I. Monday Night

The moonlight hit the mahogany wood making it shine and glow in the way that only a metal usually could. It was an old wardrobe yet surprisingly sturdy and intact for it's many years. It had been India's grandfather's once, an heirloom he had told her that had been passed down for generations. Now it was hers.

To her the wardrobe was more than just a wardrobe - it had been her childhood. Every summer she spent in her grandfather's house she would play in that wardrobe. It's magical, he had told her, running a hand over the strange deeply set symbols that were engraved into it's wood. In her childish stupor she had believed his every word. She had never believed in Santa Claus, but she had believed in that wardrobe. India was eighteen now, far too old for magic, but after her grandfather's death it had wound up in her tiny little student flat ,the one she was currently sat in now - and she was about to learn in a very unexpected way that were was a truth to her grandfather's words, to magical wardrobes.

She reclined on her bed, laptop on her knee typing away furiously trying to finish a report she had been putting of for far too long. She always left things to the last minute, she seemed to be more efficient with a sense of urgency within her. She was so preoccupied in typing that she didn't notice the moonlight seep into the little symbols, filling them with light. However she did hear the bang and the sound of her clothes hangers clinking together and her body froze with fright.

She carefully set her laptop aside, joints stiff in apprehension. A thousand thoughts flew through her mind in that moment, was this some intruder who had broken into her dingy little student flat and hid in her wardrobe? Her brother playing a cruel prank? India hoped dearly for the latter. She watched intently as the wardrobe door handle turned around and she grasped the phone in her hand ready to dial for help if it did turn out to be the former.

Then she saw him, all six foot of him and she felt her jaw drop. He had dark hair, tied back into a ponytail with a braid running through it. His frame while lean, bulged with muscle and his skin was alabaster white, shimmering all to perfectly under the influence of the moonlight that streamed in through her open window. He was handsome, unnaturally so but that wasn't all that was different about him, there was a point to his ears, a sharp, distinct and unnatural point.

"What on earth!" She exclaimed gawping at him. The phone was still in her grasp but she was too paralyzed in shock in that moment to think about typing in those three numbers. The dark-haired intruder's gaze fell upon her and she noticed that he looked just as shocked as she must have. His eyes were wide like that of a deer in headlights. "Who are you and what are you doing in my wardrobe!"

He turned to look at her wardrobe, running a hand over the strange symbols in a state of shock. It was then she noticed what he was wearing, the leggings, the tunic, the belt with a rather real looking sword poking out.. He looked like he had just come from a medieval faire - that or he was some serial killer with a penchant for the dramatic. "This is your wardrobe?" He spoke, voice light.

"Yes. Now can you please tell me how you came to be in it before I call the police." Her voice was a higher pitch and his brows seem to rise with her tone.

He seemed to ignore her question and studied the wardrobe some more, running a hand down the symbols. "These are moon runes… in ancient dwarvish. This is old magic… very old." He sighed, his nimble fingers feeling the wood.

A sane person might have phoned the police then, but India for some reason did not, she simply continued to gawp at the man who had just come out from her wardrobe. "Is… is that a real sword?" She pointed to the weapon.

"Most certainly. I would see no cause to carry around a fake one." He spoke almost bewildered, he seemed to notice she was frightened however and his expression softened. "Ah… this is old magic indeed. This wardrobe is inscribed with a strong enchantment that is awakened under the light of a certain moon. There is one identical to this back in the Homely House and the magic binds them together, a portal of sorts. It's marvelous… but rather inconvenient and frightening for you I expect, to have a man simply stumble out of your wardrobe."

Her brow crinkled and for a moment she desired very much to know what her intruder had been smoking to come up with the nonsense he had just spouted.

"Excuse me?" Was the only words she could find.

"I'm sorry if I have bombarded you with information." He chuckled, finally removing his gaze from the wardrobe and turning to study her. "My name is Elladan, son Elrond. I shall be out of your hair very shortly, but pray first tell me which way I go to get to Imladris, or Rivendell in the common tongue."

"I… could...ugh...I could look google maps?" She suggested numbly, she was eager to have him out of her room but not so eager to explain the whole situation to the police. The pointy-eared intruder seemed to nod hopefully.

"Google? I have not heard of a cartographer by that name." Elladan spoke numbly as a still shaken India reached for her mobile and pulled up google maps, only to find that Rivendell was most certainly not a place on her version of planet earth. "What in valar's name is that? What is that magic?"

"You're kidding right?" She realized he was looking at her phone in utter shock. Something clicked in her in that moment. "Oh very funny are you one of Buddy's friends? I know he put you up to this, how long were you hiding?"

This was surely her brother pranking her, she was convinced of it, then she saw the puzzled expression on Elladan's face and she started to doubt that truth. "I know not of what you speak." He shrugged. He looked around her room at the pink walls and fairy lights. "This place looks strange to me…foreign."

"What year are you from?" She asked, some childish part of her returning to the fantasy of the magic wardrobe her grandfather had sold to her so very well as a child. He looked very much a medieval sort of man.

"Tis the year 2967, the fourth age the scholars call it… " Elladan's voice was misty and India's brow was so deep she could feel the hair of her eyebrows tickle her eyelids. She watched him pull at her fairy light curiously. "You have heard of Rivendell, of the last homely house in Middle Earth. Even mortals know that place. It is quite famous." He noted her befuddlement. "Hmm.."

"I'm India. I'm from England, not Middle Earth. I have never heard of Rivendell. I know nothing of magic teleporting wardrobes, or ancient dwarf enchantments that are activated by a certain moon and more than that, I think you're crazy." Her voice seemed to cut him. "You are in the 21st century. This is a mobile phone. This is a fairy light powered by a thing called electricity not magic."

She shoved the fairy lights and her mobile phone to the bed and his eyes widened. "I think I may be very far from home." He said, rather sadly.

A moment of silence passed and India found herself considering that this Elladan was telling the truth about Rivendell and...magic wardrobes. She was crazy. Extremely crazy but she was starting to believe him.

"My head hurts." India put her hands on her head. Just ten minutes ago she was working on a report late and night, now she was considering the very fabric of her existence and the nature of the time continuum. "I suppose you're going to tell me now that those points to your ears are because you're an elf?"

"Yes..why of course, do you not have elves here?" His eyebrows rose again, those strong fierce eyebrows that were so terribly thick they would put Cara Delevigne's to utter shame. She shook her head as the "elf" studied her intently with unblinking eyes "Oh… I expect I'm quite the surprise then?"

"More than a little Elladan." India was breathless for a moment. "Could it be that you are from a different world from mine? For I have never seen a man like you."

"I think… I think this is more than just a portal from one place to the next, but a portal between worlds. My adar would know more of it than I… he is more of a scholar." Elladan sighed. "But he is not here, and my wits alone cannot solve this."

"Then can't you just go back through it, if it's a portal it works both ways right?" India suggested rather hopefully, but Elladan simply shrugged. Magic wardrobe wasn't magic enough now for him it seemed.

"Nay, but oh how I wish it were that simple as I said before this magic is only awoken under a certain moonlight and the hour of the moon that brought me here has passed. It could be decades before that same moon glows in the sky."

"So you're stuck here indefinitely?"

"It would seem that way. Aye. I think I'm stuck here."

India was silent again. She looked at him a little jaw-struck, he was sat on her bed, sword in his belt, confused look in his eyebrow deepened eyes. If you had asked her a week ago that she would be spending her Monday night with an elf from another world she would have laughed and pointed you to David Lynch to sell the rights to a new movie. "Where will you go?" She finally asked.

"I know not, but I shall work it out." He spoke numbly. "If you could point me in the direction of an inn or perhaps a nice tavern I would be grateful."

"I have a couch." What was she doing. She tried to stop the words from coming but they were moving from her mouth automatically. Was she going to offer her home intruder a place to stay? "And blankets. It's not much."

"India… you would let me stay with you?" He seemed taken aback at the offer. "Such kindness. Kindness I dare not ask for."

"It's not forever, just till you work something out."

Monday night: Her grandfather was right about the magic wardrobe after all and she had just invited a handsome elven home invader to stay with her indefinitely.

What could go wrong?

Answer: A whole lot.

Elladan could still recall it perfectly, how he had been in his father's study when the old wardrobe in the corner of the room had started to glow when the moonlight caught it. Curiosity had got the better of him and he had investigated, stepping within it in some odd childish compulsion. Now he was here, in some poor girl's home, sat on her uncomfortable couch watching two grown women tear out each other's hair in what he could only describe as a moving painting.

India had vanished into a spare room in an attempt to recover him something to wear that, as she had put it, did not make him resemble an extra from something called "Game of Thrones". Her words confused him, yet it struck him that since he had stumbled out of that valar-forsaken wardrobe and into her strange world he had never been without that feeling. India returned from the room with an odd looking outfit in her grasp. A pair of rough bluish trousers that were ripped and frayed almost as if the tailor had taken a pair of sheers to them in madness.

"Here. These belong to my brother, he left them here a while back and forgot to pick them up." India handed them over to him. He stared at them a little scornfully, thinking that he would look quite ridiculous in the tattered trousers. "They may be a little small for you, but they'll do for now."

India gave him some privacy to change. He slipped into the jeans and he noticed immediately that they were far too short for him, the waist however was a little too big. The t-shirt fit a little better, but was a little tight around his broad shoulders. He emerged and India smiled at him meekly and he tried to return the smile but found himself unable - he wanted to go home, to his brother, to his sister, to his father, but at this moment in time, he saw no way to get there.

He sat next to the girl on the sofa. He noted that she was pretty for a mortal, while her features were plain as most mortals were she had rather beautiful green eyes that had struck him the moment he had looked upon her. She had blonde hair, not gold like his grandmother's or silver like his mother's, but a dirtier and warmer sort of blonde that was flecked with strands of caramel.

He turned his attention back on the moving painting. India reached for a strange shaped device and pressed a button - all of a sudden there was sound. He could no longer just see the women tearing out each other's hair out but he could also now hear their gasps of pain. India seemed to note the crease of his brow and a soft smile touched her features. "This is a television." She told him. She then proceeded to explain to him the intricacies of what a TV was and how it worked, but Elladan would be lying if he said it hadn't confused him.

"So you truly have no estimate as to how long you will be here for?" She questioned and it was then Elladan felt emptiness spread through him. He had no measure of time, no way of counting down the days till he would return to his life and family. It could be next week, or it could be in ten years.

"As I said before. It could be many years, a decade even. It has to be the exact same conditions, the positions of the stars, everything." India looked sympathetic toward him, and she flicked a button on what she called a "remote" and suddenly the moving picture had changed to a female singer. The voice that came from her mouth was loud and it stung his ears. He covered them with his hands.

"This is X Factor. It's a singing competition, It's pretty hilarious isn't it?" India looked to Elladan, humour lightened her features. He watched it intently, wondering why a girl crying after humiliating herself for all to see was considered entertainment - then the judge at the end with the black hair had compared her voice to that of a cat being skinned alive and Elladan had realized very quickly that it was quite hilarious as India had said. He might have even cracked a smile if his soul had not felt so heavy.

It soon ended and the silence consumed the both of them. The morning sun bled through the gaps in the blinds and it struck Elladan that he was now facing his first day in India's world. "Do you want eggs for breakfast?" She asked him.

Eggs. He felt his chest heave a sigh of relief. At least their world's had something in common. "Eggs. Yes I like Eggs." He smiled at her meekly.

"I only have chicken eggs. I don't know what kind of eggs you elves eat but I'm just warning you that we don't have dragons eggs." She half snorted, drawing to her feet and heading into the kitchen. Like a lost puppy Elladan trailed after her.

"We don't eat dragons eggs." He chuckled to himself, watching in fascination as India withdrew a few chicken eggs from a cold white plastic box. "No, no, dragons eggs are much too large and in addition to that extremely rare."

She plopped the eggs into a boiling hot container of water and sat herself up on the bunker. Elladan gazed at her, at loss as to what to do. "So my world is pretty different from yours then?" She spoke to break the silence.

"From what little I have seen, most certainly."

"I'll teach you about it, you can be my project. " She laughed "It wouldn't be right to send you out on the street without knowing about google and cell phones. Maybe we can even find you a job one day until you get to go home."

"That's very kind of you. I wish I had some way to repay you."

"I'm sure I'll find a way for you to repay me… you could help me around the flat a bit, maybe do some dishes laundry…" She drifted off and he stopped listening somewhere along the way. "So what kind of job did you do back in the Rivendell?"

"Me and my twin brother Elrohir travel with the Dúnedain hunting orcs quite frequently, when we're not doing that, well, we usually just relax at home."

"So you're good at murder and doing nothing, and those are your only marketable skills?" She chuckled a bit as she plopped the eggs onto plate and began to peel them with her nimble fingers. "We're going to have to do some lying on your CV."

Elladan had no clue as to what as CV was, but he couldn't be bothered questioning her. He took the plate from her grasp and she guided him back through to the sitting room. She plonked herself on the sofa and began to eat. Elladan stood bewildered with his plate in his hands. Were there no tables?

"What are you standing there for pointy-ears? Sit down, we might be able to catch another re-run of the X-Factor." India called out to him.

"But… I… Yes." Elladan finally sat down. "It's just I'm accustomed to breaking my fast at a table, with… metal cutlery. This is rather strange."

He examined his plastic fork in disdain. It was bendy and not nearly strong enough to hold his egg. India seemed to ignore his comments and she slipped her feet up onto the footrest and settled her eyes on X-factor. Her posture was slouched, another common trait of mortals. Elladan wanted nothing more than to reach over and bend her spine into a more healthy position - of course he withheld that urge, such an action might have been seen as an assault and this was the girl who had offered him a place to stay after all. He couldn't offend her.

After an hour or so of X-factor Elladan felt a little cheerier however there was still a hollowness inside of him. He wanted Elrohir - they had never been separated before and he felt almost like a part of him had been torn out. If Elrohir was with him he would have known what to do, he was the smarter one, the reasonable one. Elladan had always relied on him, looking back through his life in fact, he had always relied on someone else, his mother, his father, his brother.

Now he was relying on India.