A/N: Rewritten as of 23/01/14

The Very Real and Complicated Dream of Gwen Wright

1. Where the Hell Am I?

Where the hell am I?

My mind took a minute to clear, chasing away the lingering sleep, and I uncomprehendingly stared at the unfamiliar room. I blinked, and for a second, I just stared at the ceiling, frowning.

Where were my stars? The little glow-in-the-dark adhesive ones that I'd stuck onto the ceiling when I first moved in? It had taken me forever to get them in the right shapes for my favourite constellations, and now someone had gone and taken them down.

Where was Cassiopeia? Andromeda? Pegasus? Ursa Minor? They were all gone.

Dick move.

Then the last of my sleepy haze cleared and I shot up in the unfamiliar bed, realizing that it actually wasn't my room, and causing a burst of pain to slice through my side. A panicked, strangled scream tore up my throat, and I slapped a hand across my mouth to muffle it. I had no idea where I was.

Not a clue. Nada. Zip. This sure as hell was not my room. My room had cool stars.

Maybe I'd gotten blindingly wasted and threw my virginity at someone. Because that was a possibility. Like I had the time. If I wasn't studying, I was working. And if I wasn't working, I was studying. It was a vicious cycle I couldn't break out of.

My fingers, dainty and graceful, scrambled at the white blankets covering me, pushing them off – wait. Hold up. Dainty, graceful fingers? Dainty and graceful were the last words anyone would use to describe me, let alone my fingers. And then I looked down at myself, searching out what had caused the pain in my side. I froze.

Don't scream.

I was naked. Stark, bare-as-the-day-I-was-born, naked.

Fear crept up my back with cold fingers. Terror threatened to make me choke on air, my intestines being pulled and twisted from the flooring panic, making me want to throw up the contents of my stomach all over the pristine, white sheets. Jesus Christ, someone had undressed me. Taken my clothes off. Seen me in all my glory.

Around my waist – my tiny waist; the kind of waist every girl envied, and was most certainly not mine (due to an unshakable and perpetual hungering for chocolate) – was a bandage strip, wrapped tight. Red stained the right side of it.

I had to forcefully shove back another scream, squeezing my eyes shut and curling my hands into fists. Okay. Okay. I'm bleeding. I'm bleeding. From what? God, what happened? Where was I?

What the hell is going on?! I wanted to scream it.

Just calm down.

Calm down? Calm down?

It was going to be a little hard to calm down at the moment. Apparently, I just woke up in a stranger's house, completely naked. I'd never done that before – I'd never gotten drunk enough to do that before. Okay. Maybe that was what it was; I'd gotten drunk and crashed at a friend's house. Oh, please, let me have been drunk and let this be a friend's house!

Oh, God, what if I'd been kidnapped? I could've been kidnapped, maybe by a serial killer. Maybe, I was in a serial killer's house and any second, my murderer was going to come into the room and cut me up into tiny little pieces, never to be put back together again. Like Humpty Dumpty. Only I was no egg and this was no nursery rhyme bullshit.

Calm down!

I was trying, I really, really was. Slowly, I reopened my eyes, taking deep, long breaths in a bid to stop my heart smacking into my ribcage in a painful attempt to rip free and leap out. Okay. I needed to get the hell out of here. Find a phone. Good idea, Gwen.

Jesus, had I been kidnapped?

I tried remembering, going back. What had I been doing last? What could I remember? I frowned, concentrating with all my might. I'd…I'd been in my flat, with my best friend. I had my first night off from work in months, and I'd already finished the study I'd had to do, so I was taking the opportunity to just relax. I was ready to just sit on the couch and stare at the wall. Do nothing. God, it had been so long since I'd done nothing. But Ally had had other ideas. And…and she'd…forced me to sit through an unlawfully long movie. And then…And then…

Blank.

That's all I got. I couldn't remember. Oh, God, oh Jesus, Joseph and Mary. Was I really kidnapped? Chloroformed? Drugged?

Roofied?

Oh, God. Was this a darker, more twisted and messed up version of The Hangover? Because that had been a fun movie, and right now, I was not having fun. I was trying to keep myself from freaking out and screaming at the top of my lungs until I ran out of breath. Dread and panic were circling in my gut, in equal parts, just waiting for me to give up my charade of being calm.

Okay.

Step one: Find a phone. Step two: Call the police. Step three: Wait to be rescued.

Okay. I could do that. I could remain calm and call for help. As long as I didn't think about the fact that I could be locked up in a psychos house while he waited for me to wake up. I watched too much Criminal Minds to believe that if this was a stranger's house, and indeed, not a friend's, then it was highly unlikely that the owner was going to just let me walk out.

I had to get myself out of here. I had to get to a phone and call the police. I looked around the room. The very, very large room. For a minute, it threw me off, the way it seemed like such a…nice room. A bed, with a frame of what looked like…vines and thin twisted branches woven into an intricate design was pressed against a wall of white stone, and covering that stone was what looked like ivy or something, growing up the stone and sprouting pretty flowers sporadically – it must have been growing for years, for it to cover that much wall. Tall candle holders stood around the room, each one holding about nine candles each, and along one wall were three bay windows, though there wasn't any glass – just pointed, arch-shaped holes. A vanity dresser stood across the room next to a wooden wardrobe. And Jesus, there was so much light pouring in, I wondered how anyone could possibly sleep with it all.

If this was a dungeon, it really needed to work on its scare and misery factor.

I went to push myself off the bed and onto shaky legs, but my side gave another shout of protest. I looked down at myself again and…were…were my breasticles bigger? Holy hell. They were. I grabbed my chest and my eyes widened – they felt real.

Okay. I had bigger boobs. I had a tiny waist. I had dainty, graceful fingers. This was getting weird. Or, weirder.

I ignored the pain in my side and fell out of the bed. The ground was hard and cool under my bare skin, and I lifted myself up, using the bed as leverage, and stumbling my way to the mirror at the vanity dresser. My blood was pumping fast, the sound rushing in my ears.

An unfamiliar girl peered back. I frowned, my mind a blank. Like a blackboard wiped clean. Nothing. I had nothing. I didn't know the girl looking back at me. It wasn't me. I was dark haired, brown-eyed and tall. Pretty, maybe. Athletic.

But the girl in the mirror was fair and beautiful. She had hair like silver threads, so fine they seemed to float; a river of silver cascading down her back, way past her tiny waist. The sides were pinned back, and I saw tiny plaits everywhere. But sitting on her hair was an intricate head-chain of silver, like a crown, the sides coming to twist around each other at the front to form a woven diamond shape that dropped part the way down her forehead. Her wide eyes were grey, her eyebrows a dark brown, almost black, thin and elegantly arched, and her body was slender, though she clearly had the curves of a woman (clearly - her boobs were bigger than mine, and she was tiny.). And she was short – surprisingly short.

I leaned closer to the mirror, and the girl's eyes were wide in confused terror as she leaned forward as well. I blinked and the girl blinked. My head tilted to the side, and so did the girl's. I jumped back, crouching slightly, and the silver-girl did the same. Ohmigod.

Oh. My. God. No. Freaking. Way.

This wasn't possible. It wasn't. There was – it just couldn't – and I couldn't – this couldn't be real. This couldn't be real. This shit couldn't be happening. I came closer to the mirror again, my hand reaching out to touch it. The girl did the same, but my fingers only met the cool mirror. Jesus Christ. God Almighty.

The silver-girl was me.

My heart was beating so fast – and then I spotted it. I turned my head to the side slightly, squinting at my reflection. Holy crap, my reflection. My ears! My ears, they were…pointed. Freaking pointed! I pulled at them, but they weren't fake. They were very real. No. No, no, no. Just…no. What the freaking hell was going on? Where was I? What happened to my ears? What happened to my body?

And then I really did scream.

It wasn't physically possible for one person to morph into another overnight. Okay, I had officially entered crazy town – population? Me.

In the middle of my freak out, the door flew open and a familiar looking, silver-haired man swept in like a storm. I turned to look at him, my eyes wide and my mouth hanging open. Shit was getting weird, man. Maybe I was on some sort of hallucinogen. His keen eyes swept the room, a strung bow and arrow in his hands, just as more men piled into the room, swords and bows and arrows at the ready.

Holy crap, they were all tall. Tall and slender, and looking like they carried around a lot of power from their slender bodies. They moved with a light-footed agility that was most definitely superhuman.

"What is it?" The familiar silver-haired man asked urgently, trying and failing to see some sort of threat. His eyes landed on me quickly, telling me to answer him quickly. "What caused your alarm?"

Holy mother of God.

My mouth flapped uselessly, and I tried not to scream again – I knew him! He was that man from the movie! The crazy-long movie, he was that elf! What was his name? It was funny sounding, something to do with legs? Was this even real? Was he real? What the hell was he doing in my serial killer's house?

He couldn't be real. No way. It wasn't possible. That solved it; I was on some sort of hallucinogen, and it was making me see characters from a movie I barely paid attention to. But…but I should make sure.

Tentatively, and on uncertain steps, I walked up to the good looking elf, semi-hesitant and curious, and wary of the point of his arrow. He quickly lowered it when I got close, watching me curiously. I reached up (quite a long way too, for he was much taller than me in this body), grabbed his cheek and pulled. But my fingers pulled at flesh rather than a rubbery mask, and the motion distorted his handsome face. He jerked his face back from my grip, his black eyebrows furrowing as he looked down at me like I'd gone crazy.

Oh, shit.

"Wow, you feel real," I breathed in awe and slight fear, as I went to grab his cheek again, to double check that he did, in fact, feel real. If I was hallucinating, would I even be aware that I was hallucinating? Wasn't that the whole point of hallucinations, that you thought it was all real? Shit, maybe this was real. He jerked his head back again, still frowning. Then I remembered his name. "You're Legless the elf!"

Oh.

Oh.

Oh, holy mother of God, I was about ready to have a heart attack, and this whole time…it was just a dream. Duh. Of course, it was a dream! I didn't know why it took me so long to figure it out! A relieved grin broke across my face; I was dreaming! Oh, God, that was such a relief – and this whole time, I'd thought I'd been kidnapped! I wanted to laugh at the giddy feeling bubbling up in my chest, at how ridiculous this all was. I was dreaming. Oh, thank God!

I never knew how sweet full-blown relief could feel. I blinked my suddenly moist eyes, sighing deeply. Oh, sweet baby Jesus, halleluiah!

Rather than mirroring the relief I felt, his eyes became worried, and he placed a hand to my forehead, "You do not feel feverish."

Ha ha. He's an elf. I had to suppress a giggle. I was an elf. We had the pointed ears and everything. I shook my head, shaking out from under his hand, and grinning at him ecstatically, "I feel great! You have no idea just how great I feel!"

I wanted to dance, I felt so great. Jump for joy. Wiggle around. A rush of energy to move in celebration swamped me suddenly, and I did a little jig on the spot, my face hurting from my wide smile. I laughed. Really, really laughed, and the sound was musical.

I was just so happy that this was a dream, albeit, a weird dream, rather than being locked up in some serial killer's house. It was a weight off my shoulders. And really, what did I expect after being forced into watching those movies? Ally had forced me to stay awake even into the wee hours of the morning to finish the last movie, and now I was dreaming it too. Big surprise.

It wasn't even as though the movies were bad; it was just that I was tired and had slept through the first half of the movie so I had no idea what was happening. My exhausted brain had found it difficult to catch on, and after a while, I'd just given up. From then on, I'd drifted in and out, catching glimpses that meant very little by themselves.

He grabbed my arms and pinned them to my sides, his eyes alarmed.

"Leave us!" Legless commanded the men – or, er, elves – behind him, who were still standing there, at a loss. "Can you not see my sister is in a state of undress and requires privacy? All is well, now leave." The tall, slender elves exited the room quickly at his command.

Oh, damn. The beautiful elf was my brother. That was a darn shame.

Then again, I probably should have expected it; our features were strikingly similar; our hair, our eyebrows, our eyes. Only, he was more masculine, and quite tall. Then I recalled his words, and a blush heated my cheeks as I quickly covered my new, bigger, boobs. Legless' eyes narrowed, roving over my face, "You should be resting still."

No, I should be dancing.

But as the panic died down, and my heart slowed, I felt the pain. My side ached sharply, burning. A wave of dizziness hit me, and I swayed slightly. Every tiny movement disturbed it, sending another jolt of pain through me. I didn't object as he guided me back to the bed and pulled the sheets over my naked form. My side continued to burn painfully at the movement. Well, this sucked.

A flutter of brown and white wings caught my attention, and I glanced at the window where a bird was perched on the ledge. It hopped slightly, and then flew into the room, landing on the twisting bed frame at the end of my bed. It tilted its head to the side and looked at me. I looked back, my eyes slightly wide and perturbed.

When it continued to gaze at me reproachfully – yeah, reproachfully – I frowned. "Legless, why is that bird staring at me?"

He was beginning to look extremely worried for my sanity. Rude. I was not crazy; he was a freaking elf, and he thought I was the loony one? This was my dream. "I believe you call him Pecky. You think him to be your bird."

Ha. Totally sounds like something I'd name a bird. If I wasn't terrified of them. "Right. Of course, how silly of me. Thanks Legless."

Moving on. It was kind of annoying that I didn't even know this stuff – he was my bird apparently, and this was my dream, ergo, I dreamed the bird up. So why didn't I know that he was my bird? And why the hell would I dream of a bird?

"Why do you call me that?"

I looked at him like he was the crazy one, "Because it's your name." The duh was implied. I mean, come on dude. Seriously. Keep up. This dream was faulty.

"No," he said slowly. "It's Legolas."

"Leg…oh…lass?" I said slowly, sounding his name out. Then I frowned again. "Are you sure? Because that's a weird, trippy-ass name."

I mentally cringed. I needed to tone done the crazy. Then again, this was my dream. I could do whatever the hell I wanted. "Are you sure you are not feeling ill, Eregwen?"

Eregwen? As in, Ere-gwen? Wow. Okay. I elf-ed up my name. Cool. Props to my imagination. I grinned up at him happily, "Positive. Though, my side hurts." And this dream kind of sucks. I mean, where the hell is Hugh Jackman? If this was a good dream, he would be here by now and his shirt would be off. "What happened to it?"

"You don't remember?" He asked. From the way he was radiating concern, I figured this Eregwen woman was close to her brother, Legolas. I shook my head a negative. "We were pushing back a small group of Orcs, and you were hit with one of their arrows. It pierced your side." Then he hung his head a little, just enough to let me know that he felt guilty. "It was my fault, for not watching you closer. We did not know you were mortally wounded until much later when you collapsed. You died, Eregwen. But then you were breathing again, and it was a miracle."

Holy shit. I died.

Then I blinked – well, technically, I didn't die, so it was all good. Otherwise that would've been quite the doozy to come back from. I glanced at him, at the flickers of anguish and guilt sliding across his face, at the way he was brooding, staring moodily out the window arches. Slowly, I lifted my hand to cup his cheek. I wasn't sure why; it just felt right. This body remembered it's acts, even if I did not. My voice was sweet, and suddenly as formal and elf-ish as his was. "It was not your fault, and you mustn't blame yourself."

Well, that just felt wrong. That's not how I would've said it. More like, dude, chill. We're cool. No hard feelings. I guess this body also remembered how to talk like an elf rather than a weird ass girl from another world.

He didn't look convinced, though.

So I tacked on some more to persuade him I was cool with it. I was pretty sure this Eregwen would be cool too. "Come on, you went all Superman-Batman on me and saved my ass. You're a good brother, I've forgiven you."

He stilled, and the alarm and worry was back again.

I snorted a laugh, amused with myself. Okay, maybe I couldn't resist messing with his head a little. It was just too tempting, and I mean, it was my dream. What was the worst that could happen?

"Rest. I will check on you again soon."

Then my fictional, adorable brother left. I wanted to get back out of bed, find some clothes and do a little exploring. So far, my imagination was doing a stand-up job of keeping this shit together and real, and I was curious about the extent of its creative ability to impersonate a fictional world. But a sleepy haze crept over me, and suddenly it was a battle to keep my eyelids open. I was exhausted from healing from a fight I didn't remember. It kind of seemed unfair I would have to suffer from a wound I didn't actually get myself, and I mentally deducted points from my imagination scale.

I yawned, and relaxed against the soft mattress of my bed. The bird hopped, before turning its head the other way to look at me. I stared back at it, and we found ourselves in a staring contest. I broke first, glancing away and trying to ignore the fact that there was a bird so close to me. Then my eyes closed and I also lost the fight to stay awake.

It was a shame I'd be waking up in my own bed, to Ally's snoring. I probably wouldn't be coming back here ever again, and I was almost disappointed I didn't get to see more. But then I remembered how much I missed my IPhone, and I was suddenly much happier to be getting home.

I needed to check my emails.

So…Interested?

Wanna read more, or are we over the whole OC-finds –herself-in-Middle-Earth thing going around? Let me know. I mean, are you really going to object to another KiliOC story?