Sorry it's been rather more than a week since the last installment. Also sorry to keep you in suspense about what happens to Pippin. I'll get to that in the next chapter, hopefully.

OneSizeFitsAll: Sorry to make you wait. Here it is!
Rousdower: Pippin thinks so, too. :D
Lily Lindsey-Aubrey: Pippin's notebook is really easy to write for some reason. Also he is becoming my favourite hobbit, although he wasn't before. I think Billy Boyd singing The Last Goodbye is rapidly winning me over.
Wunderkind: Thank you very much! And I'm glad you like the dark lord!

Chapter 13: How to Have Fun in a Death Camp

Glorfindel was in a death camp. And he was not having fun.

He'd only been there for two days so far. There was only one purpose for Sauron's death camps and that was to kill people. If there was any other purpose it was to get as much work out of them as possible before they died. Glorfindel was trying to move a rock many times larger and even many-er times heavier than himself, his muscles aching and perspiration pouring down his face. He may have once slain a balrog, but that was in the first age and he hadn't gotten any younger since.

"Get a move-on!" shouted his orc overseer.

Glorfindel wedged the rod he was using as a lever further under the rock and put all his weight on it. The rod promptly broke, dumping Glorfindel face first into the mire. He jumped up spouting words he didn't even know he had known. For the millionth time he wished he was safely back in Rivendell, teasing Erestor or playing immature practical jokes on Lindir.

"Cheer up, Goldilocks," said the orc. "Only two more hours and this shift is over."

"Shut up," said Glorfindel. "And don't call me 'Goldilocks.' "

He tried to clean the mud off of his face with his pocket handkerchief. With the aid of a nearby puddle he saw that he had not succeeded. In fact what he saw caused a tear to trickle down his cheek.

"What's the matter?" asked the orc. "What are you crying for?"

Glorfindel sat down, hugged his knees, and buried his face in them. "I hate it here," he sniffed. "Everything's horrible. I look terrible."

"Of course you do," said the orc. "You're an elf. All elves look terrible."

Glorfindel raised his mud be-smirched face from his now mud be-smirched knees and glared haughtily at the offending orc.

"Elves are the fairest of creatures," he said. He did not add that he happened to be the fairest of elves. He wanted to add it but with great modesty he refrained from doing so.

"What?" said the orc, incredulously. "No, they aren't. They're creepy."

"You're calling us creepy?" said Glorfindel. "We're not the ones who are creepy. You are."

"Seriously, elves look like girls."

"Well, you look like - I don't know what. And no, we don't look like girls. - At least," said Glorfindel, thinking of Lindir, "I don't look like a girl."

"But you are a girl."

"I am not a girl!"

The orc looked disgusted.

"Do you mean all this time I've been trying to make a dude stop crying?"

"Well, I don't...cry...very often. Only when I'm undergoing extreme emotional trauma. In fact, I don't think I've cried since the fall of Gondolin."

Glorfindel hastily tried to dry his eyes with his muddy handkerchief, with horrific effect.

"And in that instance," Glorfindel continued with dignity, "I was killed by a balrog."

The orc looked unconvinced by this disclosure.

"I came back to life," Glorfindel explained hastily.

"You're crazy," said the orc. "Which makes you even creepier."

"I'm not creepy!" said Glorfindel in exasperation. "If you think I'm creepy, you should see Erestor."

"So there's elves even creepier than you?" The orc looked interested. "That's cool."

He accosted another orc who happened to be passing by. "Hey, check this out. This one is a dude."

"Really?" said the other orc in amazement.

"And he thinks he was killed by a balrog."

"I was," said Glorfindel. "But I killed it first. I mean, we killed each other. But only I came back to life."

"And he says there are other elves even creepier than he is."

"I'm not creepy."

"Yes, there are," said the other orc. "I've seen some of them. But they're not much creepier."

"Says who?" said the first orc sceptically.

"Says me. I'm a good judge of creepiness."

The two orcs began arguing over this. In the meantime, a third orc came up to Glorfindel and looked him up and down.

"Did you really kill a balrog?" he asked.

"Yes," said Glorfindel smugly.

"Will you teach me how?" said the orc. "I'm tired of being kicked around by that know-it-all Ugluk."

"What? Me? Teach my combat skills learned from thousands of years of practice and training by the highest elvish masters to a mere orc? Never! That is...well, what would you give me in return?"

Glorfindel looked sideways at the orc with a hungry expression. If the orc happened to mention anything to do with food, now...

"I can't offer you anything," said the orc. "But I'll introduce you to a lot of other guys who want to be trained. We could start our own elite force and hire ourselves out as mercenaries. There's a good market for those right now."

"There's one problem," said Glorfindel. "We're in a death camp. That means we can't go anywhere, remember?"

"I just work here," said the orc. "I can leave any time I feel like it."

"Well, I can't."

"I'll help you escape."

"Now you're talking," said Glorfindel.

"Wait, wait, wait," said the orc. "If and only if you promise to train me."

Glorfindel pretended to hesitate for the merest fraction of a second. "You'll have to be really committed if you want to learn everything I can teach you," he said. "You'll have to practise all day long and even then you'll never be as good as me."

"Deal," said the orc.

"Okay," said Glorfindel.

"We'll escape at midnight."

Glorfindel turned back to the rock he was supposed to be moving, only to find that it now had a notice stuck to it with sticky tape.

The notice read:

Creepiest Elf Contest

Date to be decided. Place to be decided. A contest for determining who is the creepiest elf in Middle Earth. Only full-blood elves qualify for participation. Mere elvish descent does not qualify you. Results will be based on looks, not skills or performance. Judges will be Flizpot and No Nose. Apply at the Black Gate.

Who do you think should be the creepiest elf? I already have one in mind (actually it's not Galadriel...) but I'm accepting nominations.