Ingrid is utterly baffled. Is she dead? If so, is this the afterlife? And is it supposed to be heaven or hell? Surely hell doesn't have angels this beautiful, but shouldn't heaven have a better understanding of things like plumbing?
This is my take on the "falling into Middle Earth" trope. I wanted to write this trope where the heroine is a grown woman instead of a teenage girl. This is not a self—insert, even though you might think it from the specific character background!
This is an AU Earth — Tolkien never existed and nobody knows about LotR. Rated M for swearing (plenty of it in the beginning) and potential sex scenes later on. Haldir/OC!
Ingrid Jensen squeezed her way through the crowded lobby of the emergency department. It was the end of yet another long, gruelling shift that had seen her treating dozens of patients. She was tired — " no," she corrected herself mentally, "I'm exhausted, bone—weary, and probably a lot of other things besides."
Wrapping her coat tightly shut, she pushed her way out the doors and into a downcast downtown Chicago. The skies were pouring buckets. " Appropriate," she thought wryly. As a Norwegian, Ingrid was used to atrocious weather, and right now she felt grimly satisfied that everyone else would be having just as bad a day as she was. A twelve hour shift in the busiest emergency room in the city on the busiest day of the year would make anybody a little bitter, or at least that is what she told her conscience.
The heavy rain coated her glasses, making it difficult for her to see. Not that it mattered, she felt, she'd taken this route home many times before.
That's why it came as such a surprise to her when, crossing the road, she found herself suddenly thrown into the sky. She had time to think one last thought — "I really should start using crosswalks." — before everything ended.
Ingrid drifted. In what, she wasn't sure. She was surrounded by a black sky that was notable for being completely starless. She realised dimly that she should probably be feeling afraid, but for some reason the concept of "fear" seemed nebulous. In fact, the idea of feeling anything in particular seemed foreign and somehow ridiculous.
She drifted.
After some hours, or maybe weeks, or maybe aeons — "time" was another thing that was hard to grasp — someone spoke.
"HOW ARE YOU FEELING?"
Come to think of it, she wasn't sure that the speaker was a person , as such, and she wasn't even sure that he — or it — had actually spoken. It felt as though the words, or the message, arrived in her thoughts without her ears being involved in the process.
"Am I going mad?" she wondered aloud.
"I COULDN'T TELL YOU."
"Who are you?"
"I CAN'T TELL YOU THAT EITHER. HOW ARE YOU FEELING?"
Ingrid reflected over this. Theoretically, engaging in small—talk with a disembodied voice should have set alarms ringing in her head, but given the circumstances, including the vast abyss that surrounded her, she decided that it was best to go with the flow.
"GOOD IDEA."
"You can read my thoughts?"
"YES. I'M SURE YOU HAVE MANY QUESTIONS. UNFORTUNATELY, I DON'T HAVE ALL DAY TO ANSWER THEM. LET'S HURRY IT ALONG, PLEASE."
"Well, I'm feeling fine, if you must know. Where am I?"
"YOU COULDN'T POSSIBLY COMPREHEND EVEN THE MOST SIMPLIFIED EXPLANATION OF THIS PLACE. YOU MAY THINK OF IT AS A WAITING ROOM."
"It looks pretty empty, for a waiting room."
"THERE ARE OTHERS HERE. YOU CANNOT PERCEIVE THEM."
"I see —"
"NO, YOU DON'T."
Ingrid shrugged. "If you say so. I think I was hit by a car back there. Am I right in saying that I'm dead?"
"YOU ARE."
Ingrid took this with equanimity.
"That's interesting. What is this waiting room for? Waiting for what?"
"ALL LIVING THINGS COME HERE, AT THEIR END. THEY WAIT FOR US TO DECIDE THEIR FUTURE. FOR MOST, THE DECISION IS SIMPLE. THEY HAVE COMPLETED THE STORY WRITTEN FOR THEM. WE GIVE THEM A NEW STORY AND SEND THEM TO A NEW WORLD, WHERE THEY ARE BORN ANEW. BUT SOME PEOPLE MEET THEIR END BEFORE THEY COMPLETE THEIR STORIES. PEOPLE LIKE YOU."
"What happens to people like me?"
"THEY GET A CHOICE. THEY MAY COMPLETE THE ADVENTURE THEY BEGAN OR RECEIVE A NEW ONE."
"So I can go back to my life?"
"NO. IN THAT WORLD, YOU ARE DEAD. IT CANNOT BE UNDONE. WE HAVE FOUND YOU AN ALTERNATE HOME, WHERE YOU CAN CONTINUE THE LIFE YOU HAVE BEGUN AND SEE IT TO ITS COMPLETION. OR YOU MAY BEGIN A NEW LIFE. THE CHOICE IS YOURS."
"What difference does it make if I start a new life or continue this one?"
"IF YOU CHOOSE TO BEGIN AGAIN, YOU WILL BE BORN IN ANOTHER WORLD, WITH NO MEMORIES OF YOUR PREVIOUS LIVES, BUT WITH THE SAME SOUL. IF YOU CHOOSE TO CONTINUE, YOU WILL BE YOURSELF AS YOU WERE WHEN YOU DIED, WITH ALL OF YOUR MEMORIES, SAVE THIS CONVERSATION."
"Previous lives? I've lived before?"
The voice offered no answer.
"Never mind then. So I get to be a baby again or be me in a new world? Won't it be weird for me to live in some other universe? Aren't people going to find me strange?"
"THAT IS FOR YOU TO RESOLVE."
"Right. And when I die in that world — I come back here?"
"THAT IS NOT CERTAIN."
"Well, what other possibilities are there?"
"THERE ARE ALWAYS INFINITE POSSIBILITIES."
"Enlightening. Okay. I think I need to think about this."
The voice said nothing.
Ingrid drifted.
Time passed, or maybe it didn't.
"Are you there?"
"ALWAYS."
"I've made my decision."
"I KNOW."
"Wait a second, I just realised. What is 'my story' anyw—"
It was raining.
The air tasted like dirt. Ingrid spat, and realised that her mouth was full of soil. She was lying flat, face down in wet mud. Gingerly, she stretched her limbs and was relieved to note that none of them seemed broken. "That car must have been driving slower than it felt," she thought. And then, "Where is everybody? Surely someone saw me get hit?"
She rolled over and opened her eyes. The sky spread out above her in all directions.
"Wha—? Where's the city?"
Ingrid sat up, ignoring the sharp sting of complaint from her back, and looked around. She was sitting in an open plain that stretched out for miles. Far away to her right rose a mountain chain. To her left, she made out a hint of a distant forest boundary.
"What the fuck? What the fuck?"
She jumped up in panic and let out a sharp yelp of pain when she realised that her body was a lot more damaged than she'd first imagined. "Fuck fuck fuck. FAEN! Oh god, am I in a coma?"
This explanation was logical.
"Yes. I'm in a coma. That must be it."
She plopped herself back down again in the mud. A coma meant that none of this was real. Therefore, there was no need to do anything.
After a few minutes, she started shivering. "For a not-real place, it definitely feels very wet and cold, " she reflected. She looked over at the forest in the distance. The shelter trees could provide was very inviting. But the forest was far away, and her body hurt.
She waited.
After another five minutes, Ingrid gave in. She painstakingly pushed herself to her feet and started moving in the direction of the forest. Every part of her was in agony, but she was conscious that she was soon going to feel even worse if she kept sitting in the rain.
It was slow going. The plains were hillier than they first appeared. They rose up and down in lazy waves. The slopes were slippery and she lost her balance over and over. Her new mustard—yellow peabody coat was soon an unappealing shade of brown. She gained some solace in that fact that her shoes were comfortable walking shoes and not something impractical. "At least I didn't get run over on a night out ," she thought, although it didn't bring her much comfort.
Twilight was falling as she approached the edge of the woods, but it was still raining. She stopped and gazed at the trees apprehensively. Spending the night in a dark forest wasn't a particularly beguiling prospect. "But at least I won't be standing in the middle of a storm," she thought, and resigned herself.
The woods were thick and sprawling, but Ingrid ignored this, as she only meant to find some place near the border where she could wait out the night. She had absolutely no intention of going further than was necessary. She slowly eased herself onto the ground with her back resting against a tall tree, and let out a shrill scream as a man dropped from the sky in front of her.
"What — fuck — Jesus — what the fuck are you doing? You scared me to death! What — is that a bow? Helvete!"
Ingrid held up her hands and tried not to flinch at the sight of the arrow being pointed at her just a hair's breadth from her face. She let out a yelp as two other men fell from the sky around her and immediately drew weapons of their own.
"Is this the middle ages? What's going on here?"
The first man frowned at her and said something that Ingrid didn't recognise.
"Don't you speak English?"
The man said something again, in a louder voice.
"I don't understand you. You can't seriously be telling me that you don't speak English," she said flatly.
The man looked irritated. He gestured to one of the others, who stepped forward with a length of rope.
"Whoa — what are you going to do with that?"
He held out his arms with his wrists pressed together and gestured that she should do the same.
"You're going to tie me up? No fucking way! No way! This is illegal! You're not allowed to do this!"
He looked back towards the first man, who seemed to be the leader. The leader gestured to the third man, who grabbed Ingrid's arms and forcibly held them together whilst the other tied her. This done, they put their weapons away and stepped back to observe her. Ingrid, at this point, was in total panic.
"I don't know what this is all about, but I promise you, if you just let me go, I won't tell anybody about this. I'm sorry for coming into your forest. I'm just tired and injured, that's it!"
The men stared at her in confusion.
"Don't you understand a fucking word I'm saying? Parlez—vous français? No? Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Snakker du norsk? Uhhh. Español? Anything at all?"
The leader spoke again, in a different tone of voice, but Ingrid just shrugged helplessly. He turned back to his companions and they began conferring. Ingrid could do nothing but sit there and watch them. They looked nothing like anyone she had ever seen before. They were all incredibly tall, and had long, braided hair that might have been in style centuries ago. Their clothes were made of a soft green cloth cut in a style that wouldn't have seemed out of place in any fantasy book, and to top it all, they bore swords and bows.
"You... you aren't by any chance LARPers?" she said timidly, although she already knew they weren't.
They stopped talking to stare at her again. Ingrid said nothing more. The pain in her body was debilitating and she realised by now that it was futile to waste energy on trying to communicate. They seemed to have come to a decision anyway, because the leader came over and pulled her up by the shoulders. She let out an involuntary whimper from the pain. This seemed to give him pause because he stopped and stared intently at her face for a moment. Then he said something. Ingrid shrugged again, biting down the complaints from her body. The leader sighed in frustration. He pointed at her torso and made a sad face.
"Yes!" said Ingrid with relief, "It hurts, I am hurt. Do you understand?" She pointed at her abdomen and shook her head vigorously.
The leader glanced back at the other two and gestured to one of them who immediately came over. This one seemed friendlier. He didn't look at her with complete disdain, at least. He pointed at himself, and said very slowly and clearly, "Orophin. Or—o—phin. Orophin." Then he pointed at her.
"Ingrid. Ing—rid. I am Ingrid."
"Ingrid," repeated Orophin. He removed his pack from his back and took out a flask, which he offered to Ingrid.
"Is this water?"
Orophin indicated that she should drink.
"This is water, right?" repeated Ingrid hopefully.
Orophin shrugged. Uncertainly, she lifted the flask to her lips and took a sip. It certainly wasn't water. It had an earthy, slightly bitter taste that reminded her of unsweetened iced tea. It made Ingrid realise that she was, in fact, extremely thirsty, and she drank the rest of it eagerly.
"That wasn't too bad. Wow, I'm feeling tired. Really tired, in fact. Wait!" —realisation dawned— "This is a sedati— "
She looked up into Orophin's smiling face and slumped to the ground.