The Last Dreamwalker

We Dance Numb Tonight

Lessien had stayed in her spot, frozen so long, in the same position, so long that her body was cramping up. She was trying to figure out what to do.

Legolas had so brutally rejected her plan and she had no idea what move to make next.

If he was not going to go the Mirkwood and sail back to the Valinor with King Thranduil, it meant he was going to fight. He was going to go to Minas Tirith, so near Mordor, to fight Sauron's Armies and there was nothing she could do.

She tried to think but it felt like she was going in circles. It was like her head kept chasing itself because it had nowhere to go. What hope was there left? Was there really anything to hold onto? What if Gandalf had been right? What if the emotional bonds she had severed were irreparable?

There were still drunken shanties being sung. People clapping and laughing. No one seemed to notice the disturbed Court Seer in the corner and, for this, Lessien couldn't be any more grateful.

She felt a hand tap her arm and her first instinct was to lash out and possibly cut off the fingers of the man who dare disturb her but then he spoke. "Lessien?" It was high and clear, though not high enough to be Pippin. Merry.

Her hidden mouth managed a wobbly smile.

She moved her head to look up and was glad she had not cried.

Merry was obviously drunk, too, and he handed her a tankard.

Lessien, seeing no more harm in drinking, downed it all.

The room stretched and the sad in her lessened. The angry in her stayed. The careless grew. Passing it back to the hobbit, he frowned. "You drank it all."

"Next one's on me, then," Lessien replied.

"Come dance with us, then, and you no longer owe me one."

"I can't," Lessien claimed. Even drunk she would keep her pride.

"You can and you will," Merry insisted again and the next thing she knew she was being dragged along behind a hobbit.

A hobbit of all things.

Her vision was much too clouded as he hopped onto a table, putting his hand out, and hoisting her up behind him.

"Lessien!" Pippin greeted loudly.

People tended to be loud when they were drunk, Lessien noted. She only smiled in return.

"Eve!" the crowd bellowed jollily.

Lessien bowed her head to the men and her grin grew. She felt as if she was putting on a show for all of Edoras. She was only half-wrong.

"Sing! Dance!" the people requested impolitely.

Lessien observed the crowd and a tankard was shoved into her hand for what seemed the millionth time that night alone. "A toast! To the best ale, found in the Green Dragon Inn. To the hobbits!"

Lessien remembered well her time spent there and there their were much better than this watered down substance.

Many people booed.

"Hey, you hear that boys?" Lessien asked over the roar of the crowd, "We should show these hooligans the real value of the Green Dragon!"

The smile on her face was hurting her cheeks by now, all memory of Legolas drowned out.

Pippin began to clap, setting the beat to the song, and the crowd was soon doing as he did.

Lessien began moving her feet, stomping and dancing, grabbing fistfolds of her skirt and making waves of the fabric.

Merry danced with Lessien, grabbing her hands and the two spun in circles. Merry broke off and linked arms with Pippin, skipping round and round. Lessien began dancing, doing the fancy footwork Pippin had taught her. She soon found herself singing,

"There's an inn of old renown
Where they brew a beer so brown
Moon came rolling down the hill
One Hevensday night to drink his fill."

She kept doing her jig, enjoying the crowd's cheering, and turned over the singing to Merry and Pippin. The people laughed and some whistled.

"On a three-stringed fiddle there
Played the Ostler's cat so fair
The hornéd Cow that night was seen
To dance a jig upon the green.

Called by the fiddle to the
Middle of the muddle where the
Cow with a caper sent the
Small dog squealing.
Moon in a fuddle went to
Huddle by the griddle but he
Slipped in a puddle and the
World went reeling.

Lessien took another huge gulp of ale and threw aside her empty cup, knowing this song by heart from when the hobbits had so eagerly taught her around fires many months ago. She began the next part eagerly,

"Dish from off the dresser pranced,
Found a spoon and gaily danced."

The rest she did not remember, for she was too drunk to recall any of it.