…What would it look like?

Ernest Hemingway

*It was very late and everyone had left the hall except an old man who sat in the shadows the leaves of the old Mallorn made against the moonlight. The two elves inside the hall knew that the old man was a little drunk, and while he usually was quiet and kept to himself they knew that if he became too drunk he would start setting things on fire, so they kept watch on him.

“He’s drunk,” one elf said.

“What do you care?”

“He’s muttering about the secret fire.”

“Leave him alone. He used to carry a ring.”

“He’ll stay all night. He should never have been rebodied.”

The old man rapped on the table with his goblet. The younger elf went over to him.

“What do you want?”

The old man looked at him. “Another miruvor.”

“You’ll be drunk,” the elf said. The old man looked at him. The elf went away.

“Look at his bushy eyebrows,” he said to his colleague. “There is nothing as nasty as an old Man. He’ll stay all night and I’ll never get any sleep.”

The elf took the bottle of miruvor from the counter inside the hall and marched to the old man’s table. He poured the goblet full.

“You should never have been rebodied,” he said to the old man.*

Mark Twain

*NOTICE:

Persons attempting to resolve the question of Balrog wings by means of this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to define the nature of Tom Bombadil will be banished; persons attempting to find allegory in it will be shot.

BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR,

Per G.G., Chief of Ordnance.

FOREWORD:

In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Quenya Elvish dialect; the extremest form of the Rhovanion dialect; the ordinary Sindarin dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech.

I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding.

THE AUTHOR.

CHAPTER 1

You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Red Book of Westmarch; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Frodo Baggins and his Uncle Bilbo, and they told the truth, mainly. There was things which they stretched, but mostly they told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was the Lady Galadriel, or Elrond, or maybe Gandalf. The Lady Galadriel – the Lady of Lothlorien, she is – and Elrond, and the wizard Gandalf is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.*

Heh, anybody have any others?