Lily and Del got along, oddly enough, despite how different the two could be. Where Lily was solemn, Del was cheerful. Where Lily pondered for hours before making a decision, Del threw reason to the wind and jumped in with both feet. Lily spoke some simple elvish and knew sad funeral songs to sing over graves for the dead. Del knew all the words to "The Hedgehog Can Never Be Buggered", plus a few verses of her own invention. Lily's hair had eternally been bound back in long braids from the day she learned to manipulate the hair, while Del's flew around freely, ranging in length from waist long to a simple nimbus around her head.
Odd as it seemed though, Lily counted Del as the only true friend she had. Which was the reason why it was Del that Lily told her theory to.
"Elves are..."
"From the stars." Lily pointed up in the sky, picking out the brightest star there, "That one."
"Why that one?"
"Because it's brightest. Their world is all burned away by that hot sun, and they had to sail across the stars in a ship." They're perched up in a tree outside, sitting side by side on the rough bark, and staring up at black sky, uncountable pin-points of light scattered all over, "That's why they're so graceful and light. The world they came from was like ours, but everyone there was beautiful and kind."
"Not all elves are kind though."
"That's because they were born here." She tucked her legs up under her black shirt, steadying herself on the truck to keep from falling down and cracking her skull open on the ground, "They're cruel because this world makes people cruel. Like poison. And they know it, so that's why most of them are sailing away."
"They're gone to the Grey Havens." Del's voice is hard to read in the dark, and Lily hopes she's listening to her.
"How do you know that? That's what they just say. I think they're sail on the water far enough that you can't see them anymore, and then the ship lifts up and they sail up, up into the sky and then into the stars and they're going back to find a new home."
They sit in silence for a moment, both girls studying the star. "They wanted to take Master Frodo with them."
"That's because he's like them." Lily leaned closer to whispers, almost afraid that Frodo would somehow overhear, "I think Master Frodo's half-one of them."
Del looked at Lily and began to shake a little. Lily frowned, reached out to touch her shoulder, "Are you okay?"
That was all it took. Del burst out loud laughing and tumbled off the branch, landing on the ground below with a thump and an ow.
"Del!" Lily dropped off the branch after her, landing on Del.
"OW! MY LEGS!" Del shoved Lily off her legs.
"Sorry, sorry. Did you break anything?"
"I don't think so." They stood up, shaking off dirt and dead roots, "Just don't tell me stuff like that when I'm that high off the ground."
"All right." Lily said, mentally making a note not to mention the idea of birch-bark hats to keep the Elves from reading their minds.
~