A/N: Hi! This would be my first attempt at an LOTR fic, and only my third try at a fic in general, so please be nice! Also, in this first part, you are meant to be confused as I basically made up whats going on, but I will explain later. I would also really appreciate if you would review, because it helps me become a better writer. Thanks!
She found the body when she went to the river to drink. At first, she had thought him to be a log, his dark, water soaked clothes deceiving her, but as she had knelt beside the water, she had caught a glimpse of his pale skin and recognised the figure of a man for what it was. For a while, she debated with herself, unsure wether she should become involved in... whatever this was. But, deciding that she should at least pay some respect to the body, she prepared to retrieve the man. After wading out in the knee deep water of the cove, she grabbed him beneath the arms, starting to drag him onto the shore. As she touched him, however, she cried out, flinching away and falling into the icy water. The resonance of regret was so strong within her mind that it brough tears to her eyes as she struggled back to her feet, her chest tight with the pain of it. Shaking her head, she braced herself to grab the man again. When she did so, the emotion once more swept over her, causing her to gasp. But, bowing her head in concentration, she fought it back, forcing herself not to read the emotions until she had gotten the man out of the water.
It was a struggle for her, but she managed to drag him up onto the rocky shore, despite his sodden weight. She let him go with relief, sitting in the sand beside him while she waited for her emotions to once again be her own. Slowly, regret and pain and sadness released her, giving way to curiosity and concern. Who was this man who had washed up on her shore? She knelt beside him, using the sleeves of her tunic to keep her skin from connecting with him as she rolled him onto his back. He was tall, and his face was that of a man, not of an elf, with long wavy brown hair and the stubble of a beard on his chin. He wore rich clothing; a red tunic with a black vest over it, fine leggings that were nonetheless made for work, and a pair of expensive traveling boots. Even with the damage from the river, she could see that his hands were calloused from handling swords. He was clearly some sort of noble, but was also a warrior.
But more interesting than his standing, was his fate. Piercing his tunic were three large tears, stained with blood - one in his shoulder, one in his gut, and one in his chest, right over his heart. Upon closer inspection, she could see a large puncture wound beneath each of these holes, as if they had been made by arrows or spears. He had been killed in action, then somehow had ended up being washed down the river. He hadn't been in the water very long though, as there was minimal water damage to his body. She pushed her hair behind her ears as she sat back on her heels, thinking.
And the regret. There had been that awful, awful sense of regret with even the slightest brush of her skin against him. This man had died wishing so much for something, something he had or hadn't done. Such a strong sense it was that she was reluctant to make any sort of contact with him, much less go to the land where he resided, where the resonances would be felt without contact. And yet... if his regret was so strong, did he not deserve a second chance? She rubbed at her face, damp palms cooling her skin.
Finally, she came to a decision. Silently, she shut her eyes, closing off her senses to anything but the task at hand. If one was not properly focusing, it was all together to easy to lose one's self, she knew. Then, there was the familiar rush of cold, the feeling of weightlessness, and the apparent slowing of time. As she opened her eyes, her senses were assailed by a new set of stimuli. Instead of hearing the chirp of birds and the rushing of water, there was the ringing song of all living things, each song slightly different from any other. And, instead of the blue of the sky, and the green of the grass, and the general colorfulness of the world, everything was either a shade of black or white. Her island was illuminated with light from the glowing white of the trees, who, though they weren't a bright as a moving creature, were much larger and more numerous here. She herself was glowing brightly, but as she looked at her hands, she could see the wisps of her light being blown away by an unfelt wind, slowly but surely - such were the dangers of being in a land where she did not belong. She had perhaps an hour, if she really wanted it, and even then she would be very weak when she returned to where she belonged. She needed to work quickly.
She looked down at the figure of the man. There were the grey edges around the pitch black of a non living object at the edges of his extremities, showing that he was in fact dead. But there, the veins of light that ran through the center of his body, showed where his essential being, or soul as many called it, was clinging desperately to his body, all making their way back to a fuzzy glowing orb right about where his heart belonged. Had she been properly in her body, she would have hissed with dismay - the orb was many layers down, causing it to be so indistinct. So far down, in such a short period of time! The circumstances under which he died must have been extreme, and his determination to keep going strong, for his time had come long before his heart actually ceased to beat. She shook her head. I have less time than I thought, she muttered within her mind, as speech was impossible in that realm. But, she had already started, and to turn back now would be wasteful. So, shutting her eyes once more, she felt the cold become more intense as she drifted down through the layers of the realm, opening her eyes three of four layers down, wincing as she saw that the orb was at least three more layers down. Already, the white wisps of her essence were whipping away like fog in a storm. She would have only a matter of minutes to complete her task. Taking the equivalent of a deep breath, she plunged herself the last couple of layers in one go, not wanting to waste any more time.
Here, her glow was diffusing so fast that it was obscuring her vision. Leaning forwards so she could see past it, she found that she had guessed correctly, and was on the same level as his essence. Even with the constraints of time heavy upon her mind, she hesitated to touch it, fearing for what she might see or know. The feelings of before were pressing into her, and she knew that touching it would only make it worse. But, as another cloud of her own essence flitted past her vision, she realized that nothing could be worse than losing herself in this middle realm, and grasped for his essence with a careless haste.
Thus, her barriers were down as the flood of thought, memory, and emotion barraged her mind. She threw up her defenses a fraction of a second too late, and for a moment, she was not only herself, but two people. With fear, the part of her that was still her realized that she would have to wait until his presence had receded to return to the surface, or her mind might very well end up sharing with his. Though she knew it to be impossible, she tried to ignore all the thoughts and memories that she was now in possession of, to not intrude on this man's privacy. But, it was indeed impossible, and even as he slipped away, she found that she knew more about this man than he might appreciate.
When he was well and truly gone, she glanced down at herself, examining the contents of her body. Her outer extremities now were completely black, leaving only her core and the center of her arms and legs and head with a glow. She couldn't wait, and she had not the time for being careful. With reckless speed, she shot up through the layers, trying her best to shield the soul she now cradled in her hands from the intense pressure of the shift, and to not take any of it's essence for her own, however tempting it might be. As she arrived, she could feel the soul beginning to warm her hands, eager to rejoin the body it had been forced to leave. Obligingly, she released it, and watched as it flooded the body, describing each organ and system in the body. She watched as each one began to function once again, and instantly could see that what had killed him was not a lack of blood, but instead an inability for his heart to pump properly, due to a large tear in it. Silently thanking whoever had left the weapons in him until after his death to leave his blood inside himself, she began to work. Her now entirely black hands passed easily into his body, her lack of essence to conflict with his allowing her to move through seemingly solid things if she so chose. She found the tear in the vital organ and then, with a confidence that came only from years or practice, took a small amount of what little of her precious essence was left, and changed it from that essential energy into matter, patching the tear in his heart.
Even at the slowed rate at which her essence was depleted on this level, she was getting dangerously close from being entirely swept away by the realm. Her time was almost up. With desperate haste, she forced some of her essence into every part of her body, even if it was only the faintest of glows, before jerking herself back into the physical world. Gasping and trembling, she dropped from her knees onto her hip, her entire body feeling as if it had had the circulation cut off for a very long time, creating the feeling of pins and needles. And yet, her discomfort was small in comparison to the intense satisfaction she was feeling. That was the deepest she had even been in the levels, and she had not only returned, but succeeded in rescuing the man she had set out to save.
She didn't have long to be pleased, however. In quick succession, she was jerked to her knees, then to her feet, before finding herself with her back pinned against a tree, a pale face beginning to flush again very close to hers, and a blade to her neck.
Boromir woke to the sight of a creature of darkness looming over him. It appeared to have a human shape, but was entirely black, and seemed to suck in the light around it. As he watched, it leaned back, seeming to shrink beside him, and looked at him almost hungrily. Without hesitation, he rolled onto his side and grabbed the creature, jerking it around to gain control of it. Then, he gained his feet, spinning it so that it was pinned against the tree, and whipped out the small dagger like knife that he kept in a sheath at his belt to hold beneath what he hoped was it's throat.
"Who are you?" He demanded, his voice oddly hoarse, "What are you?" When the creature did not immediately answer, he pressed the blade slightly into it's skin and yelled, "Answer me!"
"P-please Lord Boromir!" The voice sounded oddly hesitant, as if it did not know the common tongue very well, "You see me with the eyes of a dead man! I beg you, look again!"
The eyes of a dead man? Boromir thought, his eyes narrowing with confusion. Shaking his head, he looked again to find that, instead of some monster, he was pinning a girl of perhaps sixteen against this tree, and drawing a line of blood with his knife. Startled, and very confused, he stepped back, dropping the dagger with a clang. "Please, forgive me." He said, reminded of another small person who he had tried to kill, "I did not, I thought-"
"As have many before you." The girl replied, sliding down the trunk of the tree, looking as if her legs would not support her for a moment more. "Please, sit. You will kill yourself again if you keep moving about." Her speech was sounding more and more confident as she continued.
Again? Boromir did as she said, realizing that he did in fact feel quite faint, and was in great pain. His hand reach for his chest, finding that there was a great puncture right through his shirt, and into his skin. With a flash, he remembered. After he had tried to take the ring from Frodo, there had been the Uruk-Hai, coming to kill them, and he had been shot thrice with arrows. By all rights he should have died as soon as the third arrow had struck him, but he hadn't been ready - there had been things he needed to say. And so he had fought, fought to try and rid himself of at least some of the guilt he had felt at what he had done, but in vain. He had died... he had died.
"Are you...?" he began, and the girl watched him silently, waiting for him to finish the sentence. "Are you Death?"
The girl let out a laugh, a sound like bells chiming. It was how he might imagine the laughing of elves to sound. "Nay, not I, though I have been called such many a time."
Boromir examined the girl with curiosity, trying to discern from what race she might come. Her hair was long and blonde, like that of the Mirkwood Elves, and her skin was pale also, and yet, her eyes were bordering on black. "Then what are you?"
Her merriment in the girls eyes faded, replaced by a look of wistful sadness. "I do not rightfully know."
Again they fell into silence, and Boromir once again examined his wounds. They seemed to have healed, though hey still hurt like the devil. Wiping his hair from his face, he looked back up at the girl. "I was... I was dead." He said, though it was more of a statement than a question.
"Yes." She said.
"And yet it feels as if I am yet living."
"That is because you yet live." She offered him a sad smile. "You should rest; my explanations would take too long, and you are weary."
Uneasy, Boromir did not lay down. "Who are you?"
The girl looked away, staring pointedly at the ground. "I have been called by many names. Demon, Monster, Necromancer, but I am none of these."
"Then what is the name you are truly called by? The one by which you might introduce yourself?" He asked, frustrated by her avoidance of his question.
Plucking a piece of grass from the ground, she hesitated a moment, before whispering, "I have none." She began to knot the blade of grass as she said, "You must rest, or you may meet death yet." The girl gained her feet, if a bit unsteadily, and started into the forest. "Have no fear - no one comes to this island except me. You are perfectly safe."
Boromir watched her go, this mystical girl who had danced around his words with a skill he had rarely seen. Who and what she was would have to remain a mystery for now, as he did indeed find that he was excessively weary. Laying himself out in the soft grass, he cushioned his head with his arm before letting his eyes slip shut.