Disclaimer: It should be pretty obvious that Lord of the Rings isn't mine. I'm only responsible for mangling storyline, characters, and backstory for my own twisted amusement.
A/N: I blame l-ishida-dark. Entirely. She's the one who brought up the subject of the magical belly-button piercing. She's also responsible for the ending of this chapter. XD
PROTIP, u gaiz! When you've got exams in two days time, the ABSOLUTE BEST THING YOU CAN DO is start off a new fic. For best results, make it a complete piss-take with no merit whatsoever besides personal lols, then post it on an archive infamous for the tempestuousness of its authors.
Rest assured that any comments, positive or negative, which take this seriously in any way at all should at least provide me with much-needed amusement.
Enjoy!
Chapter One
A single tear, crystalline and glistening, slid down my cheek. My eyes were dark with sadness. No, literally. I know it seems odd, but my eyes change colour when I feel strong emotion. Today, as I choked back sobs at the side of the freshly-turned earth, they were black, as black as my long, poker-straight hair was blonde. Well, blacker than that, because my hair is actually pink and purple as well as blonde. Cool, huh?
But I digress.
A single tear, crystalline and glistening, slid down my cheek, as I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself. Pain clutched at my very soul, my blonde-and-pink-and-purple hair shrouding my heart-shaped face as I knelt there, head in hands.
My mother… my father… if only they were there with me now. Looking up, I imagined I saw them there; Daddy was holding Mom's hand, one hand on her shoulder as though to comfort her. They looked at each other, expressions unreadable, but I read love there – love for each other, but mostly love for me.
I could almost hear their voices…
No, wait. I could hear their voices.
"Siltasuvi Araeina Raven Tri'shah Iuhlmati Ellenor Isabella…" Mom said carefully.
"…Geliarae Arwen Sarabelle Kitsune Hmrevenueandcustoms," I added helpfully.
"Siltasuvi Araeina Raven Tri'shah Iuhlmati Ellenor Isabella Geliarae Arwen Sarabelle Kitsune Hmrevenueandcustoms Smith, why are you crying over a flower?"
"Yeah," Daddy agreed, monosyllabically. "I think we can replant it."
"You don't understand!" I cried at them, leaping to my feet. "George was my best friend! You can't just replace him like that!" How could they be so cruel? So callous? So utterly, splendiferously, terribly, awfully horrid? Several single crystalline tears streaming down my alabaster-pale cheeks, I turned and fled back towards the shack they called a house – how could anybody expect a growing girl like me to live in a place with only three wings and two hundred rooms? – my frail shoulders racked with sobs.
Running upstairs, I shoved the maid, butler, and PA out of the way and threw myself down on the tiny four-poster bed with hand-embroidered Venetian silk pillows, racked by heartfelt sobs. George was gone. Gone forever. My only real friend. And Mom and Daddy didn't even understand my agony! They never did. They just couldn't comprehend my sensitive soul, the depths of my deep heart in all its deepness. Daddy wouldn't even buy me another pony!
They kept me a virtual slave here. I had to wash up twice a month, and I was always dragged out of bed at crack of noon, each morning, to trudge all the way to the Ferrari. I tried to call social services down on them, but they just laughed in my face. Nobody cared. Nobody understood. I was all alone in a cold, cruel world.
School was the worst. My teachers never stopped hounding me about petty things like grades, concentration, and showing up for lessons. Every boy in the school threw themselves at me, but none of them saw me as more than a pair of G-cup breasts and a pretty face. The girls all said I was a total bitch, even though I never did anything wrong. Everyone hated me because I was so popular, and I never really had friends at all.
Until George. George was my friend. My best friend. My only friend.
And now he was dead!
Sniffling, I wiped a single crystalline tear away from the corner of my eyes, which were fading back to a pale, mourning silver-grey, like a rainy sky without the rain or the sky, and sat up on my bed, looking around my 'room'. I had seen more luxurious cupboards. It was only ten metres square, and what had given them the idea to paint it pink? Everyone knew that I wanted it to be black, and had done for whole days! The velvet drapes would have looked more in place in a museum, and the only furniture was hideously uncomfortable and made of cold iron. Well, the lampshade was, anyway.
I didn't belong here. I couldn't! Everyone here hated me. George was dead. My parents were callous, boorish types, with no interest at all in deep culture, like MCR, Hawthorne Hotel, and Marilyn Manson. They listened to strange music, shallow and uninteresting. I mean, somebody whose idea of a good title is 'Beethoven's Ninth' is clearly an imbecile as well as an egotist.
And my parents were boring. We had nothing in common, except for a 97.3% perfect facial match and a genetic surceptibility to contracting syphilis from drinking out of toilets. But Mom and Daddy were too cowardly to do something like that.
Pulling up my black, lacy top, which clung to my slim figure perfectly, accentuating my mild curves, and was emblazoned with the Hot Topic logo in hot pink, I peered down at the only clue I had to my real past, my real parents, before my mind was implanted with these false memories. I had had the belly-button piercing for as long as I could remember. It had a gem in it which was the exact blue of my eyes in 10:35:21:9001 happiness/love/sadness/rage mode, held perfectly in the slim silver setting. A tiny flaw in the crystal depths made it seem to shine with a mysterious inner light, just like my eyes in 13:66:6:1 mode.
Where did it come from, I wondered.
Where did I come from?
Who, after all, was I?
Who was the 'me' that was thinking?
What was the meaning of life?
Why couldn't I afford that shiny diamond-studded skull Damien Hurst was hawking? It would really suit my room once I managed to sneak in twenty or so cans of black paint and a few miles of black lace.
"I wish I was somewhere else! I want to go somewhere where I belong!" I cried, a single crystalline tear running down my cheek again. Single crystalline tears are a bitch, believe you me.
In a sudden storm of glitter, a strange figure appeared. He had light brown hair and blue-grey eyes, and when he spoke, it was with an English accent – South Shields, to be precise. He was dressed in a pink leotard and tutu, and he carried a glittery wand with a star on the end.
"And so you shall!" he told me, tapping me over the head with his wand.
"Who are you?" I asked, amazed, but before he could reply, I was sucked into a swirl of sparkling, shining strangeness. Rainbows rolled round me, quite quickly, and purple points of light plummeted past me. Overhead, other odd occurrences occurred.
At last, after an amazing alliterative age, I landed with a thud.
I looked around, unable to believe my eyes. Overhead, birds were singing. The trees bowed in a light wind. A few feet away, a neon sign flashed pink and green, surrounded by bright lights; writ upon it in great, towering letters were the words WELCOME TO MIDDLE-EARTH!
What had happened?
Where was I?
Where had that anachronistic and frankly tacky neon sign come from?