A/N: This fic is one part of the History Will Be Kind To Me universe. Both this and The Road Goes Ever On and Tales From Arda all take place in the same alternate universe and frequently crossover. You will see characters or things from both of those fics appear/mentioned in this one. It's all one giant tangled ball of yarn. Have fun untangling it. :)

EDIT: Yep. I rewrote it. Again…don't look at me like that. I much prefer this chapter over the old one. I'm actually rewriting all the current chapters so they mesh together better and don't sound so goddamned hurried. Also I'm implementing a new structure to the story. Odd-numbered chapters (i.e. 1, 3, 5, etc) will be entirely from Alice's POV whereas even-numbered chapters (i.e. 2, 4, 6, etc) will be from Celírion's POV. Just a head's up. You may have also recently noticed the rating has changed from 'T' to 'M'. This is to cover all of the foul language (Alice has a fondness for the word 'fuck' and its many iterations) and possible (but not guaranteed) sexual situations that may or may not be coming up later on. Also violence. There's going to be a lot of that soon enough.

If you'd like to see how far the chapters for this story are coming along, check my profile. I update it every time I make progress or post something.

History Will Be Kind To Me

From Lands Beyond

"Not only do I not know what's going on, I wouldn't know what to do about it if I did." - George Carlin

01. Surprise!

The Field of Celebrant, 2998 of the Third Age

Once, when she was nine, Alice had gotten lost in the woods on a school camping trip. As it turned out, this was not like that.

In fact, it was worse.

Jesus Alice, what rabbit hole have you fallen down this time?

A very grassy one apparently. Somewhere to her left she could spy mountains off in the distance but otherwise it was nothing but endless yellow stalks as far as the eye could see. It reminded her of Montana…not that she'd actually ever been to Montana…unless this was Montana?

For what had to have been the thousandth time, Alice felt the wheres, whys, and hows begin to resurface in her mind with a feeling nearly akin to panic before she savagely squashed them down again. She'd had quite enough of nervous breakdowns today thankyouverymuch. It seemed like all she'd done since waking up here was cry uncontrollably. Which, to be fair, was completely understandable. Unfortunately her triumphant moment of self-control lasted all of half a second as she turned her eyes to the horizon and took notice of the saffron-stained sky. As she watched the sun sink ever so slowly into the east she felt a heavy sense of dread begin to coil alarmingly in the pit of her stomach.

It would be dark soon.

And she was alone.

Alone and afraid and half-naked.

Stupidly, Alice wondered why she hadn't gone to bed in one of the myriad of pajama bottoms that sat unused in the corner of her underwear drawer. At least then she wouldn't be sitting in the middle of nowhere in just a raggedy t-shirt and her underwear. Seriously, from now on it was pajama bottoms all the way. No excuses.

The sun sank further, bleeding into the horizon like an omen.

It was that image that stayed with her and followed her into her dreams as the encroaching night finally swallowed the sun whole.

The following morning Alice awoke to a massive crick in her neck, a plethora of bug-bites (that she had to resolutely force herself not to scratch), and a firm sense of fortitude and optimism which she had most definitely not had the day before. Then again, a parched throat and a grumbling stomach could be exceedingly powerful motivators.

Okay. Time to put your best foot forward. No more moping.

Unfortunately her best foot forward stepped on a rather pointy rock and made her realize (after quite a lot of agonized swearing) that she wasn't going anywhere without some form of footwear. Which is how Alice ended up spending the better part of the morning wrestling with her t-shirt as she ripped off the sleeves and finagled them into pseudo-sandals. Granted they barely provided the same protection as her cheap foam flip-flops back home but they were also better than nothing at all.

Eat your heart out Martha Stewart.

As it turned out she didn't have to go far to find water. There was a stream a few hundred yards away and neither thought of dysentery or cholera could stop her from lapping up the water like an animal. She figured she could regret the decision later when she suddenly started vomiting up her intestines.

Her thirst abated, Alice finally gave her surroundings a better look. Sure, she'd stared at it all day yesterday, but most of that staring had really just been her gazing at nothing as she wondered how the hell she could be looking at it in the first place. For the most part it was all the same as she'd saw before: sparse yellow plains that stretched into the horizon and rolling hills and towering mountains behind her. Oh it was all very beautiful, to be sure, though more in a I-would-much-rather-be-staring-at-this-on-a-postcard kind of way than a let's-take-an-unexpected-half-naked-hike-through-the-mostly-grassy-wasteland kind of way. What she hadn't noticed during her initial observation yesterday though, was that there was a splash of green near the base of the mountains. A forest perhaps? It was hard to tell, which meant it was probably miles away.

Still…

Well, it wasn't like she was going to find food out in this wasteland. If there was anything edible nearby it had to be where green things were growing. Green was good…right? Alice's stomach grumbled, as if in affirmation.

Towards the blurry green shape it is then.

Except, as she soon discovered, it wasn't nearly that easy.

I'm never going to complain about walking in heels again. Even high-heels would be preferable to walking across the open plan in what basically amounted to rags tied around her feet. Even with her tiptoeing across the ground like she was playing the-floor-is-lava, every step was met with a grimace as rocks poked against her soles and dry grass scratched at her bare legs. And that wasn't the only problem…

It was hot.

The sun was high in the sky now and it had begun to beat upon her mercilessly. Her skin, though dark, was not impervious to sunlight (as a rather obnoxious girl in elementary school had once seemed to think) and Alice knew that soon she would be sporting a rather uncomfortable red hue to it in the foreseeable future. Miserably, she wiped at the sweat dripping into her eyes and scanned the hillside before her and then back to the stream she'd left behind. By her rough guesstimate…she's only gotten about as far as the length of a football field…maybe even a football field and a half…though perhaps that was too generous an estimate and she was only trying to make herself feel better.

Alice sighed despairingly…This is going to take a while.

"Owowowowwwwwww!"

Alice moaned, the sound of her voice closer to that of a wounded animal than anything she would normally recognize as her own. Her foot twitched as she poked as a particularly angry looking blister and she hissed through her teeth. She decided then and there that she really hated walking. As soon as she got back home, she was going to invest in hover-chairs.

Gingerly, she stretched her legs out and looked out from her perch atop a rock embedded in the hillside, watching the sun sink ever westward. She glanced north, towards the patch of green. She wasn't quite sure it had gotten any bigger, but at least she couldn't see her stream anymore (though there were a few more here at the base of the hills, trickling down from the mountains which at least meant she wouldn't go thirsty) which meant Alice was most definitely farther than a football field and a half from where she started. That was progress at least. Not that she would be moving any further today. Her feet ached just at the mere thought of any more walking. No, she was definitely done for the day.

God, but she was tired. Alice had never been a particularly athletic girl by any stretch of the imagination, but she had always thought she wasn't really out of shape either. Guess this whole adventure cleared that up. Sore and exhausted, she slid down the rock to curl up at its base and swiped irritably at the bugs attempting to nest in her hair. The grass made for a scratchy bed, though she imagined it was better than sleeping on the rock itself which at the moment was now serving as her only form of shelter against the howling wind.

In the distance, a very different kind of howling joined the sound of the wind whistling over her rock.

Alice froze, suddenly all too aware of her perilous position alone with only the stars for company. Seeking to distract herself from the thought of predators prowling in the night, she instead focused on the hollow pang in her stomach, letting it ground her. She hadn't eaten in two days now. Grimly, she wondered if she would even make it to the forest before she collapsed from exhaustion and malnutrition. Or perhaps the wolves would get her before then? Tear her limb from limb to feed their own hungry bellies?

A shiver of foreboding slithered up her spine at the thought.

Shaken, Alice studied the changing shade of the sky above, now a brilliant burnt orange color that was quickly fading into a deep indigo. She could already spy the stars peeking out, their light shining past the leftover haze left in the sun's wake. As the last shred of daylight leeched from the sky she could only marvel as the Milky Way slowly came into full view. A dazzling riot of color and light unlike anything she had ever seen before, with its swirling nebulae and varied dappled stars crying out for her attention. Growing up under the smog of Boston, she'd only ever been able to glimpse the brightest of stars, enough to trace out the Big Dipper or Orion's Belt but nothing like this. As she marveled though a queer feeling settled uncomfortably in her gut. It took Alice a while to figure out what unsettled her…and then it hit her.

The constellations were gone.

Well, not gone, but definitely wrong. The Big Dipper was nowhere to be found, nor its smaller cousin, or Orion. Draco, Sagittarius, Hercules, she couldn't find any of them.

That's weird.

Thoroughly disturbed, Alice slept little that night, dreaming of a picnic that never ended under a ever-changing sky.

As it turned out, walking for hours on end was a rather boring experience. It was just her here after all and Alice had yet to see a single sign of civilization. For a while she tried reciting Shel Silverstein poems to herself. She wouldn't dare touch anything darker than that lest she'd cause herself to spiral into hysterics again. Apparently though Shel Silverstein was a lot darker than she'd originally thought because…

"…Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me too

Never returned to the world they knew,

And nobody knows what's happened to

Dear Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me too."

…On second thought…perhaps it was time for some tasteless pop music?

"I'm the operator, you can call anytime

I'll be your connection to the party line."

Ah. Much better.

And so her day went, interspersed with the occasional bad pop song to distract her from the slowly climbing temperature and the way her ruined t-shirt clung to her skin in the most uncomfortable manner. Alice was sure by now she smelled as awful as she probably looked. She particularly was glad she didn't have a mirror or else she would be despairing over her hair right about now. Today of all days, she wished she'd taken more after her pale German mother and her side of the family rather than her dark American father. Perhaps then her hair wouldn't be nearly the matted mess as it most certainly felt. She vowed that the moment she got home she was going to use an entire bottle of conditioner and de-tangler spray to salvage it. And then, if she was really lucky, she might not have to chop it all off.

Alice's stomach interrupted her train of thought, reminding her of its ever-present emptiness. She was so hungry. Unsuccessfully, she tried not to think about food…which meant it was all she could think about. God, but she missed nachos. And cheesecake. And orange juice. And greasy Chinese food. And pancakes. And definitely triple-chocolate cake. And while on the topic of things she missed, she also wanted some shoes. And some real clothes. And her cellphone. And indoor plumbing. And air-conditioning. And considering how awfully red her skin was getting a bottle of sunscreen wouldn't hurt either.

Alice whispered these things to herself like a mantra as if conjuring them in her mind long enough would make them appear. Instead she found that she was still as dirty, half-naked, dehydrated and starving as she had been for the last three days.

She pressed on.

Later, sometime after she'd sang what had to have been her sixth Backstreet Boys song in a row, Alice finally saw it. Nestled down between the slopes of two hills and nearly hidden by several very large boulders…was a house.

A house.

"Oh my god!"

Though her feet were swollen and blistered and hurt more than she could even describe, Alice all but ran down the hillside. If there was a house, then there would be people, and if there were people they would have food and a phone. The mere thought made her heart sing. However, the closer she came to the little brown structure, the more she began to notice the things she had not been able to see before like the naked beams jutting into the sky or the half-collapsed wall hiding behind one of the boulders. Alice felt her hope die in her throat as swiftly as it had been born.

It was abandoned.

Devastated, Alice staggered to the bottom of the hill and tripped, falling to her knees near the base of a tree. A sob welled up out of her throat, unbidden. She tried to choke it back but it was too late and before long she was howling as loudly as the wind overhead. She wasn't sure how long she cried for, but by the time she was able to bring her emotions back under control dusk had begun to set it. Wiping her nose with her arm, Alice lurched to her feet awkwardly and took a step…only for her toes to collide with something that was definitely not a rock this time. She glanced down.

It was an apple.

At first Alice just stared at it rather stupidly. After a second though, realization dawned and her stomach twisted in recognition. She looked up. The branches of the tree above her bore the same familiar green-and-yellow fruit.

Food.

With more fervor than she thought possible, Alice snatched the apple from the ground, lightning quick, and greedily bit into the green flesh, dirt and all. It was sour on her tongue and clearly still immature but in that moment it was the most delicious thing she had ever tasted. In moments, it was gone and Alice eagerly reached for another still hanging on the bough.

Later, when her fingers and face were sticky with juice, Alice decided to explore. The house, as it turned out, was really more of a shack. The outside was overgrown and half of the roof was missing. Sadly there was little in the way to scavenge, just a plethora of broken pottery shards and some rotten burlap, though the promise of walls and a roof over her head more than made up for it. After the last several days it might has well have been a palace.

Alice was by no means a religious person but that night she thanked every higher power she could think of. Either someone (or something) was looking out for her or she was the luckiest unlucky idiot alive. And so with a full belly and walls to guard her against the elements, she fell asleep.

It was still dark out when she heard it.

After three days alone with only the sound of her own voice to keep her company, the sound of other voices was almost jarring. Nonetheless, when Alice heard the stamping of feet and the arguing of people she was startled awake as if by the shot of a gun. She stiffened, sitting up confusedly, eyes blinking at the darkness. Voices rang out beyond the walls of the house, though they were too far away to make out. It was like trying to listen to someone else's conversation from the other side of a gymnasium. Still…people. There were people here. Alice scrambled to her feet and made for the ruined doorway…

And that was when she noticed that she wasn't alone in the house.

Several figures stood silently in the shadows, all of them tensed, faces turned towards the commotion coming from outside. One of them glanced in Alice's direction, as if she were a mild irritation. He made a motion with head and before she could make a sound, a hand darted out from behind her and clamped over her mouth.

Shocked, Alice didn't even have time to struggle before she was spun around to face a tall man with eyes that seemed to glint in the dark. He pressed his finger to his lips in a gesture for her to be silent. Obediently, Alice bit her tongue.

What was going on? Who were these people?

A thousand questions swirled in Alice's mind as her heart fluttered in her chest like a hummingbird. The man's fingers still rested against her lips, as if to remind her of his silent warning. She stared up at him, her eyes adjusting to the darkness. His face was shadowed by the hood he wore but she could still make out the pale skin under it. He made a motion to one of the other people across the room and Alice couldn't help herself flickering her eyes over towards them in response. There were five of them. One in each corner, all wearing the same hooded cloak as the man before her.

And they were all holding weapons.

Alice felt her heart stutter in her chest.

And then, like a frightened doe, she bolted from her captor's grasp and out the doorway. A surprised noise came from her right, where the voices had been coming from, and Alice instinctively turned towards it…and froze.

There were several of them and even in the darkness, Alice could make out the ghastly grey skin that clung to their bones and the yellow eyes which hung in their sockets and glowed with a predatory sheen. And now every one of those eyes was directed at her. For a single moment, no one moved.

Alice took a step back.

And then one of the monsters sneered. Alice was barely given time to process any of this before another grunted and then charged her. Terror filled her, seizing up her muscles and making movement or coherent thought impossible. The monster was close enough for her to see the sickly shade of its eyes as it swung a hideous-looking axe up, ready to bring it down onto her skull. Reflexively, Alice squeezed her eyes shut.

Oh God! I'm going to die!

The blow never came though. Instead, Alice heard a strange sound come from the creature and she opened her eyes just in time to see it crumple to the ground, an arrow lodged deep in its eye-socket. She stared. Unfortunately for her, the other creatures recovered from their shock faster than she did, charging towards her and shouting in a strange language.

Quite out of nowhere, a hand lodged itself between her shoulder blades and shoved. Hard. Alice didn't even have time to catch herself before she went tumbling to the ground unceremoniously. Behind her, she could hear the shouts of men and the sickening sound of arrows burrowing their way into flesh. Mercifully, the battle was short-lived and the air went still and silent when the last body hit the ground. Alice's heart thundered in her chest as she crawled to her hands and knees. A pair of boots appeared in front of her and Alice flinched. She hadn't even heard them move. She looked up.

It was the man from the house.

He murmured something to her. Alice blinked in confusion. What was he saying? That didn't sound like English…it didn't sound like German either. Oblivious to her linguistic crisis, the man grasped ahold of Alice's arm and forcefully pulled her to her feet. Her head spun. The man spoke to her again.

He sounded angry.

"Please," Alice whispered, miserable and shivering with fear. "I just want to go home."

The man said something else, this time shaking her shoulder as if to punctuate some point. She felt her throat tighten. In fact…it tightened almost as if…

Oh noooooooooo-

It was last thing Alice thought before she hunched over and vomited all over the man's boots. She didn't even get to see his reaction before darkness swallowed her vision and she collapsed.

It was a strange feeling to wake up in a bed after having slept on the ground for days, almost like a dream itself.

Alice sat up, blinking against the bright light assaulting her senses.

"Ugh…what…where…?"

Her first thought was that she'd been dropped into a very unorthodox open-air infirmary. Well…perhaps a fantasy movie's interpretation of one. It was very…earthy. And clean. The room was circular, with seven beds lined up against the pale stone walls in a star-like shape, and glassless windows facing the aisles in between them. She'd certainly never seen an infirmary quite like this before.

Alice's second thought, as she looked down at herself, was…

"Where are my clothes?"

In place of her soiled t-shirt and underwear was what could be only be described as a very old-fashioned white nightgown. It even had the billowy sleeves. In what particular hell had she woken up that she'd been forced into a nightgown even her grandmother wouldn't have been caught dead in?

What happened? How did I get here?

Alice wracked her brain, recalling all too well her disastrous journey out in the middle of nowhere. Then there had been a house…and then…monsters? A shiver crawled up her spine. The image of iridescent yellow eyes flashing in the dark burned in her memory like a particularly unpleasant afterimage behind her eyelids.

A voice rang out jarring Alice from her thoughts, her head snapping up so quickly she heard her neck crack. A woman stood at the foot of her bed. And yet…she was like the final photoshopped version of a woman on a magazine cover. Her pale skin was too smooth, too flawless, and her hair shimmered in the light like pale gold. When the lady smiled, Alice could only notice her unnaturally perfect white teeth.

For the first time in a long time, Alice felt incredibly self-conscious. Though she'd never been unattractive, and she had always had more than enough self-confidence to fall back on, there was no way on Heaven or Earth she could possibly compare with…that.

"Ummm…hi?" she stammered out, more than a little awe-struck.

The lady stood quietly for a moment, tilting her head just a fraction to the left like a cat who'd come across something peculiar. And then she opened her mouth…and nonsense came out. Oh it was beautiful nonsense, to be sure, but completely incomprehensible nonetheless.

Alice groaned. Perhaps that whole fiasco with that strange man really did happen…

"Ich bin Alice?" she tried halfheartedly. The woman stared at her politely, though uncomprehendingly. Well, that was a 'no' then.

"Hola ¿cómo estás?" Okay, also no.

"Parlez-vous français?" Well French was out then.

"Nǐ hǎo?"...Well to be fair she didn't look like she was Chinese anyway.

Each language was met with an equally kind, but oblivious stare. Alice switched back to English, "America? U.S.A.? George Bush? Disneyland? Hollywood? Umm…Britney Spears? No, nothing?" Defeated, Alice flopped down onto the nearest bed with a huff.

Well this was definitely going to be a problem.

She'd been stuck in this room for days and frankly it was starting to drive her a little crazy.

Oh she was well taken care of, that was indisputable. Meals were brought three times a day and several people routinely came in to check on her to make sure she hadn't died overnight. For the most part though...she was bored. And very, very confused.

Where was she? She wasn't really allowed outside of the infirmary (someone would magically appear to herd her back inside every time she so much as thought of taking a peek beyond her door) and her inability to communicate with anyone outside of flailing her arms around left her thoroughly frustrated and just as ignorant as she'd been at the start of the interaction. Well, on the bright side, the food was fantastic. And after her hellish few days out in the wild, Alice was more than happy to gorge herself on the meals put before her.

And such meals they were! Warm crusty bread and soft cheeses, succulent peaches and crisp apples, soft boiled eggs and thick sweet stew, and always a mug of hot mint tea to wash it all down. It was a vast step up from sour apples and water from a suspicious stream that was for damn sure.

Still...she could really go for something chocolate.

In fact, Alice had been having a lot of cravings for food back home recently. Like cheesecake...and avocados...and mango smoothies. Once she'd even woken up randomly in the middle of the night with a fierce longing for ice-cream. Not that she'd seen any. As far as she knew this place didn't have refrigeration. They certainly didn't seem to have electricity. Instead of light bulbs in her room she was brought a candle every night. A candle! Who were these people? Some weird supermodel sect of the Amish?

Maybe they're hoping to bring you into their creepy cult as new blood? Why else would they refuse to let you leave?

...Perhaps she needed to start working on her escape plan. Which is exactly what Alice had been busy contemplating one especially cheery (and boring) afternoon when she finally showed up.

The moment she swept into the infirmary, Alice felt like she'd been knocked upside the head. It was like meeting one of those flawless celebrities...only to find out they were even more attractive in person. Except this lady seemed more like something out of a dream than a television screen. She was too ethereal, too divine. When the woman had moved to sit on the bed next to Alice's own, she could only stare, dumbstruck. There was a beat of awkward silence, and then...

"Hi," Alice wanted to slap herself the moment the word came out of her mouth. If the lady was anything like the other people she had come into contact with the last few days, then she probably would've been able to understand that about as well as they had.

The lady only smiled in reply though, responding in that lovely (yet still incomprehensible) language of hers.

"I'm just going to assume that means you don't know English then?"

The lady smiled kindly. Alice took that as a 'no'. And then...she held out her hand. It was smooth and unblemished, with perfectly manicured nails and unadorned but for a single silver ring. Alice couldn't help herself, she stared. Did...did she want her to shake it? Awkwardly, the girl took ahold of the lady's hand and shook it once.

The lady laughed, clearly amused.

Embarrassed, Alice made as if to pull away but the beautiful woman gripped her hand in her own and covered it with her other. She stared, entranced by a shaft of sunlight that hit their joined hands, making the ring on the lady's finger almost seem to glow.

And that was when things got really weird.

At first she didn't seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. Out the window, she could hear the birds sing to each other and her mind slowly began to wander, daydreaming…she thought about her home in Boston, the busy streets and vibrant old brownstones...and then suddenly she was recalling a visit to Paris with her mother when she was eleven and just how tall the Eiffel Tower had seemed at that age...and then abruptly she remembered waking up in the endless sea of rolling grass not long ago, and how terrified and baffled she had been. One by one memories flittered to the forefront of her mind, only to be replaced by others, her whole life flipped through like the pages of a book.

Except...she hadn't called upon any of those memories.

Thoroughly spooked, Alice darted her eyes around, attempting to regain control of her train of thought, until they settled back onto the ring on the lady's finger. There was something strange about that ring...something...familiar. Unbidden, a disjointed scene played in her head of yet another ring and the little hobbit who had offered it to another unearthly lady in white…

The woman dropped Alice's hand as if she had been electrocuted.

And just like that it was like a light had been switched off. Alice suddenly slumped forward like puppet whose strings had been cut. She was clutching at her head when the lady stood. Her vision was still hazy at the edges and it made the bottom of the woman's dress seem shift about her legs like smoke. Alice tilted her head up to look at her fully, utterly bewildered.

"I don't understand."

The lady didn't speak, only looked down upon her with the strangest look; both weary and perplexed. Well if anyone had a right to be weary it was Alice. She tried again, "Who are you?"

The lady said only one word.

"Galadriel."

For a moment Alice didn't quite know how that answered her question and was about to ask again...when it all finally clicked into place. Suddenly she realized what it was she'd failed to see before.

And her eyes were opened.

And her world was shattered.

Somewhere on high, the Powers That Be were laughing their celestial asses off.

Alice didn't even have it in her anymore to blame them. Her whole situation had passed ridiculous over a week ago...and then some. On the bright side no one had come to bother her since her disastrous meeting with...Galadriel (God, it was even weird just thinking it). And perhaps that was for the best. Alice wouldn't have wanted to see herself right now either.

That night, she curled up beneath the window next to her bed and went over theories as to how exactly she had gotten herself into this mess. For a while she toyed with the 'maybe it's all a dream' idea before eventually discarding it altogether. She knew what her dreams felt like...and this was definitely not anything like those. If anything it seemed more like something her friend's boyfriend, Sebastian, would fantasize about. He was the Tolkien nerd. Alice had only ever seen the movies...and that was years ago. Then again, this was all assuming that this also wasn't one of those weird fanfiction stories her friend Rachel was into.

If this was the gods' idea of a joke, Alice didn't find it very funny.

When one of her caretakers finally came in with her breakfast the following morning, Alice saw her with fresh eyes. And elf. She was an elf. They were all elves. The monsters from before, Galadriel, and now these people...all the pieces fell into place too neatly for her to ignore.

So then...suppose this was all real (a frightening prospect indeed)...how did she get here? Better yet, why was she here? What use was a 19-year old girl in a place like this? As she'd so adequately displayed her first few days out in the wild, she had no real survival skills to speak of. If she hadn't run into that house out in the hills, she most certainly would've starved to death. She knew nothing of the local language nor did she know how to swing a sword or cast magic spells or whatever it was people around here did. Certainly a Navy Seal would've been a more intelligent choice to drop in Middle Earth. At least they were trained to deal with weird situations...well...maybe not this weird.

"I suppose you wouldn't have any idea why I'm here?" Alice asked rhetorically, giving the elf setting her breakfast tray down a skeptical look. Unsurprisingly, she just smiled politely, though uncomprehendingly.

Alice sighed. "Of course not."

She tore off a chunk of bread from the spread before her. She was really going to have to do something about this language barrier thing…

Wait...she could do something about that!

The elf was turning to leave when Alice hastily called her back. She glided over, staring at the girl quizzically. Alice glanced about frantically before settling upon the chair at the end of her bed. Slowly, she pointed, hoping her meaning was clear. "Chair." Mercifully, the elf was quick on the uptake.

"Ham."

Finally, now she was getting somewhere. Excitedly, Alice patted her sheets. "Bed."

"Haust."

Alice smiled for the first time in days. She pressed both hands to her heart.

"Alice."

The elf smiled, mimicking the gesture. "Faendis."

And thus Alice began her Sindarin lessons.

Of course, it was just after she had begun to regain some semblance of control over her life again that the final blow came to knock it all down again.

Several days later, in the dead of night, Alice was awoken by the tell-tale churning of her stomach and barely made it to the chamber pot under her bed before she violently vomited up her dinner. The more mortifying experience by far though, had been when she had been forced to show Faendis its contents the following morning. However, dear sweet Faendis either had a remarkably impeccable poker face or was genuinely unfazed by the matter for she had whisked away the bowl afterwards without so much as a wrinkled nose. Regardless, Alice had thought that had been the end of it.

She was wrong of course.

At first she hadn't noticed that anything had changed. But then one afternoon she would find that she really didn't have the energy for anything outside of curling in her bed and sleeping away the day like a cat. And then there was the continued bouts of nausea and her weird cravings afterward. She felt...off. Like she wasn't herself. And then, one day, Alice realized that she had missed her period. Unsurprisingly, she reacted to this realization the same way any woman would in her situation.

She panicked.

Alice frantically tried to recall all she could remember of her drunken birthday the month before. Vaguely, she remembered the blonde boy who had charmed his way between her legs...what had been his name? Better yet, had they used a condom? How could she not remember something so important?! She couldn't be pregnant...could she?

"I'm not pregnant," She whispered to herself. "I'm not."

Unfortunately, Alice had never been good at lying to herself.

A/N: Surprise! You're pregnant! You thought showing up in Middle Earth was bad? How about a side of parenthood to top things off? I'm starting to think I enjoy torturing Alice. Maybe just a little bit.

Trust me, it only gets more complicated from here.

Chapter Timeframe: June 12, 2998 T.A. - June 26, 2998 T.A.

Today in "Middle Earthean History, Culture, and Geography Notes AKA Stuff I Feel Like Talking About":

- Alice goes to sleep in Munich, Germany on June 12th, 2008 A.D. and wakes up in Middle Earth near the Field of Celebrant (which is located between the rivers Anduin and Limlight just southeast of Lothlórien) on June 12th, 2998 T.A. (Third Age).

- This fic subscribes to the Middle Earth = Ancient Europe theory. As such Alice is some 6,000 to 7,000 years before her own time period. This explains why she showed up around the Field of Celebrant so close to Lothlórien because that is where Munich will one day stand. This also explains why the constellations she's familiar with are not visible. The Earth is tilted in a different direction from what she's used to and so really Alice is just viewing a section of the sky she's never seen before.

- Yes, the Alice in Wonderland references were intentional. Keep a look out for those because they won't be stopping anytime soon. I did name our protagonist after the book character after all.

- The poem Alice recites is Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too by Shel Silverstein (which holds an incredibly special place in my heart), the 'tasteless pop songs' she sings are Get The Party Started by P!nk and several Backstreet Boys songs (including but not limited to Everybody and I Want It That Way).

- For those who didn't pick up on it, Alice is biracial. Her mother is Caucasian (German to be precise) and her father is African-American. Pretty much every Modern-Girl-In-Middle-Earth fic I've ever read features a Caucasian teenaged/twenty-something protagonist. I wanted to mix it up for once. Alice is also heavily based after one of my best friends (appearance-wise anyway), Amber.

- Westron is not English, neither is Sindarin or the Black Speech. Therefore there should be no reason why Alice would be able to understand anyone (or vise versa) after first arriving in Middle Earth. She's going to have to learn the local languages the same way everyone else does...the hard way.

- Yes, Galadriel can read minds. It's implied in the books (and downright shoved down our throats in the movies) so I ran with it. As such, she used her mind-hacking-skillz to take a poke around Alice's head to see what was up...and saw just a bit more than she was expecting. Remember this. It will come into play later.

- Sebastian, the Tolkien Nerd...remember him...because reasons.

- I had to throw in the "this was all assuming that this also wasn't one of those weird fanfiction stories her friend Rachel was into" line. Because I'm hilarious. Ha ha. Also 'Rachel' is totally the name of another of my best friends from High School who also happens to love fanfiction. Coincidence? I think not.

- Alice is roughly 6-7 weeks pregnant by the end of this chapter. She conceived on her birthday, May 7th, 2008.