Author's Note: This is not anywhere close to my first fanfiction, but it is definitely my first published one. I spent a long time in the deliberation phase for this, and decided that if this is the first I'm going to finish, it's also the first one I'm going to publish. I'm not traditionally a fan of the "fall into a fictional world" trope, but credit where credit is due is owed: this is a bit of a tribute to my first, and long since deleted fanfiction, rife with unrealistic expectations, divergences from canon, and plenty of other characterization problems. This is not just an attempt to mitigate those errors: this is a genuine exploration in writing an epic-style romance between two of the fairer sex, a nearly invisible portion of the fanfiction present in the Lord of the Rings archives. Motte and Ophir are unapologetically in love, though they share little time together; their stories will always be intertwined. I will use a lot of book-oriented knowledge from the more extended universe's lore, but I don't think it's required knowledge to appreciate the story. If it could be puzzling, it'll come with a footnote, though those chapters likely won't appear until much alter in the story. My chapters also have a tendency to be brief and to the point, but there will be many of them, though this is still a WIP. I have a healthy vault of unpublished material at the moment that's still being edited, and I plan on updating at least weekly. Any criticism is more than welcome, and should you wish to message me about anything, I'm almost always available.
"Babe," Motte said, stumbling behind her girlfriend, her hiking boots half untied and her steps barely scraping the top of the tree roots. "Slow down. This is a camping trip, not a race."
"Sorry," said Ophir, about twenty feet in front of her. She didn't have to raise her voice- it was loud enough as it was. "I'm just really excited." And far more used to rugged trails than Motte was.
While Motte was a fashion design major with internships lined up at the door, Ophir was a soon-to-be park ranger, finishing up her senior year of college with a degree in ecology. Her homelands were the wilds of North America, and though the cold of winter still clung to the woods, spring break had promised a break enough for the happy couple to go backpacking. Motte and Ophir had been together for two years now, having met by chance during a hockey game. Motte had never seen a match before, and Ophir was a much more enthusiastic fan than most in the audience, and the two had hit it off sitting next to one another. A meeting led to friendship, led to a hangout, led to a date,and before they knew it, they were a couple. Different and contrasting though they were, the two thrived on the duality of each other, constantly learning from one another's experiences and having more in common than met the eye.
Motte took a long sip from her Camelback and stepped over the roots. They were at the trail's head in Great Smoky Mountain National Park, and they were going to be out in the woods of Appalachia, sleeping in a tent for three days, before coming back up, and on the way back to Columbus, visiting Motte's father, who had a small livestock farm in northern Kentucky. She was excited to go home, almost as excited as Ophir was to spend four days in off-the-grid wilderness.
"I know," said Motte, a light smile on her lips as she caught up to her girlfriend. Standing on her tiptoes, she kissed her cheek lightly and kept going past her. A bit dazed, Ophir watched her pull ahead, then followed behind her, shifting her backpack further up onto her shoulder. It was heavy, but nothing her muscular arms, back, and shoulders couldn't handle. Ophir was not slender. If she was a tree, she would be oak- strong, broad, and stubborn.
"You don't ever play fair, do you?" Ophir said.
"What on earth do you mean?" Motte asked innocently
"You're going to beat me there just 'cuz you keep distracting me."
"And," said Motte, a lilt in her voice, "how do I do that? I don't think this is even a race."
"The little kiss thing!" And yes, to Ophir, it was.
"Am I not allowed to kiss my own girlfriend?" she said. "I can't believe it. Wake up, America."
"We're hiking! What if I lost my concentration and fell on my face?"
"You're smarter than that," said Motte. "More coordinated, too. If you're that easily distracted, maybe you need a different job."
"You won't be at work with me," said Ophir.
"But what if I call you? Then what?"
"Then I'll be distracted. So don't call me."
"But what if I miss you?" Ophir was trying not to giggle like a child.
"You don't miss me!" She elbowed Motte. "You miss my damn attention!"
"Falsehoods and lies. I miss every bit of you."
"Is that so? Even the sweat? Because you complain about the sweat."
"Not the sweat. I miss every bit of post-shower you." The two of them had moved into an apartment together, and loved every minute of time spent with one another. It had been a late night, between-the-sheets idea to take a real vacation for spring break, and while Motte was initially reserved about the prospect of not showering for three days on the trail, she had also warmed up to it as they planned it. She'd gotten to help dress and decorate Ophir's things, and had taken her shopping and to fancy boutiques, she might as well get to know part of her life better.
Six hours went by with this bickering and discussion and laughter. They talked about books, politics, and wildlife, but often found themselves relishing in the silence. The crunch of leaves underfoot was enough noise at times, but sometimes, their own voices needed to sound through the canopy. It was the romantic getaway of their dreams, and as the sun began to set around 5, they decided to break camp along the trail, in a small clearing.
Shadowed by maple, beech, hemlock, and poplar, Motte, who was a birch tree if Ophir was oak, dropped the pack and flopped onto a log. "Night, babe." Flair for the dramatic, as always.
"You get a ten minute nap," said Ophir, setting down her pack with more care and untying the tent canvas and ground pads. "But after that, you get to either gather sticks and build a fire for dinner, or you get to pitch the tent." Motte thought about which she knew how to do. She couldn't start a fire if she had a gallon of gas, a flamethrower, and an entire plain of dry grass.
"I'll pitch the tent." She rolled over and sat up. Which left Ophir to gather firewood. She checked her boots, took a final sip of water along with her carabiner that also happened to have her bear spray hooked onto it, and headed out.
Motte, in the meanwhile, pushed herself up and grabbed the tent poles and tarp. She had insisted on using her vintage, eBay purchased canvas army tent, complete with aluminum poles, and Ophir had said that if she wanted to use the fancy tent, she would have to carry it. It may have been just a two (wo)man tent, but it sure was a hell of a lot heavier now than it had felt at the start of the day. Taking the aluminum poles out of the carrying case, she laid them out, got out the stakes and mallet, and hammered the tarp down with only minor injury, a bruised index finger. She sucked on it for a second, then went back to work. In around 20 minutes' time, she had it up, and had chucked most of their things into it.
In the meantime, Ophir was having a surprisingly difficult time finding viable firewood. There must've been rain recently, because not only was the soil and sticks she could find damp, but also, there was still some remnant flow down to where there was likely a creek bed deeper in the woods. She wasn't going that way, having no intention of getting lost, but finally settled on the armful of wood she did have. She meandered back to the site, but the sky was beginning to get even darker than it already was. It wouldn't be long before creatures came out.
When she got back to the campsite, Motte was already done, had taken off her shoes, and had pulled out a book. She'd always taken books on the trail, but Ophir herself, being a more physically inclined person, was not a big reader and found it to be more tiring to read after a day of hiking than it was relaxing. "Which one is it this time?" she asked, curiously.
"Song of Myself." Ophir nodded, as if she'd heard of this before, though she hadn't. "It's Walt Whitman. You'd like him. He was a poet." Motte stuck her nose back into the book.
"Nice." Ophir began making a campfire ring in front of the log, the smooth, weathered stones of the area perfect for the job. She shuttled the leaves out of the new little pit, and set up an A-frame campfire. "Can you hand me the fire starters?" Ophir, a wilderness purist, used her own egg crate, dryer lint, and paraffin wax fire starters for campouts and would refuse any and all alternatives.
"Yup." Motte threw her the Ziplock bag after rummaging in Ophir's pack for a second. In five minutes of quiet, Ophir had raised dry log to the beginnings of a crackling fire. For a moment, she felt a surge of the awe humanity's primitive ancestors had upon the creation of fire, and staring into its burning heat, felt the warmth of summer even in the earliest weeks of spring, when the snow had only just melted away. But then, the grumble of her stomach came back. She wasn't going to bother Motte now, and reached for her pack herself, over Motte's feet, and grabbed the thermal tote. They'd packed, for tonight, some potatoes they'd sliced in advance and sausages. They were wrapped in aluminum foil, and to be eaten as nature intended: with their bare hands. The foil pack popped and fizzed when she set it down into the coals, but with time, she could smell the sweetness of cooking meat.
"They're ready," said Ophir, pulling the pack out with the hem of her shirt shielding her from the brunt of the heat. She tossed Motte the foil pack, and reached in with her unburnt hand to nab a fresh-from-the-fire slice of potato. "Why does open flame make everything taste better?"
"Mmm-mm." It resembled an "I don't know," but out of Motte's food-filled mouth, it was barely a mumble. "But it does," she said, following a swallow.
"I wonder if it's the nature. You know, the magic of nature." She took another bite. "Like how everything is prettier out here. I never remember the park being this beautiful when I came last." Motte had never come this way, and had no way to form an opinion.
"It's spring. Everything is beautiful when you can still feel the cold, but see the sun." Motte sucked a bit of grease off her finger, then reached for another bite. "It's green, but you still can feel something coming." This was her home, her sweet rolling, round mountains covered in trees.
"Maybe," said Ophir, "but everything seems so different." She wasn't going to get worried yet, but they should've reached at least one of the landmarks on the map that night. They could've been walking slowly, but that was unlikely. Motte was no experienced hiker, but she was at least physically fit, and Ophir could easily travel fifteen miles in the time they'd hiked that day, not accounting for elevation. They should've passed more trail markers, as well, and while she knew that they were both going to be safe for the night, it worried her how they'd travel in the morning. "Like it's an entirely new place."
"There was a wildfire a few years back," she said. "Maybe you just don't recognize the new growth."
"That's probably it. Still, I feel like something here is strange." Ophir's instinct was never wrong, but she wasn't going to push it now. There was little they could do this time of night, and often, places seemed unfamiliar or foreign after dark.
Motte felt it too. This was close to her home, and she knew her spring, her end of winter. But Motte also knew that if she showed any sign of alarm, it would send Ophir into a whole night of trepidation. "I'm sure it's fine." She reached for another potato. "What did we even put on these things? They're better than I remember last time."
They went back to finishing their dinner, and balled up the foil repacked all their supplies, and made a bear hang. The sounds of animals in the woods startled neither of them, and taking off their boots, they both crawled into their sleeping bags inside the two-woman tent for the night.
"Hon?" Ophir stared up at the stars through the mesh window of the tent. Motte laid beside her, staring at the canvas ceiling and beginning to doze off.
"Mm?" She turned over and gazed at Ophir lovingly, the soft, tiredness clear on her face.
"I love you." She'd said this every night for the last year and a half, of course, but it felt special and different every time she said it. "I'm glad to be with you."
"I wouldn't have it any other way." Motte leaned in, and the two kissed; though it was brief, it was gentle and tender, full of warmth. "I love you too." Motte rolled over, and fell asleep quickly, while Ophir gazed up at the sky for what felt like hours. These were not the stars she knew. She thought for what felt like hours of all the stories her mother told her about the stars, and none of these stars were familiar. She couldn't even see Polaris in the sky, though she knew the window faced north. She'd checked. Something was wrong, and it was many hours before her eyes drifted closed.
