Chapter One: Cousins

A/N Just some forewarning, this is my first fan fiction so I would very much appreciate any and all comments you have to make! It's FilixOC and deals with pre-quest (by a number of years) and during quest. Maybe a bit of post quest too.

Without further ado, welcome to my story. Read, review and most importantly, enjoy.

Chapter revised as of 9/9/2014

Revised again as of 19/12/2014 (major edits)

Disclaimer: Obviously, I own nothing to do with the Hobbit. Apparently the only thing that belongs to me is my overactive imagination. All rights reserved by J.R.R. Tolkien and the movie verse is the brainchild of Peter Jackson. I wish I had even a small portion of their creative genius.

Also! Please bear with me in regards to this chapter. Chapter four is the first chapter of this story that I actually like, so please trying reading up to and beyond that point! Thanks!

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Mikhayla laughed as Prour moved beneath her. They chased after the other horse and rider, the two women laughing and whooping loudly as the enjoyed their freedom. Both young women had their horse-bows clutched in their hands and a quiver of arrows slung over their backs. They moved their horses using only their weight and the pressure of their legs, performing elaborate movements as they looped around the makeshift course firing at the targets with precision born from years of training, their mounts listening for even the slightest command.

"Don't draw your elbow back so high; keep it parallel with the arrow!" Mikhayla called as she watched Katie draw back her bow. Katie adjusted and the arrow flew straight and true, a couple inches or so shy of a direct bullseye. "Good, you're getting much better."

Khayl, as she was most commonly known, loosed her shaft as she came past the target, laughing at Katie's scowl as the shaft embedded itself almost square in the centre of the target.

"How do you do it?" Katie asked almost despairingly. "I'm not bad, but I can never nail the bullseye."

"Practice." Mikhayla replied, which was more or less the answer Katie had come to expect from her dearest cousin.

"You always say that," she muttered, extracting a laugh from her friend. "Come on, how?"

"Race you to the creek!" Khayl called instead, turning her horse, Prour, and racing away. Katie huffed, spurring on Khayl's other horse Nyx. The wind whipped through Nyx's mane as the pair galloped after the lithe black horse and its fiery headed rider.

The horses raced playfully as they entered a copse of trees, not hesitating in their break-neck pace as all of them new the path like the back of their hands. The creek loomed up ahead of them and the horses drew even before they leapt at the same time. Their riders leaned forward, holding on tightly with their legs as they felt the muscles bunching beneath the horses powerful, bare backs.

As always the flight seemed to take an eternity but it was no more than an instant later that they again adjusted their positions as the horses landed smoothly and calmly. They were in mid motion of running when the ground seemed to slip out from underneath the horse's steady feet. It was as though they were trying to run up a slick surface at a ninety degree angle, with the ground just slipping out from beneath their feet.

Mikhayla wrapped her arms and hands in Prour's thick mane and clung to his neck as the gelding screamed, legs scrambling for purchase that was no longer there.

Mikhayla opened her eyes for a fraction of a second before joining her horse's scream. The trees, land, creek, sky! It was all gone! They were falling through nothingness with mist all around them, above and below them.

And still they kept falling.

Up,

Down,

Or perhaps they were floating?

With no solid surroundings Khayl couldn't be certain of anything.

All she knew was that Nyx and Katie were with them.

And then it all went dark…

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When Mikhayla's consciousness flickered back again she took an involuntary gulp of air, only to drag water into her mouth and nose instead. Reacting instinctively, she gagged before the water had gone half way down her throat, coughing it back into her mouth, her nose and throat burning from the sensation. Now that she was slightly more aware she began to panic as she felt water pressing in all around her.

She saw Katie striking out for the surface and did the same, cupping her hands and dragging the water out behind her. Her clothes weighed her down but they weren't far from the surface. Lungs already burning, Khayl broke out into the cool, crisp air and heaved in a lungful of oxygen.

"Mikhayla?" she heard Katie splutter.

"Here!" she replied looking around. Prour and Nyx were there too, both of them quickly paddling to shore with long, powerful strokes. Together Khayl and Katie followed the horses, clambering onto the bank with fatigued limbs. Both of them dropped their sodden bows and quivers on the ground before they collapsed beside them.

"Prour!" Khayl called, coughing a little from the water that she had very nearly taken into her lungs. The well-trained, soot coloured horse looked over before he began to walk towards her, Nyx following suit.

"Where are we?" Katie asked, tilting her head back as she looked all around them.

"I'm… I have no idea," Mikhayla replied frankly, frowning. The land around them was lush and green with a brilliant blue sky and nary a cloud in sight. The embankment they had clambered out on was littered with rocks and wiry grass. There were trees everywhere; Mikhayla could see no more than a hundred metres in any direction for the trees, except for over the lake which was at least a half kilometre wide. "It's definitely not home."

"But how did we get here!?" Katie cried anxiously, wrapping her hands in her soaking hair. "Khayl, how did we get here!?"

"I don't know!" Mikhayla snapped at her frantic friend, her mind whirring a thousand miles a minute as she tried to come up with an answer. It was something simple, it had to be. There was a simple explanation and all she had to do was find it. "Maybe we went through a portal?" She said, shrugging. The words sounded stupid even as she said them.

"Ridiculous," Katie breathed as she looked around them once again. "This just isn't possible."

"Anything's possible," Khayl replied, moving further up the bank with her things and her horse. Katie hurriedly followed with Nyx who stubbornly insisted that she be allowed to eat grass before they went anywhere. "Isn't that what someone once said?"

"Shut up."

They moved into a cluster of low trees where the two young women eagerly stripped their sodden outer clothing and laid it in the sun before tying up the horses.

"I say we just rest here until we're dry and move on then," Khayl yawned, exhausted all of a sudden. "We can locate some people and then find out where we are."

"What's happening to us, Khayl?" Katie asked, looking to her cousin for reassurance. Mikhayla was only a few months older, but she had always been mature and wise, even when they were just little. Khayl always knew what to do. She would look after them, there was a simple explanation. Her mother had once said that Khayl was an old head on young shoulders, even though her immaturity could sometimes trump even the most mischievous young scamp. Khayl would work it out.

"Just rest," was the simple reply. Katie sighed and laid down, rolling onto her side and curling up into a little ball, confident that Khayl would watch over her as she slept.

As soon as Katie was breathing deeply and surely, Khayl also laid back before closing her eyes and opening her other senses. She did as she had taught herself, slowly relaxing and making her mind go still.

It was real. That was the very first thing she realised. She could smell crushed pine needles and damp leaf litter. She could hear a flock of birds calling to each other, a ravens caw as it was attacked by a nesting pair. There was a small creature moving very quietly through the undergrowth a few metres away, though it was hesitant of the heavy tread of the horses. Khayl opened her mouth instantly and all of a sudden she could taste the world around her. The slightly damp particles that floated through the air, the warm, moist air rising from their damp bodies as the two of them lay in partial sunlight.

There was a twittering of insects nearby and a fish flopped lazily on the lake. Khayl felt intoxicated by the sheer multitude of things she could sense. It was all very real and it was all very different. Where she had grown up in Australia everything was hot and dry, and when the wind blew it too was hot and dry. The most common scent there was of dust and heat. This was place was like nowhere she had ever been before.

But it was real.

Khayl lay back and rested her head on her arm, opening her eyes and looking up at the wavering tree tops. She heard the small creature rustling through the undergrowth again and looked over in interest. A large rabbit gazed back at her timidly. It was halfway through shedding a winter coat and Mikhayla found she had to smile at its patchwork appearance and bright black eyes. Seeing her as no threat the rabbit began to clean itself, resting in the sunlight as she and her cousin were doing.

Katie murmured something in her light sleep and Khayl turned her eyes towards her instead. The other young woman had rolled over onto her other side now so that she faced Khayl. Her eyes moved restlessly beneath their lids and her hands clutched at something that wasn't there. Mikhayla wondered if she was thinking about her family.

Khayl herself wondered briefly what it would be like if she never got to see her parents or her big brother again. She would miss them, she knew, but she knew it would be enough for her just to know that her family was happy. She hoped that her disappearance wouldn't cause them too much pain. They may not have been the closest family, but they were one of the strongest she had ever met. They accepted one another for who they were and had no problem allowing one another to find their own way. It didn't make their reactions to the current situation seem so scary. They would probably just scold her for disappearing and take her story with a laugh and a wink.

Katie's family, her dad and adopted brother, on the other hand … they tended to cling to one another emotionally. They were a lot closer and once they realised that Katie had disappeared they would likely flip out, even if they were only gone for a few hours. It would probably be a few days before Mikhayla's family became overly concerned, by which time both she and her cousin would be safely home with them laughing about their wild imaginations. A portal. Khayl had to laugh at her idiotic idea, even though it had just been a stray thought.

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It was high noon when Khayl shook Katie gently. The younger girl jolted out of her sleep, immediately springing into full awareness. Mikhayla hadn't realised her rest had been so uneasy.

"We should get going," Khayl said to her dark- haired cousin. "I'm half starved." As if in response her stomach gave a particularly ferocious growl causing Katie to laugh slightly. Over the past hour the innocent little rabbit had begun to look particularly appetising. She probably would have tried to catch it save for the fact that neither of them had a lighter or a knife.

"Me too," Katie began to get dressed, increasingly aware that she had been virtually naked aside from her bra and knickers. Khayl had long since gotten dressed in her usually tattered jeans and a black singlet with white branding on it. Between that, her casually scuffed boots and well-toned, muscled body she looked like she could take on the world. Katie, on the other hand was painfully conscious of her 'cushioning' as her mother called it as well has standing well under a head shorter than her cousin. She had to admit that they looked nothing alike.

Katie was of average height, average weight and what she deemed to be average looks. She thought her face too thin, her eyes too large. Her hair was dark, as were her eyes, and her skin was pale like snow. Her snub nose was always tinted red. She was of the very firm belief that she was nothing but average; nothing made her stand out in a crowd, not in the way her cousin did without even trying.

Khayl was tall, thin and fair with a glowing tan and adorable freckles. Her hair was auburn but in the sun it shone brilliant shades of crimson, copper and gold. Her face was solid with high cheek bones and expressive brows, though her nose was slightly crooked from one of her first fist fights. She made everything look ten shades too easy and she drove every girl green with envy.

Despite that Katie loved her to bits. Khayl was such a simple, kind person when you scratched beneath her confident exterior, and she had a nature that you either loved or despised. Katie felt like the only way anyone would know they were related was if you left them alone for two minutes and watched the resulting chaos ensue.

"Are you done daydreaming?" Mikhayla called as she used a rock to boost herself up onto Prour's bare back. The clever black horse bowed his head in acceptance of his load and responsibility to carry his rider safely. Katie managed a small smile as she looked at them both, proud and loyal, clever and fierce. It was like they were reflections of one another.

Katie pulled on her other boot and walked over to Nyx who nickered a small greeting. She took the reins and guided her next to the same rock Khayl had used and turned to mount. That was when she felt the ginger horse's teeth latch onto her jeans and the flesh beneath. Mikhayla laughed as Katie squealed and danced about, growling at Nyx before vaulting onto her back.

Needless to say, the connection between those two wasn't quite so strong.

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A/N 9/9/2014 - Okay, first chapter revised. I really hate the beginning to this story, I do, it really bothers me. No matter what I do I just can't seem to get it right. I will say that the real story starts in chapter four. So bear with me until then, please. I've taken a few things out and adjusted a few others, but if Khayl still seems Mary Sue-ish then I apologise. It gets better, I swear.

Thank you for reading though, and your reviews and thoughts on my story will help me greatly. Even small things make me think about certain aspects of my story and voila! Better writing.

Read and Review!

19/12/14 – Revised again. Some major changes this time, though only to improve the flow, sentence structure and some minor details. Nothing relating to the plot has been changed.