Protect & Serve LotR-Lord of the Rings Fanfiction - Fan Fiction -WattyAwards2012

Chapter 12: A Reason to Stay; A Reason to Go

We sat together in companionable silence for several moments more. I knew I should get up and either get something to eat, or try to go back to sleep. But truth was, I wasn’t sure I’d get back to sleep now that the city was awake and bustling with activity. And, I was enjoying the easy tranquility.

But those things never last.

“Laney! Laney!” a clear high voice called out. I smiled at the variation of my name. The elflings hadn’t liked calling me Lane, and had a hard time with the vowel pronunciations of Elaina, so they’d taken to calling me Laney.

Legolas and I pulled away from each other to turn around. Three small elflings ran up behind me while the elleth of the trio, a precocious little girl named Caladhiel, clambered into my lap without hesitation.

Grasping my hands, she pleaded brokenly, “Please! Laney play!”

I laughed at her broken Westron. The elflings had been trying to teach me the prevailing language of Lothlórien, Quenya, but I was as hopeless with it as I was with Sindarin. The elflings were proving much faster at learning bits of Westron than they were at teaching me to understand them.

Pulling Caladhiel’s arms out wide, I laughed then spun her around, wrapping our arms across her stomach as she giggled. “Come on munchkin. We’ll go find the others and play,” I laughed.

I used my arms to tumble her through the air as I stood, uncrossing our arms as I did so, and allowing her to land on her feet. She laughed and started tugging on my arm again, dragging me over to the two boys who watched eagerly, one of them holding a leather wrapped ball. The oldest of the boys, Caladhiel’s two cousins if I remembered correctly, enthusiastically held the ball out to me.

“Soccer!” he declared as I took the ball.

“You had someone make a soccer ball?” I laughed as I recognized the size and weight of the ball. Mostly I’d been playing games with the elflings that they were familiar with, but I’d been teaching them about hide-and-seek and other sports that were played in my world. Soccer and football were always favorites in the Corp because they could be played anywhere with very little equipment. I explained soccer to the elflings thinking it seemed like the safer, easier choice of the two, and told them I wished I knew how to fashion a soccer ball for them. It seemed the children beat me to it.

“Teach us,” the smaller boy said, grabbing my hand from Caladhiel and pulling on me. The little elleth immediately started chattering angrily at her cousin in Quenya.

I tossed the leather ball back to the oldest boy and tugged on one of Caladhiel’s golden braids to get her attention. “Come on now, no arguing,” I told her with a smile before scooping her into my arms and resting her on my hip. She was about the size of an eight-year-old child, but I knew elflings were much older. Haldir had explained that they looked like small children for around fifty years, and didn’t really reach adulthood until their first century had passed.

Balancing Caladhiel on my hip, I grasped the smaller boy’s hand and turned to look at Legolas. “You gonna come play soccer with us for a while?” I asked with a grin.

He laughed as the small elfling continued tugging impatiently on my hand. “You still need to eat something, Elaina,” he reminded.

I shrugged. “I’ll grab something in camp. Maybe the hobbits will still be there and will want to play too.”

Seeing that I wasn’t going to be stopped—at least not with three elflings tugging on me—he shook his head and followed along behind me.

“I do not know what this ‘soccer’ is,” Legolas called curiously, as he jogged to catch up to me.