"I know it's here somewhere…" she thought as she stopped for a moment in search of the trail, her loose hair swishing lightly on her shoulders as she looked defiantly from side to side. "Couldn't have gone that far off…" her thoughts continued as she bit her lower lip, certain that she was not lost in the forest. Again.
She sighed and looked up to the branches above her head that now sported the dimming lights of day, bringing a vague sense of worry as she caught glimpses of clouded sky. Continuing on the general direction of where she was sure she had come from, she pulled her thin jacked closer to her, her breath beginning to become visible as the warming spring sun retreated to the horizon. Minutes passed and she was still at a loss of where the trail was, and soon she began to feel the cool drizzle of rail drip down from the upper branches of the great oaks. "Stupid Meshlen…" She thought bitterly of her brother who had run off with her cell phone when they were on the trail heading for home. After covering a decent mile, he threw it at the first sign that she was gaining on him and he made strait for the trail laughing, leaving her to scout the land to find her phone alone.
Annoyed and frustrated with his childish ways, she pulled out her cell and flipped it open, the numbers 5:57 popping up on her now cracked screen saver. She gritted her teeth and closed it with a slap, shoving it back into her coat pocket and letting out a shiver when the rains picked up, now a continuous tap on her head as the clouds began to darken to a threatening gray. She would never make it home for dinner at this rate.
Ten minutes later she gave up and found the nearest tree with branches low enough for her to reach and she climbed up to the point of where the branches became dangerously thin and she glanced around the terrain. There was little more to behold than a blob of green trees that went in all directions as far as she could see and the trail no where to be seen. Disappointed and now worried that she was truly lost (and cold now that the rain had really pick up and was taking joy in drenching her clothes and skin), she climbed down the tree, careful not to slip on the moss covered branches.
She shivered a bit more violently as her skin paled with the cold, and she became even more perplexed and hopeless feeling when the trees around her started to become unfamiliar. All around her she saw nothing but silvery white barks and pale green leaves that she could barely make out in the now quickly fading light. Her hair clung to her face from the wetness, and she pushed it to the side as she came to a river. She never recalled ever venturing far enough to hit a river, and she went over to inspect the torrent as it rushed angrily forwards with the copious amounts of water recently dumped into it. She stood on the rocky edge and saw that it was shallow as far as she could tell, but she kept her distance from the edge anyways so as not to slip in.
Instead she chose a relatively dry patch under a tree and huddled under it, her knees tucked closely to her body and her arms wrapped around them with the annoying drips from the leaves above thumping her on the head periodically. She most certainly was not going to make it for dinner. She pulled out her cell phone again and looked at the illuminated screen, the numbers showing that she had been traveling for another hour since she last checked the time. "Why did he have to be so childish on the day it was going to storm? On the one day that it stormed all summer thus far!" she thought as she looked from side to side once more, giving a final pathetic attempt to get at least an idea of where she was.
But rather than a land mark she saw a human figure on the other side of the river. She stood up and squinted to try and cut through some of the darkness and rain, but all she could make out was a figure lying on the ground with its legs partially submerged in the river. Confused and scared of what she might find, she began to cautiously trudge through the river, her jeans quickly getting soaked up to her knees. The river pushed rebelliously against her as she reached the middle, and she teetered and fell, letting out a slight "Oomph!" as she sputtered and stood up again. She looked down at her clothes that had been effectively drenched in the icy flow of the water, and then cold, wet, and miserable she finished crossing the rest of the river.
The figure continued to be still, and even when she was just a few meters away from it, it didn't jump up and pull out a chainsaw and start screaming psychotically or anything as she had thought. This gave her some reassurance as she approached, her feet touching firmer ground as she stumbled over to it. She let out a small gasp as she saw the person more in full: a charmingly handsome young man with long blond hair that was strewn about his shoulders and draped upon the ground beneath him. He was garbed in some sort of green tunic with a leather strap crossing his right shoulder down to his side…and on his left shoulder he bore a deep cut that was visibly red even in the faint grey hue that the light of the almost non existent sun gave through the clouds.
Her complete confusion over his choice of dress was succumbed only by her sudden fear of what, or who, had done this to the man. She looked around frantically for a moment, content only when she was sure that she would not get attacked by the trees which were the only things in sight. Her brow furrowed for a moment as she calculated the consequences, and she resisted the urge to off running in the opposite direction as she leaned over the young man and listened for breathing. She heard a slight gasping sound that was faint and shallow, but breathing all the same, and she stood up and tried to find a way to pull him out of the river.
She managed to get a grip under his arms and she dragged him rather ungracefully to the nearest tree, gingerly setting him down again with his head resting on a tree root that had thrust itself above ground. The man's chest moved slowly up and down as if it was a struggle to do so, and she inspected his wound, feeling faint at the sight of the blood but she pushed her dizziness away as she saw that the gash was still bleeding. She looked around for something to tie around it to stop the flow, but found nothing more than ferns and trees that she was sure would do little good.
Suddenly an idea came to her, and she stripped out of her jacket, her three-quarter sleeved shirt equally drenched and cold as with it and her skin numb anyway from the constant crash of water drops against her back. She then proceeded to try and rip off a sleeve like she had seen in the movies to tie around his shoulder, but accomplished little more than stretching the seams out a little. Frustrated and feeling like there was little time to spare, she settled for wrapping the whole thing around his shoulder, securing it as tight as she could like she had learned in health class a few years ago.
Once she had finished that job she took a step away and turned, cupping her hands around her mouth and yelled. "Hello!! Someone! Mashlen! There's someone hurt! Helloooow!" she called as loudly as she could, trying to get anyone's attention in the woods to help. She coughed from yelling so hard, and she listened for a moment to hear any return, but all there was to hear was the distant rumble of thunder and the rushing of the wide river before her. To say the least, she became panicked.
She turned to check on the young man and saw that the jacket had slipped slightly from the cut. Giving one final fearful "Help!" to the empty forest she rushed over to him and untied the coat to try again. Kneeling down next to him, she readjusted the placement and pulled the sleeves even tighter around his arm, the once light blue fabric stained purpley red. It was when she was starting to double up the knot that the inhumanly beautiful man stirred, turning his head slightly and letting out a soft moan barely audible over the loud tapping of the huge raindrops that pelted the leaves above.
"Aragorn…" he whispered with one of his shallow breaths, his eyes still shut but his expression turning to that of pain. His head turned to the side as he heaved a deeper breath to try and speak, a sense of desperation in his heavily accented voice "Aragorn…did we…" he gasped, unable to finish as he cringed slightly as he moved his shoulder, letting out a slight "agh" as he did so.
Our friend also gasped and pulled away when he spoke, her numb fingers jumping back from her work. "D-don't worry," she shivered, at a lost of what to say otherwise and also wishing to comfort the young man, who turned his head at the unfamiliar voice. He opened his eyes and then squinted, his vision blurred and the darkness not helping.
"Who are you?" he questioned when he saw the person before him, soaked and her strangely cut hair dripping and clumped into strands of wetness. She was, as far as he could see through his pounding head that throbbed uncontrollably, young and with a stunning face with wide eyes that stared back with startled fear. He pushed himself up into a more or less of a sitting position with his good arm, his head only slightly more elevated than before.
"Um, uh…well, you can call me Lin or Linandra," she stammered, unsure of what to make of the whole situation of talking in pouring rain kneeling next to a guy who just woke up from who-knows-what-happened. "S-sso…who are you? And if you don't mind…w-what happened?" she asked, finding a seat on another root a safe distance from the stranger but also a bit in the rain.
"Was returning…unarmed" he gasped, his eyes fluttering shut again until he willed them to open, his horribly bruised ribs making it hard to breath. "…with Aragorn…was ambushed….why are you in Lothlorien?" he managed, but he was soon out again, his body going limp but still breathing. Lin took this as an opportunity to get in closer to the cover of the tree, decently certain that this stranger would (or could) not hurt her. She felt if anything more confused than ever as she slumped against the trunk of the tree, balling up her legs and arms once more as she contemplated what the young man had said. "He's mad…" was the only explanation she could think of as she slowly drifted off to an uneasy sleep of cold, wet, and miserable dreams.
o
Lin woke to a slight crackling sound and the smell of smoke. Her almost-conscious-but-not-quite mind took a while to comprehend that it was, in fact, fire that was warming her numbed fingers. She jolted awake as she quite literally sprang to her feet, stumbling slightly as her tired legs resented the sudden movement. "What the—?" she whispered to herself as she looked into the cheerful little fire that was burning in a small hole beside her. She looked around, bewildered and not quite ready to be thinking right after being awakened, she saw the young man arriving with an armful of kindling.
His left arm was now wrapped in sleekly ripped shreds of her jacket that was far more elegant than her crude method of helping him. He walked up and placed the kindling in a pile next to the flame, turning to her with a smile upon his face. "I see you are awake. I do not blame you though: the hour must have been late when you found me. And I thank you graciously for your acts, but I do not believe that our names have been exchanged in full. I am Legolas of the woodland realm, and you, as I recall, are Linandra."
Lin stood shocked with her eyes widening even as Legolas spoke, unbelieving to what she saw or heard, and lack of sleep not helping in her rationality. "But—but you were unconscious. And you were there," she motioned to the spot that she had left him the night before with frantic hand gestures. "And your arm! It was all tattered and bloody and now you're walking. You're walking!" She left little time to think for herself as she spouted the first things that slammed into her mind. It took only a moment for her attention to be drawn away to something else, however. "Wait, what's wrong with your ears?" she asked, noticing for the first time that they ended in points.
Legolas looked equally shocked, firstly at her randomness and secondly at her comment on his ears. "Is there something wrong with them?" he said as his right hand jumped up to feel one of them.
"Yeah, their pointed!" she said as if it was obvious, which it quite frankly was. Her head hurt from lack of sleep and she felt tired and yet she was somehow awake, the last thing she wanted to do was deal with a guy who had pointed ears and a crazy recovery rate.
"Of course. I am an elf, what do you expect?"
Author's note: Okay, I don't own Legolas or Lothlorien but Lin is mine. This story, as you can guess from the title, is deliberately cliche and randome, so flames are worthless times of energy that can be better spent learning Molecular Physics. This is my attempt at a Romance/Adventure/Humor fic, so please tell me what you think (and no, this is not a one shot). Hope you liked this and i will try to update soon.
P.S.:Meshlen is also mine