Chapter One:
It was another rainy day as Laurel gazed out of her solitary window. She could only see an endless sea of treetops and grey, gloomy rainclouds casting shadows over the landscape. She did this every day. She would keep a steady eye trained on the horizon for anything new each day. Some days she would see whole flocks of birds, other days a squirrel poking its head through the topmost branches of a nearby tree. It was all rather monotonous. She had no idea how long she had been in this godforsaken tower. Her caregiver, Saruman, brought her here as a child. He watched over her and cared for her and educated her on the ways of the different races of Arda. He brought her water, clothing, reading material, and even trained her in self-defense. Laurel knew that he never intended for her to leave this tower, so he never taught her to use a sword or bow for offensive purposes, and nor would she ever wish to.
Laurel had been blessed by Yavanna, one of the Valar, at birth. She was always in tune with the plants and animals that lived in the known world. She was born to human parents long ago, but she had a few striking features that set her apart from the race of men and ultimately lead to them opting to give her up. Her eyes were the brightest shade of emerald green and her hair was a rich, mahogany that shimmered down to her lower back in soft, wavy curls. She liked to imagine that her soul had been woven from a beautiful tree, since she seemed to be connected with them in such an intimate way. She had peach-colored skin that flushed easily when she was excited or embarrassed, and was much taller than most human women, according to Saruman. She hadn't had the chance to interact with other children for much more than a few years before she was whisked away to this tower.
Saruman had eventually revealed to her why she had ended up here when he deemed her old enough to understand. Apparently, her eyes would change shades according to her moods, and this greatly frightened her human parents. When she was happy her eyes became a bright, shimmering lime-green, but when she was angry they became a forest green so dark it nearly looked black. Oh, and she never ate. This is probably what frightened her parents the most, she thought. Laurel was truly connected to the earth in more ways than one. She drank water like everyone else, but when it came to food, well, she never had an appetite for it. As a child she would simply bask in the warm sunlight and gain enough energy for days of activity.
That was why they had sought out a wizard. Their strange little girl never ate, had eyes that changed colors, and was more interested in watching the ants march along the forest floor than playing with the other children. Saruman had taken a liking to her and offered to take her in as if she were his own and to care for her for the rest of her days. That must have been around the end of the first age and the beginning of the second. She could never really remember. All she knew, day-in and day-out, was this room in her tower and the endless, leafy horizon. The room was a small, circular one with book shelves on one side and her four-post bed and her dresser on the other. The floors were made of hard, grey stone and when the sun caught the room just right she could see all the little specks of dust floating in the air. Sometimes out of boredom she would count them, or imagine she was one of them and could float out the window on a breeze to who knows where.
As a teenager she had despised Saruman for keeping her in here, but nowadays she was indifferent. She had attempted to escape many times, and each time Saruman had invented new ways to keep her in. At first he had just removed the door he used to access the tower, then he took away the balcony and then the curtains, raised the tower's height, and restricted her belongings to those that could not possibly be used for escape (i.e. books). So she resigned her time to be spent training her body and mind for the one day that she might need those skills, although she highly doubted it. Over the years she became very skilled in archery, linguistics, and horticulture among other things. Her small room was absolutely overflowing with various plants and flowers, these she would receive as gifts from Saruman on special occasions and for good behavior. Her gifts from Yavanna, the Giver of Fruits and Protector of Plants, had allowed her to help plants grow well beyond their limits, even in the absence or excess water, sunlight or nutrients. She made friends with some of the migratory birds that would fly passed her tower, but they were never permanent friends. She never really had any friends besides Saruman. It was sad, but Saruman said it was for her protection and that no one must know about her. Everyone that knew about her as a child had long since died, but for some reason she seemed to never age beyond the looks of a twenty-something year old human woman.
She became lost in thought as she leaned against the window's frame, but she was stirred out of her trance when a beautiful blue butterfly hovered just in front of her nose. Now, she couldn't speak to animals in the way she spoke to Saruman. They didn't have a formal language with syntax and a vocabulary. How she communicated with them was through feeling. This butterfly, for instance, was panicked. This made her sit up quickly and hold her palm out to the little thing to rest on. In her mind she saw Gandalf the Grey, injured and reaching out for help. She knew it was Gandalf from Saruman's stories, even though she had never made his acquaintance. In another scene she saw her caretaker, Saruman. She gasped as she saw him attacking the grey wizard and felt a sicking feeling in the pit of her stomach. His usually endearing smile was twisted into an evil grin. He lashed out at Gandalf and it was clear that they were no longer friends. Laurel was horrified at the the thought of him being capable of such things, betraying his best and oldest friend.
She had never met Gandalf personally, but she had most definitely pictured him to be a wizard who always fought for what was good and just. But now Saruman had turned his back on his friend. Laurel remembered when Saruman had taught her how to craft her bow, how to weave, taught her Sindarin and Dwarvish. He patched her knees when she feel after climbing to the top of her dresser and falling onto the hard, stone floors. He held her hand when she cried after seeing a small songbird snatched from the air by a hawk for the first time. He cared for her. But what now? He had known Gandalf for much longer than he had cared for her. The look in Saruman's eyes. It was something that shook her to her core and set a chill in her bones.
She could no longer stay here. She loved Saruman for being the person who cared for her for thousands of years, but he was someone different now, this was new, this was bad.