Stupid Stories for Irreverent Elves by darthfingon

Peculiar Night Air

Glorfindel, Fingon, FA 45

Fingon slept facing the wall, his back turned to Glorfindel, who was awake even as the sun started to climb over the edge of the horizon. Fingon had learned a considerable time earlier that the sun's presence did not necessarily indicate that it was time to get out of bed. Especially not so far into the north of the world, where summer's day began again after only five short hours of night. Glorfindel had not yet learned this. So he woke too early, and spent the first part of morning watching Fingon sleep. Or rather, he watched Fingon's hair.

Fingon always lay facing toward the wall, which Glorfindel thought odd for someone who fancied himself a warrior. In Glorfindel's opinion, a warrior should sleep facing the room, in order to better align himself against potential attackers. But Fingon explained away his preference through the story of a childhood nightmare. At age six, he had dreamed that the wall by his bed had melted away to reveal a gaping, mouth-like hole full of tentacles, ready to pull him in and swallow him. This was a far greater concern than monsters creeping through the open room. He would hear those creaking on the floor before they reached him, of course. So thereafter, he always slept in a wallward position to better align himself against potential tentacle attacks from that side.

This was naturally ridiculous, as Glorfindel well knew. There was no chance of a tentacle-filled mouth hole opening in the bedroom wall. Walls simply did not do that. Young Fingon must have had a runaway imagination to have dreamed such a thing. Glorfindel never would have. His dreams were, for the most part, purely functional. Except for the one he had just experienced. By all accounts, it was strange, and it worried him. He needed reassurance.

"Findekáno?"

"Mm?" answered Fingon. Either he was only pretending to be asleep, or he had fantastic wall-honed reflexes that allowed him to wake in a second at the slightest sound.

"I had a strange dream," said Glorfindel.

Fingon yawned, rolled over, and looked at him. "Oh really?"

"Yes. Just now."

"That is curious," Fingon said. "I too had a strange dream. It must be the air this past night. What was yours?"

Glorfindel took a steadying breath, and began. "It started normally enough. In my dream, you were teaching me a new card game. We were sitting in your father's salon. But then he came in and said he'd purchased a new ornamental bird. It was dreadfully expensive. And worse, he charged me to look after it. I had to feed this bird, and wash its feathers, because it was very dusty from having been sent up from the south. Then as I was washing it, its tail fell off. No matter what I tried, I couldn't put the tail back on, and I knew your father would be furious with me for ruining his new bird."

"And then?"

"And then nothing. I woke up. So I never learned what happened to the bird's tail. Isn't that strange?"

Fingon blinked once, and twice. "I suppose," he said slowly.

"What was your dream?" asked Glorfindel.

Yawning again, Fingon shifted to prop himself up on one elbow. "Well, first I dreamed that I was part of a band of thieves trying to steal the secret to long-term food preservation from the town crier's wife. She happened to be a powerful sorceress, but we didn't know this, and so crept foolishly into her cellar. The others were captured, but I managed to climb a ladder that led to a garden shed, and thus escaped. I ran away and quickly found myself in the marketplace at Alqualondë. I met the captain of the palace guard there. He was wearing peasant clothes to disguise himself from enemies, and escorted me to the covered stalls to purchase a basket of a new variety of fruit. He kept fondling my bottom along the way, which was both infuriating and arousing. I rather wished we were someplace alone. But we had come upon a Vanyarin wedding ceremony, all full of people and decorations. The bride and groom were about to speak their vows when on a sudden the bride burst into flames and toppled backward in convulsions, landing on a partially collapsed pavilion. She was dead immediately and there was nothing anyone could do about it. However, the wedding had to go on, because of all the people and decorations. I had to marry the captain of the guard. Only in my thief's clothes, because the bride's outfit was ruined in the fire. What a disappointment."

For lack of any better comment, Glorfindel muttered, "Oh." If the child Fingon had a problem with imagination, the adult was no better.

"I think that's quite strange, don't you?"

"Very," said Glorfindel, and he nodded. He was, on the whole, quite sorry he'd raised the topic of dreams in the first place, and made a note to himself never to speak of it again.