Carefully, Artanis approached her friend Thranduil. “What... what are you doing?” she asked, cautiously staying a safe distance away.
“Shh, I am concentrating.” Indeed, Thranduil had an intense look upon his face as he dipped the brush back into one of the pots of paint balanced upon the stone wall he was perched on. “I want this to be a special present for the spring festival for my parents.”
“Oh,” replied Artanis, for she was going to suggest that Thranduil would be better off painting on a wall or a flat piece of wood instead of an eagle’s egg. Finally, being Artanis, she ended up telling him just that.
“This is NOT an egg,” he corrected, after mumbling, “Girls are so stupid sometimes.”
Artanis crossed her arms. “That is too an egg and I am NOT stupid.”
“Well, you think you know everything, and you do not. There is no way eggs can be bigger than the animal that they come from. This is a rock, and a very nice rock.” Pausing his work for a moment, Thranduil added, “I know how eggs are made. Do you?”
“Yes,” she hissed back, for after the last fiasco when she found out she had not been properly informed as to the origins of elflings, Artanis had demanded to be told the origins of everything else as well. Her brothers had been only too happy to answer her questions, usually at the dinner table, much to her parent’s chagrin.
“Then you know this is not an eagle egg,” he said, swirling his brush in the glass of muddy water and then dipping it into blue paint. “Now if you stop trying to make me mess up, maybe you will get to see it when I am finished.”
Giving Thranduil a moment to resume his work, Artanis tentatively reached out and touched the shell of the giant egg. At first, she felt nothing, and wondered if indeed this was a rock as Thranduil claimed. Then, there was a gentle tapping from the inside. “Artanis, what are you doing? Get your ear off my egg!” Thranduil demanded, pulling it away what little he could.
“Thranduil, listen! There is something inside!”
Rolling his eyes, Thranduil shook his head. “You are imagining things.”
>Tick tic<
Thranduil’s jaw dropped and Artanis gave him a smug look. “Your ‘rock’ is ticking,” she informed him.
“N-no, it is not,” argued Thranduil, which was difficult over the ‘tick-a tic tic’ they were hearing.
“Wow, Thranduil! Where did you find that?” It was Ecthelion, their slightly older friend, who hopped up onto the fence. “That eagle egg is SO big! How did you get it away from the parents?”
“The parents?” asked Thranduil warily as his rock continued to tick.
“They say that Giant Eagles are very protective of their eggs – they leave them only for a few hours at a time,” explained Ecthelion. “I have never seen one this far from the Helcaraxe before!”
Artanis curiously touched the egg again, feeling the vibrations of the tapping. “Where did you find your ‘rock’, Thranduil?”
“I, um... it rolled down the hill this morning,” he said uneasily, setting the giant object on the ground. “Er... what... why is everything shaded?” he asked suddenly, and all three elflings looked up into the sky.
“I think that might be your rock’s mother,” said Artanis rather quickly as she bolted away from the stone wall. Ecthelion gave Thranduil’s sleeve a tug as the eagle above them circled once more and then began to dive.
“Maybe I should just stick with some flowers instead,” said Thranduil as he and Ecthelion caught up with Artanis.
“As long as you have no inclination to go picking something like the flowers off of the two trees,” answered Artanis, “I think that might be a very good idea.”
