Disclaimer: Playing unpaid in Tolkien's sandbox in the corner reserved for people who are not exactly right in the head.

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Report after report came in over the long months, the tales always the same.

Sires gone.

Hunters dead.

Ambush.

Ambush.

Killed in ambush.

The enemy hid in the trees. The enemy hid among the rocks. The enemy hid among the tall grasses.  Too often did it seem that the hunters sent out for food to feed the many hungry mouths came back wounded or empty handed -- if they even came back at all.

In these harsh winter times, only the strong survive and that is rightly so. Indeed, that was always the way of it. But the children were the future, and too many of them were going hungry now. Too many hunters were not returning home. There can be no glory for a sire if his sons are all dead from the weakness of hunger before they can even lift a sword.

The chieftain sent dozens on the most recent hunt and the sheer numbers of hunters did assure that there was food for a change. But they would need this much food and more each from each hunt if the young were to survive to serve their lord in these parts.

Certainly the children were taught to be strong and fierce from the time they could grasp a stick, but the enemy was cunning.  If the survival of their folk lay in the young, then the children would need to be taught to be clever as well. 

As one haggard mother devoured her food, watching her many sons eating leg meat and breast meat and huge slabs of ripe flesh from the bone, she had an idea.  Calling the other mothers to her, she shared her thoughts. Grinning heartily over mouthfuls of food, they all listened, and they all agreed. 

Boldly, the mothers approached the chieftain and asked for the heads from the carcasses of that day’s kill. No one ever ate the heads, so the chieftain agreed. They were useless to him anyway except as decoration for empty walls.

Each mother took a head, then gathered the children and explained.

Every day, the head would be hidden in a different part of the dwelling. The head would spy on them like the enemy scouts spy on hunters, and it was up to the children to find the head. The first child to find the head each day would be rewarded, but woe would betide any who touched the heads but the mothers and the sires. To make it more interesting, the head would be named for an enemy from tales of horror told to teach children to fight hard and win at all costs. Eagerly, the children agreed.

The next day, the mother who had proposed the idea woke her children and immediately they began hunting for the head.  Her eldest and strongest son, Azog, screamed triumphantly as he pointed upward at a flat piece of rock protruding from the wall.

“There he is! I win! I see the head of Glorfindel the balrog slayer, our elf on the shelf!”

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NOTES:

The modern children’s story The Elf on the Shelf tells about how Santa sends out scout elves to spy on children and then report back to Santa during the night. The elf spies on the children from a new place each day and only parents are allowed to touch the elf or the magic will be lost. These scout elves get their magic by being named by the family each elf is spying on. Lots of stores in the United States carry The Elf on the Shelf books and little stuffed scout elves to hide around the house.

For me, this concept was too good to resist playing with.