Name guide: (I KNOW these aren't real LOTR names, I made them up. Sorry.)
Tsanra is pronounced ZAN-ruh, rhymes with camera.
Kiilj is pronounced KILL-juh, rhymes with bilge.
Laenas is pronounced LAY-nas.
Tsanra yawned, stretched, and peeked out the window. It was dawn. She could see the elves outside in the courtyard meditating and doing whatever else elves do. Her mother had been of the Race of Man and her father something other than human. Tsanra had never known either of her parents; she had been sent to an orphanage run by woman elves at a very small age. She didn't know how old she was, but she thought she might be around fifteen.
Tsanra clambered out of her bed: she was at the top of a three level bunk bed, with two other orphans below her: Kiilj, a chubby, kind dwarf girl around the age of fourteen, and Laenas, a beautiful, hotheaded young woman who was sixteen. Tsanra padded down the girls' dormitory past the snoring, snoozing lumps of her peers. A bell would ring at the second hour past dawn, calling all the girls to wake, bathe, and come for breakfast and their daily lessons. Tsanra hated to bathe with the other girls; her dark, long hair attracted attention from the others, who choose to dye their hair light colors to look more Elvish. I don't know why they would want to be something they're not, thought Tsanra. She really didn't understand people. They were so concerned with fitting in. Tsanra herself was a quiet, reclusive girl who most of the others considered to be very boring. Her only real friends were Kiilj and Laenas, but they were all she needed.
As Tsanra soaked in one of the swimming hole sized tubs that would hold up to ten girls later on in the morning, she thought about all her adventures with her two friends. Laenas, Kiilj and she had gone exploring under the mountain that the orphanage was built on when they were young, which was totally off limits. They had found many strange, twisting passages carved with ancient Runes. None of the girls could read the Runes, and they had laughed about an elf carving a raunchy story of their illicit lovers. But that had been all in play; everyone knew that the elves promised to love one person for their entire lives. Later, they had gone deeper into the caverns and perched on a tiny sliver of crumbling rock, looking down at a giant dragon skeleton lying on a heap of gold and silver thousands of feet below them. Molten rock bubbled dangerously around the precious metals, and the girls had spent a few hours teetering on the brink of the precipice, wondering if there was a way to get down. They had missed the evening meal, and had to sneak back into the dormitory. The month's worth of kitchen duty that they had earned had been well worth the trip.
Tsanra sighed, and wrung out her long hair that flowed down to her waist, folded it into a braid, then tied it up in a bun. Her thin, watery reflection looked dour this morning, and a bit washed out. Tsanra had never really been a strong girl, not like Kiilj who could lift a boulder easily twice her size, or like Laenas who could be downright pigheaded when the mood struck her. Her two friends always talked about going on great adventures with the heroes of the War: Frodo; Samwise; Aragorn; Legolas; Gimli; and Gandalf, the White Wizard. But not Tsanra. No, she was a soft spoken girl who liked to sit in the sun with a good book in some hidden corner of the library. The only thing that Tsanra was an abysmal failure at was the fighting arts classes that everyone was required to take from the time they were twelve until they were seventeen. Her teachers had also despaired of her ever being a decent horseback rider; she was terrified of the gigantic beasts! Any sane person would be, if you looked at the size of their teeth!
She dressed quickly, then hurried outside with her book, heading out towards her favorite oak tree with a book on Magic that she had snitched from the liabrary. Magic was the only thing she had a real knack for: this book was written for adult mages, and she understood it perfectly. Tsanra hoped to try out one of the spells, a summoning that would call up a Morgoth, a kind of funny little demon guide that could find and retrieve nearly anything, as long as the summoner could see what she wanted the demon to get. Tsanra thought it would be interesting to show her friends a cup of solid gold and remind them of the dragon lair.
Tsanra was so consumed by the thought of the looks on their faces, that she wasn't watching where she was going. She smacked straight into a man dismounting off a beautiful white horse. The man tripped and fell to the ground. Tsanra started, apologized, and reached down to help the tired old man up.
But when she looked into his face, she recognized him and nearly leaped straight out of her skin. This was no old man. This was Gandalf, the greatest wizard in the entire history of Middle Earth. And the look that gleamed in his eyes was not surprise, scorn, dislike, or even amusement: it was fear. Tsanra helped him up, and turned over her shoulder to see if there was anyone else that he could be looking at behind her. But there was no one. Slowly it dawned on her that a great assembly was watching her. Tsanra looked around. There, on his horse sat the King of Men, Aragorn; on a sturdy pony rode stalwart Gimli; and on a Palomino rode Legolas. All four watched her with a mixture of fear, respect, and deep surprise.
Then, Gandalf drew his breath to speak⦠to her!
