The waiting is the hardest part, thought Birdie. Then she sequed into "An American Girl", and shook her head in irritation. She wished she'd brought a radio.
The Storm Attack had played itsself out, and since then everything seemed to have come to a standstill. Was the storm just the Wizard's way of showing us what they were capable of? Had it driven the ships in some direction known only to their enemies? Birdie knew nothing charts and sextants. But since Tuor had found them, he must have some idea just where in Middle Earth they were.
If the storm had only been an opening gambit for the Wizards, it had done real damage to the adventuring party-goers. Mith and Rose were lost. Birdie had the feeling they were not dead, but nothing had been seen or heard from them in hours. How long could a person swim around down there without help...or fins?
Child had been holed up below most of the night, pouring over the Silm and other volumes found on the ship, trying desperately to find something in the histories that would help them. But there was nothing in the Books about the Blue Wizards. Nothing! They had arrived on Middle Earth, and the East had swallowed them for centuries. What could the scholarly Hobbit possibly find about them?
But now they were back, seemingly writing their own history, and it was definitely not Canon.
And what of Pio and Idril? Pio acted like she didn't - well - like Idril. What could possibly drive a wedge between the plucky Elf woman and The Lady of Gondolin, who was so beloved of the Valar that they had allowed her husband the blessings of the Undying Lands and made her son a constellation? Pio should practically be worshipping this Legend of the First Age, but instead she was barely tolerant of her.
"Go not to the Elves for advise..." ran through Birdie's head. It seemed to be a true, but not very helpful old saying. Not at the moment, anyway.
Birdie looked down at the waves, and almost felt her spine tingle where a few hours before a proud grey dorsal fin had sprouted. Up until now the little crebain had been Birdie's favorite form to assume, but now she had developed a sea-longing of her own. She thought about slipping over the side and swimming off into regions unknown. But now was not the time. The only help that form would give them now is if it would allow her to hunt for Mith and Rose, but the sea had swallowed them, and wandering through that vastness below to search would be folly. Perhaps the Mer-Man would grace them with some answers.
Birdie propped her hands in her chin and looked out across the sea at a full moon rising. Birdie started to sing in a soft, absent-minded voice. But oddly, it was not a sea shanty that came to her, but the words of an old Hobbit walking song:
"One morning very early,
In the pleasant month of May
As I walked out to take the air,
All nature being gay;
The moon had not yet veiled her face,
But through the trees did shine
As I wandered forth to take the air
On the banks of Brandywine.
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