Disclaimer: LOTR does not belong to me. Hunter's name was inspired by the "Fugitive," "Hunter," "The House of Telcontar" trilogy by Evendim. Thor is the name of a distant cousin of mine.

A/N: The h in Thor is silent.

Two teenagers and the Dreamworld

Hunter Jameson tried not to wince as his thin body smashed into the locker and his books were knocked from his hands. He silently cursed in Russian and prayed that the seniors--both of them on the school football team--would just leave him in peace.

At fifteen years old, Hunter was small for his age, barely 5 foot 7, which made him a perfect target for malicious seniors with too much spare time. Being a genius didn't help.

Even as early as kindergarten he had noticed that he was different. He would sit in the corner and read books while the other boys and girls were learning the alphabet. His teacher had not seemed to care what he did, as long as he didn't cause trouble and proved that he could do what the other kindergarteners were learning. That year he had been lucky. After that, he had been plagued by teachers who believed that he should be subject to their rules about exactly when and what he could learn. Every year, he would walk into the classroom knowing more than half of what would be taught that year, but the teachers would neither give him more advanced work nor let him skip grades. Sitting around in class gave him plenty of time to read, but having to do worksheet upon worksheet of simple things he already understood irked him. If not for his parents' unwavering support of education, Hunter would have quit going to school long ago.

Quickly picking up his book, he made a quick dash for the library, which was only one hundred feet away. Thor had asked him to come so she could read his essay.

It was a strange name, to be sure, even more bizarre than his own name. Thor's real name was Annika Thora Marshall, but she detested her first name and preferred to be called the name of the Norse god of thunder.

They were friends, of a sort. Thor was too wild to be tethered by close relationships, and Hunter was too introverted. But they were both social outcasts, so this made them comrades of a sort.

He entered the library to see Thor sitting at a computer looking up various medieval weapons.

"Hey," he said. She spun around in the swiveling chair. Hunter could never understand why the school had the money to buy swiveling chairs for the library yet was unable to fund a second year calculus class. He passed her his essay. He'd actually written it two years ago, when he had to do a project for language arts. For an entire month in eighth grade, he'd thrown himself into writing a 30-page paper comparing The Lord of the Rings to the epic poem Beowulf, only to be told by his teacher that he needed to pick something less specific. Well, he'd been given an assignment a month ago, and then come down with the flu, so he'd just retrieved this paper off of his computer to save himself the trouble of writing another paper. It wasn't like he really cared about high school.

Thor read the paper quickly and handed it back to him. "Interesting. When did you read Beowulf?"

"A couple years ago. This paper is a recycled one."

"Hmf," was Thor's only reaction. They both used this tactic; it was a way to minimize the homework that they had to do, not to mention silently protest the educational establishment. "Aren't we supposed to be watching the movie in class today?"

"What?" Hunter asked. They had the same language arts class, so they alternated the days that they spent sleeping during class so that one person would always know what homework was assigned. Sleeping during school was a great way to get the rest that they needed, because they didn't have to endure sitting through boring classes and they didn't have to spend their most of their free time at home in bed. "Oh, yeah. I think we're watching the first one." Hunter had no idea why they were watching a movie in school--they weren't studying the book--but he had long since quit questioning the lesson plans. Last Friday they had watched "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" in his math class, even though more than half of the class had flunked the last test. He'd never actually seen any of "The Lord of the Rings" movies, which was odd, considering that he had loved the book when he was younger. Well, there was a first time for everything.

The warning bell for first period rang and the two left the library for the classroom. "Any progress on that program?" Thor asked Hunter. He nodded. He'd been working on a computer program for the last few weeks during school--it wasn't hard. Most kids used laptops to take notes during class, and since he was the top student in almost all of his classes, his teachers really didn't care what he did. Unfortunately, he'd put the wrong battery in last Monday, and so his laptop had run out of battery power long before he'd expected it too, so he hadn't saved his work and had lost a few hundred lines of code, including some math that he'd spent hours on. He'd managed to rewrite that part, but he was still smarting from that incident.

They started arguing about the President's recent changes in foreign policy. The speech had made the headlines that morning, and Thor and Hunter intended to use the time before class to enjoy some intelligent conversation. Standing over by the doorway, both heard the jeers of, "Ooh, Hunter's got a girlfriend," but simply ignored them. Both had dismissed the idea of them dating each other soon after they met. They were simply to different to be compatible in a romantic relationship.

The bell, unfortunately, decided to ring while the two were in the middle of a very heated debate and both reluctantly stopped talking and went to their seats. The usual classroom business was quickly taken care of, though Hunter was asleep by the time that the teacher finished calling role.

"

Thor could barely keep from yawning while she watched the teacher and a few students try to get the television work. She'd been up until four that morning working on an engineering project and she had only managed a few hours of sleep. Exhausted, she folded her jacket to use as a pillow and rested her head on it--she didn't care about the movie and since they weren't doing anything in class that day, she didn't need to stay awake to write down the assignments. Just as the students finally managed to get the TV working, she felt the fog of sleep wrap her into its grasp.

"

Hunter woke up and immediately felt like he was going to be violently ill. This feeling was indeed foresight, since only a few moments after waking, his partially digested breakfast spewed out of his mouth. Digusted he spat and wiped his mouth. He was quite surprised when he saw the vomit and saliva both disappear, enveloped by the white fog that was all around him. He looked around, suddenly afraid.

'It's just a dream, just a dream,' he thought, and pinched himself to wake up. Nothing happened except that his nerve endings sent a message to his brain telling Hunter that he had just pinched himself. Now he was very afraid.

Hearing a noise, he spun around and saw Thor looking around bewildered. "Thor!" he shouted, delighted. Well, if he was going to be stuck in this dream that he couldn't get out of, it was just as well that he had some company. He paused. Dream? Was this just a dream? He didn't want to think about what it might be if it wasn't a dream.

"What the hell just happened?" Thor exlaimed. "Why do you have to be in my dreams?" For some reason, she appeared extremely dismayed, which shocked Hunter.

"What, would you rather have Dalton in your dreams?" Hunter demanded. Tiffany Dalton was the head of the leading clique at their school, and she tried her hardest to make Thor's life miserable.

Thor grimaced. "Well, no..." She looked as if she had eaten something extremely unpleasant.

The reality of it hit Hunter all of a sudden. Like other boys, puberty had grabbed hold of him before his thirteenth birthday, but he'd never dated and romance wasn't high on his list of priorities, so...'Ew,' he thought. A year ago, a few months after they had met, they had vowed that they would never date each other, because both, at that very awkward stage of adolescence, decided that would be too weird. Hunter quickly decided to change the subject.

"Yeah, it's kind of weird. Usually people in my dreams aren't speaking English."

Thor rolled her eyes. "Lucky," she said, envious of Hunter's ability to quickly pick up foreign languages.

"Hey! It's not like I can understand them all the time!" Hunter exclaimed. It was true. Sometimes the people in his dreams were speaking Klingon, which was extremely strange. He loved Star Trek, but there weren't Klingons in every episode, and he couldn't speak the language. Thor simply rolled her eyes, not bothering to answer.

"You know," Thor said, "this is a really weird dream."

"I'm not even sure it's a dream," Hunter told her, casually dropping the bomb.

"Hunter, get a life for once," she shot back. "What else would it be?" Hunter got a distinct feeling that Thor's reaction was caused by fear and denial, rather than irritation.

He shrugged. "I don't know. I puked when I woke up and then it disappeared."

"What disappeared, pray tell?" Thor demanded. Hunter sighed. He had known Thor long enough to know that when she said "pray tell," she was extremely angry and the best option was usually to leave the scene.

"The vomit," he said politely. He was perfectly willing to use the verb "puke," just not the noun. Hunter was a little odd when it came to the English language.

"So? It's just a dream," she told him dismissively.

Hunter gave up at trying to persuade his friend. Bored and anxious, he started walking around. It was felt rather weird to be walking on something that looked like a cloud, yet felt solid. Absentmindedly, he wondered what was happening in his language arts class. Had they gotten to Weathertop yet?

All of a sudden, Hunter noticed that one patch of the cloud wasn't the usual blank white. Rather, it had a bit of a greenish tinge. He wondered if it was just a figment of his imagination. He wanted it to be...but he also wanted it to be real. "Thor, look." He needed to make sure he wasn't just seeing things.

She came over to stare at it with him. "What is that?" she asked, puzzled.

"I haven't a clue." He leaned over to look at it more closely and unconsciously took another step. His foot hit soft ground, beginning to sink...

And he fell.

He didn't seem to fall for a long time, because, almost immediately, he felt the ground slam into him. But when he hit the ground, he fell into darkness. He could voices around him, speaking a language he couldn't understand, and for one moment he thought he could see a light, but that faded as the voices faded, and then there was nothing.

So, what do you think? All reviews are welcome, but constructive criticism in much appreciated.

Do you think Hunter and Thor should have a romantic relationship? There's clearly some attraction between them, but it's a matter of whether that can overcome the obstacles to a relationship.

Next chapter: Hunter wakes up and Thor follows him through the hole/portal in the Dreamworld.

So, again, note the review button. It's calling to you. Like the Ring, except that reviews are not evil. The more reviews that I get, the faster I'll update.