Snow angels

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by alatar

Do elves see the thicker patches of snow, and again, just know where to step? Do they guard this secret to make themselves more interesting?

Well, if this be so, it suggests that their art or 'magic' leads them into a wee bit of deception, a quality which was recently attributed to the Ring on one of our serious threads. This could be interesting to explore as elves exist in the same dimension, simultaneously as they exist in ours, as that of the Ringwraiths. (Yes, there is a Tolkien comment about this, which I posted elsewhere, but my books are not at hand at the moment.) Maybe elves do have a different density than humans or hobbits?

Is Legolas' ability to walk upon snow (not water, now, snow), part of elven knowledge of the dark dimension? This is a very different take from that of Roa and Celuien's thoughts on the warming condition of the secret flame.

Originally Posted by Celuien

What if the Elves are able to slightly melt the snow as they stand on it, then allow it to refreeze in the cold temperatures? They could then skate on a film of ice (as I saw a few enthusiastic skaters at the edge of a nearby horse farm doing yesterday). I know that I can't tell the difference between frozen and non-frozen snow visually unless I look very closely. Perhaps the difference produced by this sleight-of-hand (or, more accuratelym slight of foot) was imperceptible to the non-Elf members of the Fellowship.

Now this raises in interesting possibility. Could elves have invented the game of hockey? Note, I am assuming that Celuien's friends at the horse farm were engaging in a game of shinny, but perhaps elves would limit themselves to the more elegant form of freeskate or figure skating. Not that Legolas would have been wearing blades on his slippers, although if swords could be fired and tempered to great sharpness, there's no reason why elves wouldn't have come up with the idea of attaching them to their slippers.

I seem to be developing two different lines of arguments here. The topic is so slippery.