"Glorfindel, darling, it is time to come inside!"
"I cannot come in yet, Nana, I'm having issues!"
Shaking her head, the elleth sighed and went out into the yard to find her elder child. He was nowhere in sight, but she new he had to be close for her to have heard him so clearly from the kitchen. "Glorfindel, dinner is ready. You will have more time to play tomorrow"
"I do not mind eating it cold," he said, his voice coming from a cluster of foliage. Glorfindel still remained hidden, but his half-wolf companion stood behind a bush, poking her head out and grinning lopsidedly at the thought of food. "How long until the sky gets dark?" asked the elfling.
"Glorfindel, I do not know what you have done now, but I want you on this porch by the time I count to five," warned his mother, drying her hands on her apron.
"Ahh... not a good idea," came his reply. Peeking out from the cover of some of the bushes he said softly, "Do you think you could come over here instead?"
Looking over her shoulder and listening for any sounds of her young daughter whom she assumed to still be napping
yet, she and hurried down the path to the big oak tree where Glorfindel and his father had built a house in the branches the year before. Usually, Glorfindel would do his shouting from the treehouse, so seeing him beneath it was certainly odd. "This had better be good," warned the elleth.
"Well, I have been out here hunting," he said, and with one hand he lifted up the sling that was on the ground beside him and showed it to his mother through the break in the brushes.
She nodded, and he continued, "I have had an awful time of it, nearly everything is as big as I am, and too fast to catch."
Thinking Glorfindel was hiding due to embarassment, his mother smiled fondly and tried to coax him out. "You will catch up to them in time. Your uncle brought us venison yesterday, there's no need for you to hunt right
now," she assured him.
"Well, I have not been hunting, not recently. I was hunting. Now, I have just
been sitting here," explained Glorfindel.
"Sitting in the bushes? Why not in the tree house?"
Looking up at the house above, Glorfindel replied, "'Cause I fell out of it into the bushes."
"Sweetie, are you all right?" His mother swooped
down to pull him out of the bushes, but he pulled back. "What is wrong, Glorfindel?"
"I... well, when I fell, I landed in a fox-squirrel nest, and I do not think they liked it," he said. "'Cause they chattered up a storm and then they scratched at me and... they tore a big whole in the seat of my pants," he admitted, and now he turned around and stuck his back end out the little hole in the bushes. Several furry
heads popped out from around the area to see what the commotion was, and they all seemed to laugh as Glorfindel turned himself back around. "So, I can not walk
to the house like this until it is dark."
"Oh, Fin... Stay right here, and I will
get a big blanket. I will bundle you up and carry you in, and no one around will notice what is happening, alright, sweetie?" Glorfindel nodded as his mother
hurried back up to the house. Picking up his sling, he held it to his chest with one hand while he tried to keep his britches together somewhat with the other.
"Now, all of you just wait until I get me a big real weapon like a sword," he
said in warning to the fox-squirrels, who seemed to giggle at him in their chittering. "When that happens, then you will have to watch out!"
