Disclaimer: Tolkien owns all.
Title: The Other Path
Summary: When Freida falls into Middle Earth, she finds herself surrounded not by handsome elves, but by a band of vicious orcs. Her only hope lies in strangers from a distant land, and her own resilience.
Notes: First of all, thanks for reading. A quick note, rating may fluctuate a bit. I'm starting things at T, but individual chapters may be rated differently, or I may just bump the whole thing up to M.
Also, This story has been edited; I got a new job and my boss was named Emily, and it was to weird for me, so I went ahead and, seeing as we're only one chapter in, changed the name.
Chapter One
Freida awoke with dew clinging to her skin and itchy grass pressing into her arms. Her body felt sore and tired, like she'd fallen asleep in a car for a long drive. Slowly coming to her senses, she opened her eyes and looked around her. It took a few moments for the fog of sleep to disappear, and for her to fully register the transition from dream to reality.
When she did, she sat bolt upright.
The most pressing question on her mind was where am I?, and how did I get here was a close second. Paralyzing fear, the sort which deafens you to anything but your heartbeat and ragged breath, came quickly, and Freida anxiously rubbed the base of her hand over her heart, a nervous habit she was hardly aware of.
She was still in here pajamas, barefoot. Part of her was aware that she was cold. Part of her was aware she had to pee. Part of her was aware she was hungry. But all of these were being suppressed by the sick feeling rising in her throat.
Someone was bound to show up soon. Tell her it was all a joke. Share a laugh, buy her a coffee. She looks around herself, hands shaking, wondering if whoever had done this had left a note.
The hadn't.
She could feel the tears sting her eyes. The bile in her throat was building. God, Freida, get it together! She looked around again, wondering if she'd missed something. She hadn't. It was a struggle to keep from pinching herself multiple times. She ran her hands up her arms and over her face, though her hair, but it did not help calm her nerves.
Shakily, she stood up. The world was never right until you got out of bed, and maybe this erratic hallucination- what else could it be, after all- would dissipate when her feet touched the cold tile of her floor.
It did not work.
When she was standing, she spun, hoping to see something in the distance; a road, or building, or a town.
All around her was a flat field. It was green and yellow, only grass, and a thin layer of fog was gathered low to the ground, chilling her feet. No hills or mountains obscured her vision, which meant that wherever she was, it was decidedly deserted.
Focusing very hard on being rational, she looked around to see if there were footprints or tire tracks in the damp grass, but the only sign of any disturbance was in the spot she had been lying in.
She was alone, and she had no idea how she got there.
It didn't take long after that realization for her to begin crying. She crouched down and hugged her knees to her chest, sobbing like a child. Some part of her was rational enough to be frustrated with herself, but it was a small voice compared to the fear engulfing her.
How long she stayed like that, millions of thoughts running through her head, she didn't know. But sooner or later, she had run through all the awful possibilities in her head so many times they lost their shock, and the sensible part of her began to grow louder.
You probably sleepwalked, or this is a prank. You're fine, you're safe, so stand up and do something!
Rising and wiping the tears from her eyes, Freida drew in a few deep, if feeble, breaths. The sun was still close to the horizon, meaning it was early in the morning. If she walked far enough, eventually, she'd reach some form of civilization. However she'd gotten here, it had happened between three am, when she'd gone to sleep, and now, so society couldn't be more than a few hours out.
Of course, in what direction to go…
She had no real way of deciding. Whichever route she picked, with her luck, would be the longest.
She looked back to the sun- walking towards or away from it would mean squinting for some part of her journey. The sun rose in the East, so she decided to head North. It took her a little while to figure it out, her head was still swimming, but she turned to her left, praying she remembered basic geography, and began to walk.
It was not a pleasant trek.
The sun steadily rose higher in the sky, and the fog dissipated. While the warmth was, at first, pleasant, it quickly grew hot and humid, and she sun beat down on her. The ground was not soft, but hard and bumpy, and her bare feet tripped and stumbled. More than once she stifled a shriek at finding a strange bug climbing up her leg. Then there was the hunger, thirst, and general feeling of uncleanliness that came when a morning passed with no breakfast, shower, or teethbrushing. She had to pee, and her matted hair itched on her head. Every so often, she stopped herself and tried to rest, but these became more frequent as the time went on.
Inside her head was no more enjoyable.
Her mind kept playing tricks on her- if you'd gone any other way you'd be home by now was a common thought, but the scarier ones were those which caught her off guard. You've died and this is the afterlife. You're in a coma. A serial killer brought you out here and when you're weak from walking, he'll kill you. It was all she could do to not cry as she walked.
The truth was, nothing like this ever happened to Freida. She was a linguistics student at a small college, lived close to home. She didn't drink much and never did drugs. Her most exciting stories were about funny things that happened in class or something cool her dog did. She had a few close friends and no enemies she could think of. She thought waking up someplace strange, with no memory of getting there, was the sort of this that happened to exciting girls. Not the sort who read romance novels as a hobby.
So who would have done this, and why, was beyond her. Even her family was boring- at least so far as she knew. Maybe her dad was a CIA agent in hiding and an old enemy had come to seek revenge. But no- she'd seen old pictures of her dad. No way was he fit enough, even in youth, for the CIA.
The day moved on miserably, and with it, her thoughts grew steadily darker, more depressing, and more frightened. Freida could feel her legs turn sore and feeble, and the need to use the bathroom and eat was pushing her to almost give up. But then, as the sun began to set, she saw, in the distance, a small shape.
It grew, over time, and into the night, into several smaller shapes, but in the growing darkness, it was hard to make them out. Eventually, she could discern that they were buildings. The relief that flooded her was unspeakable.
It wasn't until she reached the first of the buildings that she noticed something was off.
It didn't look like anything she'd seen, least of all in her small town. She guessed she could be somewhere out in the boondocks, but she had no idea where this sort of building would be from.
It was stout and made mostly of mud and stone, with a thatched roof. There was a window, but it had no glass pain, only a weak curtain inside, gently swaying. The whole place stank, as well, but who was she to complain?
Tentatively, she knocked on the wooden door.
There was no response.
Dammit.
She tried knocking again, and when no one came, she called out, in a small, scared voice, "hello?"
No luck.
She looked towards the path she was on. There were more houses down the way, maybe she'd have more luck with them.
As she walked, she noticed what, other than the old buildings, was odd. There was no light, and no noise. No car motors or twinkling lamps in the distance. It was almost a ghost town.
Shuddering at the thought, she kept moving forwards. You're just being silly.
She reached a group of buildings grouped together around a main square. Like the first one, they were build in an old-fashioned style, and reeked.
Maybe it was some tourist town, closed for the fall.
Great, just great, she told herself, but hoped maybe one building would be open and have a phone- and a restroom.
The first building she reached was small. Part of the roof seemed strange in the darkness. She knocked, and the door swung open.
Still hesitant, but with her desperation getting stronger, Freida stepped into the small house.
It was hard to see anything. The only light was the thin, gray starlight coming in from two small windows in the back. She could make out a few shapes; a table, a small cot. She moved towards the table. Something was slumped over it, and it caught her eye. She moved nearer to it, hovering around it and trying to make it's shape out.
What happened next she wasn't sure- perhaps a cloud moved just right, and the moonlight grey brighter, and for a moment, she saw clearly what she was looking at.
The body was bent over the tale, neck twisted aside at an impossible angle, and blood staining the old man's white hair. His eyes were open, but no light was reflected in them. His arm dangled by his side, limp and swaying ever so slightly. There was a awful, high-pitched noise.
It took Freida only a moment to realize it was her.
She ran out of the house, back into the small square. No one had come at her shriek. Her breathing was ragged and her head was spinning. She had never seen a dead body before. She had never seen someone murdered before.
Her eyes were burning as if she was going to cry, but no tears came. She wondered if she ought to cry for help, but not only was she sure it would go unanswered, but her voice refused to make a sound. She was to afraid to move, to afraid of what she'd find in the other houses. Her mind kept flashing back to what she knew was in the house, the old man, his eyes, his hand, the red against the white, his neck, his eyes, his hand, the red…
The stench was awful. It was getting cold. She was hungry and thirsty and had to pee. Her feet hurt, her legs hurt. She felt filthy and gross. She was afraid. She crouched down and hugged her legs, praying, for the millionth yet most fervent time that day, that this was all an elaborate dream or hallucination.
She did not notice the figure above her until it's large, gray hand grabbed her by the hair and pulled her upwards.
She shrieked again, and then, painfully, it spun her around to look at her, and in the same moment she looked at it.
It was at least six feet tall, gray, with beady, yellow eyes. It was clad in some kind of armor. It's teeth were bared in a snarl. There were little pieces of metal piercing its cheeks. It was something even a nightmare couldn't create.
She was screaming when it through her back to the ground, when it yanked her up by her arm, when it began to drag her through the square. She was screaming as she struggled, and she screamed louder when it cuffed her hard across the face, a ring or something else scratching her chin enough to draw blood. Se screamed the whole way, until they were out of the small grouping of homes and up a hill, where she realized it, whatever it was, was not alone. A dozen other creatures like it were milling about, all uniquely ugly, all uniquely terrifying. With them were two girls- one perhaps twelve, another sixteen. Both looking horrified and scared and confused.
She screamed again, and it cuffed her again, so hard she fell to her knees. And as two of the horde approached her, unable to scream any more or stand and run or do anything, the thing that had brought her here kicked her down in the abdomen, and that was when her body gave in, and she peed.
So that was chapter one! Please leave a review if you enjoyed it (or hated it, or were ambivalent about it); it would really mean a lot to me!
A quick note; while I'm trying to keep this canon-compliant, I'm more concerned with telling an interesting story than sticking to 100% book-accurate info. So if you see something off, please let me know, so I can figure out how to best either work it into the story, or work around it!