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Chapter 8

The Sixth Day - Morning

The sun rose and shined brightly over Imladris, inviting its occupants to bask in its rays while relaxing under the cloudless, blue sky. To all it seemed the perfect morning, and the best day for a festival to begin, or at least, for most; we must not forget the few trapped in the caves. These few miserable elves were still suffering from the effects of last night's storm, which hadn't ended until only an hour or so before the sunrise.

The rain had caused so much excess water to enter the rivers and streams that they were still at risk of being drowned; indeed, the water was now up to the elflings chests, and in Lindir's case, almost up to his neck. It also didn't help that all five of the elflings were nearly about to pass out from exhaustion.

However, their absence was soon going to be noticed…

~.- Celebrian's POV -.~

Yawning, Celebrian made her way to the twins room and knocked, "Elladan, Elrohir, it's time to get up."

The groans and complaints that usually issued forth from the room at this announcement were not heard, and Celebrian frowned, "Elladan? Elrohir? You two need to get up now."

The room was still completely silent and Celebrian sighed before pushing the door open, "Elladan! Elrohir! You need-,"

Celebrian abruptly fell silent as she took in the sight that awaited her; the twins' beds had been stripped bare, the blankets and sheets used to create a rope that was tied to one of the bed posts and extended out the window.

"Elladan?! Elrohir?!" Celebrian called, now sounding somewhat worried.

When no answer was forth coming, she made her way towards the open window and peered out of it; dreading what she might find. However, neither of the twins' bodies lay at the bottom of their makeshift rope, much to her relief. Her relief did not last long though, but instead faded away to anxiety, and then came the inevitable question: where were they?

Meanwhile, this question was also pondered by four others as they also tried to figure out where their respective charges may have gone, but, when no answer could be found and neither could the elflings, the five elves soon found themselves becoming increasingly frantic. Soon the group of panicked elves had spread to include many more, all searching for the elflings who had dared be so foolish as to wander away in a storm. However, there was one noticeably missing in the groups looking for the elflings:

"Where on Arda is Glorfindel?" asked Elrond, looking about as if he expected the Balrog-slayer to suddenly appear.

"Undoubtedly, he is still asleep," growled Thranduil, running a hand through his hair out of anxiety.

"My advisor is far more responsible than that!" Elrond began heatedly, glaring at the king.

"Then where is he?!" Thranduil shouted back.

"He's probably searching for our sons!"

"Then why are we waiting here!"

"What?"

"I thought we were waiting for your idiot of an advisor to arrive before we began searching for our sons ourselves!"

"As much as I respect you, King Thranduil, I would really prefer that you not call Glorfindel an idiot!"

Erestor sighed as he watched two of the most powerful beings in Middle Earth reduce themselves to quarrelling fools. Surely the realized there was more important things to be doing? However, two minutes later, Lord Elrond and King Thranduil still showed no signs of stopping, and had completely gotten off the topic of whether Glorfindel was an idiot. Instead, they had changed the subject in favor of the topic of whether the Lord of Rivendell and the King of Greenwood were idiots or not, and Erestor decided something really must be done.

"My Lord, your Highness, as… important as your disagreement is, isn't there something else you should be focused on at this time?"

Both Elrond and Thranduil looked rather ashamed after his statement, much to Erestor's satisfaction.

"Right, of course," Elrond stated, still looking abashed, "We should begin searching the Last Homely House immediately."

Thranduil gave him a dubious look, "Why would we search inside this house, when it is clear that our sons have left it?"

Elrond began to glare at Thranduil once more, "Because I fail to see why our sons would have stayed outside when the weather was so terrible."

"And I really think that if our sons were inside this house, they would have realized the problems they have caused and shown themselves by now!"

Erestor sighed, here we go again…

~.-Meanwhile-.~

Orophin stood to the side of Rumil, who was kneeling on the ground and studying it intently.

"Found anything yet?" Orophin asked anxiously.

"Yes, I actually have found something," answered Rumil, studying an imprint in the ground, "We've been following a deer."

"Rumil!" shouted Orophin, looking exasperated.

"Sorry!" Rumil exclaimed back, "But the rain washed away most of the tracks!"

"We need to find Haldir now," Orophin stressed the last word, "Before he gets into trouble."

Rumil didn't look particularly worried, "Ah, you know Haldir, he probably just wandered off somewhere and accidently fell asleep."

"Rumil!" Orophin howled, "He wandered off in the middle of a storm! Is that not a cause of worry for you?!"

"Right! Of course it is!" answered Rumil, sounding as though he was only saying this to appease his brother, "We should go back and try to pick up the trail again."

"Exactly," growled Orophin, "And this time it had better be the right one."

Rumil nodded hastily, looking warily at his increasingly irritable brother.

Running back to where the trail had last split off, Rumil once again began to study the ground, this time making sure the tracks actually belonged to an elfling before beginning to follow them. Orophin followed his brother, becoming rather ill-tempered with Rumil's slow process.

"Are you getting anywhere?" He snapped, his arms crossed over his chest, and tapping his foot on the ground impatiently.

"Patience, brother, these sorts of things take time. In other news however, these are definitely Haldir's tracks," Rumil answered, plucking a light blonde hair from the ground.

Orophin snatched the hair away from his brother, and stared at it closely. He then smiled, "So they are, brother! Carry on then."

Rumil muttered something about 'don't trust me at all,' causing Orophin to raise an eyebrow, "What was that? I didn't quite catch it."

"Nothing!" Rumil exclaimed hastily, and began studying the tracks with slightly more determination. If finding Haldir put Orophin's mind at ease, and made him stop being so pestering, then finding Haldir was most definitely at the top of Rumil's priorities.

A few minutes later, Rumil and Orophin found themselves in a small clearing backed by a tall cliff. Rumil continued studying the tracks until he reached a spot in front of the cliff where the ground had recently been disturbed, "The tracks disappear here."

Orophin looked horrified, "He didn't climb the cliff, did he?!"

"No…," Rumil studied the face of the cliff; there appeared to be an area where there had once been a cave entrance, but it was now blocked by rocks.

He examined the disturbed area of ground in front of the entrance and realized that the cave in had occurred recently, very recently in fact. Finally realizing what had happened to his dear brother, Rumil flung himself towards the blocked off cave entrance, "HALDIR! HALDIR!? ARE YOU IN THERE?!"

Inside the cave, Legolas suddenly started, "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Elrohir asked, sounding exhausted.

"I think someone outside is yelling," Legolas answered, listening hard, "Hey! Haldir, I think it's Rumil and Orophin!"

Haldir looked up in surprise, "Really?!"

Haldir began yelling; calling to his brothers for help and the other elflings soon joined him.

Outside, Rumil nearly danced for joy when he heard his brother's responding shouts, and Orophin looked as though he was about to pass out from relief.

"Quick, brother!" Rumil exclaimed, "Go tell Lord Elrond, King Thranduil, and Maenor that we have found their sons!"

"What!? I'm not leaving!" Orophin argued.

"But I-," Rumil began only for Orophin to give him a death glare, "Okay, I'm going!" Rumil amended hastily.

Rumil sprinted back towards the Last Homely House and soon found King Thranduil, who was searching the gardens for his son.

"I see why Lord Elrond wanted to search inside the house," Thranduil was grumbling to himself. "This is ridiculous. Why must there be so many hedges? It is impossible to find anything in here, let alone an elfling who does not want to be found… Ow! Since when did Begonias have thorns!?"

Rumil paused behind the king, "Your highness, those are roses."

"Ah, right, of course they are," Thranduil agreed, hastily turning to face Rumil, "So, what is it? Make it quick; I'm rather busy at the moment."

"Your Highness," Rumil began beaming, "My brother and I have found your son!"

For a moment, Thranduil was completely speechless, staring at Rumil blankly, then, "What!? Where is he?! Is he alright?" Thranduil shouted, looking panicked.

"He, my brother, Lindir, and lord Elrond's sons are all trapped in cave not far from here," Thranduil suddenly turned white, and Rumil quickly added, "But besides that, I believe they are fine."

Thranduil did not look relieved, "Tell me where the cave is immediately!"

Rumil did so, and Thranduil left at once; not running, but close to it. Rumil then went to find Lord Elrond, and several minutes later, he came upon the Lord who, like King Thranduil, was also muttering to himself.

"What is the point of having foresight, if it never works when you need it?!" Elrond ranted while pacing a hallway, "I could have found them ages ago if-," Elrond abruptly fell silent and swirled around to face Rumil, "Rumil! Where are my sons?!" then, before Rumil could respond, Elrond exclaimed, "Ah! The caves!" and swept off towards the doors of the Last Homely House.

This time, it was Rumil who was left speechless, but, when he had recovered, he went to go find Lindir's father; wondering if, and hoping that Galadriel was not nearby, all elven nobles were insane.

~.-Meanwhile-.~

Lindir clung to one of the barrels of enchanted water as, though it was partially submerged, it was the only thing keeping him from drowning. Nearby, Legolas, Haldir, and the twins stood on their toes to keep their heads from going beneath the water. At the moment, even though they had now been found, their situation was looking rather dire.

"Erm, Orophin," Legolas began in a conversational sort of voice, "You wouldn't happen to have an idea of how long it is going to take to get us out of here, would you?"

Orophin chuckled before saying in a teasing manner, "What is wrong, Prince? You're not afraid of bats are you?"

"I like bats," Haldir stated suddenly, "They're kind of like butterflies."

The elflings, in their sleep deprived and rather stressed out states, for some reason found this comment immensely amusing, and Orophin suddenly became anxious as he listened to them howl with laughter over one of his brother's ridiculous remarks.

"Are you all alright in there?" Orophin asked nervously, hoping that they weren't going insane.

"Oh we're fine," Elrohir giggled uncontrollably, "We're about to be drowned, but we are completely fine."

Another roar of laughter came from inside the cave after this comment and Orophin wasn't sure as to whether he should take Elrohir's remark seriously or not. Suddenly, before Orophin could think of how to answer, Thranduil swept into the clearing and towards the cave.

"Orophin! How is my son?" Thranduil asked, looking worried.

From inside the cave more laughter could be heard.

"Adar! Is that you?" for some reason Legolas sounded oddly choked, "Make Haldir stop making me laugh! I'm going to drown!"

Thranduil stared blankly at the blocked cave entrance, "Drown?"

Orophin shrugged, "I'm not entirely sure as to what is going on in there, your Highness."

Thranduil sighed, "Legolas, can you tell me exactly what has happened?"

"Of course Adar," Legolas giggled, "We came out here in the middle of a storm, then the cave entrance collapsed so we couldn't get out, and now we're going to drown," Legolas suddenly dissolved into hysterical laughter, "B-because, t-the pool o-overflowed and we now h-have w-water up to our n-necks!"

Legolas's hysterical laughter was suddenly cut off by a great deal of coughing, choking, and sputtering. He had apparently collapsed into the water do to laughter.

"Legolas, I want you to listen to me very carefully," Thranduil began sternly, "If I even hear a single peep of laughter after this point onwards, you will be grounded from training for the next age."

From inside the cave there came a very serious, "Yes, Adar."

Outside the cave, Elrond had finally arrived, "Don't you think that's a bit harsh?" He asked, looking confused; he had apparently only heard the end of the conversation. However, after everything had been explained to him, he was all for the punishment Thranduil had come up with, as were Rumil and Maenor when they showed up.

"Just a little longer, young ones, and then you will be out of there," Rumil said cheerfully, "Erestor is gathering together a group of elves to help."

"Oh, good, because I'm hungry."

"And I'm cold," Erohir added.

"And I want to go to bed," Legolas agreed.

"And I don't want to be wet anymore," Lindir decided to give his opinion.

"And I need to feed Fuzzy," Haldir finished.

Orophin looked confused, "Who's Fuzzy?"

"Oh, nobody," Haldir answered, sounding far too nonchalant.

Haldir was spared Orophin's interrogation by the group of elves Erestor had gathered together arriving. They set to work immediately, trying to clear the rocks, however, the cave was still filling up with water. Soon, all the elflings were clinging to barrels to keep from drowning.

"There has to be a better way to get to them," Elrond muttered to himself while pacing, "This is taking far too long."

"We can't get to them through where the waterfall enters the cave?" Thranduil asked, looking very worried.

"Possibly," Elrond sighed, "But the only way to get there is by climbing this cliff."

Thranduil, Maenor, Rumil, and Orophin studied the cliff's sheer face. It was tall enough that if someone were to fall after having climbed only halfway up it, they would risk seriously injuring themselves, and, if they were to fall from higher than that, well, the consequences would be severe.

"And I'm fairly sure that climbing it would a very foolish thing to do," Elrond finished.

Orophin sighed in disappointment, "Ah, you're probably right. Rumil-," Orophin turned to face his brother, only to find that he wasn't there, "Rumil?"

Orophin looked about wildly, trying to find his brother. Only, when he actually did spot his brother, he almost wished he hadn't.

"Rumil!" Orophin howled, "Get down from there at once!"

Rumil, however, continued to determinedly climb the cliff; paying no attention to his brother. He had a large coil of rope slung over one shoulder, and a knife in his belt. To an outsider, he would have looked like one of the classic hero characters in a book; a brave young man willing to do anything to save a few innocent children from a terrible fate. However, this was no child's story, and there was no guaranty that there would be a happy ending. One slip of a hand, a single mistake made, and Rumil could easily die.

This thought had clearly occurred to Orophin as he began to curse his brother's stupidity and stubbornness loudly; causing the eyes of the elflings in the cave to go wide. Then the realization that their once naïve and innocent children were being corrupted apparently occurred to the parents of some of these elflings as well, for Orophin suddenly found himself being forcibly shut up.

In the meantime however, Rumil had continued to climb the cliff and was now nearly two thirds of the way up. He grabbed hold of a ledge and Orophin let out a terrified, though rather muffled, shout when it crumbled. For a moment, Rumil swung by only one hand, but then he managed to quickly grab another ledge and keep himself falling from a rather painful and tragic death. He continued to scramble his way up the rest of the cliff, and everyone still at the bottom let out a sigh of relief when he reached the top.

Smiling triumphantly, Rumil made his way over to the large opening where the water fall entered the cave. The water was still rushing in a murky, brown torrent into the caves, and Rumil was forced to yell over the loud roar.

"Can you swim towards the water fall? Then I can lower the rope and you can climb up!"

"We can try!" Elladan shouted back, but looked rather doubtful; there was a very strong current coming in from the cavern where the waterfall was.

Clinging onto their barrels, the elflings began to kick and paddle their way towards the water fall. However, as soon as they got close to the entrance into the cavern, they were immediately pushed away by the current, and it wasn't long before all five elflings were exhausted.

"I'm sorry!" Lindir howled, looking close to tears, "I can't do it Rumil! The current is too strong!"

The other elflings would have agreed with him, but they were too exhausted to do much more than nod their heads sleepily.

Outside of the cave, the elves looked at each other worriedly, that was all the elves except for Elrond. He appeared to be contemplating some sort of agonizingly difficult decision instead of sharing in the other elves anxiety. Then, he suddenly raised his hand and the roar of the waterfall was abruptly cut off.

For a moment, no one said anything, and many elves looked very confused at what had just happened. Then a quite murmur of voices stirred as the rescue party of elves began to discuss this new shocking development; staring at Elrond in awe. Meanwhile, Orophin gaped at the lord of Rivendell while Thranduil, Erestor, and Maenor gazed at him with unreadable expressions on their faces.

"Erm, okay then," came Rumil's rather confused voice from the top of the cliff, as he wasn't entirely sure what had just happened, but wasn't about to question it as it was helping, "Now you can swim towards me?"

The only response from the elflings was the sound of splashing as they began to make their way towards the opening. Soon Rumil had five rather miserable looking elflings staring up at him tiredly.

"Right," said Rumil, trying to stay cheerful in the face of this gloom, "Now I'm going to lower the rope and you can climb out of there."

The elflings didn't reply and continued to stare at him blankly, it was clear that they were completely exhausted and Rumil realized that this might interfere slightly with his rope climbing plan. Sure enough, when Rumil had secured the rope to a nearby tree and lowered it into the cavern, Legolas only made it a quarter of the way up before his hands slipped and he crashed back into the water. This wasn't particularly concerning, after all he could always try again, but the fact that Legolas didn't come back up to the surface of the water after falling into it, was a cause for panic.

"Legolas!? LEGOLAS!" Rumil shouted, looking desperately for any sign of Legolas in the dark water, "Try to find him before he drowns!" he called to the other four elflings.

The elflings began to swim around where Legolas had fallen into the water, but in their exhausted state they weren't making much progress.

"How deep is this pool?" Haldir asked, trying to peer through the black water.

"I don't know," answered Elrohir, trying to search for his friend with his feet, "No one has ever reached the bottom."

Immediately after this comment, something large crashed into the pool, and a wave of water washed over the elflings. For a single extremely sleep deprived moment, Elrohir wondered why Rumil had taken his statement as a challenge to try and find the bottom of the pool, before realizing that Rumil probably wanted to find Legolas before he discovered the bottom of the pool.

While Elrohir's rather fatigued brain contemplated whether it would really count as discovering something if you were dead, Rumil swam deeper into the pool. The water surrounding him became freezing cold, and it was impossible to see anything through the dark water. Soon the pressure of the water around him was making it increasingly hard to continue and just when he thought he would have to return to the surface for air, the slight glow of an elven body alerted him to Legolas's presence. Rumil frantically swam over to the nearly unconscious elfling and, grabbing onto his hand, began to pull him towards the surface.

After what seemed to be an eternity, and when his lungs were burning and black spots had appeared in his vision from lack of oxygen, Rumil's head broke through the water. Taking in large gulps of much needed air, Rumil pulled Legolas up the rest of the way and the elfling immediately began coughing and sputtering. Nearby, the other elflings let out relieved exclamations and helped keep Legolas from sinking back beneath the water. Outside, Thranduil was frantically asking for news on his son's condition.

"Everything's fine," Rumil answered the muffled shouts, "I think…"

Legolas managed to nod his agreement through his coughing and choking.

"Right then," Rumil grinned at the elflings after a moment, in hopes of cheering them up slightly, "Let's get out of here."

Instructing Legolas to hold on to his shoulders and wrap his legs around his waist, Rumil began to climb the rope with the small, shivering elfling clinging onto his back. Once he had reached the top, Rumil dove back into the pool and collected another elfling. This slow process continued until all the elflings where at the top of the cliff.

"Is everyone out of the caves?" Elrond called.

Rumil confirmed this and suddenly a loud roar of water could be heard. A massive wave crashed over the top of the cliffs above them, completely soaking Rumil and the elflings once more, before the violent torrent poured into the caves. The power of the water was so great that the ground began to shake and the cracking of rock within the caves could be heard. Without warning, the boulders blocking the entrance of the caves exploded outwards, and water rushed out of the opening bringing with it, strangely enough, ten rather battered Greenwood barrels.

~.-.~

Arda: elvish word for Earth.

Ada/Adar: Dad/Father

Vilya: the elvish ring of power belonging to Elrond. May have the power to heal, preserve, and give the bearer the ability to control some minor elements.

Mwahahaha! Another evil cliff hanger!

So, who is Haldir's new pet, Fuzzy? Have you changed you guess on who the mysterious blue-eyed elf is (shouldn't be too hard now, if it ever was; I've given lots of hints ;D )? Send me a review and tell me what you think, all reviews are appreciated! :D