An Unexpected Vir(tu)al Party

[Thinlómien]

So many people! Thinlómien thought, happily ambling through the crowd, sharing toasts with old friends and enemies alike. It felt like good old times. And to think, an even bigger party was only to come!

Suddenly, her musings were interrupted by the papery sound of a telephone ringing in the distance.

"Is that for me?" she muttered aloud. "And if I pick it up now, who's gonna pick it up the next time it rings?"

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

"Saucepan? Common greeting brings underworld to nothing! I do beg your pardon, Lhuna. Haven't had a chance to do one of those for a while."

This may seem like an odd way for old comrades to greet one another, but it had been some time since Squatter had put a crypticism to the Saucepan Man and the sudden presence of a room full of old friends had left him slightly overwrought. He rambled on, apparently to the world in general.

"The old place hasn't changed a bit. I wonder what we've all been up to. So many unquiet dead returning to their mounds I almost feel newly deceased again. Good to see you anyway. Servant, ma'am."

He trailed off, apparently having forgotten what he was talking about, and gazed around the room. Perhaps he had drifted into some philosophical reverie, but more likely he was looking for canapés.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Estelyn was delighted to see such old friends as Saucepan and Squatter in the ballroom! How wonderful, she thought. Many had become treeish in the past years, as she had sometimes thought of herself, but fond memories had kept the Barrow on her mind and quite obviously, on others' minds as well.

Ah, the good days of adventure - Merisuwyniel and all who had shared those times... Her reminiscences were interrupted by images of the world beyond these halls, where her companion was not an Entish Bow but a sewing machine, where stacks of cotton waited to be sewn into protective masks. The masks of anonymity in the early days, of hiding behind a nickname, had dissolved into the true names and faces of friends, truly met in life, or at the least virtually known. Now it was back to masks again - strange times indeed.

[Mithalwen]

Mithalwen lingered outside a long while. She had seen the invitation sometime ago but she had never been a party person and this tendency had strengthened over the years. She had grown more like her name greyer and more treelike in temperament as well as physically. She was definitely not as bendable - “and increasing in circumference year on year” piped up a voice in her head. Her mind’s eye gave her inner voice what her mother would have called an old-fashioned look and the voice bit its tongue.

It wasn’t that she didn’t love the place, she did. it had been a refuge for years but she had another refuge now, a home she need never leave on the blessed island and there were things in the other world which took her time and occupied her mind. She had taken a stop gap job on moving and just when she had planned to move on she found herself a key worker in the struggle against the pestilence. She was working for the victuallers and as a wise hobbit once said “where there’s life there’s need of vittles”.. She couldn’t save your life but she knew where wine and the requisites for the privies were kept... Spending all day answering queries and soothing the irate left her almost grateful for social distancing.

But yet there were people it would be good to see again, those of whom no word reached her in the other place. So she loitered outside and watched others enter, some the firstcomers she knew little, some of her own time, some of The bright younglings grown very well indeed. Inner voice and another that sounded rather like Lalaith’s chivvied her on. She wrapped herself in her shadowy cloak, washed her hands carefully While she hummed the first stanza of “Gil-galad was an Elven king” and slipped in as unobtrusively as she could contrive.

[piosenniel]

“Oh, look!” Pio’s companion nodded her head toward the man who had just entered and now stood glancing about the room in a somewhat bemused manner. "He looks like that fellow you told me about. From that Inn you ran? Or was it some adventure?”

Raising a brow at that vague description, Pio scanned the room in the general direction of Angara’s nod. Just the person I wanted to see!
She smiled, nodding her head at the fellow. Raising her arm, she waved at him, half filled mug still grasped in her hand.

“Envinyater! Join us!! I’ll stand you a cup of whatever your thirst desires!"

[Lalaith]

Lalaith had been happily exchanging Werewolf anecdotes with Pitch and cooing over pictures of Boro's gorgeous sister-son - babies were, like parties, one of her Favorite Things. A clanging noise distracted her. Well, of all the...Saucie!!

And who is that gliding in stealthily behind him..."Aha! Mith...dear thing!!" Remembering her friend would not appreciate a great song and dance, she reined in her urge to halloo across the crowded room. Instead she deftly grabbed another glass of bubbles from a passing tray, and made her way through the crowd, being careful to not tread on any toes or dragons' tails.
"Hello darling, isn't this fun? Here, have this - I've hardly spilt a drop. And do you know, I think I've spotted Lhuna!"

[Mithalwen]

Mithalwen smiled. . It was always a joy to see Lalaith and she could say much the same of a glass of fizz. “It is a wonder to see so many again, and you are right about Lhuna”. Mithalwen smiled again recalling how Nilp had adopted her and so Lhuna by logical necessity was also one of her brood. “I have had word from Her brother lately, but I don’t think he is here yet. And Lhuna seems deep in conversation just now, but there is young Galadriel” , again Mithalwen’s sometimes frosty heart filled with maternal warmth and guilt, my cub! It was long since she had seen her and letters had been left unsent. She was worse than Butterbur she thought.