Author's Note:

Tender Is The Night was written as a challenge. What if a normal girl was sucked into Middle-earth? What would happen to her for she wouldn't be speaking the language and obviously wouldn't be understood. What if this would happen to one of us? How would we behave?

This story was initially titled What Dreams May Come. After some thought, I decided that it was not exactly the title I was looking for and so renamed it Tender Is The Night. Incidentally, I am aware of the fact that two of my stories share the same titles with F.Scott Fitzgerald's well-known works. It was not intentional but I find it a bit amusing.

Tender Is The Night

Chapter I

The living room did not look cozy. None of the lights were on and the meager heat supplied from various radiators had altogether abandoned the spacious room. The autumn night outside the huge first floor windows appeared even colder and unwelcoming. A streetlight shyly filtered through the curtain but did little to illuminate the vast space. The television was turned on but the image was frozen. It bathed the room in a weak glow and this coupled with the streetlight, gave the entire room a decidedly eerie appearance.

Claudia's head felt as though it would split open. Taking a day off from work obviously had not done much for her migraines, neither had her new painkillers. She whimpered softly, wanting to sink back into the warm couch and back into forgetfulness. However, it was not meant to be. The phone rang, its shrillness disrupting the quiet of the room and making Claudia's migraine take another vicious stab at her long suffering skull.

Feeling her knees begin to shake and having a sense that she would collapse if she didn't sit down soon; Claudia crawled over to the phone, cursing its inventor Alexander Graham Bell under her breath. Reaching the phone seemed an impossible odyssey and its non-stop ringing resounded in Claudia's head painfully. She reached for the receiver and growled a very unamused "hello". There was no response. The caller had either given up or perhaps it had been kids prank calling.

Claudia almost cried. She hated feeling so weak and hated what the pain reduced her to. This occasion seemed to be the last straw for her already frustrated self.

'If the world had decided to make it a "Let's bug Claudia" day, then the honoree would retire to her bed and disappoint everyone!' Claudia smiled at her melodramatic thoughts.

She felt she was acting like one of Jane Austen's least likable heroines: the ones who constantly cried, whined and were rather similar to Lydia Bennett. Nevertheless, the distraction did not work. The migraine was here to stay and intended to prove it. Another quick stab of pain and Claudia decided that she would infinitely prefer giving birth or having insane cramps instead of having to deal with the pounding timpani in her head.

Claudia wished she were at her own apartment, where she knew exactly where everything was. "House-sitting" for her parents, albeit a house or actually an apartment, where she had grown up, was not turning out to be a picnic. Everything was different and Claudia had forgotten how big the whole place was. Her parents' house was welcoming during daytime but became dangerously unfamiliar at night. Claudia never felt very comfortable in it and she moved out weeks after her 20th birthday into a small apartment. Standing around wasn't going to bring her any relief and so the hunt for the painkillers was on.

Slowly, very slowly she made her way towards the stairs, inching her way across the room. The darkness was welcoming and calm, soft against Claudia's flushed skin. Climbing the stairs slowly, one at a time like an old woman instead of a youthful twenty three year old, Claudia finally made it up to the second floor. Now all she had to do was find the blessed bottle of painkillers and crawl over to something soft.

She took a few searching steps in the dark and suddenly tripped over something. Claudia was sure she had come within inches of almost breaking her neck, making her migraine seem quite insignificant in comparison. Instinctively reaching down to see what had almost caused her untimely demise, she grabbed something.

'A book! Who the devil left books lying around where anyone could stumble to death over them' she mused with annoyance.

The answer found her almost at the same time as she thought of the question. Her brother, Erik, who else? Clutching the book, though for the life of her, Claudia could not explain why, she made her way to her mother's bedroom, hoping to find the pills on her bedroom table.

She lucked out for once. There they were, a comforting small white bottle sitting happily next to a powder puff and an almost-empty bottle of Chanel No. 5. Mme Aurel often imagined her illnesses to be a lot more serious than they actually were. Her migraines, however, were not of the imaginary sort. They had plagued the mother since childhood and were now passed on to the daughter. Grabbing the bottle as a life-saver, Claudia shook two pills out into her hand and greedily gulped them down. She was trembling with the effort of coming upstairs and the imposing size of her mother's bed beckoned to her aching and exhausted body.

Nevertheless, the darkness that seemed so comforting downstairs, took on a somewhat oppressing air up here. Claudia groped around for a light switch on the bedside lamp. When she was successful, a soft light flooded the room. Claudia looked down, still wondering why she was holding her little brother's book. Bringing it closer to her eyes, she read the title. "Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King". Claudia would have rolled her eyes but the migraine was still ruling the roost and so that possibility was out of the question.

The book fell to the floor, Claudia's hand went limp. Her eyes fluttered open once more and then she finally gave over to the oblivion she'd been searching for ever since her head started pounding early that morning. She slept...