The Woes of a Thirteen Year Old Tolkien Fan
Disclaimer: The idea behind the Plushie Stories belongs to Crackers (CrackinAndProudOfIt) and Duilin, the characters from the Silmarillion belong to Tolkien, and I made up the rest, except for the F. A. U. L. T. T. Y. idea, which I got from Crackers. Beta-read by Crackers.
Chapter One, Footsteps of Doom
Zoe sat at her desk, hopelessly trying to translate Christus est rex hominum sed est frater hominum, et Deus est rex hominum sed est pater hominum* into English.
"Is it Christ is the king of…?" she muttered to herself. This exercise had to be done by Tuesday, and it was already Saturday evening. With no chance of being able to do any school work on Sunday, what with church and family, she now deeply regretted reading that piece of fan fiction this afternoon, when she should have been catching up on schoolwork. Mommy and Daddy will not be pleased, she thought to herself. (Yes, she still calls her parents Mommy and Daddy. No, she is not crazy. Or maybe just a tiny bit.)
There was a knock on the door downstairs. She paid no attention to it, though normally she raced her brother to see who could be the first to open the door. It puzzled her, though, because just as the knock resounded, she felt her spine tingle, and she heard in her head the voice of Galadriel saying "As the footsteps of doom," which of course made no sense. Though Lord of the Rings generally took up her whole life, she hadn't thought about it for the past thirty minutes, a long stretch of time in Zoe's world. She shook her head at herself and turned back to her Latin.
"Where was I? Let's see, He is also the…"
"Zoe?" Her brother, Alex, poked his head into her room.
"Alexander Hebrew!" she exclaimed. "How many times have I told you to knock?" Little brothers can be a pain in the neck sometimes.
"Umm, about nine hundred?" He was grinning now. "Listen, Zoe, there is an extremely long package for you down stairs. It just arrived and it's addressed to Nimrodel626, your pen name on . Thought you might want to know."
"What!?" she cried. "I didn't order anything!" They were alone, their parents being at a meeting with their other brothers. She gave up on her Latin, at least for the moment, and ran down stairs.
They hurried into the living room, where Alex had dragged the behemoth-sized box. Well, it wasn't really as large as the creature described in Job, but it was long, wide, and flat. Zoe stuck out her hand for something to cut it open with.
"I'll go get a knife from the kitchen," Alex volunteered. Seconds later he returned with the knife. Once again the words "footsteps of doom" echoed through Zoe's mind. Before she slit the tape, she examined the package for a return address to find out who this could have possibly come from. There was nothing. The writing on the package only said Nimrodel626 7832Parkington place Watertown, NY 77098
Taking a deep breath, she slit the tape. Alex slowly lifted the flaps, and there, lying in the box, were two-
"Plush Toys?" they said together, mystified. Zoe slowly lifted them up. They were life-size toys of two elves, one a little taller than the other. They both had long, straight, dark hair. When I said that they were life-sized, I meant life-sized: around seven feet tall. The main clues as to their identities, though, the ones that helped Zoe pick out which elves they were, were the facts that the taller one had only a left hand, and the shorter one had a harp.
"Maedhros and Maglor," breathed Zoe.
"Who are they?" asked Alex.
"They're the ones I've told you about, you know, the sons of Feanor, who are always trying to get the Silmarils back. You remember what the Silmarils are, right?"
"Of course. They're the jewels Beren and Luthien tried to get back, aren't they?"
"Correct. Look around the Styrofoam nuggets and see if you can find anything that says why we have been sent Silmarillion plush toys, and why they were sent to my pen name."
After about three minutes of searching, {Alex} came across a sky-blue envelope.
"Hey! Look at this!" he shouted. "It says 'faulty' on it, but it's spelled out."
Zoe came over to look at the envelope. Sure enough, against the azure background were the letters F. A. U. L. T. T. Y.
"I wonder what that could mean," she murmured.
End of my first chapter. How did you like it? Please review to let me know. (Nim is on her knees begging.) Pretty please with sugar on top!
*This is Latin, translated to English it is: Christ is the King of men but He is also the brother of men, and God is the King of men, but He is also the Father of men. A rather rambling sentence, I know, but I did not make it up. It was the longest sentence that I can translate, that was in my Latin book, so that is what made it into my story.