I want to step back a few pages and consider the arrival of the group at Rivendell and the house of Elrond. It is a dream-like place, especially in
The Hobbit. Bilbo even starts falling asleep while he's still entering the valley as they "slithered and slipped in the dusk down the steep zig-zag path." From there story time passes like dream time and their stay of fourteen days is mentioned even before Elrond is properly introduced. The house itself is not described, and Tolkien remarks on how good times are "not much to listen to" but that bad events "may make a good tale." Such unpleasant moments are described, evocatively, as "uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome." It's not such a bad description of nightmares, actually, and a good representational counterpoint to the the pleasant dream of Rivendell.
We learn something else interesting in this chapter, that "Elves know a lot and are wondrous folk for news, and know what is going on among the peoples of the land, as quick as water flows, or quicker." This seems a far cry from the melancholy, brooding image of the Elves that sometimes appears in
The Lord of the Rings. Are these Elves just gossipy? Are they, to some great extent, politically and socially aware? Are they some kind of fairy internet, a circuit of spirit and song that circulates through the ley lines of Middle-Earth?
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