“So here we are in Middle-Earth.”
“Yes.”
“Where a great many people get killed by orcs, trolls, wargs, giant spiders–”
“Ooh, those are nasty, I had a cousin killed by a giant spider last week.”
“Quite. Elves. Dwarves. Balrogs. Particularly detetermined hobbits. Dragons. Ents, when they move themselves to it. Rock slides. Rivers in flood. Influenza.”
“Yes, I’m beginning to see your point.”
“Pneumonia.”
“Yes, yes.”
“Cholera, starvation.”
“You needn’t belabor it.”
“That fellow who turns into a bear.”
“I got it quite some time ago, thank you!”
“Not to mention shield-maidens of Rohan and their stubborn old aunties, thank you very much. Oh, and UNliving men, we seem to have no few of those wandering around on winged shadow horsies, no guarantees that they’ll stay my pals, our side are not known for that. And you want me to feel all cozy because I can be hindered by no living man? Thanks. Thanks ever so, dark lord, that’s just keen.”
She closed the book. “And that, my darlings, is how the word ‘angmar’ came to mean ‘panic room’ in the old tongues of men.”
“But not the old tongues of elves, Mummy?”
She kissed the little hobbitling brow. “Elves have four different words for panic rooms, my sweet, and if you are good, we will get one of your Took aunties to come over and teach them to you, and why it is that they need to complicate things with four when we and the dwarves don’t need any. But not tonight. Tonight is for sleeping.”