The heat of forever shines down on you, burns you bitter and dry, until you no longer glitter and shine.
Chapter One
Lost
The smell of jasmine and freshly cut grass was heady in the air. Lazy afternoon indie danced at my ears.
I moved out of the deck chair and grabbed the Reef coconut san tan oil. I re-oiled myself and sat the bottle back on the side table. I missed and it went skidding across the granite tiles, spilling out in a puddle. "Shit!" I growled and picked it up, setting it back gingerly.
I looked at the time on my iphone. "Gosh, is that really the time?" I groaned.
Only four hours until the parentals came home and saw what a good job I did of house sitting while they were away for the week. I had planned to spend the day cleaning up after the minor party I had there last night, but the sun had been shining in a way that was too tempting to ignore.
So I had put on my favourite Kulani bikini in blush pink, which perfectly matched my Cake Pop – pretend-I'm-not-a-bartender – mani and pedi, and took to sunbaking beside my parents pool.
I calculated the level of mess to the ratio of available time and decided to soak in the sun's rays for another hour before getting down to the grind. "Siri can I have a sixty minute timer?"
"Sixty minutes and counting," the male Siri droned.
"Perfect," I sighed before laying back down.
The hour went quicker than a lazy blink of the eyes. The pounding of Kanye's Black Skinhead blared through my phone in what felt like five minutes later. I groaned and sat up, grabbing the aloe vera bottle and rubbed it into my skin over the gleam of coconut oil – I would have a shower later, or better yet return to the pool after my chores were done.
I stood to walk back to the house, when my laziness came back to haunt me. Having forgot about the slick puddle of coconut oil that I had promised myself to clean up later, it was Murphy's law that I slip in it.
I fell with a heavy crack of of my head against the granite pavement that curved over the lip of the pool; I don't know what hurt worse – the pain or the sound of my skull hitting the unforgiving tiles. I felt myself roll into a plunge of cold water as darkness tunnelled toward me, too fast to escape.
What's worse than waking up in the wild Bear Grylls style, you ask?
It would definitely be waking up in the wild in nothing but your favourite Kaluni blush bikini, slightly burnt skin well oiled and recking strongly of coconut. If I didn't die from exposure or a Ted Bundy impersonator didn't eat me, I would like attract every wild animal from here to the back end of burke with my fragrant coconut flavour.
My surroundings were greener than anywhere I knew close by in the harsh Australian summer. My town was surrounded by shades of red, with barely-holding-in-there lawns, sucking up every inch of grey water available for them.
The flora and fauna was different than anything I had seen. I remembered my art teacher telling me once that when the English had settled in Australia for a while they would still paint English landscape when attempting to paint the Australian one. So used to seeing their native wilderness, it was hard to adapt.
The trees surrounding me had thick knobbly trunks that meandered every which way, their foliage thick and lush. Everything around me felt so alive and moist; I started to feel the chill in the air immediately.
"I'm going to die, fuck, fuckity fuck!" I pulled at my long dark hair.
A thought occurred to me, a horrible thought that made my stomach curdle – was I already dead? Was this heaven? It was my only explanation past hallucinating from the head trauma.
"Seriously, what the fuck would Bear Grylls do in a situation like this? Probably not turn up to a sojourn in the wild wearing a bikini, for starters… arrrrggghh!" I groaned, stamping a foot.
I wandered forward; all directions looked to have the same level of wilderness, with zero civilisation in sight so I couldn't really go wrong. A cruel thought in the back of my mind which I tried to shut out whispered, 'Oh but it could, forward could be to the den of a mass murderer, behind you could be civilisation…'
There was a big thick stick on the ground with sharp ends. I picked it up and pulled off the smaller branches. Feeling slightly less exposed, extreme emphasis on the word slightly, I moved forward with gritted teeth.
I kept a brisk pace to ward off the chill, but I was still cold. I swatted at bugs every now and again, but thank god there didn't seem to be flies or mosquitos currently – I don't think I would have coped at all; in fact, I would have cracked faster than Britney Spears circa 2007.
But it seemed things were going that way even without the bugs. The longer I trekked without a tiny glimmer of civilisation the closer I got to a meltdown, toddler style. Stumbling across a McDonalds with greasy middle aged workers who didn't speak a lick of English would be fantastic also – weren't they supposed to be everywhere in the world?
I felt like my standards for getting out of here were dropping by the hour – soon I would be praying for a serial killer to find me, if only I could have some sort of chance; I didn't want to die slowly from starvation, thirst and the exposure. It was a horrible feeling being cold without a way to get warm and I suspected that severe hunger and thirst weren't pleasant fates either.
Later on, as the sun got worryingly close to setting, after I had tripped over a rock and scraped my hands and knees, when I truly didn't care who found me as long as it wasn't a wild animal with massive gnashers, I screamed for help at the top of my lungs, over and over.
Nothing happened, no one came; the sun got closer to disappearing and with it any last remnant of warmth.
I started to cry, slightly amazed I hadn't before. They weren't pretty tears either, they were loud and snotty.
And just then I heard it, the sound of something faint, almost like a dull thunder. I yelled for help again. Suddenly as the sound got closer and discernable as hooves, I became self conscious of what I would currently look like to a stranger. I wiped the snot from my face with my hands but I couldn't do much about being naked and coconut oiled, like I was some model for a nature bikini shoot.
Again, it could seemingly get worse, much worse.
Through the trees broke four horsemen in fine clothing like nothing I had seen in this century. It was closer to a movie set in the dark age. They had breeches, leather boots, tunics and leather arm bands- the whole kit and caboodle.
Their clothing didn't hold my attention for long, next was the weapons they were all packing – quivers of arrows, huge sturdy bows, swords and daggers, and that was only what I could make out from afar. I imagined there may have been some concealed weapons also. They seemed to mean business.
The thought of their weapons escaped my mind quickly also, as it was their form which shamefully took up all my brain power. They were beautiful, like something off a runway, only more ethereal.
The one at the front had long pale blonde hair braided at the sides of his temples. His sharp grey eyes took me in with what looked to be distaste. Suddenly they were surrounding me, weapons drawn. I didn't raise my hands, I felt too exposed to do that; instead I wrapped my arms around me.
"Who are you?" the one who had lead them demanded, his voice unforgiving ice, sharp and cold.
"Ya naa re? Re ma' ve ittee?" one spoke in a musical language. It warmed me, though the words were said with disgust, making me think they were an insult.
"Tanya ben dukkoti," another spoke with a laugh. The one I had named as the leader in my mind, as I sensed his dominance over the others, didn't react to the words spoken by his men.
"Please, I don't know where I am," I murmured, cowing under their heavy gaze, mortified and fearful.
"Are you a prostitute after money, or is this a poorly designed trap? I can see no other reason why you would be in a forest dressed as such," the leader spoke harshly, notching his arrow more firmly.
"No, these are swimming clothes. I'm not from around here, where I'm from is like a desert. I don't know how I ended up here, please you have to help me!" my voice quavered, my words sounding insane to my own ears, let alone a group of foreign men- and were they pointed ears I saw?!
Their features remained stony, their weapons raised. I fell to my knees, tears falling from my eyes – they weren't going to believe me.
"F-Fine, but please at least direct me to the nearest town, or I will die out here!" I sobbed.
"There is no human settlement for days, we head to an Elvish stronghold named Rivendell, where someone of your standing would not be welcome," another spoke, his hair a darker blonde, his eyes a dark brown.
Elvish? I wasn't one to give up easily, but I my emotions were frayed and I knew they would not help me. There was nothing I could say.
"Re navanya maa wethrinaer, mani manka nat' lle nae ú-sui hain thi?" another spoke, looking me up and down.
The leader silenced the others with finger tilted back from the still position he held his bow, cocked with an arrow. There was silence for what seemed an age, and I think I could almost hear the leader's teeth grind.
"You will accompany us, but you will wear a cloak to cover your indecency; if you are truly what I suspect you to be the truth will be revealed and you will not be dealt with kindly," the leader finally spoke, his voice more threatening than his words.
"Lord Althidon, for your feelings of pity, you will face the burden of relinquishing your cloak and sharing your steed," he said dismissively, a cool malice behind his stony features.
Despite what the leader described as pity, Althidon looked like he'd rather give away his favourite knife than have me sharing his huge and imposing horse.
He dragged me up in front of him after I had tightly tied his large cloak around myself. He pushed me forward so that I was touching him as little as possible, so that I had to hold on to his horse's neck to keep from falling off, which from its snorting, it didn't appear to like.
With another foreign comand from their illustrious leader, the horses bolted forward and I gripped the horses neck for dear life with a whimper.
Translations:
"Ya naa re? Re ma' ve ittee?" - "Who is she? She looks like a whore."
"Tanya ben dukkoti." - "That or an orc lover."
"Re navanya wethrinaer, mani manka nat' lle nae ú-sui hain thi?" - "She is too fair to look deceitful, what if things are not as they appear?"
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