Misdirection: first impression by Quente

"Oops."

“Sincerely, I did not intend to barge into the Princess’s bathing courtyard,” Tuor said, yet again, noting that the business side of a Gondolindhrim sword was just as sharp as his own -- and likely by the same makers.

At that moment his knees were on the cobbled flagstones of the Courtyard of the Diving Swans, and a bevy (or was it a gaggle, given swans) of elven maidens were peaking at him from behind a row of colonnades.

Few of them were dressed in anything but their long, dark hair, and Tuor averted his eyes.

“And what business DO you have here, Secondborn?” The Princess’s guard were some of the strongest female elves Tuor had ever seen. If Princess Idril was a graceful reed, these were like unto a fierce raspberry thicket in full thorn.

“I was looking for the Courtyard of the Diving Swallows,” Tuor said, “and did not realize that Gondolin had more than one Courtyard of the Diving Bird.” And he’d been misdirected, by one Maeglin. He would remember that.

One of the ladies in the distance giggled, and Tuor felt his face come all over hot. It was lucky that the fairest of them was not bathing at that very moment, or she might think him lecherous, or worse –

And then, of course, he heard her soft voice approaching. “Why wait you, my friends? Do you not bathe?”

“Ah,” said one gaily, “It seems we have a Man in our midst, espying us.”

Tuor shifted, gritting his teeth. It was going to be That kind of day.