Well, this certainly wasn't what she expected for life to throw at her once she'd graduated. Being torn from a life of academia – ok, so it was more drinking and lazing around in bed than actual academia, but still! – to a genuinely terrifying situation with magic, witches and different worlds of all things, had definitely not been on the agenda.
The woman leaned nearer to her, smiling almost apologetically, the knife coming ever so closer, inch by inch. She could practically hear her last seconds ticking away, her breath increasing rapidly, frantic.
"You really don't need to do this, I swear. There must be something else I can do, some kind of a… a… compromise, anything! I'll just give it to you, I swear!" She begged, close to sobbing now, her fingers digging in to the bark of the tree behind her, still unable to move.
"I really do wish there was another way, dearie. I do so hate that this has to happen. But the evil in this land is back, I can feel it. And after what happened last time, I will not be caught out. We were almost destroyed by Sauron in his mad struggle for power."
"Do you even hear yourself?!" She shrieked, tears streaming down her face now. "Sauron?! You're crazy!"
The older woman shrugged, now seeming quite amused. "It would seem that way to you of course. I know your world regards ours as some kind of a fairytale story but I can assure you, it's all true. Not that it matters much to you now. I just wanted to assure you that your death will not be for naught. I need your power. And, unfortunately for you, I need it now. And then, I'll be going back for your lovely looking friend. I assume she's quite worried about you, back there in England." She smiled, apparently attempting to be reassuring, and put the knife against the sobbing woman. "Now dearie, hold still, I assume this is going to hurt rather a lot and I don't particularly want to make a messy job of it. Blood is a terrible pain to get out of these robes."
...
"Hey, what d'you reckon?" Zoe asked grinning, leaning back on the grass and stretching slightly in the weakening but still warm summer sun. "Fancy camping in the ruins tonight?"
"You sure? What if someone sees us? Won't we get in trouble?" came the reply from the open boot of the car.
"There's no one here, Ari! And I doubt anyone will come by at night. Stop being so pants and help me put the tent up. Besides, I want to see if it's haunted…"
There came a derisive snort from behind the car. Zoe, raising her head slightly, shaded her eyes to see her friend raise her hand from behind the beaten up, old car and make a rather obscene gesture.
"Well fuck you too!" She said laughing. She groped around on the grass behind her and pulled her black aviators on, smoothing her short, red hair back from her face, pouting at its ruffled waves and attempting to flatten it with her hands. "God, I only straightened this mess this morning. Why am I cursed with frizz?" She mumbled to herself, shaking a clenched fist at the sky.
Stepping from behind the car, Ari grinned. "You clearly don't know me at all, loser. Bloody ghosts are hardly going to want to make me sleep in there, unlike you, crazy lady. Also, you look like a duck when you pout like that. Desist."
"Desisting, cap'n!" Zoe saluted her with her middle finger and then continued on with her badgering. "Please, please, please bestie? You know you love me and you know I'm going to get my way anyway, so why don't we just skip the debate and move the tent in the ruins instead of next to boring, old Shit-Tip in some field?" she said, referring to her beat up, fading turquoise, Volkswagen Beetle. She had received it four years ago for her seventeenth birthday, from her absentee mother, and had named it the Guiltmobile. On its third year of being in her ownership and after many bumps and scrapes, she had rechristened it Shit-Tip, now almost affectionately.
"Fine, but if there are ghosts, you can go outside and shoo them away while I hide in my sleeping bag, cowering pathetically. Deal?"
"Deal!"
Zoe launched herself from her sunbathing spot and ran to the car, pulling the tent bag and her own backpack, which was bursting at the seams, running across the fields and into the beautiful but scanty ruins of the castle before Ari changed her mind. Ari smiled at her friend's antics and, turning to face the sun soaked up the warm rays. It had been an unusually good summer so far and she wondered how long it would be before their luck changed and the fine sunshine changed to a dreary drizzle. England's weather was, after all, notoriously wet. She couldn't remember a summer when the weather had held this long. Last year, thankfully after she'd finished her second year exams at university, there had been two long weeks of blissful sunshine, where her skin had become a gorgeous golden brown colour. Then it had rained. Non-stop.
Typical Brit, she thought to herself, still smiling slightly. Always complaining about the weather.
She and Zoe had graduated four weeks ago, both with respectable degrees - hers in literature, with two languages that she had picked up along the way, and Zoe's in physiotherapy. Five days after their ceremony they had ditched the well-wishes and the underlying hints from their parents to get 'real jobs' and 'real responsibilities', as her Dad kept putting it, and escaped. She loved him dearly but she had barely been back at home for two days before he had started harping on at her; what she was going to do with her life and what was she going to do with a degree in literature, really?
Well, she didn't have any answers for him. And really, it was a few years too late to start criticising her degree choice. So, full of worries and anxieties about disappointing her parents and the pressures of being a freshly made graduate, she had despondently walked to Zoe's house down the street. And Zoe, being the impulsive one of the two of them had come up with a plan, straightaway. Leave for the summer. Get their heads straight. Come back with goals and answers for their parents' niggling questions. But they had to do it on the cheap, being several thousand pounds in debt to their beloved government. And so they had packed Shit-Tip to the brim with the 'essentials' - light packers they were not- and set off to tour the castles, abbeys and monuments of England. That was two weeks ago and Ari was still loving every minute of it. Hanging out with her best friend and having no commitments, no deadlines or parents looming over their shoulders, was apparently just what the doctor ordered. They had stopped in at cheap B&Bs when baby wipes and dry shampoo weren't quite cutting it on the shower front, but all in all, they both loved camping in the shadow's of monoliths of British civilisation. The history nerds in both of them delighted over the old stories, the noticeable changes in architecture and defences, and the people they had met had been wonderful, and so interested to hear about their travels. It was an amazing experience and the best thing was that they had five or six weeks left until they were expected home.
"Ari, are you going to get that gorgeous arse of yours over here? I need help with the tent. And make sure you remember the food!" came a distant shout.
This was it. The best summer of her life. Grinning, she cupped her hands round her mouth and shouted back;
"Hang about, you mardy cow!" Distant laughter echoed back to her. She scooped up her backpack, sleeping bag, and a shopping bag of food, locked up the car, and made her way over to the ruins.
...
"Good Lord, what took you so long? I'm starving. Look, you took so long that I'm withering away!" Again she was lead back on the grass and sucked in her cheeks and pushed out her ribs, attempting to make her slender frame look skeletal. Ari looked at her, head tilted to the side.
"You look like a warning against plastic surgery."
"Douche-cake."
"Inventive. Here you go, heathen!" She threw a plastic covered sandwich at Zoe's head, missing due to her terrible aim, but Zoe caught it regardless.
"Ewww, egg. I think that one is yours, smelly oik. Did we nick these from the B&B this morning?"
"We, my dear friend, did not do anything. I was telling the owner about our travelling plans and he insisted on making us sandwiches and what have you. We shall have a veritable feast I say, a feast!"
"Excellent news. Got anything that doesn't smell like your brother after a particularly spicy curry?"
"You're such a lady. Have the bag, there'll probably be something in there that strikes your fancy."
"Cheers." Zoe rifled through the plastic bag and, after a short while, crowed with laughter, holding aloft from the bag a suspicious looking box. "Jackpot! The guy gave us free condoms! Was he hitting on you or something? He was at least forty five! For shame, Miss Ariadne! What would your delightfully smelling brother have to say about this kind of business?"
"Sweet Jesus, that's grim. Wait, that's a Boots' bag, do you think he left them in there by accident?"
They both looked at each other and burst out laughing. Incoherent with amusement, anyone passing would have been quite alarmed by the sight: two twenty one year olds sitting on the ground surrounded by random bits of canvas, poles sticking out of the ground at odd angles and barely nibbled sandwiches, positively bawling their eyes out with laughter.
"Bet his wife was super disappointed when they realised, eh? Look there's even lube in here. Oooh, it's vanilla flavoured. Shotgun!"
"You're so depraved that you're stealing some poor man's lube? That's a new low, even for you."
"Pfft, he practically gave it to us."
"Us? What exactly are we doing tonight…?"
"Hah, you wish!"
"Bitch, please, I would be the best you ever had."
Ari smirked at Zoe, who was looking almost impressed.
"You know, when I met you all those many, many years ago…"
"It was, like, six years ago Z, we're not a hundred yet!" Ari interrupted looking exasperated. But Zoe would not be deterred from this particular trip down memory lane. "… You were so virginal and pleasant, not a single bad word came from those angelic lips of yours. And now look at you. I'm so proud!" She pounced on Ari and hugged her, squishing Ari's egg sandwich into her chest.
"You are a satanic monkey, sent from hell to terrorise me. Get off me, lesbo, you're crushing my precious food." She pushed Zoe away, her green eyes shining with suppressed mirth and fussily dusted at herself for imaginary crumbs. "Eurgh, can you get egg mayonnaise out of lace?"
"Tch, there's nothing there. And also, that top is from Primark or something, I doubt it'll last that long anyway. Alrighty," she clapped her hands in what she imagined to be an efficient manner. "Let's finish up the food and get this show on the road. Teamwork this tent like we mean it, yeah?"
Ari grinned, nodding her head but unable to speak due to the large amount of food she had just stuffed in her mouth.
"Always got your mouth full of something…"
...
The next morning saw a change in the weather. Though still warm, rain clouds threatened on the horizon, and Zoe groaned when she poked her head out of the tent.
"Looks like it's going to piss it down in a while. I'll probably forgo my run this morning, can't be arsed anyway. Which site do you want to go to next anyway? We kind of got off topic last night…" This was true; instead of planning their next stop, the two girls had made up a lurid sex life for the B&B owner, complete with dalliances with the women they had seen by the seaside the day before. The conversation then turned, as it so often does in these kinds of situations, to which character in a movie they would sleep with.
"Alan Rickman in every movie ever." Zoe burst out laughing. Ari defended her choice and continued. "His voice is incredible! Especially in Die Hard. Ooh and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves."
"Don't be silly." Zoe said, talking over Ari's terrible impression of the Sheriff of Nottingham ("I'm going to cut your heart out with a spoon!"). "It's obviously Captain Jack Sparrow! We would drink rum and be merry and such."
"You definitely picked the best option from that franchise. Seriously, what is up with Will Turner and the bucket of grease he dipped his head into every morning? It's crazy how he looks so much different in Lord of the Rings…"
Zoe had groaned dramatically at this point; "No, not again!"
"What?"
"You have an obsession."
"So? I love the books and the films are definitely not to be sniffed at!"
"Definition of an obsession right there."
"Right, Lord of the Rings. Who would you try and bang if you could?"
"Gandalf! I could make some wicked innuendoes about what he could do with his staff. And… that's the only one I can remember, other than blondie elf boy."
"I think you mean Legolas."
"Pfft, yeah, whatever. You?"
"It's so hard to choose! I'd probably go for Eomer."
"Who the hell is that?"
"He's the big, blonde one; looks vaguely like a sexy lion. From Rohan? Eowyn's brother?"
"Nope, no idea."
"He becomes King of Rohan at the end."
"Woah! Spoiler alert. Oh wait… I don't care."
"You suck. New game…"
And thus the laughter had continued late into the night, with neither the police nor any ghosts disturbing them as Zoe had promised. Ari was pulling her favourite pair of short dungarees on over a black top that barely reached her midriff and, instead of answering Zoe's question, asked;
"Reckon I should get some cowboy boots to go with this?"
"I don't think it's legal to wear cowboy boots if you don't come from the deep south of the USA… But sure let's crack open a few beers and go line dancing afterwards!"
"Your hilarity never ceases. I'll take that as a no then." She pulled on a pair of maroon converse and stood up. "I wish we had thought to bring a mirror with us."
"That would never fit in Shit-Tip."
"True. Ah well, who needs mirrors around when I have you around to criticise my every clothing crisis?" Zoe nodded sagely in agreement. This morning she had despaired of her wild, short red hair and tied it back into a surprisingly neat French plait, teamed with four small silver hoops in the double piercings in her ears and a swallow in the top piercing in her left ear. She looked down at the denim shorts she had on and decided not to bother changing; the rain didn't matter so much to one's wardrobe when you were going to be travelling in a car. Just to be on the safe side, she pulled a large, black jumper out of her backpack over her green tank top, fringed with lace.
Ari was brushing her hair but paused mid-stroke and looked at Zoe rather quizzically. "Are you wearing walking boots?"
"Yes…?"
"Since when did you own a pair of those? I thought I knew every item in your wardrobe since we were fifteen!"
"Since my Dad likes birdwatching and walking in the Lakes, and I like hanging out with my Dad. I thought they might come in useful…"
"Huh. Very practical of you." Zoe threw a cushion at her.
"Ok, sorry! Your bum looks great in those teeny, short shorts." Zoe laughed as Ari started dancing around their tiny tent, singing 'We like short-shorts'. They both set to packing away their things, cramming an assortment of items into their bags.
"How on earth did we get all this stuff to fit in their before?"
"Well Ari, if you weren't keeping what looks to be an entire toilet roll in your bag, you might have more room."
"It's in case of emergencies!" Ari sat back on her heels and placing her hands flat on top of the coat at the top of her bag, squished the contents down and quickly zipped it up, only mildly catching her hand with the zip. She then eyed the ends of her hair dismally. "I super need a hair cut… Shall I splurge at our next stop?"
"No, you just need to stop dyeing your hair. That's what causes the split ends to begin with: your hair is too dry from the dye."
"Hmph. That's your opinion, I suppose. I was actually thinking about adding another colour. What do you think?" Sighing in exasperation, Zoe eyed Ari's hair. It was a beautiful wave of colour, from her natural dirty blonde to a streaky kaleidoscope of dark pinks, lilacs and electric blue. Being a natural ginger herself, she had been teased throughout primary and high school, but she absolutely loved her own hair colour and didn't understand Ari's need to change her multitude of colours every few months.
"I was thinking maybe green next. Like a turquoise green though." Ari mused, picking up her bag and exiting the tent.
"You know, I think McFly would be super into you right now." That comment obviously led to a rendition of 'Five Colours in her Hair', while they began the laborious task of taking their tent apart.
"Why haven't we gotten any better at this yet?"
"Probably because the instructions went missing…"
"You mean you lost them!"
"… And we've been doing it wrong ever since then."
"I blame you! Alright, you take this back to the car and I'll roll up the sleeping bags and we can crack on. Try and find the map in the boot as well, if you can."
"Sure your delicate, little arms are up to the task?" Her comment was ignored so she just grinned at Ari's scowl and poked her tongue out. Bulky tent back piled high in her arms, she turned and walked towards the road, saying over her shoulder; "Back in a jiff."
Ari concentrated on the sleeping bags. Why were these things so fiddly and hard to put away? Zoe was always teasing her about it. After a minor battle with the second one, involving several cuss words, she leaned back victorious and shouldered her backpack. Looking up as she rose, Ari caught sight of a statuesque woman looking straight at her, not more than twenty feet in front of her. How had she and Zoe not seen her before? She flinched back; the intensity of this woman's stare was insane. Ari tried to smile politely and picked up one of the sleeping bags, intending on getting away from the mildly awkward situation but found that she couldn't break their eye contact. Instead she felt compelled to watch the woman who, without removing her gaze from Ari, walked towards one of the walls of the ruined castle, her navy robes billowing quite impressively as she came closer into view. Who was this woman? Ari spared a moment to internally comment on the weirdness of the robes – I mean, who really wears robes? Maybe she's some crazy druid chick? – and beat down the momentary swirl of hair jealousy that occurred from the woman's shiny, jet black waterfall of keratin, and with no conscious thought slowly stepped towards her.
Wait, what am I doing? Legs, stop! Her legs quivered and she came to a halt. The woman, blue eyes still locked with Ari's, quirked her lips into a slight smile, which only served to emphasise her loveliness, and reached out to a door that had definitely not been there before. Ari had never felt this curious before. What was happening here? Compelled and completely powerless to resist, she followed the woman, who was stepping through the door. She reached the door after the woman had finished and placed her free hand on the handle. A small part of her brain was positively screaming at her, begging her body to stop and at least wait for Zoe before she want through the door. But, Ari shrugged and almost skipped through the door and into the darkness beyond, not hearing Zoe's shout behind her:
"Ari! I found the map!"
Hi all! I've been a loyal fan of for the past nine years or so but I've have never, ever written anything. But I've been feeling quite inundated with plot bunnies, having recently been introduced to the lotr section. You guys =). I haven't particularly planned this down to a tee, so I'm just going to run with it.
This is rated M for language and maybe some sexy times later on. Just so you know, I'm English and there's going to be quite a lot of slang in this story – I'm not just crazy and making up words and weird spellings. This isn't meant to be a serious piece of work but if there is anything wrong with it, please let me know!
Anyway, as this is my first time, please be gentle if you choose to review ;)