Loyalty, Honor, and a Willing Heart

Chapter 8 - An Unexpected Party

Lily finished to braid her own side-beard in a way it got up to her temples and then around her ears and fell down behind them. It brightened her face, making her sea-deep eyes shine and stand out. Iris was brushing the hair on her feet, still not at all comfortable with this new feature, but resigned to it. If she had to have hairy feet, they would be well tended to. Ellen stepped in the room with the folded map in her hand and a weary look in her face; she sat on her bed and looked up at the girls.

“Ladies, I wish you are comfortable at your seats and that we all have a nice afternoon. Our goal at this meeting is to...” The girls looked at her as if she had gone crazy. “... ask goodness we all get safely away from this absurd world and have a chance to rest ourselves, heal our wounds and wake up to discover it was all just a nightmare. Forget data reports, scheduling, targets and forecasts. I quit!”

Then she threw herself on the bed and closed her eyes, while her nieces laughed out loud.

“Bad meeting afternoon, Aunty?”

“I am sure I’m not hundred percent elf yet, I still hunger when a meeting gets past noon time and the president of the company keeps on talking, with no coffee-break! By the way, don’t they have any coffee here in this world? No coffee, no espresso, no cappuccino...”

Lily intervened. “And no chocolate at all!”

“Oh, no! I didn’t consider this! Then it is far worse than I supposed!”

“Just kidding, Aunty, I still have some chocolate hidden for an emergency!”

She drew a deep breath, forcing herself to get a little serious.

“Then keep it, we don’t know where our misadventure will lead us, keep it hidden from all of us until it is a matter of life or death.” Lily stared at her, astonished. “Don’t look at me this way, now I’m talking seriously, keep the chocolate hidden! Have you eaten any of it already?”

“No, but I gave one to a boy, I think this Estel is the only child I’ve seen here in Imladris, you must see what a cute! Oh, and he is human, too, or at least he doesn’t have pointed ears.” Then her alarm sounded. “You ain’t telling us that you believe that we may fall into a situation when we could hunger, do you?”

Lily was the worst person to have around in state of hunger, since she was a child. She really got angry, bad humored, impatient, temper less, to say the least.

“To tell you the truth, anything can happen. See, if we didn’t find Elrond’s house, our food would be almost gone by now, and then? We had an incredibly luck of finding, or in being found by Radagast, Gandalf and the dwarves. I don’t know what we could have found if we got the wrong way. Thanks to that star in map, we started trying the right way. Elrond does not know about the origin of this map, either, but he guesses it seemingly makes one go to where it shows. We could have entered by any border of it, depending on the lay of the land of where we wandering about in our world. We could have found the orcs and be killed, or worse, and that is a fact. Without the dwarves, we probably will never reach Erebor, and do you know the best of it all?” The girls looked at her, perceiving maybe for the first time how serious their situation really was, if this was result of the meeting with Elrond and Thorin, and maybe more people they didn’t know were there, their aunt’s state after that, and the reaction of asking for coffee and to quit, that was well know by the girls when she was in very sticky professional situations, although she never quitted in fact. “I bet a tuna can you don’t guess what lays at Erebor’s halls waiting for us.”

“Ahh, hmm, Fili said it was a secret, but that they are going to reclaim a treasure lost long ago.” Said Iris.

“Yes, Kili mentioned an old heirloom, but didn’t get into detail.” Lily filled in.