia. Badly. He wanted her to reassure him that the comforting words he spoke to the elves were not a lie. He needed to hear her say it would all be fine. He found himself longing for her touch on his hands or his face like she had done before. Bernard desperately wanted to know her thoughts, for her to open up to him again. Was she scared? Was she confident? Was she just as confused and lost as he was? How much did any of this mean to her, since it meant so little to him? He felt he could reconcile his own feelings, if only he could work his way through the tangled labyrinth of time and space to hers.

Unfortunately, he now had little opportunity for any of these things. Gilrohir monopolized her time, and now she trained from the first light of day until the last and often long after that. On the few occasions when she did not have a sword or a bow in her hand, Bernard could never seem to find her. She was never in her tent, and if any of the wood elves had any idea where she went in her free time, they kept it to themselves. So in his spare moments, Bernard could do nothing but return to the training grounds and watch her from his spot in the trees.

Lydia took a hard hit to the side and tumbled to the ground. Her helmet fell off as she rolled several feet and came to a stop face-down. Her back was covered in snow, and several large strands of her hair had fallen free of their braid. She did not get up.

"What's going on?"

Bernard jumped as Santa's mittened hand came down on top of his shoulder. "Ouch. That looked painful."

Gilrohir shouted loud enough for them to hear as far away as they were. Bernard crossed his arms and restrained himself from marching down to the clearing and doing some shouting himself.

"I can hear your teeth grinding from here."

"Can you blame me?"

"He's a bit rough around the edges. But he's like a drill sergeant. He's supposed to be tough on them."

"But he's not like this with any of the other elves. Yeah he's tough, but not like this."

"She's younger than all of them. She's younger than you. These guys have been doing this for centuries. Maybe he's trying to get her caught up."

"Maybe," grumbled Bernard.

"This is good, though. Right? Last time you saw her, she got killed. Now she'll be prepared for next time."

"What. Next. Time?!" said Bernard, throwing his hands in the air. He lowered his voice. "What are they preparing her for?"

His boss looked at him bemused. "In case that Erlking guy shows up."

Bernard shook his head, unconvinced. Scott watched him for a moment then spoke again.

"Tell me the truth. Do you dislike him for him? Or because he's spending so much time with your girl?"

"I am not jealous of Gilrohir."

"Is it the hair?"

"What?"

"He's got that long, flowing, golden blond hair. Sure you've got those thick dark curls that the girls always like to gawk at, but now you've got some competition in the Hair Department."

Bernard closed his eyes tightly and fought the urge to groan.

"Are you done?"

"Sure, sure."

Bernard had known his boss long enough to not trust that. Sure enough, only a few seconds later, he piped up again.

"Is it all of them? Or just him?"

"Sir!"

"Because I think Orёna's alright."

"You just like her because she complimented your beard."

"It's nice to have someone appreciate it, considering I grew it against my will!"

Bernard's rebuttal was cut short as Orёna rushed into the clearing. Gilrohir was still venting at his protege as Orёna put both hands on Lydia's shoulders and lifted her easily to her feet. She looked hard into Lydia's face and touched her lightly on the forehead. Turning on Gilrohir, she cut off his shouting by barking at him in a clipped, glotteral language that was definitely not Elvish. They had no idea what she was yelling at her captain, but even taking the growling dialect out of the equation, it was clear Orёna was furious. To Bernard and Scott's surprise, Gilrohir looked chastened, and as Orёna escorted Lydia out of the sparring field and into a tent, Gilrohir did not try to stop them.

"Huh," mused Scott. "Makes you wonder what the magic words are."

He shook his head, gave Bernard one last pat on the shoulder, then left the Head Elf to his thoughts.

Bernard could not bring himself to care about the Erlking. The name belonged to some intangible thing, an abstract concept without shape. Yet if he dug deep, there was something more. Alone in his room, he had once forced himself to say the name out loud. His mind conjured a storm, a dark, twisted forest, and a terrible fog that reached for him with finger-like tendrils and whispered his name. It was a nightmare he had long forgotten. He'd shaken the fog and the forest from his head and never spoke the name again.

He focused on his duties, which now mostly consisted corralling the elves, and stubbornly pretended all was normal. But he felt the familiar pangs of longing and loneliness as an ever present ache. Ultimately whether that nightmare returned for them or not, he could do nothing about it. So he turned his attention to Lydia. If he could not see her, if she would not see him, and if those medieval torture sessions Gilrohir called training were a responsibility as inescapable as his own, then perhaps there was something he could for her.

He returned to his bedroom, dug through his dresser drawers, and found the jar he had not had cause to open in many a year. Hoping it had not lost its potency, he twisted off the lid, and immediately the pungent aroma wafted into the room. Quinton was a man - or elf, rather - of many talents.

"It sort of works by wishing," he remembered Quinton had said.

Bernard twisted the lid back onto the jar, pocketed it, then went back outside. To Bernard's relief, Gilrohir had gone to be tyrannical someplace else. He found Orёna standing outside with her hands on her hips looking cross.

"Orёna?"

She turned around.

Several emotions passed over her face so quickly, he couldn't properly interpret any of them.

"Yes?"

"I wanted to ask you something. About Lydia."

"Alright," she said. Bernard could tell she was deliberately keeping her tone neutral.

"Is she okay? I've tried to talk to her, but she's always busy."

"Gilrohir is training her very hard. Which you know, considering how often you've been watching her."

"You saw me?"

"You made little effort to conceal yourself, at least not up to a wood elf's standards. You saw what happened."

"Yeah." Now he was the one keeping his tone neutral, as he tried very hard to keep the unspoken "I have a strong urge to punch your boss, but I won't, because I am above that and also he can take me" out of his voice.

"Gilrohir is concerned about what may happen if the Erlking returns. I assume none of you have ever picked up a weapon?"

"No," Bernard admitted. "But-"

"I've told Gilrohir to take it easier on her."

"Was she hurt?"

"Cuts and bruises happen," said Orёna with a shrug.

"It's just, I have this stuff." He pulled the jar out of his bag. "Quinton gave it to me. It's good for bruises and sore muscles. Stuff like that. He gave it to me when Lydia was here last time. When he - well, when I needed it."

Orёna opened the jar and sniffed the liniment. She dipped a finger into the jar and rubbed a dab of it between her forefinger and thumb.

"It's got some sort of magical properties. Quinton would explain it better."

"This is interesting. And powerful. What need did you have of this? Are injuries common to you?"

"No, but one of my boss's predecessors was…" Bernard struggled suddenly to speak. "I don't really like talking about it, but that came in handy until we got rid of him."

"I think I've heard your fellow speak of him. He mistreated you?"

"That's putting it lightly, but yeah."

Orёna stared at him with that impenetrable expression again. She said nothing.

"Anyway," said Bernard. "I thought that might help her."

"I'll see that she gets it, sir."

The entire interaction seem to perplex both of them but for entirely different reasons. Bernard had grown begrudgingly accustomed to the way the wood elves stared at him, but Orёna's expression was different somehow. Recently he had gotten the impression that the normally jovial half-dwarven elf lady did not like him. If he could have put words to her expression on seeing him mere moments previously, they would likely have been "oh, what now?" Now she seemed unsure what to make of him.

Bernard decided to let her figure it out on her own. He muttered a thanks, turned away from her bemused frown, and made his way back inside, waiting until his door was shut behind him before shaking his head and uttering a disdainful "wood elves" under his breath.

The Pole, he thought, was getting entirely too crowded.


One night Scott, Orёna, and Quinton sat together at their leisure at one of the long benched tables that had been assembled outside for the wood elves' use. They had eaten dinner, and Orёna had just started in on her fourth tankard of cocoa. Scott watched her pour three handfuls of marshmallows into the tankard with a look of impressed disgust. She stirred them in and took a satisfied sip which drained half the tankard. Before she could finish it off, Scott spoke up.

"Do you really think he's coming here?" he asked.

Orёna looked up sharply from her tankard. She slowly, deliberately lowered it to the table and ran her finger along its rim for a few moments before answering.

"I hope not. But without knowing for certain he's dead, and given what we know, my hopes any my expectations may not be close enough to shake hands any time soon. It may be nothing, but I'd rather prepare ourselves for a day that never comes than cross our fingers and nothing more."

"I don't understand why he's waited so long to attack. Sure most adults don't think this place is real, but if he looking for elves, this should have been the first place he looked."

"The war with our people left him very weak. Elrodan believes he used his last energy to flee here. He's been in hiding ever since, perhaps using children as some kind of energy source, destroying them and gobbling up their life force like waybread."

Scott stared at her as though he had just witnessed her swallow a live mouse. Orёna shrugged.

"The lads know more about it than I do," she explained. Scott's expression did not change.

"Okay, can we change the subject please?" he said.

Orёna cleared her throat and obliged.

"I've taken a look at those tunnels of yours," she said, giving Quinton a gentle nudge with her elbow. "I know dwarven work when I see it."

"You think this advisor you spoke of built them?" asked Quinton.

"If I had to guess, I'd say so. You've updated the designs as you added to them, didn't you?"

"Using more modern engineering, yes."

"I don't think 'bored' quite covers it, Quinton," interjected Scott. "Between you and Audrey, I'm starting to get really curious about what you guys get up to when I'm not looking. Curious and concerned."

"There's still the mystery of how you lot ended up here of all places," Orёna continued. "I think I'm starting to piece it together, but it bothers me not to know exactly what happened."

"You want to talk about mysteries, let's address that right there," said Scott.

He pointed to where Gilrohir sat at another table with a dagger in one hand and a whetstone in the other, sharpening the blade. Elrodan lay near him with his head in the elf captain's lap, engrossed in a book which he held above his head.

"How does that even happen? One's like if a cactus learned to use a sword, and the other is what Velma from Scooby-doo would be like if she was a guy. I mean one of them should be wearing bifocals and elbow patches, and the other needs a warning label that says 'INTERACT AT OWN RISK.' As an item, they make no sense."

Orёna chuckled, but her coppery eyes suddenly seemed to look far away.

"It all started while Elrodan was in training under Gilrohir," she began. "I was apprenticed under my father at the time. He's a healer. I'd done combat training under Gilrohir for a while too, but you know how he is already. He doesn't let anyone in. I hardly knew Elrodan at all. Anyway, I was coming back after being away on some business with my mother's people. They were out on a hunt, nearing nightfall, when the boar they were after turned on them. Massive thing it was, at least ten feet long, with tusks the length of my forearm. Gilrohir tried to fell the beast, but Elrodan took a blow for him. I saw it happen a furlong away and put an arrow in the creature. Gilrohir finished it off.

"Elrodan was in a bad way, gashes a foot long all across his chest. The thing had trampled him good too, so his ribs were all broken in, and he could barely breathe. I took him to the healers, and my father fixed him up. But Gilrohir, I'd never seen him like that. It was the first and only time I'd ever seen him truly shaken. Never before and never since. He stayed by Elrodan's side for near a fortnight until he was in the pink again. Since then, Gilrohir's had me at his right side, and Elrodan at his left. That's the way it is sometimes, when you go through something like that."

She nudged Quinton again with her elbow and picked up her tankard. "I suspect you know what that's like?"

Quinton smiled sadly. "Yes, I think I do."


"How many times are you going to read that book?" asked Gilrohir, not looking up from his work.

"As many as I like," retorted Elrodan. He turned the page and inhaled the singular musty vanilla smell of an old volume.

"I do not understand what has you so transfixed. Mortals have such short lives. What could they possibly have to write about?"

Elrodan hummed and did not look up from the page.

"I think Orёna's right. You are a snob."

"Perhaps. But you have not answered the question."

"It is precisely because of their 'short lives' that their literature is so fascinating. They have such an intimate relationship with death. They feel everything, and they feel it passionately, because they know they have so little time to do it. They waste not a moment, because they know each one could be their last. Listen to this."

'I wage not any feud with Death for changes wrought on form or face.

No lower life that Earth's embrace may breed with him can fright my faith.

Eternal process moving on, from state to state the spirit walks,

And these are but the shattered stalks or ruined chrysalis of one.

For this alone on Death I wreak the wrath that garners in my heart

He put our lives so far apart we cannot hear each other speak.'

After Elrodan finished his recitation, several moments passed in silence, and Gilrohir had not responded.

"You aren't listening at all, are you?"

"Of course I was, how dare you," answered Gilrohir crossly. Elrodan looked back at him with an expression which clearly said "I do dare."

"I suppose the piece has some merit," Gilrohir conceded, prompting an satisfied grin from his companion, who quickly buried himself back in his book.

With a growl of frustration, Gilrohir threw the whetstone onto the table.

"What is it now?" asked Elrodan patiently.

"It's no use. If we have to rely on whetstones to sharpen our blades, we're lost. We need a proper smithy, and there is likely not one for hundreds of miles at least."

Elrodan sighed and closed the book over his finger, using the digit as a bookmark.

"You need not despair. Young though they are, they are clever and crafty workers. Imharion has already taught a group of them to fletch arrows. Some of them already knew how, from days when the craft was more popular here, and only needed reminding. Other picked it up quickly. So we shall not be short on arrows at least."

"You are the eternal optimist."

"Someone should balance you out. If everyone acted like storm clouds, it would rain all the time. What's life without a little sunlight?"

"You've been reading too much poetry, I think," said Gilrohir, yanking the book out of Elrodan's hands.

"Thief!" protested Elrodan. He attempted to reclaim it, but Gilrohir held it aloft out of reach.

"Mr. Gilrohir?"

The elven captain started at being addressed this way. He turned and Elrodan rose up out of his lap. A young elf, long and gangly with fiery red hair and a face full of freckles, stood before them.

"I overheard you say you wanted something to sharpen your swords on? Would any blade sharpener work?"

"It would have to be quite large," said Elrodan. Gilrohir continued frowning, still a bit confounded. None of the young elves at the Pole had ever directly addressed him before.

"Well we have a mechanical sharpener. It's pretty big."

"What on earth do you use that for?"

"Ice skates. A dull skate won't work on the ice. They have to be sharp. If you think it'll work for a sword, you're free to use it."

"Show me," said Gilrohir at once. He attempted to stand, but Elrodan stayed him with a hand on his arm.

"Halt," said Elrodan, a light scolding tone is his lilting voice. To the shock of the young elf, the commander obeyed. "You may show us tomorrow. What is your name?"

"Louis. I work in the stables with the reindeer."

"Thank you, Louis. If the machine is fit for the task, we shall be very grateful," said Elrodan, and he plucked the book out of Gilrohir's hand and laid his head back down in his lap, never seeing the vexation on Louis's face as he walked away shaking his head.


Bernard sat on a stool before the grand arrangement of glass tubes and beakers and other scientific apparatus in Quinton's laboratory and willed himself not to fiddle with anything. A flask full of milky white liquid simmered over a bunsen burner. Steam furled out of it like ribbon candy. Bernard leaned over the flask and tried to determine by sight and smell what the Pole's resident mad scientist might be working on. As his face inched closer toward it, the liquid stirred violently and began to foam.

"No, no, no, don't do that!"

In his panic, Bernard very nearly made the egregious error of grabbing the flask with his bare hands, when a stern voice rang out.

"Don't!"

Quinton had materialized in the doorway. Without a word, he walked to his lab bench, flicked off the bunsen burner and, using a padded pot holder, removed the flask onto a trivet which sat on the worn wooden counter. He then pulled out a plastic tupperware container which held what looked to Bernard like waxy brown pencil shavings. Quinton picked up a healthy pinch of these, dropped them into the flask, and stirred the contents with a clean glass stirring rod. Once the mixture had turned a robust, creamy brown, he poured it into a mug, dropped in a handful of marshmallows, and sat on the stool next to Bernard to enjoy his cocoa.

"Ahhhh," he sighed contentedly. "Not quite up to Judy's standards, but it does it the spot nicely."

"Why don't you just call the kitchens?"

"They've got quite enough to do at the moment. Can I tempt you? It's not quite as good as what the girls make, but it's far better than those abominable powdered mixes."

"I'm good, thanks."

"Suit yourself."

Instead of a cup of cocoa, they shared an awkward silence. Quinton drummed his fingers on the side of his mug.

"I haven't seen much of you lately," he said.

"I've been busy."

"I see. And here I thought you'd been avoiding me. Oh, no. That's right. It's Lydia you've been avoiding. Silly me."

"Don't start."

"You're going to lose her."

"Quinton," growled Bernard.

"Well? What do you want me to say? You obviously didn't come down here to discuss my latest experiments, no, you never do, do you? So why don't we skip your usual stubborn prevaricating and get right to the part where I try to help you fix the mess you've made, so that we can then get to the part where you don't listen to me and make an even bigger mess of things, so I can get that part over with so I can actually get some work done today?"

"Are you done?"

"Are you ready to actually have a conversation with another person? Because if not, I've got at least three hundred years worth of ranting left in me."

Bernard stared into the persistent face of his nearest friend and felt himself wilt.

"I know I mess up, okay? I know I've been avoiding her, and I know it was stupid, but now I want to talk to her, and I can't. Gilrohir's got her training night and day, and when she's not out there having the tar kicked out of her, I can't find her anywhere."

"Well I'm not surprised. She spends every waking moment getting run into the ground, the elves' answer to the boogeyman is after us, and her best friend is giving her the cold shoulder, if you pardon the pun. Of course she seeks solitude."

"Quinton," said Bernard desperately. "What do I do?"

Quinton sighed.

"Bernard, you live here. If you want to talk to someone, talk to them. You don't need Gilrohir's permission. Just walk up to her and say, 'I need to talk to you' and off you go. If Gilrohir gives you trouble, ignore it. Since when are you one to be intimidated by someone like Gilrohir?"

Bernard let out a breath.

"Right. Okay. You're right." He stood up and straightened his tunic and beret. "How do I look?"

"Like a prat wearing a funny hat," said Quinton as he nonchalantly stirred his cocoa.

Bernard narrowed his eyes and shot Quinton a strong death glare. Quinton kept stirring with only an impish glint in his eyes to betray his amusement. They maintained this contest of wills for a few moments until Bernard rolled his eyes.

"I give up," he said. "I'm leaving."

But as he grabbed his duster off the back of his chair, a sharp horn called from outside. It was none of the rhythmic calls that Gilrohir had used when summoning the wood elves, but a constant sounding noise that repeated again and again without abate. Quinton rose from his chair.

"Tell me that's not what I think it is," said Bernard. He hoped badly it was another drill, but some instinct told him this was not so. He looked at Quinton, who looked back at him wide-eyed, and Bernard felt his heart sink. The normally implacable scientist looked frightened.

"Someone's sounded the alarm," said Quinton. Bernard shook his head, not comprehending the words. "He's here. The Erlking is here."


A/N: I have no idea if a skate sharpening machine could be used to sharpen a sword. Call it artistic license and let me go to my grave ignorant.

The poem Elrodan is reading is a stanza from "In Memoriam" by Alfred Lord Tennyson. You might be familiar with another part of it if you've seen Hellboy 2. Abe Sapien reads Section 50, the one that starts "Be near me when my light is low." I think I may be far too nerdy for my own good. But it's a wonderful poem, if very long, so I'd give it a read if you're into that sort of thing.