Elrohir’s eyes were enormous. “You cannot mean it!”
“We have to,” Elladan insisted. “If we are not home for dinner, Ada will be angry.”
“And you think he will be less angry if we appear like this?” the younger twin demanded, casting a pointed look at his brother’s scratched and muddied legs. “I knew we should never have told her, ‘Dan. She cannot be trusted.”
“If you knew so much, why did you not share your knowledge, then, Elrohir?” Elladan snapped, feeling cold and wet and increasingly irritable.
“Because you never listen, anyway, Elladan,” Elrohir retorted, his own hackles rising. “There must be some other route we can take.”
The elder twin forced back his own frustration as he saw his brother’s temper begin to flare. “We have argued and studied for nigh an hour, ‘Roh. But there is no other way out that I can see or think of.”
Elrohir sighed in pained resignation. “Best get it over with, then.”
Nodding morosely, Elladan led the way on through the thicket, biting back the grumbles and whines that threatened with every slap and prick of the sharp riverbank weeds. His spirits lightened a bit as the back garden came into view, apparently unattended. Perhaps...
“Oh, no,” Elrohir groaned, “not Erestor, too.”
Following his brother’s horrified gaze, Elladan groaned, as well. There, beside their father, on the curving steps that descended to the garden, stood the tutor they had evaded to enjoy their afternoon swim, a scowl of frightening intensity trained on the very spot from which they must emerge. Their hands clasping in unspoken support, the twins shared a brief glance before stepping out into the open.
Elrond’s expression was carefully neutral as he watched his sons’ slow progress across the garden, what might have been a twinkle of laughter gleaming briefly in his eyes, but Elladan and Elrohir did not notice. Their attention was caught, instead, by the third member of the receiving party, who might have seemed an ally had she not held their missing leggings in her very hands.
As towels wrapped them and the lecture began, the twins turned a murderous glare on their gloating betrayer, their hissing whisper an accusatory chorus.
“We shall get you for this, Arwen!”
*~*~*~*~*
