“Archery is all about precision. Not power, not strength, not even stamina.” Eledu pulled back the string of his bow with one elegant motion. Ellonur cautiously attempted the same move, but the string slipped, snapped, and he let go of the bow lest it injure him. Eledu picked it up without missing a beat and handed it back to Ellonur. “Bard had it all figured out. There is no need for more than one arrow, if you hit your mark.”

Early that morning, Eledu had found Ellonur awake in the kitchen. Gwyndir was still asleep, and Bainith was out already farming or cooking or something else hobbity. Instead of simply wishing him a good day and heading out to hunt deer on his own or check in with the Bounders, Eledu picked up both his bow and the one he had given to Ellonur which had remained unused and insisted that Ellonur come along with him. They had gone past the horseracing track that was nearer to them than any of their neighbors as they rode across the Shire to a hilly area near some farms. Ellonur pouted about not being able to partake in the racing that day, and now stared at Eledu as if everything he had just said was completely foreign. “Minstrels use bows?”

“Mins--- oh. No. Bard.” Eledu turned the bow around in Ellonur’s grasp when he noticed he was holding it backwards. “He was one of the greatest archers, a man of Laketown. One of his arrows was the black arrow—“

“You have different colored arrows?” Ellonur looked intrigued.

Eledu took the opportunity. “Yes! Yes, different arrows for different things.” He pulled a few from his quiver. “Some have barbs, while others are designed to spin as they are shot. I also have—“

“Oooo, purple!”

“…yes, purple.” The arrow currently in Eledu’s grasp had two lavender feathers and one dark purple. There were alternating bands of purple, plum, and lavender around the shaft. Glancing up, Eledu noticed that Ellonur’s outfit, made up of the same colors, allowed him to match to the arrow perfectly. Eledu handed it to Ellonur. “Shall we practice?”

“With this one?” Ellonur frowned. “But, purple. I do not want to ruin it.”

Eledu stared at Ellonur, then withdrew a second lavender and purple arrow. “Then here.”

“Oh! A matched set!” Ellonur hugged them.

Eledu continued to stare until he drew out an arrow with grey and olive feathers. “Here.”

Ellonur wrinkled his nose. “Not very pretty.”

“Exactly. Shoot it.”

Lifting the bow to try to mimic Eledu, Ellonur craned his neck around when he suddenly noticed the intricate carvings on his bow. “Look! Little bitty clouds and lightning!” Ellonur sat down and started to look over the little pictures carved into the wood. “Did you do all of this?”

“Of course I did,” answered Eledu proudly. “Why make a bow that is just a bow? It should be art.”

“Very nice!” Ellonur finally stood up. “I think I might hang it on my wall.”

“No, no..” Eledu reached out to grab hold of Ellonur’s shoulder when he tried to walk away. “This is a weapon, not a decoration. Come. Let me show you how to hold it. You never know when you might need to protect yourself.”

“I am fine with lightning.”

“What if the weather is bad? What if it is too warm and there are no clouds in the sky?” prodded Eledu.

Ellonur plucked at the bowstring experimentally. “I would just use fire,” he said nonchalantly.

With a sigh, Eledu adjusted Ellonur’s hands on the bow again. “Alright. What about sleet? It would be too hard to find clouds, too hazardous for ice, and too cold for fire. Or a hurricane! It would be so windy, fire would be blown out, and lightning might not hit its target, and ice would melt.” Eledu looked quite smug, until Ellonur said:

“Oh, no worries! Orcs are not so stupid that they would venture out in sleet; if there was a hurricane, it would probably be to our advantage against them. If the weather was really and truly that bad, then I would be home, probably cuddled by the fire with Bainith. I think I would have some soup.. or coffee. Either way, I would nice and warm—“

Eledu growled and pulled an arrow from his quiver. “When I was half your age, I could shoot a fly from a hundred paces.” To demonstrate, Eledu scanned the horizon, and picked out a maggot crawling up a signpost. He drew back the arrow and in an instant it was gone. When the pair walked to retrieve it, Ellonur pulled a face.

“I think I will stick with lightning and fire,” declared Ellonur as Eledu wiped his arrow off on the grass.

A web not far away caught Eledu’s eye. He pointed at a large knee-high spider creeping along the side of one of the farm fences, and shot the recovered arrow at the creepy creature. “What would you do if you ran out of parchment and had nothing to write your scrolls on?” asked Eledu as he drew back another arrow and shot it towards the spider that skittered towards them.

“I can adapt. I would just write on leaves or cloth or whatever I could find,” Ellonur answered. He pulled back the string, but it snapped at his hand and the arrow tangled, then fell to the ground. Noting that Eledu was focused upon the spider, Ellonur stepped down, breaking the arrow in half. He picked it up and tried to look innocent.

Eledu shot another arrow, and it hit the spider with a thwack. The beast rolled to a halt, legs still twitching as Eledu pulled the arrow out.

“What would you do if your quills were broken, your ink dry, your throat sore?” Eledu held out another arrow. This one was black and blue, though the feathers had more iridescence than some of the others.

Instead of answering, Ellonur inspected the feathers. “What kind are these?” he asked, turning it in his hand to make the colors dance over their surface.

With another heavy sigh, Eledu yanked out his other two arrows. “Those are from a crane. I was watching a pair of them one day making a nest. I had been hunting goose, but it was the first pair of cranes I had seen in Ered Luin, so I stopped to watch. They kept pulling out down for the lining, but there were a few feathers they left behind. I gathered them and created half a dozen arrows. That is the last of them.”

“What a wonderful story!” Ellonur added the arrow to the other two he had. “I think I will keep this one as well – with provenance like that, you should not shoot it at spiders!”

Eledu groaned and shook his head. “If we keep up like this, I will have no arrows left!”

“You can keep the ugly ones,” offered Ellonur.

The spider twitched its legs again and made an attempt to get up. Eledu stepped back and drew an arrow, but Ellonur held up a hand. “You want to know what I would do if I was unable to cast fire, ice, or lightning?” asked Ellonur as he pulled his rune-stone from his satchel. Eledu nodded. Lifting the stone eye-level, Ellonur looked at the etchings in the hard rock, and the jewels he had adorned it with. There were prettily scrawled runes carved into the hard surface, and he turned his wrist to catch the sunlight and make the stones set within glint and gleam. “I would just do this.” Ellonur drew back his hand, and threw the stone into the side of the spider’s head. It rocked over on its side, dead.

“Alright. That could work,” admitted Eledu.

Ellonur patted Eledu’s shoulder before reaching down to pick up his rune-stone. “Can we go back home now? We could race there – winner gets to keep all the pretty arrows.”

“How about, you can keep those, you can have this one,” he said, pulling an all-lavendar arrow from his quiver which looked out of place without its counterparts, “and when we get home, you make some soup and coffee for me, and we call it a day.”

“And you stop trying to get me to learn how to use this?” asked Ellonur, holding up the bow with disdain.

Eledu shook his head. “I am too stubborn for that,” he vowed.