Where You Can Not Follow: The Journey
Chapter Two: Everything Will Come Around
She could feel a cold zap of air wisp across her face and she shifted for the first time in how ever many hours she had been knocked cold. So Joan hadn't ended up dying. She felt relieved and at the same time wondering if when she opened her eyes it would only end up being worse.
Joan struggled to open her eyes and could feel her head spinning. It felt like it had the weight of the entire world shoved into her skull and she had to lift it all up by herself.
It had to have taken at least half an hour before Joan had sat up all the way. Her hands were pressed palm down firmly on the cold, wet ground. It was either dark, or Joan had gone blind, but the reassurance of the faint outline of trees slowly coming into focus made her happy that she had infact not gone blind.
Her head raced, and her head hurt.
"You're finally somewhat awake," said a deep, accented voice. It was the kind of voice that when you heard it you felt like everything was perfect and made sense. It was filled with wisdom and knowledge.
With still blurry vision, Joan looked around cautiously. There was a bright white light; an ethereal light to her left. It looked like a person sitting, and as her vision became clearer and clearer she could began to see that it was a real person.
He was an old man dressed in the purest of white. A long white beard and long hair fell and stopped at his waist. He was smoking a long wooden pipe, and when he blew out the smoke he blew out these intricate designs of ships and towers and castles. Joan rubbed her eyes to make sure she wasn't just seeing things, but when she could finally see straight (though she still had a pounding headache), she saw the man still sitting there, smoking a pipe.
"What? I don't understand what happened," Joan managed to choke out.
The old man in front of her went quiet. Putting his pipe out he stood, gathering his robes in one hand as he did and walked forwards to her with an overwhelming aura of power and knowledge.
"You wouldn't." he began, "But I can only tell you that you are needed here now."
Joan narrowed her eyes towards him, "I am needed here? Where is here?" she paused, remembering her poor dog and frantically started looking around for her. "Where's my dog?"
He let out a sigh again, knowing that this would be difficult, "Dead." He said grimly, watching the young woman's face fall.
"What is my mom going to say? I'll be in so much trouble."
"She will not say a thing," the old man interjected. Joan raised her head to look up at him, eyes narrowed again.
"What do you mean? Are you crazy? Are you going to murder me?" Joan started to stand, her head heavy and she faltered swaying from side to side when she stood up and used a tree's trunk to hold herself up.
"No, I am not." He said to her, "You may want to sit down."
"I don't want to sit down," Joan shouted at him.
"As you wish," the man mumbled, and moved to sit down back on the smooth stone again, settling in. "I suppose I shall try and explain this to you, but it will be hard. You will be in denial and will mourn for the loss of your past life."
"What're you talking about?" Joan shouted at him again.
"Quiet, child," the man said to her firmly, eyes locked onto the young woman's. Joan fell silent but her face still read of anger and mistrust. Who was this man who wanted to tell her about a past life? That she was needed here? Nothing at all made sense to her at the moment.
The old man began.
"Firstly, I am Gandalf the White, and you my child, are in Middle Earth," Joan tried to interject but he held his hand up and she held her tongue and Gandalf continued, "Now this is the complicated part. Where you lived does not exist. There was a prophecy, about a young woman coming from a time unknown to us, a time that to us, does not exist and will never exist. That young woman was meant to stop history from repeating itself."
Joan frowned, but was oddly intrigued, and oddly enough her worry and fright began to melt away like every thing he was speaking about she understood and she was meant to be here. In an odd way it just felt right.
Gandalf continued;
"You must never speak of your world, because now to your world you never existed. It's very complicated to explain, and even I cannot explain how this happened or why it has been you who has been chosen. Nor can I explain how you got here, but I must insist that you do not speak about anything from your world."
Still frowning she asked, "I never existed then?"
"Never." He replied, "But what you were meant for here, ah, it was written in stone that you were meant to save us. Stone cannot be erased." Gandalf paused. His head tilted to one side watching her expression. "You look as if you feel like you know every word that I speak is the truth."
"Oddly enough, yeah."
Gandalf flashed a crooked smile and grabbing the twisted piece of white wood with a white crystal fitted into the top of it he stepped forwards to her and placed a withered hand on her shoulder. "Come now, and I will take you someplace safe."
"Wait, what about those men on horseback who shot my dog in the face?" she asked him.
Gandalf's face fell and even looked like it became dark and the light faded away from him, "Before there were creatures called ring wraiths: men who had fallen to the One Ring's darkness. The only thing they craved was the power of the Ring, and would kill anything in their way to get to that one thing, but now." He inhaled deeply, "These things are darker. They were bred in evil. Darkyns: creatures who live on the taste of human blood. Evil, vile creatures they are. Bred by the Darkness himself to find and kill the girl who holds the power to destroy the New Ring. Thankfully, they are just as stupid as orcs and can die just as easy as a man, but it's their evil and lust for blood and the reason to keep the New Ring alive is what keeps them going."
Gandalf looked down to Joan, his gaze intense. "You need to stay alive, or we will all suffer a fate again like one that has happened with the One Ring." He dropped his hand and turned on his heel with his walking stick in one hand. Joan faltered for a second.
"Did you stop the..One Ring? You know, from being used badly?"
"We did," Gandalf replied without looking back, "But not without a fight and many deaths, but you," he turned around once more, "You were meant to stop this New Ring. It is more powerful and evil than one could bare and if it fell into the wrong hands than Middle Earth would perish. You need to find the Ring, and as a young man who had destroyed the One Ring before, you must destroy the New Ring now."
"I don't want to carry the weight of anything on my shoulders," Joan protested. "It's too big."
" Yet you feel like you cannot deny this quest, can you? As sad as it is to say, you will forget everything you have ever known in your world," Gandalf said, "You will know nothing of that world as you become more involved in this world; in your world."
He turned around again, beckoning for her to follow. Joan started to walk side by side with Gandalf. Her mind was flooded with questions and worries and scares, and almost as if Gandalf could read a question that she had been thinking of, he barely spoke in a whisper as he said; "History has a way of repeating it's self."
