Disclaimer: Don't own Lord of the Rings, don't own anything, really. Save maybe Padma…and even there I'm not so certain.
Silence and Clarity
"I'm going now!" Padma's voice reverberated and slowly died away in the silent, empty halls of the house. The furniture seemed to mock her as it sat there, unused and alone, while the windows, shades cracked open a tad, allowed the dim, golden light of the new dawn to pour in and show off the thin amounts of dust trailing through the draft-less home. No voice responded to her call, no sound from any room, no shift in light or creak of stair replied. She gently, quietly lifted up her bag and slid her house keys out of the front pocket. It was so strange, so lonesome to have this kind of silence. She set her hand on the cool brass doorknob and lingered for a moment.
"I'll be back later…" Padma called back into the house and stared, anxiously up at the white ceiling.
Nothing.
Crestfallen and a bit unnerved, she opened the door and turned to face the morning light. Padma froze in the doorway, and stared out into the whiteness of it all. Her eyes smarted from the sun above and its fragmented reflection before her, but she could not will them to close. Up unto her very doorstep, until the horizon, were the great, blue, and perfectly crystal waters of the sea. The sky above was littered periodically with clouds and the water below sparkled blue in the pale white light of the dawning sun.
She stood, transfixed, in the alcove of the door for some time and just watched it all. Never had she seen anything quite so peculiar and never had she witnessed anything so spectacular or silent as this had been. Indeed it must have been surreptitious in the making, for she had not witnessed it at all until this very moment. Her mind reeled but, as no danger had openly presented itself, she did not recoil from the sight but simply stared off into the distance. Only when she had regained some of her wits about her did she think to question the sight before her.
"This can't be real…" she whispered and knelt down in the doorway. Padma set down her bag and, tentatively, stretched out her fingers towards the water. She tapped the clear and shining blue, it was cold and bit at her skin so newly warmed by the fantastic sight of the rising sun. She stared into the water for some time and lifted her gaze to see the expanse once more. It was so clear that she could make out rows of waving green beneath the surface and the perfect white of the sand beneath. It looked like a field of tall grasses, shifting in an ever-present wind. But there were no fish, no other living things save the seaweed and herself.
"No…that's not right," Padma corrected herself quietly but aloud to her disbelieving mind. The ocean was so calm, so serene, that it almost seemed to be singing. Not literally, of course, but gone was the white noise that plagued the shores back home, gone was the biting streams of wind, and the muggy feeling of the hot sun evaporating waters. The sea was perfect, calm, crisp, and it smelt of cold salts even while the air was warm and comfortable above it.
She stood once more and cast her eyes to the distant horizon. Somehow, the distortion of such far off and imagined things as the horizon was gone, but the world did seem to drop off much sooner than it should have. She stared for some long time and noticed a flicker of movement, a thin flash of silvery light that dissipated into the serenity of the world.
"Wait!" Padma said and was startled at how her voice carried. The waters were so quiet, but that was not the way of the ocean. "Where am I?" Padma whispered and the world did nothing in response. She backed through the alcove, closed the door, and stared for some long time, breathing deeply, at the wood before her. She closed her eyes tightly, the light shifted, she exhaled very quickly, and threw the door open in one abrupt move. She gasped and her eyes widened instantly as she saw the new world before her.
No longer was the ocean there, nor the fleeting image of a silver ship. This was a deep place; she could hear it on the branches, in the air. The forest before and around her was tall, dark, and looming ever so greatly upon her. Just before her doorstep was a pond, and in it were rocks so covered over by moss that they appeared to be little more than moss, solidified into one great item, and hardened by years. There were tiny flashes of gold and blue in the water, they looked like fish. But even here there was no life aside from herself and the plants.
"I was just…." Padma could not finish the thought, so perplexed was she by this. She knelt down once more and touched the water to assure herself it too was real. The water was cool and moved with a swift current. This was no pond; it was a stream, a river, which ran past her horizontally. She could not see it in the dark, but for the bare green lights through the trees and the thin, veiled glow of those plants which had grown so accustomed to the blackness they simply became alight themselves.
"Hello?" she called out once more, but no reply came and her voice did not carry so far in this place as it had before. But just as it had before, something here showed itself to her in its passing. Just through the greatest trees, those twice or thrice so tall as her two story house with such thickness that she would need a great many friends to form a circle around one, a flicker of white and gold, figures, silhouettes in the darkness and green glow of the woods, which were all tall and fair. Each of these bore a shining item in hand, some swords, some bows, others spears and flags.
"Can you tell me—?" Padma hadn't the chance to finish her question as her voice moved through the figures of light and shattered them as a fan would to a wisp of smoke. Her eyes searched the darkness for some time, but she could not find them, she could not see them though the night of it all. Only the trees, only the water, only the plants but none else could she see here. She moved to close the door once more and, only as she had it mostly shut, did one of the figures return. He was right before her door, traced in a thin film of dim and shifting light. She had closed the door though, before she could get any more than a glance of his profile as he passed. The light shifted again as she threw the door open, in hopes of catching him, but that world had passed her by and now she saw something different.
It was a desert, and she stood with her doorstep atop of an oasis. Water was once more before her, thin grasses wafted in the superheated air, and the higher breezes tugged the tall, waving palms too and fro. She stared at the distance, here there was distortion of place and the horizon existed most blurred upon its rightful place. Heat rose up, she could see it from the sand, and feel it from the arching rocks that scraped at the blue sky like fingers from the earth.
"No…that's wrong," Padma whispered as she corrected her eyes. She squinted into the brightness and insufferably clear desert, towards the distortions she had thought were heat, and it took her only moments before the figures once more appeared in some good clarity. These, however, were not the figures of light as before. Here, in this brightness, they were dark and shining back in red what the noonday sun could tell. Hundreds, thousands, millions? They were innumerable to her in this place as they marched through the heat. Where were they going? She was hesitant to call out to them for any reason; they were so many and she so few. She paled and stepped further into her house as her vision of them grew stronger, for it did, with time and her silence. They, all of them, were bearing a myriad of weapons and shields. These men, creatures, and horrible things marched to make war.
Her heart halted in her chest as one of the figures turned towards her and stopped marching. She paled and quickly slammed the door shut. Her heart was racing inside her chest as she stared at the warmed wood and the brassy knob in her fingers. She closed her eyes and leaned forward until her head hit the door with a muted 'thump.' She took a few deep breaths and opened her eyes only to find that the light through the windows was, once more muted to a softer shade.
Padma exhaled slowly and released the knob from her grasp. She backed away from the door, her eyes not leaving it, her mind fixed upon it, and she was loath to open it again. She turned from the door, swiftly, and halted, mid-step, as she spotted the windows across the hall. They showed what they had always shown, the world as it had looked every single morning she had ever looked out side of them. Was she dreaming? Padma's sense of curiosity, unfortunately, won out over her self-preservation and she turned back to the door. Carefully she moved back to it, house keys still in hand, and her bag resting against the wall by the alcove.
"Am I asleep?" Padma leaned over her bag and pulled the curtains away from one of the tall, narrow windows that stood on either side of the door. She could see her street, the court across from them, her dirty blue car in the driveway, the neighbor's black and white cat stretched and yawning on the pavement of the sidewalk, and there were bluebirds that flitted back and forth from one side of the street to the other.
Reassured, she picked up her bag, looped the long strap over her shoulder, and gently wrapped her fingers around the brass knob again. She steadied her shaking right hand and gripped the knob so tightly that her knuckles turned white. She swallowed her fear, took a deep breath, and turned the knob but she did not pull on the door—not at first. She stretched up onto the balls of her feet; her darkly colored coveralls and thin knee-length coat shuffled slightly, and peered through the peephole in the door. Despite being slightly distorted, she sat her front doorstep and the concrete stairs that led down to her driveway. She let out a sigh of relief, stepped back, and casually opened the door.
She was nearly knocked flat to the ground by the force of the winds that poured through the door. She was horrified, for even with all her caution this was not the outside of her house. This was some place altogether different, some place dark and stormy. This place was not as calm as the others she had seen, for here it stormed, but it was by no means as terrible as most storms. The wind chilled her, the rain fell in all different directions, but none of the water crossed the threshold, it simply stayed outside. Before her doorstep was a great puddle formed of rainwater and all about the world was rock. There were flowers, bedraggled, trees, soaked, and grasses that swayed and were torn back and forth by the powerful winds.
Padma scrambled back to escape the winds, but the door was torn from her hands by the force of it all. She stepped backwards and tripped on the rug that lay just beyond the front door. The door flew open, struck the wall, and then swung back, violently, as she lost her balance. Within seconds, Padma was struck hard in the back by the brass knob, the knocker hit her head, and she was thrown through the doorway into the place she had only seen. Curiously enough, though she did not notice this, the door closed perfectly and the house was utterly calm just after she was gone.
Padma let out a scream as she fell into the world she had wished to rid herself of. She opened her eyes and everything had become darker, danker, less sheltered. It was almost as if she had seen a toned down, distorted, sugarcoated version of it before. The rocks were sharp; many had slimy moss or algae growing upon them from the rains, and the rain was falling in much greater amounts than what she had seen. The wind bit at her, the rain stung her skin, and within moments she was soaked and fighting to climb out of the puddle that had been before her door. Lightning flashed and, for a moment, the world was too bright to see. Thunder rolled and shook the foundations of the rock beneath her. The mountain grumbled, and she fled into the rain.
She fled, stumbling, frigid, and blind through the spiraling and biting storm. The lightning made her jump with every flash and the great rolling thunder shook the ground so badly that she stumbled more than once. She fell forwards over a shadowed stone and ended up sprawled out across the ground. She moved her arms over her head and realized that some of the great thunderous claps and rolls and the shaking of the mountain was not wholly due to the storm.
"Impact tremors?" Padma shouted as the sound of her own voice comforted her somewhat in this unfamiliar place. "Where would those come from? Is someone blasting on the other side of the mountain?" She was both elated and panicked as she turned and peered, wide-eyed, into the darkness around her. Another great tremor shook the mountain, but she could see no blast, no smoke rose up, and no flying debris. There were only two things that Padma, for all her years and experiences, knew down to the absolute: stories, and explosives. This was like some terrible nightmarish story, but that was no explosive.
Padma stared towards the origin of the sound and her throat closed up and her heart nearly stopped as her eyes caught sight of the source, a great lumbering shadow, perhaps fifty feet tall, or higher for she could not tell through the disruption. In its great fist it held tight a tree, withered and brutalized, with dirt still falling in clumps from its tangled roots. She did not wait to see more of this thing; she scrambled to her feet and ran away from it as fast as her legs would take her. Her mind paused as she heard hoof beats, but did not slow in her flight. Had she imagined them?
She turned her head as she ran and, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of silver strike the great lumbering thing. She saw no more, however, because the ground beneath her abruptly ceased to be and she fell forward. Her shoulders hit the ground first, there was a searing pain that shot through her head, and her legs were caught up on some plant. This was all she remembered before she passed out from the pain and sheer terror of it all.
Author's Notes: I once read a story where the girl who was transported from her world opened her door to find the ocean. She just said something akin to "WoW! OMG!!! Water!" and left it at that. The lack of description and setting disappointed me, but I got over it fairly quickly. I decided if I were ever going to write a story where a girl got transported anywhere, I was going to make it very strange and very unnerving.
So, what did you think? Too much?
I would much like a beta for this—any who are willing, feel free to e-mail me at twentyfourhoursopen@yahoo.com .