"Is Fili in love with Ella, Bilbo?"
Bilbo glanced down at the little face asking the question.
Frodo stared back with wide eyes.
"Well, he probably is, isn't he?" someone else said – Merry, he thought it was. "Looking after her like that, and staring at her like that!"
"But he's only known her a day!" Pippin had obviously found some interest in the story now, looking across at Bilbo. "How can someone fall in love with someone else in only a day?"
"Will they leave her behind in Rivendell?" Frodo asked. "Thorin didn't want her along, did he?"
"Excellent questions, all of you," chuckled Bilbo. "All of which would be answered if you'd just let me continue the story…"
"Oh, all right, we'll be quiet, Uncle Bilbo," said one of the smaller hobbits, and laughter broke out before they fell silent once more, and Bilbo continued with his tale…
It was only a while later that Bofur was eyeing Kili suspiciously as the younger dwarf stared, transfixed, at the elf playing the harp next to them, finally winking at her and breaking into a smile, before turning away.
Across them, Dwalin's face was hard, his gaze fixed on Kili.
The younger dwarf faltered.
"Can't say I fancy elf maids myself," he said, as he reached out to grab some more food. "Too thin," he said, as Dwalin gave him a sceptical look. "They're all high cheekbones, and creamy skin. Not enough facial hair for me."
From her place, Ella listened to their conversation as she dug into her food, trying to push down her horror at the dwarfs' table manners, complaining about the food, grabbing whatever they could reach and stuffing it into their mouth.
She nearly choked when she heard his last sentence.
Not enough facial hair.
She felt a now-familiar hysterical urge to break into laughter. Not enough facial hair. Ella could still remember the endless hours she'd spent, with both Emma and her friends, agonising over their increasing amounts of facial hair and everything else that came with being a teenager.
"Although," she heard Kili continue, "that one there's not bad."
She raised her head just as Dwalin leaned forward.
"That's not an elf maid."
It took a moment to sink in; and then they were all laughing, the dwarfs at the table behind her included, Ella unable to control her giggles as she clutched at her stomach.
She really wished she had a camera to capture the look on Kili's face.
Cameras. Her father, laughing, as she brought back his DSLR camera yet again, saying something about the shutter messing up, that it was in no way her fault that it had spoiled, that it was just the camera that didn't like her.
To her immense relief, she didn't start tearing up, but there was an ache in her chest, a painful ache that didn't seem to want to leave.
And then she saw Oin stuff his hearing trumpet with a napkin to block out the music, and grin and nod at the others as they laughed.
Her mood changed abruptly, and she buried her face in her hands.
It would be rude to get up and walk away, she told herself. They can't help it if they don't have manners.
She winced as Nori slipped something into his coat, as Bombur stuff his face with food.
"Change the tune, will you?" Nori snapped as he turned to face the elf Kili had been winking at. He twisted back around. "I feel like I'm at a funeral!"
"Did somebody die?" Oin asked, looking around him.
Don't lose it. Ella took a deep breath in, was reminded of the few times she'd helped her parents' friends take care of their younger kids while they had dinners, their appalling manners disappearing as they attempted to imitate her, looking up to her.
Her mother, she remembered, had always been rather fierce about manners at the dinner table.
And especially when they were the guests.
She decided that maybe it would be a better idea to leave her face in her hands.
She didn't want to look up.
"All right lads, there's only one thing for it," she heard Bofur say, and glanced sideways to see him push his chair back and get to his feet, and heard him clamber onto a short stone pillar jutting out of the ground behind her.
And the next thing she knew, he was singing cheerfully at the top of his voice, and all the dwarfs were laughing, chiming in and singing along with him, tossing food at him, vegetables drifting down only to be picked up and thrown up again.
She buried her face deeper into her hands.
"Missing me?" a voice asked, amused, from beside her.
Fili.
She looked up, smiled weakly.
Fili glanced down at her.
He had realised, shortly after the outbreak of laughter at his brother's expense, that he was missing Ella's company much more than he should have.
I'm so weak. And useless. And pathetic. I'm such a burden.
She must have thought that she was being a burden on him.
It was the only reason he could think of as to why she was avoiding any eye contact with him.
He would have to talk to her before night had fallen, he decided.
And then, when Bofur started singing, he figured that this was the perfect opportunity, and had made his way over to her.
"I'm not really sure what there is to miss," she was saying now, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear.
"My company, of course," he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "My natural charm, and of course my equally charming smile – "
"You are ridiculous." She was looking away from him now, but he could see the smile on her face, as food went flying over their heads, the dwarfs roaring with laughter at Bofur dancing on his perch, still singing.
"You miss me, really." Fili grinned and, on the spur of the moment, held out his hand. "Come on. Dance with me."
"What?" Ella turned to look up at him now, eyes widening in rapidly increasing panic. "No, I couldn't, I've never done this kind of dancing before, and I've never danced with a partner – "
"You can try something new, then," he said, cheerfully, grabbing her and lifting her off the chair, whirling her around until they stood facing each other. She looked at him uncertainly, placing an arm on his shoulder as he placed an arm on her waist and his other hand on her shoulder.
And then he spun her around and she shrieked with laughter as they twirled along to the dwarfs' ridiculous song, jumping and spinning and skipping around each other, her horror at the dwarfs' manners all but forgotten as they leapt and whirled around, food flying past them as the dwarfs flung vegetables across at each other and into the air.
And they were laughing, and she was spinning around and around, Fili's eyes fixed on her as she twirled back towards him, catching her in time as they continued dancing along to Bofur's singing.
And Elrond and Lindir, both who had been watching the dwarfs with a sort of horrified fascination as they flung the food about, couldn't help but break into small smiles as they watched the two dance, Gandalf chuckling as he continued eating.
Ori glanced up, looked down at the food in front of him, and stuffed a leafy green vegetable into his mouth.
"Would you walk with me, Lady Ella?"
Face still flushed from the dancing, Ella now turned to Elrond with a flustered look on her face, as Fili, still at her side, tensed up.
"Simply to show you around some areas of Rivendell," Elrond said, "and to talk."
"I – ah – sure." She smiled uncertainly as he gestured for her to fall into step with him.
Fili could only glare after them murderously as Elrond led Ella away.
"Gandalf tells me," said Elrond, pleasantly, after showing Ella some of the more breathtaking views of Rivendell, "that you are an inter-dimensional traveller."
They had stopped at the top of a high tower, looking out over a balcony at Rivendell, Ella's eyes fixed on the view before her.
"Yeah, I guess I am."
"If I may see your mark?"
Ella looked up at the elf, his tall figure towering over her. He was, somehow, a comforting presence; and, slowly, Ella pushed up her right sleeve to show the swirling patterns on the inside of her wrist.
Elrond nodded, and Ella pushed her sleeve back down.
"Will you be accompanying the dwarfs when they leave?" he asked, abruptly, as they stood together, watching the sun setting in the distance, orange rays of light fading.
"I'm not very sure," she said, slowly. "I don't think Thorin would want me to accompany them, and even if I did accompany them, I'd just be a burden, wherever they're going."
"So you have no idea of the purpose of their journey."
"None at all."
Elrond nodded again, thoughtfully. "If Thorin would allow you to accompany them, would you go? Or would you stay here in Rivendell?"
Ella opened her mouth, shut it again.
Rivendell. Beautiful Rivendell, with gleaming buildings, delicious food (even if it was mostly vegetables), cascading waterfalls that sparkled, a peace and calm and quiet she had never known. Not even in her old life, in her old world, where every day had been spent preparing for the next, studying and studying in order to be the best, pitting yourself against everyone else.
And the past one or two days – the dwarfs, a loud, rowdy lot, always full of laughter and cheer, on some super-secret quest she couldn't know about. Possibly to venture off into the great unknown and very possibly never return. No clean beds, no guarantee of meals every day, no showers, not even a guarantee that they might stay alive, judging from both the trolls and the Orcs pack she'd encountered in her short time with them. Just moving, always moving, until they reached their destination, with about a hundred and one dangers on the way.
"My father used to tell me that I should never give up a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, even if it seemed crazy and reckless. He always told me I'd never get the chance to do it again, so I might as well do it when I had a chance." Ella recalled the endless number of times he'd told her that; convincing her to go para-sailing, to climb up a mountain with him for his fiftieth birthday, to try out all the roller-coaster rides at Universal Studios. "And Rivendell is beautiful. It really is, it's amazing, I've never seen anything like it." She glanced up at him quickly; he stood silently, watching her, his face expressionless. "But if I had a chance to go with them, and I didn't take it, I'd probably regret it for the rest of my life that I had given up this once-in-a-lifetime chance."
"You do realise that if you follow them, it is extremely likely that you would never return."
Ella shrugged.
"I don't think it'd make much of a difference," she said, simply. "I've got nothing to return to. My sister and my family and my friends all think me dead, and they're not even in this world. I've no home, nothing. As long as it's not particularly painful, I don't think I'd mind that much. I think the only thing I would really regret is maybe not seeing more of this world."
"You are willing to die."
"Not willing." Ella shook her head furiously. "I think that it's just inevitable. And it might as well be on some mysterious quest. And, well, I've nothing to lose, really."
"I do believe that your path lies with them, wherever it may lead." Elrond placed his hands on the balcony railing, glancing briefly over Rivendell before looking down again at Ella. "Your path in this world, in this life, is linked to theirs. They were the first to find you and to take you in, were they not?"
"Yes."
Ella offered nothing else.
"If I may ask," Elrond said, finally, after a long silence, "how did you come by into this world?"
Ella leaned on the railing, gazed down at the lights flickering below them.
"If you must know," she said, "I died so my sister wouldn't."
"Are you burning the furniture?"
Ella was standing in one of the doorways leading to the dwarfs' quarters, watching them, horrified, as the flames flickered in the circle in the middle of them, a cauldron above it.
"Roasting sausages," Dwalin said, grunting, obviously in a much better mood.
"Bombur!" Bofur called suddenly, tossing a sausage.
The large dwarf caught it; and then, eyes growing wide, the table promptly collapsed beneath him, causing the dwarfs to break out into laughter.
Ella could only stare. In any other circumstance she would probably be giggling to herself as the table collapsed; but now, in this beautiful place, where they were the elves' guests –
"Oh, my god," she murmured to herself, turning away and hurrying out to one of the many open balconies.
Before Ori could get even get over his laughter, Fili had already scrambled to his feet and was striding out after her.
"What's wrong?" he asked, when he finally found her at the edge of the open balcony, looking at the sky with a distant, far-off look in her eyes.
At his voice, she snapped back into reality.
"Nothing." She shook her head, tried to smile.
"Ella."
He stood and leaned against the balcony next to her.
"It's just – " She bit her lip, then hurriedly rushed on. "You're guests. From what I can see, elves and dwarfs don't seem to be very friendly with each other, and you were completely unexpected, but they still took you in and gave you food and sleeping quarters and everything. And, well, you're wrecking everything."
She turned away.
"That's what you're upset about?" Fili chuckled, bringing his hands up so he could rest his head on them, watching her. "We're dwarfs, Ella. It's how we are. And besides, we'd much rather not be here anyway."
"Even though they saved us from the Orcs?"
"Oh, don't be ridiculous." There was laughter in his voice, a smirk. "We'd have dealt with them, no problem. We're thirteen of the best, bravest dwarfs that there ever was. No ugly Orc pack with their ugly Wargs could take us down."
Ella couldn't help but laugh.
"I'm sure."
"You know," he said, after a moment as they stood together in silence, "you're not a burden."
Ella felt her face heat up.
"Yes, I am, and don't you dare tell me otherwise," she said, fiercely, forcing herself not to look at Fili. "Don't even think of opening your mouth. You saw what it was like with that Orc pack just now – you were making sure I was behind you all the way, and you had to keep making sure I was okay, and just now with the dead Warg…"
Her voice trailed off as she remembered exactly what had happened with the dead Warg.
Then she continued determinedly. "I can't cook, I can't fight, I can't even stomach a dead Warg, I keep shrieking half the time. How am I not a burden?"
"Well, I'm just saying, you're not. You really, really aren't." Fili turned to face her, but her eyes were still determinedly fixed on the sky. "Not to me, anyway. It's kind of a nice feeling, having someone to protect. Kili learned to fend for himself long ago."
"What, like I'm some bloody damsel in distress?"
Ella could feel anger, hot, irrational anger, rise up in her. Her mother had always told her that her pride was her biggest flaw; Ella hardly ever wanted to let anyone in, hardly depended on anyone if she could help it, determined that she could deal with things on her own. She'd already been depending on the dwarfs so much the past day, a massive blow to her pride, but accepting it because there was no other choice; and here was Fili, saying that he, what, wanted to, liked to protect her, because she couldn't fend for herself?
She knew he didn't mean it to be offensive. She knew he meant well.
It didn't stop her from turning away and marching over to the room they'd allocated her.
Ella is a deep, deep person...and Elrond's impressed! Hahaha. But poor Ori! And what's happening with Fili and Ella now?
Oh wow I'm a lot more amused by this than I should be