Author's note: Sweet Lurline what have i done? it's a LOTR fic! ((squeals in horror)) LOTR, Middle-Earth and all things therein belong to the immortal genius of J.R.R. Tolkien. I only claim the two characters you meet here, and their names. Which I haven't figured out yet. Flames are welcome- I deserve them.I will notpost more until there are reviews.Oh, and I have no idea where I'm going with this. Well, read and form opinions!


A Mortal is walking through dense forest looking for game and spots an Elf-princess who is singing and dancing, then cannot take his eyes off her. That's the way it always works. Then everyone tells him he may not court her. Mules may not pursue mustangs. Everyone tells her she does not love him. She can't -- what grief, what despair would befall her when he dies and for all eternity until the very earth swallows her up in order to silence her cries. But they both fight hard enough, and in the end are always wed. That's the way it always works.

This encounter was very different. Perhaps that's why it dumbfounded them so. She had lost her family and he had lost interest in sleeping. As he heard her heavy steps approach, he turned to greet her, grateful for some company and a good travel story. But something happened that no one could have foreseen. As soon as her eyes met him, she fell to the forest floorin a series of swift folding joints, and sat there and could not look at him. The sight of him overtook her with fury, and she feared for her life. He - as embarrassed as Elves can be for startling her - for a moment also could not meet her tawny skin and jet black hair as she sat, trembling on the floor a few paces from him. Then he turned and walked toward her, thinking perhaps she had fainted from exhaustion, and held out his hand to help her up.

"Are you well?" He asked.

She did not answer, only pulled her knees up and tried to shield her head behind them. Her dress was brown and faded in parts. It had the reminiscence of lace around the bodice, sleeves that had been torn from their seams. There was a gap in the dress under her arm where the seam that had held on the sleeve and connected it to the rest of the dress had continued to unravel a little down the side, and through it he could see that there had been whalebone gutted out of it. The dress hung frighteningly loose on her, although she was not emaciated, and he could not decide if it was originally made for her or someone else.

"Forgive me." He said. "I did not mean to startle you. Are you weary? Come into my city, my people will provide foodandbeds."

She looked at him, then, as he knelt down beside her like a father speaking to a shy four-year-old. The swiftness of the turn of her head and the coldness of her utterly black eyes unnerved him a great deal. Her face was stony, her voice all to real for an Elf who spends his days in dream lands. "I am not weary."

His brow furrowed just slightly, and rebel tears began falling down her face. It was then that he recognized that she was not human. She was not Elf-kind, and she was Mortal, but she was not a Woman. At least, not of any race he had seen or heard of in Middle Earth. The dark, tawny color of her skin coupled with her blue-black hair and cold black eyes made her very unusual. Not to mention the tattoo that must have wound up her back andcircled her throat up to her ear like a vine of scythes, alsomade it impossible for him to determine her culture.

His crystal blue eyes worried her. What could he see? What did he know? The bright golden hair on his head seemed to draw the sunlight down from the sky, and his fair skin soaked it and gave it back with a luster akin to starlight. She, on the other hand, cast shadows all around her. Her hair devoured all light but moonlight and would never shine. His eyes which so clearly boasted truth and goodness tried to penetrate her ambiguous and shielding ones, looking for a soul that was already decaying into dust within her. She dropped her gaze, afraid that he would be able to see the truth of her past. She knew he did not recognize her, and it was just as well.