“We were not playing War,” Elladan repeated yet again. “You know Arwen will not play with us. She is no good at it and she hates to lose.”
“Then what were you all doing?” Elrohir demanded with a frown. “You were shut up for hours.”
Without me.
The last words hung in the air, unspoken but understood.
“Talking,” Elladan answered evasively, refusing to look his brother in the eye. “And it was not hours, ‘Roh,” he added, stung by Elrohir’s distrustful manner. “It could not have been more than a single hour. We had lessons after lunch and the sun is still high.”
“Maybe I wanted to talk, too.”
The hurt in Elrohir’s voice silenced Elladan’s offhand retort, and he nearly confessed all. Would have confessed all, had the echo of Arwen’s warning not still been ringing in his ears.
If you breathe a word of it, I will squash every last one.
Visions of the strawberry patch mangled and torn quickly brought him to his senses.
The rest of the afternoon passed in an uncomfortable silence, broken only by the occasional sharp word or frustrated sigh, and Elladan despaired that the wretched day would ever end. As dinner neared, however, his mood brightened, sending Elrohir into an even more petulant state.
“Where is Arwen, anyway?” Elrohir asked grumpily, tugging at the sleeves of his tunic, which never seemed quite long enough these days.
It seemed that nothing was quite right these days, and today had been worse than usual.
Elladan had left him alone to play with Arwen, Erestor had not been satisfied with his copying, and he had nearly spitted Glorfindel while brandishing a lance he was not supposed to touch – a happening which had amused neither Glorfindel nor Elrond. On top of it all, dinner had proved to be quail and rice (two things he despised and Arwen adored), and dessert was sure to be some strawberry confection prepared with Elladan in mind.
All in all, Elrohir felt like an unwelcome afterthought.
Elrohir was so deep in his morose musings that he did not notice the platter until it was directly before him. Awash in the scent of fresh-baked ginger cookies, he took in Arwen’s triumphant smirk and Elladan’s hopeful smile, then looked closely at the cookies arranged carefully on the long, narrow tray. There, written in white-icing, the letters a combination of Elladan’s clear script and Arwen’s childish hand, was his name:
E L R H O I R
“Arwen! You ninny...”
Elladan’s annoyed hiss prompted a warning look from Celebrían and a quick rearranging of the cookies.
E L R O H I R
Elrohir looked down at the platter again, the stress of the day rising and floating away, replaced by the warmth that spread over him from head to toe. A reluctant grin curled his mouth as he reached for the first cookie. “Thank you, Arwen...’Adan.”
Swallowing and reaching for the ‘L’, he poked Elladan teasingly.
“But it was still more than an hour.”