This is pretty much my first LotR fanfic ever, so plz be nice to me. I know that my other fic was a complete catastrophy, but I'm thinking of re doing it. I'm pretty sure that this one wont be a Mary Sue, but plz warn me if it starts exhibiting signs of such. It might seem Mary Sue at the beginning, but plz wait for the next chapter before you judge. Suggestions are always welcome!

Warnings: Rated for implied drug use and a lot of drug reference. There will be language if there is none already. Apart from that, this is a pretty clean story.

Disclaimers: I think we all know that nothing from LotR belongs to me. It all belongs to the great Tolkein.

Little Faith

Chapter One: Outweighed By Forces Greater

She sat lethargically on her futon day bed with her long black locks of hair spilling down over the shoulders of her slight frame. The intense beams of morning sunlight came in through her open window mixed with the light ocean breeze rolling off of the Pacific.

Outside, the seagulls were crying and the fishermen were bringing in the day's haul.

On this sunny day, all of the people that this teenage girl knew were out playing basket ball, or down at the beaches soaking in the sunlight. But she was stuck inside, doing nothing, hoping for something to happen. Though, she knew that nothing would.

Nothing ever happened at this house, in this pathetic Seattle suburb. It was all just sit around, eat, sleep, watch TV and get high.

At least, that was the way it went for her parents. They would either disappear to their room or to the den and come back a while later completely stoned out of their minds. That was the general routine for many nights and almost every weekend.

Well, at the very least, they had always managed to provide exceptionally well for her. Both parents had standard paying jobs and somehow made amazing financial decisions. They, as a family, had never been considered poor, or even close to that. She had always been grateful for things like that, it was just the marijuana she had a problem with. They loved her, she knew that, but she rarely ever saw the people that her parents really were. Meaning, their true characters always seemed to be overcast by the pot smoke.

A sudden low grumbling sound the erupted from the teen girl's stomach, knocking her out of her thoughts and causing her to realize that she hadn't eaten in almost twenty-four hours. She then figured it best to go and get something in her gut. Maybe then she could go and try and find a friend's place to stay at for the next night. She often did that, because she often got really fed up of seeing her parents stoned all the time. She would only stay for a night or two, she was always welcomed at her friends' houses. And, her parents never really cared where she went.

The kitchen was a mess, as usual, the teen found when she reached her destination. It wasn't unsanitary or anything obscenely gross like that, but there were dishes in the sink that needed washing, there was a pot of chili still on the stove, and a bagette loaf on the island counter half cut up.

She pulled a half a loaf of bread out of the pantry and popped a couple of pieces in the toaster which some how always avoided its proper place.

The teen girl then noticed that her parents weren't up yet. And no wonder, either. It was about seven thirty on a Saturday morning. They were still probably fast asleep, trying to get yesterday's stash out of their systems.

Soon, her breakfast popped up and she sat down at the cluttered table and began her 'meal'. It was uneventful, as per usual. She glanced briefly through one of her mother's magazines that was carelessly thrown aside onto the table. There were no interesting articles or anything else that caught her eye, so she soon discarded it back onto the messy table.

The raven haired teen looked up at the sound of muffled voices coming from her parent's room down the hall. She knew that they would only be up for a few moments before falling right back to sleep. Neither would even come out into the living room.

She then left for her own room which was down another hall, separate form her parent's room in this nicely sized bungalow. Her feet moved her towards the mirror that hung on the wall above her desk. She scanned her reflection which stared back at her through the mirror. Dark circles hung under her eyes from the lack of the sleep that she often needlessly forced upon herself. Her lips were dry and chapped and her long black hair flowed messily down her shoulders and to her breasts which looked small under her tight grey camisole. In fact, her entire form looked small and androgynous under her cami and black boxer shorts that were her pajamas.

Her gaze slowly wandered back to her sunken face. She would have to put make up on, yes, before she left anywhere, that was an almost daily task for her. Not that she was self-conscious or beauty-obsessed, or anything of the sort, but she did look nicer with her make up on.

She proceeded in dressing herself in something of her usual attire. She didn't worry about bathing herself, for she had done so the night before. She wore black, as she always did, that was just the way she was. A lot of people thought oddly of her for being so dark in disposition, but hey, that's what you got when both of your parents were stoners.

Her shirt was stiff cotton, collared that buttoned up in the front with a dark blue tank top underneath and her pants were baggy black cargos with a studded black leather belt. She wore an assortment of jewellery. Her necklaces consisted of a chain fastened there by a small lock, a golden ankh, and a small YinYang that she got from the Fisherman's Market downtown. There were a whole variety of bracelets adorning her wrists. They ranged from silver Indian bangles, to those plastic 'Sex Bracelets' which were held in almost every store, to a black cord that was tied loosely around her wrists. She put a few silver rings, primarily the large one that went on her right ring finger, decorated as a silver moon surrounded by silver stars. She did nothing to her hair, being perfectly satisfied with her natural curls that ran down her shoulders.

In preparation to leave, she took a medium sized black duffle back she got when she was on her school's soccer team, and filled it varying objects. There was her pj's (she didn't like sleeping in her cloths all that much), her sketch book (there were some new drawings in there that she wanted to show her friend), her CD case and player (for a bit of music), a change of clothes, make up and a whole bunch of seemingly needless crap.

She picked up her black 'Kamelot' zip-up hoodie on her way out of her room, just incase the wind decided to pick up in the near future. Not wanting her parents to freak out too badly, she left a note on the kitchen table, saying that she was indeed going to a friends house for the next day or two.

With everything being taken care of, she left her house, locking the door on the way out. She may have lived in a suburb, but they were still pretty close to downtown and you never knew what kind of people wandered down from there.

On her way down her driveway, a western breeze caught her, the scent of the ocean on it. The teen inhaled deeply, she loved being greeted by the ocean's wind in the morning. It was the one thing that she looked forward to when she got up for school in the morning.

Luckily, her friend's house was west of hers, meaning she would be walking right into these winds on her way. The path she took was one that she knew all too well. Ever since she was nine years old, she had taken this path back and forth to get to her friend's house and back.

She soon reached an empty lot. The 'meeting point' he and her friend would call it, seeing as it was pretty much the mid way between the two houses. It was a fair sized lot, probably as large as a small park. No one owned it, and a lot of people avoided it. The grass was long and unkept, and in the middle of it was a large oak tree that was really creepy. It was early fall right now, so it was not too creepy, there was a canopy of green leaves grown on it.

Out of plain curiosity, the dark-haired teen checked her watch for the time. Eight thirty. Chances were that her friend wasn't even awake yet. There were some kids around her age playing basketball at the concrete pad in the park over there, but she knew that she, at least, still had a couple of hours to kill. Looking once more at the empty lot, she knew the perfect thing to do to pass the time.

She found the well-worn path that her and her friend had used numerous times over the years without any problem and navigated her way to the base of the old tree. The girl looked up its height and began to climb it to her favourite branch. It was a large branch, curved like a seat. She often climbed up here when she needed to just sit and think, or if she just had nothing else to do, like now. She had not climbed to her branch in a long time, she had all but forgotten that it existed until now.

Lounging as the ocean breeze washed over her relaxed form, the teen girl reached into her pack, still slung over her shoulder, and pulled out the novel that she was currently in the process of reading. As she found the place she had marked as last being, she took a moment to look around once more. Nothing had changed, quite obviously, as there had not been enough time for anything to change. Or was there? Now that she was on a train of thought about it, she no longer could see the kids in the park playing basketball, and nor could she hear them anymore. It hadn't been but a minute, so she knew that she could not have gotten very far, even if they had decided to leave the very moment that the girl had taken her eyes off of them.

She sighed. Of coarse, there was really nothing that could be done about that particular situation on her part except worry about it, and she really hated to worry about trivial problems, even though she often did worry about trivial problems. That was probably why she hated trivial problems so much. And that, in turn, is why she turned almost immediately back to her book, so she could worry about the story, instead of trivial problems.

In all this time that she spent worrying over not worrying about trivial problems, the teen did not notice the breeze from the ocean steadily pick up and become a wind. Her long, loose hair was blowing across her face, but she disregarded this and continued to read the story that spilled out over the pages of her book. She simply tucked her hair back behind her ear, and when the wind came stronger and colder. Shivers racked through her body mercilessly, so she decided to put her book down for a moment to put her hoodie on.

Suddenly, the wind picked up from out of nowhere. The black-haired teen thought this to be weird. Even though she lived right on the coast, nothing like this ever came that unexpectedly. By all rights, it was almost a gale. In fact, the wind was so strong, that the only thing that she had seen that was stronger than this was the typhoon that had come for a visit when she was six.

She quickly put her book away inside her duffel bag at the thought of the possibility of her worst fears and went to get out of the tree. If this was indeed a typhoon (highly unlikely, but still possible), stuck up in tree would not be a very good place to be. Although, the high winds made actually getting out of the tree and climbing down a very difficult job.

Sooner than she could comprehend, her sneakered foot slipped on a loose piece of bark and the sstrong winds finished the already started job and sent her effortlessly plummeting back down to Earth. She did not even have the time to put her hands up in front of her face. As she landed harshly, her head roughly smashed down upon a rock protruding from the ground.

She attempted to get up, though she found that her surroundings were spinning, and also going in and out of focus. Or was it her that was spinning and going in and out of focus? No matter, her condition was soon worsening as hallucinations of a grassy, barren, dry land appeared before her. She tried to shake the image from her head, but it was only replace by darkness and she knew little more.

A young man in his early twenties whispered calmingly to the sandy brown horse that he often thought of as his own. The young mare was a loyal companion to him in his often dangerous errands. And, as the Captain of the nation's royal guard and army, he needed a loyal companion. The battles that increasingly occurred in these lands were absolutely deadly. Almost every time, he lost more men to these horrific battles that seemed more like carnages than anything else. So far, he had been exceedinly lucky, but that was mostly due in part to the horse before him.

But now, she was whining anxiously from the insanely strong wind that had unexpectedly blown in from nowhere, it seemed. It was almost always windy here due the mountain range they were at the base of, but this... this was unheard of.

Other men were also in the stables, attempting desperately to calm the many other war horses that were whining uncontrollably.

The man smiled inwardly. How ironic it was, that these horses were the finest bred anywhere to be found. They could stand the most frightening of battles, against the most horrid of creatures, yet they were easily spooked by a bit of unexpected wind. Minding that this was a bit more than just a bit of wind.

The worst of the scenario; this hectic behaviour was greatly hindering their efforts to aid a village that was currently under an unfair siege. This village was a defenceless farming community. They had no warring tools, or even soldiers place out near there at stations. He would not at all be surprised if they arrived at the sight of a small massacre.

Then, by some miracle, the wind slowly calmed, and in due turn, so did the horses. Now they would be able to ride out and meet these foes.

The young man quickly mounted the brown mare and signalled for his men to follow and meet him just outside the stables. As he passed by each one, he saw the fear on the faces of every man. Though they were all soldiers, they still held the mortal fear of death. Not any one of them wanted to die on this day, or any other for that matter. He was no different.

This was not in any way fair for any one of these men. Most had wives, and also children. Though he himself had neither, he still felt for them and always silently vowed to himself that he would do all that he possibly could to keep as many of his men as he could alive. He absolutely dreaded coming back and seeing the faces of the women, young and old, who had just found out that they were now widows. It made him sad, yes, but he knew that nothing he could say would comfort any one of them, so he simply did not bother in saying anything at all.

The rest of them men soon gathered and they were off to see how many lives could yet be spared.

If any at all.

Well, thank all you kind folks for your time. Plz, review and whatever else. It might be quite some time before I post another chapter, so dont hold your breath.

Hey, at least I'm honest.

And now I'm out!