Story Downloaded from Open Scrolls Archive (https://www.openscrolls.net)

Title: A Modest Suggestion (#1217)
Author: Haleth
Chapters: 4

Archive: Tolkien
Category: Palantir Section
Description: A cautionary tale regarding Elves and their libido.
Published: 26 Aug 2004
Updated: 19 Sep 2004
Warnings:
Type: Humour
Characters: Elrond, Celebrian, Erestor, ofc


Chapter 1 - An Unexpected Arrival

Esmerelda Finnegan marched through the dingy hallways of the South Central High, heavily laden with papers to mark and books to read. Her low, sensible heels clicked on floors stained and worn by generations of teenage feet meandering the corridors. Her grade ten biology class had written essays on the reproductive system and she dreaded reading them. Given the pathetic level of understanding of the basic biology, it was amazing that Homo sapiens were as successful as a species as they were.

It was a quarter past seven and the sun had already set, leaving dirty streaks of brown and red in the sooty October sky. Miss Finnegan had stayed late to supervise the audio-visual club. A routine meeting had become a near disaster when David Fisher, a paeon to adolescent clumsiness, had tripped and almost broken an expensive camera while practicing to fill the annual drama club production. The other club members had argued bitterly over who's fault it was and how things should be changed until Miss Finnegan had become fed up. In her usual brusque manner, she had told them exactly where to place the cameras as well as how to operate them. She had dismissed the students after Paula Danforth had whined that her mother would be most upset with her for being late for dinner. In Esmeralda's estimation, Miss Danforth could stand to miss a few dinners and be the better for it. But she kept her opinion to herself and shooed the dispirited club members out of the door, silently cursing for allowing herself to be sucked into having anything to do with the drama club's latest production.

The annual play had been a thorn in Esmerelda's side since she had begun teaching at South Central ten years previously. Arthur Fortinbras, the drama teacher, had once aspired to be a theatrical director. Each year he poured all of his enthusiasm and boundless energy into the production, enlisting the help of as many of the students and staff as he could wheedle.

Esmerelda, who had always been slightly suspicious of the thin, sallow Fortinbras and his excessive zeal, had been out of the last hold out to be recruited into the effort. The productions had grown more and more ostentatious and, to Esmerelda's practical mind, more ridiculous with each passing year.

This year's effort dealt with the legends of King Arthur. Esmerelda had been hopeful that Fortinbras had finally taken the final step that would make him a complete laughing stock and that the idea would be laughed off by the jaded student population. But once more her hopes had been dashed by Fortinbras' ability to make the most ridiculous idea sound attractive.

She was contemplating Fortinbras and half hoping that he met an untimely and messy demise as she pushed open the door to the parking lot with her elbow. A dense fog had settled over the school grounds, a combination of water vapour and industrial smog from the nearby manufacturing plant.

Something large and white loomed unexpectedly before her. Startled, Esmerelda jumped backwards and dropped her papers. They scattered across the expanse of asphault like so many autmn leaves. Her fear immediately switched to extreme irritation when she realised that what had startled her was one of the sculptures that the art class had been putting together as part of the scenery for the play. Fortinbras' staging called for several of them as well as a set of standing stones. Mrs. Filion's art class had been diligently working on them for weeks. It was supposed to be a statue of a beautiful young woman done with graceful, flowing line.

Once again it seemed that the drama teacher's aim had far outstripped his resources. The best efforts of the earnest art teacher and her earnest students were enough to make a barbarian cringe, but Fortinbras treated them as precious works of art being sculpted by geniuses.

As she went along the schoolyard, gathering papers and cursing fervently under her breath, Esmerelda again wished Fortinbras a slow and painful death.

Retrieving each of her students' essays in the murk took much longer than she would have anticipated. She carefully counted each rumpled, scribbled essay until she was certain she had them all, then leaned against the ugly, styrofoam statue in relief.

Much to her disbelief, the sculpture no longer seemed to be made of styrofoam. It seemed solid enough to be rock. Upon closer inspection, it had somehow transformed itself into a work of beauty. The stone lines of the lovely young woman's clothing draped elegantly upon her lithe form.

Esmerelda shook her head and deliberately looked away from the statue. She wondered if she was succumbing to Fortinbras' mysterious glamour and decided it was simply a case of nerves after a very long day. Laughing nervously to herself, Esmerelda began to make her way towards her car.

The soles of her heels thudded softly on a wooden walkway.

Try as hard as she might, Esmerelda could not remember a wooden path anywhere in the vicinity of South Central High.

The pragmatic part of her mind attributed it to yet another piece of the set meant for the ridiculous play. It could not be that long; the auditorium stage was only twenty-five feet wide.

The more primitive part of her brain responsible for processing fear gibbered quietly when she came to a solid wooden wall.

Esmerelda very sternly told herself to calm down. This had to be the wall of the school itself; she had become disoriented in the fog.

But the school, a building erected at the turn of the century, was solid brick and this wall was more definitely wooden.

She was frowning mightily at the out of place, most unwelcome wall of wood when someone spoke directly behind her. The language she thought she recognised as the Welsh that her maternal greatgrandmother had spoken. As a small child, Esmerelda had been fluent in it. Now she did not wish to embarrass herself by trying to make use of it.

"I'm sorry," she said to the tall figure that loomed before her. "I would like to help you but I don't speak Welsh."

The man blinked at her statement, obviously surprised to see her. Then he gestured that Esmerelda should follow him.

Desperately wanting to get away from a place where wooden walkways and walls that had no business being there mysteriously appeared, she followed him at a careful distance.


Chapter 2 - Stating the Obvious

Several months had passed since Esmerelda had found herself unceremoniusly stranded in a valley that the residents called Rivendell. The wider world around it was apparently called Middle Earth. Esmerelda refered to the entire piece of real estate as Coma Country. She was quite certain that she had suffered a severe blow to the head, undoubtedly at the hands of one of the juvenile delinquents who attended South Central. The only thing that kept her sane was the dogged belief that one day she would awaken in a hospital bed with a rat's nest of tubes and wires attached to her. Until then, she had to keep herself occupied somehow and the local inhabitants were the only available form of entertainment.

Esmerelda was, in a perverse way, rather proud of her Coma World. It proved her to be in possession of something she despaired of ever having; an imagination.

Rivendell was populated by a race of beings with pointed ears who called themselves elves and who claimed to be immortal. They were were uniformly tall, willowy and preternaturally beautiful.

Esmerelda attributed the oddly shaped ears to a residual memory of Vulcans and blamed it on being forced to watch too much Star Trek as a child. Her father and brother had always claimed that the stories interested them, but Esmerelda had noted that they both focused on the small screen the most when a scantily clad, green-skinned dancing girl was performing.

The leader of this particular enclave was a gentleman of the pointy-eared persuasion known as Master Elrond Half Elven. He and his wife, Celebrian, their twin sons, Elladan and Elrohir and their daughther Arwen behaved the way that nobility were supposed to behave in all of the fairy tales that Esmerelda had never believed. They were kind, gentle, and displayed a genuine concern for each and every onel of their subjects.

This attitude was also shared by the high ranking advisers, all of whom had pointed ears, all of whom were unbelievably good looking and none of whom appeared to be married. This in spite of a bevy of beautiful, eternally young, pointed eared women who followed them around with wistful expressions.

Everyone was uniformly courteous to Esmerelda as well as to each other, but all of them, from the lowliest of stablehands to Master Elrond Half Elven himself, held an air of everlasting, indefinable sadness.

From her mortal perspective, Esmerelda found this melacholy difficult to comprehend; how could any group of people who had so much going for them could be unhappy? It was not until she had a better grasp of the language that she learned the reasons for it. By dint of much effort and much patient teaching by the inhabitants of Rivendell, she picked up the local language. It was vaguely reminiscent of Welsh.

Life in Coma Country remained peaceful and idyllic until the day Esmerelda made the mistake of asking Master Elrond Half Elven why he was referred to as being half elven instead of one quarter elven or simply elven.

The resulting explanation, which began when the sun was a quarter of the way to its zenith, lasted the entire day. It involved a dizzying number of people, many of whose names began with the syllable Fin. Esmerelda had very quickly become hopelessly lost in the maze of names, dates and events. But Master Elrond Half Elven had been so serious and sincere in his explanation that she did not have the heart to interrupt him. So she made use of the technique she had perfected when cornered by Andrew Fortinbras, the drama teacher at South Central. She smiled slightly, nodded vaguely and half listened for her name while Elrond droned on and on.

It was not until the sun had set and the moon rose high in the sky that Celebrian thought to rescue her.

"Husband, the hour is late. Our guest needs her rest."

Elrond looked around him, surprised that so much time had passed. He apologised to Esmerelda and bade her a good night.

"Please come to bed?" Celebrian asked him without much hope.

"Not tonight," he told her softly as Esmerelda passed them by. "I will study the stars."

Esmerelda noted the disappointment in Celebrian's eyes and the stern set of her jaw and quickly made her way to her own room.


One thing had been made plain to Esmerelda from the long, unlooked for history lesson; there had once been many, many more elves that there were now. It was obvious that most of them were long since dead, slain in some battle ages ago. For whatever reason, they had never replenished their numbers. As a practical person and a biology teacher, she could not quite understand this, although the brief encounter between Elrond and Celebrian that she witnessed gave her a clue. With nothing better to occupy her time, Esmerelda was quite determined to discover the reasons for it.

As this was not the sort of subject that lent itself to casual, everyday discussion, she had to wait until one of her hosts broached it. This finally happened on a winter's evening. Master Elrond, Celebrian and their advisers Glorfindel and Erestor, were in a sitting room. Esmerelda followed them, uninvited. She pulled a chair close to the fire and listened to them speaking in sad, serious voices of events in the outside world.

"There is no doubt that our time here will soon pass and the humans will supplant us entirely, " Master Elrond sighed, his voice heavy with resignation.

"It has already begun," Erestor agreed in the same tone.

"It began long ago," Glorfindel corrected him.

"Excuse me, but why must that be?" Esmerelda heard herself asking.

Four pointy-eared heads slowly turned to face her as though they had been unaware of her presence in the room until the instant she had spoken.

"Because it is the way of things." Elrond finally broke the uncomfortable silence. "The time of the elves will soon be over. We will pass into the West and leave Middle Earth to the Second Born."

"But why is it the way of things?" Esmerelda questioned. When they all looked at her blankly she got to her feet and began to pace before the fire the way she did when delivery a biology lesson. "You're immortal. You seem to be gifted with boundless strength and energy. Why don't you simply have more children?"

The men contrived to look utterly confounded, as though this had never occurred to them until she had mentioned it. Celebrian, on the other hand, seemed to be holding her breath. Her beautiful face was utterly still, a terrible anticipation barely hidden below her outwardly serene expression.

"But that would require...certain...interactions between men and women," Glorfindel said dubiously.

"Oh for pity's sake!" Esmerelda cried. "Have you looked in the mirror lately? Even if you haven't how could you have failed to notice the small troop of hopeful females who follow you around? I imagine there are two or three of them waiting in the hallway as we speak. Go and pick one and get to it. Go on. Out!"

Glorfindel blinked and looked to Elrond for support. The Master of Rivendell nodded briefly towards the door, his expression one of deep contemplation.

By the time he left the room, a small smile had made its way onto Glorfindel's face. Once he had recovered from the initial shock, the idea seemed to hold a certain attraction for him.

Back in the familiar territory of issuing orders, Esmerelda rounded on Elrond. "Well? You have less of an excuse than he did. Why are you still here?"

"We were just leaving, weren't we, dear?" Celebrian purred. Grasping Elrond's arm, she pulled her faintly smiling husband from the room. Watching them go, Esmerelda was vaguely reminded of a cat dragging its prey somewhere private to devour it.

Their departure left Esmerelda alone with Erestor. Celebrian's performance unnerved the prim and proper biology teacher. The wind had left her imperious sails.

"Well," she said. "I believe I will call it a night."

Much to her dismay, the dark haired elf followed her into the hallway.

"May I escort you to your room?" he asked solicitously.

"No. I know the way," Esmerelda said, picking up her pace.

"I'm certain you do," Erestor said, his voice husky with double meaning.

"Look," she said, stopping dead in her tracks and facing him. His face shone like starlight upon still waters. "This is very flattering, but it just won't work. I'm not planning on staying. Why don't you go and find a nice girl with pointed ears and be happy?"

She patted him on the arm in a companionable, encouraging and utterly platonic way and rushed down the corridor, her low, sensible heels thudding softly on the wooden floor.

When she reached her room, Esmerelda slammed the door and leaned against it. After some consideration, she dragged a heavy piece of furniture in front of the door and then closed and barred the heavy window shudders.


Chapter 3 - Adulation (Of a Sort)

Weeks had passed. Esmerelda found that her suggestion had been adopted with a bit more zeal than she had expected. When it came down to it, the adjusted behavior of her pointed-eared hosts was making her downright uncomfortable, It was almost impossible to walk down a hallway without encountering an amorous couple in a secluded corner. The nights were embarrassingly loud with the sound of passion erupting from behind closed doors at all hours. More than once Esmerelda had found herself rushing to get away from the noise, her face blazing with mortification.

If this was not enough, Esmerelda was quite certain she was being stalked by Erestor. He appeared at unexpected times as if by magic and was becoming more and more difficult to put off.

The only bright spot in the entire unnerving mess had been the gratitude given to her by the much relieved female half of the population of Rivendell, even though Esmerelda found them embarrassingly frank.

A small group of them led by Celebrian approached her one day as she was hiding from Erestor. Esmerelda noted that the sadness they had worn over them like a veil was gone, replaced by a radiant sheen of hope.

"We're so grateful to you," Celebrian said while the others nodded in solemn agreement behind her. "You have no idea how frustrating the past few millenia have been."

"Er...it was nothing," Esmerelda said, clearing her throat and anxiously peering about for any sign of Erestor.

"But it was! We've decided to do something for you."

"Yes?" Esmerelda asked with trepidation, sincerely hoping that they were not intent on playing matchmaker so that she could share their happiness.

"Yes. We've erected a statue of you so that everyone will remember what you have done for our people."

"Oh!" Esmerelda said, touched and extremely relieved. "That's very kind of you."

"Come along and see it!"

Esmerelda had to admit it was a very sympathetic depiction of her, carrying a book and apparently holding forth, her thumb bent over her little finger and the middle three digits held up in the classical pose of the teacher. It had been carved with the loving attention to detail that immortals invested in everything they did.

"What do you think?" Celebrian asked as the other women beamed at her expectantly.

"It's...lovely," Esmerelda said sincerely. "Who sculpted it?"

"I did." Erestor came out of the crowd to stand beside her, smiling faintly.

"Yes. Well, good job," Esmerelda said stiffly. Something more seemed in order so she delicately patted his arm, noticing with rising panic that everyone else had mysteriously vanished.

"My lady, I need to speak to you," Erestor said urgently, reaching for her hand.

"Talk away," Esmerelda said with forced brightness as she hid her hands behind her back. "I'm just going for a walk."

"Why do you avoid me?" he asked sadly as she bolted up the pathway towards the relative safety of her room.

"I'm not avoiding you," she lied. "I'm just in a hurry every time I see you." That much was true. Esmerelda was always quick to avoid Erestor.

"What reason would you have to hurry in Rivendell?" he asked gently.

"My reasons are my own," she said tartly, picking up speed. Erestor paced her without expending any visible effort.

"You can't run away from me forever," he said, blocking her path.

"Watch me," Esmerelda told him grimly as she spun around and pelted up a different path. She rushed along without care for direction. Skidding around a corner, she came upon the statue she had seen the night of her arrival in Rivendell and ran straight into it. There was a feeling of falling, then of vertigo, then she knew no more.

When she awakened, Esmerelda found herself at the base of Mrs. Filion's blocky creation, once more in the foggy parking lot of South Central. Her students' papers were once again scattered on the ground. Groaning and rubbing her head, Esmerelda cursed Andrew Fortinbras, gathered her work and went home.


Chapter 4 - Consequences

It would be uplifting to say that her experience in Middle-earth had left Esmerelda more open to the wonders of her own world, that she had learned something of compassion and wisdom from her experiences. Sadly, very few of us learn from such escapades and here, at least, Esmerelda was squarely with the majority. She put the entire occurrence down to a practical joker spiking the staff room water cooler room with a hallucinogenic drug. When careful questioning revealed that none of the other teachers had a similar experience, Esmerelda decided that one of her own drinks had been spiked. Thereafter, she took precautions to never leave a beverage unattended again.

The only concession she made to the entire episode was to ask Mrs. Filion for her ugly sculpture after the school's Arthurian extravaganza finished its more-successful-than-expected run. Andrew Fortinbras took the request as a sign that the formidable Miss Finnegan was beginning to soften. He discovered that his assumption was utterly incorrect when he approached her with ideas for the next year's production, a musical version of JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Esmerelda stared down her nose at the drama teacher while she listened to him spinning fantastical tales and visions of Middle-earth. She let him drone on, nodding vacantly and listening for her name until he finally asked if she was interested in helping.

"No," she said with no little satisfaction, before turning on her heel and marching away.

She put the sculpture in the extremely neat, formal garden in her back yard, placing it behind the yew tree that hid the compost heap from the house. On moonlit nights, she would self-consciously go and stare at it while pretending to add vegetable peelings to the compost.

One foggy evening, months after her trip to Middle-earth, Esmerelda found herself alone in the back yard, studying the sculpture and wondering if the garbage collectors would take it away if she hauled it to the curb. A very small, foolish part of her wondered if she could use it to return to Rivendell. She studied the neighbour's windows to see if anyone was watching. All of them were reassuringly dark. It was Saturday night and the Moscoes were undoubtedly at the bowling alley.

Self-consciously berating herself for being ridiculous, Esmerelda took a blind run at the statue. She fully expected to end up on her backside with the styrofoam on top of her. She fell as she connected with the sculpture and slowly opened her eyes, expecting to see the familiar bulk of the compost heap.

She was completely unprepared for the sight that greeted her. It certainly appeared that she was in Rivendell, but it was an oddly transformed Rivendell. The place looked as though a tornado had picked up the contents of several clothing stores and a toy store and scattered them across Master Elrond's demense. Clothes-lines hung between the fine wooden walkways, holding what appeared to be many, many MANY diapers. A small city of shacks huddled against the wooden walls of Rivendell. The wailing of several babies and small children pierced the still night air.

Stepping carefully around the litter, Esmerelda wondered where her fevered brain had brought her this time.

"Who is there?" someone cried.

"It's just me, Esmerelda Finnegan," she called, her tongue fumbling over the unfamiliar words. She was certain that she would receive a warm welcome if this was Rivendell.

There was a brief, hurried conference, then two grim-faced elves appeared before her.

"Please follow us," one of them said. "And mind where you step."


~~*~~


After picking her way through toys, clothing and the occasional sleeping body, Esmerelda found herself facing Celebrian in a small chamber. At least, Esmerelda assumed it was Celebrian. Her features were similar, but she had gained at least sixty pounds. Her once rosy complexion had faded to tired grey.

"YOU!" the woman said when she recognised Esmerelda.

"Yes?" Esmerelda asked, wondering at the angry tone of her reception.

"Do you know the mess you've made?" Celebrian demanded.

"Excuse me, Mistress Celebrian," Esmerelda said sternly. She had a fairly good idea of what had happened while she had been away. "But I have not been here. I hardly see how I can be blamed..."

"I have had five hundred seventy four children since you were here last," Celebrian interupted, her voice shrill and building in volume. "My stretch marks have stretch marks. Do you have any idea what five hundred seventy four years of morning sickness can do to your disposition?"

They were interrupted by Master Elrond. The Half Elven lord of Rivendell held a crying baby in his arms.

"I'm sorry, dearest, he's hungry again," he said apologetically, handing the screaming bundle to his wife. He paused, seeing Esmerelda for the first time, then bowed deeply to her.

"My lady! It is good to see you again," he said, a lopsided grin on his face. His robe was inside out and stained in spit-up.

"Elrond," Celebrian snapped.

"Yes, dear?" he asked.

"Don't you have something better to do?" she demanded crossly.

"Now that you mention it, I do," he said. Bowing to Esmerelda and smiling in a secretive way that made the priml teacher extremely nervous, he took his leave of them.

Celebrian sang a lullabye to her infant son as she fed him. The music seemed to soothe both of them, encouraging Esmerelda to offer another suggestion to Celebrian. She listened intently while Esmerelda paced the room, explaining her plan. In the end, there was nothing for it but to escort the biology teacher to the statue and allow her to go back to her own world with the promise to return with help for the elves' dilemma.

On the way back, she passed the statue that Erestor had made of her. Someone had smashed the index and ring fingers so that only the upwardly extended middle digit remained.


~~*~~


Dressed in a hat and unseasonably warm trench coat and staggering under the weight of a large box, Esmerelda once again charged Mrs. Filion's creation. She opened her eyes to a sea of fair elvish faces staring at her.

"Right. This had better work," Celebrian said, stepping out of the crowd as Esmerelda stood and self-consciously smoothed her clothing.

"These should work as long as they are used properly," Esmerelda said. She struggled to open the large box and encountered more boxes with pictures of warriors in oddly crested helms upon their sides.

"What does this say?" Elrond wondered, trailing his finger across the writing.

"Trojans," Esmerelda said briefly. She waved a slim packet of a condom at the assembled elves and smiled bravely. Hundreds of bright eyes stared back at her in complete incomprehension.

"I supposed I'd better demonstrate how to use them," Esmerelda sighed, her face as red as a beet.

"This is how these work," she explained as she opened a packet, removed the condom and unrolled it over her thumb.

Several elves near the front had taken a box and passed the packets around. They placed the condoms over their thumbs and beckoned to their mates, who were openly leering.

"No, no no!" Esmerelda said hurriedly before they could disappear into a private room or behind some bushes.

They stopped and stared at her expectantly.

Using sign language, Esmerelda launched into a halting explanation of the exact piece of anatomy the condoms were meant to cover.

It was Elrond who rescued her.

"Don't worry," he said, stopping her impromtu lesson in birth control. "I'll see to it that everyone knows how to use them properly. We should be able to learn how to make our own before this supply is gone."

Heaving a sigh of relief, Esmerelda slipped behind the Master of Rivendell. The new, crowded Middle-earth had lost its appeal. It was just as overpopulated as home, only without the amenities of electricity and running water. She fully intended to go back to her own world as quickly as possible and not return.

So it was a terrible shock to find Erestor had reached the transport statue before her. Or rather, that he had been the first to reach the pile of rubble where the statue had once stood. Crystalline stone chips sparkled in his dark hair and his clothing was covered in dust. He still held the hammer he had used to demolish the sculpture.

"What have you done!" Esmerelda shrieked in dismay.

His only response was to drop the hammer. A small package materialised in his hands. Esmerelda's eyes caught the familiar depiction of a Trojan helmet. She began to back away in open-mouthed panic as the discarded plastic fluttered to the ground.

Smiling determinedly as he approached her, Erestor unrolled the contents of the package and very deliberately snapped it in her direction before scooping her into his arms and sweeping away all of Esmerelda's objections.
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