I have internet again! After almost two months without it, I was starting to have withdrawal symptoms!
Many thanks for the reviews to the last chapter. I hope you enjoy this one! :)
D.O.T
As it drew near to evening, Faelwen's day got progressively stranger. No sooner had she got used to the presence of Master Gamgee, then another two hobbits burst into the room, rushing to Frodo's bedside.
"Frodo is alive! Hurrah!" cried the one who appeared to be the youngest, shocking Faelwen by hugging her suddenly around the waist, which was on a level with his curly hair. Samwise Gamgee, without letting go of his master's hand, introduced them as Meriadoc Brandybuck and Peregrin Took.
These two new acquaintances proved to be a lively pair and, once they had been assured that Frodo was indeed out of danger and merely needed rest to recover, their exuberance seemed to know no bounds. They chatted and laughed and joked until Sam was chuckling heartily and even Faelwen's spirits raised enough to laugh along with them.
Desiring to know what had caused them to end up in the company of her brother and journeying to Imladris, Faelwen enquired as to the purpose of their journey and Peregrin, who she had been right in thinking the youngest, as well as the noisiest, set about chatting at great speed and recounting the tale to her.
He explained at great length their doings in the Shire; telling her how they had made everyone believe that Frodo was merely moving to another dwelling place. He related their meeting with a person called Farmer Maggot, and told her how he, Sam and Merry, as he called Meriadoc, had determined to accompany Frodo and began to describe the first stage of their journey.
He had got as far as explaining about their meeting Tom Bombadil when the deep voice of Mithradir cut through the room; "How now, Peregrin! Will you talk Lady Faelwen's ears off, lad?" Looking around, Faelwen saw the tall elderly wizard standing with her father in the doorway.
"Gandalf!" the three hobbits cried simultaneously and immediately launched off into a barrage of questions.
"One at a time, one at a time," said Mithrandir gruffly, moving across the room to take a position by Frodo's bed. "I have a great deal to ask you too!"
Faelwen, leaving them to their reunion, retreated to the doorway with her father to deliver an update on Frodo's recovery, which was going well. Despite receiving such good news, she perceived Elrond to be worried; his eyes troubled and his brow creased.
"I shall watch him now, until he awakes," he told Faelwen kindly. "It is your turn to rest."
Faelwen obediently took her leave of her three new friends and made her way out of the healing wing. She had got as far as the main staircase when she found herself unexpectedly accosted.
"Mae Govannen, my friend!" a cheerful voice cried suddenly, and Faelwen felt a noisy kiss planted on her cheek.
"Legolas?" she cried in surprise, too shocked for a moment to embrace him as she usually did. "What are you doing here? Ada never mentioned that he expected you."
"No, It was not a planned visit," Legolas admitted, his smile fading. Faelwen suddenly noticed that he looked pale, tired and strained. "I have not long finished talking with your father about my errand. Dark times are upon us, Faelwen. Very dark times. I come with grave news from home."
"That seems to be all I have heard today," said Faelwen exclaimed, sounding irritated. "Bad times are upon us, dreadful things are happening, Arda is no longer safe...but no one seems to be very generous with the rest of the details!"
"I am sorry, Faelwen," Legolas smiled kindly. "It is cruel of me to tell you so little. Your father has had a guest room prepared for me, and I was going to wash before dinner. Come, walk with me and I will tell you more."
He extended a hand to her and, taking it, Faelwen fell into step beside him. Before he could even open his mouth though, the question she had been longing to ask since she laid eyes on him burst forth. "Have you seen Haldir of late?"
"Not these two months," Legolas shook his head. "All is not well at home – there have been attacks on the outmost settlements and the spiders seem more numerous than ever. There have been few to spare for journeying out with the kingdom. I would not be here myself if my news were not so grave. Likewise has there been no one travelling from Lorien. I have heard that Orcs and Goblins are on the move once more and that the Marchwardens have had to double their patrols."
This news did little to ease Faelwen's mind. In fact, it only increased her sense of foreboding. Legolas read her expression and smiled sympathetically. "Lord Elrond is to call a council of the free peoples," he told her as they continued to walk towards his room. "And much will be discussed there. It seems that the weapon of the Enemy, the greatest of all weapons, has been discovered again."
Faelwen stopped in her tracks.
"That..." she struggled for words. "That cannot be true!"
"It seems that it is so," Legolas replied gravely. "The Nine are abroad, Saruman the Wise, Mithrandir tells us, has turned traitor and creature Gollum, over whom we have so long kept a careful watch, has been taken. When I found him gone, I knew I must hasten at once to tell your father and Mithrandir. All these separate incidents when combined can mean only one thing."
"Elbereth save us!" said Faelwen weakly and her heart, which had seemed low before, sunk insurmountably.
Elrond had indeed summoned a great council, and in preparation for that event, new arrival after new arrival appeared in Imladris over the following few days; a party of dwarves, short , stout and bearded who eyed Legolas – clothed in the garb of Mirkwood – with great distrust; a tall, broad man of about thirty or forty who carried a magnificent white horn at his waist; Galdor of the havens, bearing messages from Cirdan. To Faelwen's utter joy, Elladan and Elrohir returned home too; bringing tidings for Elrond and Mirthrandir. Soon, Imladris was as full and as bustling as it had been in the old days, the days before the world had gone grave.
Despite her continuous worry for Haldir, and her growing dread of the future, Faelwen found herself cheering a little. The company of Elladan and Elrohir, of Legolas, and of Estel after so long an absence, did wonders at restoring her good humour. In addition, she very quickly became extremely fond of their small visitors from the Shire, Peregrin Took especially. He was so cheerful, so innocently good-humoured and ready to be merry, insisting that everyone should call him 'Pippin', that it was impossible to be subdued in his company. Pippin, in turn, seemed to have taken a liking to her too and, once Frodo was awake and on his feet again, they could often be found in the gardens; Faelwen teaching him some elvish songs, or Pippin recounting to Faelwen the deeds of some exciting and unusual ancestor of his.
As a result, when Frodo's three loyal companions were told, to their considerable dismay, that they were not to attend the council, despite having come so far and braved such dangers alongside Frodo, it was to Faelwen that Peregrin Took made his appeal.
He found her seated, as he had expected when he had not found her in the healing rooms, in the gardens. She was with three other elves – a fair-haired one, dressed in green and brown, and two dark-haired ones who were identical to the last eyelash. They all were laughing heartily at something the fair-haired one was saying; from what the young hobbit could make out, it seemed that the elf had been conversing with old Bilbo the night before and had suddenly come to understand how a company of dwarves had vanished from his father's dungeon many years before.
"Well, you may rest easy now, Legolas," one of the dark-haired elves said. "Your great mystery is solved! But here is one of our friends from the Shire," he added, catching sight of Pippin. "How can we help you, young master?"
"I wanted to talk to Lady Faelwen," Pippin mumbled, blushing and feeling a little unsure of himself before so many tall and elegant elves.
"Then I am at your service, Peregrin," Faelwen said with a smile, rising from the bench on which she was sitting, before informing her companions that she would see them at dinner and walking with Pippin into another part of the garden.
As soon as they were out of earshot of Faelwen's three friends, Pippin's dismay burst forth and he described his unhappiness, as well as that of Sam and Merry, to his new ally in Imladris.
"Please, my lady!" he pleaded to Faelwen. "Can you not convince your father or Gandalf to let us attend? Could we not sit with you? We would not interrupt or even speak a single word!"
"I'm afraid I cannot, Peregrin," Faelwen explained kindly. "For I will not be attending myself."
"But you are Lord Elrond's daughter!" cried Pippin in great surprise.
"Yes, that is true," said Faelwen with an amused but understanding smile. "But I have no knowledge of rings of power, or of the dark magic which created them; I am only a healer. I can be of no use to the council, and so my presence is not required. I am sorry, my little friend, but I am afraid I would not be able to sway them."
When Sam and Merry joined them soon after, and Pippin related this news to them, all three looked so thoroughly downcast that they should not share this final part of the quest with their friend that Faelwen's heart went out to them. "However," she added, with a sudden twinkle in her eye. "I do know that the council will be held in the courtyard and, having played hide and seek with my brothers and sister there for many, many years, I know of several good places where one might conveniently take cover and not be seen."
The happiness in their faces was enough to overpower the pangs of guilt she felt for this dishonesty, which she had no doubt her father and Erestor would frown upon. But at any rate, she reasoned, these brave little souls had stood by their companion thus far and helped him all they could in his dangerous endeavours. Was it not only right and just that they should be permitted to hear the conclusion of their journey?
"Come," she said decidedly. "Walk with me to the courtyard and I will point out all the loveliest statues to you."
It is a matter of history that Samwise Gamgee, Peregrin Took and Meriadoc Brandybbuck did indeed eavesdrop upon the great Council of Elrond and, upon hearing their friend Frodo pledge to take the One Ring, the great weapon of the enemy, to the fires of Mount Doom and hearing several members of the council pledge to accompany him, they burst forth into the gathering and declared their own determination to go with Frodo.
"Indeed," Gandalf remarked that evening as Elrond, his family and all his guests dined together in the great hall. "It is very fortunate that the young rogues seemed to pick just the places where they could not have been seen by any one present."
Here he looked very pointedly at Faelwen, who felt the tell-tale colour rising in her cheeks. Mithrandir, noticing it at once, harrumphed to himself in a perfectly audible voice about soft-hearted elves with no sense at all.
"I knew it was you!" Elladan, who was sitting next to her, whispered. "I knew as soon as they jumped out that they had chosen their hiding places far too well to have found them by chance! Well, I hope they do not come to regret their eavesdropping – it is a very perilous task they have undertaken!"
It was a task too, which none of the three could be dissuaded from. Elrond counselled that another elf, such as the powerful and capable Glorfindel, should take Pippin's place amongst the company, but Pippin vehemently declared that he would have to be sent back home to the Shire tied in a sack to stop him from following his friends.
With the council's conclusion that the Nine Walkers – from that pointed on referred to as the Fellowship of the Ring – should brave the task of returning the ring to its fiery birthplace, Imladris became a bustle of activity. May scouts, including Elladan, Elrohir and Aragorn rode out into the wild in search of tidings of the Ring Wraiths or 'Black Riders' as the hobbits called him. Everyone else played their own part in helping with the preparations; gathering supplies, pouring over maps, packing things as efficiently and practically as possible.
Legolas, meanwhile, found himself struggling over another task – that of writing to his father to explain why his only son and heir was walking straight into Mordor and might never return. He varyingly brooded and made light over the situation and it was not for several weeks that he was finally able to produce a letter which satisfied him and sent it to King Thranduil. To Faelwen's distress, Legolas also tasked her with passing on several messages on to his father in the event that he did die. She promised faithfully that she would do so, but wept bitterly in the confines of her room that evening when she was at last alone. It seemed, when the Fellowship set out, that absolutely everyone she loved, with the exception of Elrond, Arwen and Erestor, would be in the greatest of dangers, and there was nothing she could do to help them.
It was late December before the scouts returned. Elladan and Elrohir were last of all, grim-faced and quiet, and they refused point blank to tell even the slightest detail of what their errand had been to Faelwen. "It is nothing you need trouble yourself over," Elrohir had said with well-meaning vagueness, and Faelwen had had to be content with that.
With the twins' return, it was announced that the Fellowship would depart seven nights hence, and the preparations reached a new height of business. Narsil, the sword of Elendil was reforged and presented by Elrond to Aragorn, who renamed it Andúril. Faelwen, meanwhile, spent several days in the healing rooms, crushing up different herbs and wrapping them with leaves to form small packets and pouring varying colours of liquid into the little vials that they might be carried with ease in the packs of the walkers. Legolas, seeing how low her spirits were at the thought of their departure, frequently tried to make her laugh by proclaiming that she seemed intent on cramming a whole forest into their packs, but he was not very successful. This was the only way in which Faelwen could be of use to the Fellowship, and she was determined not to fail them.
All too soon, it seemed, the evening of departure arrived and all of Imladris turned out to wish the Fellowship of the Ring – Aragorn, heir of Isildur; Boromir, son of Denethor of Gondor, Legolas, Prince of Mirkwood; Mithrandir of the Istari; Gimli, son of Gloin; Meriadoc Brandybuck of the Shire, Peregrin Took, his partner in crime; loyal and steadfast Samwise Gamgee and, lastly, Frodo Baggins, the Ringbearer.
Much advice was given from all sides, along with many wishes for their safety and success. There was no laughter, no song...all was solemnity. Aragorn looked even more grave than usual – his family understood just how much this quest was to mean to him, as he finally took his destiny into his own hands.
Legolas offered both Arwen and Faelwen a comforting hug, promised that he would soon see them at both their weddings and made them both promise to dance with him when he returned. They both gave their word, smiling despite their distress, and begged him to be careful.
Pippin meanwhile, crossed to Faelwen, and bowed rather comically before asking her if, when he returned, she would teach him the song she had sung in the Hall of Fire last night. She very solemnly promised that she would, and pressed an affectionate kiss to his forehead before he hurried to join his companions again.
Elrond spoke the final words of farewell and, thus taking their leave, the Fellowship departed. Faelwen and Arwen, each as unhappy as the other, walked together to the highest room in the house and watched with sharp elven eyes the progress of of the nine shadowy figures moving through the valley, until they could see them no more.
Arwen gave way to tears, which very nearly shattered Faelwen's own very tentative composure. Her eyes over-bright and her throat painfully tight, she embraced her sister and tried to comfort her.
"He will return, Arwen, I am sure," she said shakily, though the twist in her stomach declared her far from sure. "You will see him again!"
"They walk straight into peril! How many will return from this task?" Arwen wept. "How many lives will be lost?"
To this, Faelwen could not even try to form an answer, and the thought of Aragorn's death, or of that of Legolas, or little Pippin, brought her own tears out in force.
It is said that misery loves company, and Arwen and Faelwen sat together by that window, weeping long into the night for all the people they loved; all of whom they could do nothing to protect.
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