(O.C.C. - OK, everybody back the boat up! Pio is not - repeat - not in the water. She was last seen on the deck consulting with Tuor and Idril about the fake surrender and hostage-taking of Frodo and Samwise. Rose is in the water. And Mith is in the belly of a whale, or submarine, or something, with the Blue Wizards.)
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After the council had broken up, and Tuor and Idril had gone below to speak to the Hobbits, Birdie wander off to the rails and went over the plan in her head again and again.
It was desperate and fool-hardy, and she was still amazed that the Numenorian had ever agreed to it. And yet what other possible solution could there be? It had taken stealth to defeat the Dark Lord. It would take the same to defeat this latest enemy.
Birdie looked around at the sailors preparing the small flotilla for departure to the Inner Seas. It suddenly occurred to her that most of the new crews were strangers to her, and a sickening thought poppped into her head. The Blue Wizards had tricked them all before by assuming the forms of Cirdan and Legolas. They could be on this boat again this very minute! From the oldest mariner to the rosy-cheeked cabin boy, everyone here was under suspicion. Birdie supposed it was even possible that her dearest companions could be someone other than they seemed. When Pio had climbed out of the sea onto the Catamaran, had it been Pio? Was Rose, (whereever she was) still Rose? Was Child, Child?
Bird stamped her foot in irritation, trying to drive such thoughts from her head. Such thinking could lead to madness! She could only comfort herself with the thought that Idril and Tuor had the wisdom and far-sightedness to see through such trickery.
Birdie looked down in the water, and caught a flash of white floating on the surface. It was not sea-foam, and she looked closer, following the white, waving patch on the waves.
Suddenly she gasped, and grabbing a gaff-hook, lowered it over the side and snagged the object before it passed away to the stern. She pulled a sodden mass up to the rail, and flipped it onto the deck.
The wail floated over the waves, and down to the cabins, shocking the other passengers out onto the deck. They stood agast as they saw the skin-changer hunched over a white, soggy bundle, gripping it in her hands and sobbing.
Birdie held up a piece of white, ruffled fabric, dripping with sea-water. "Rose's petticoats! Rose's petticoats! A shark must have gotten her! She's dead!"
[ June 16, 2002: Message edited by: Birdland ]
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