The Art of Survival and Cooperation

Leigh's chief concerns at the moment were very simple: try and get warm, try to find something growing within reach that she could eat, and keep herself and her friends alive. Oh, yes, and it would be great to escape before these 'guys' could take them to someplace big nasty and evil, namely, Barad-dur. It had been a pleasant surprise to realize that their only bonds were on their wrists and ankles and that all of them were made of rope. If they had been chained, that could have made things even more difficult. In such a situation as she found herself in, she found that, for the first time in her life, she was grateful for those sharp little rocks that seem magnetically drawn to the sleeping bags of innocent campers.

A hiss escaped her lips as the ropes rubbed roughly against the nasty wounds they had created on her wrists. Of course, rubbing them like she was doing probably didn't exactly help the situation. Consenting to the price of severe rope burn in exchange for freedom, she continued rubbing the rock against her bonds.

Apparently it was the popular belief that the troop knew nothing in the way of survival skills. If any stock had been taken in their being able to take care of themselves in this strange world they would have been far more securely tied, and there would undoubtedly be more than two orcs guarding them, no matter how big they were. Even though they had remembered to take her knife, Leigh saw no reason that they couldn't escape if they worked together. Maylin began to aid her in any way she could, passing the word along to the others to be ready to move, and gathering ideas on how to take out the orcs that were their jailers at the moment.

"How much longer?" Maylin asked.

"I should be done by evening," she whispered in reply. "Maylin... we'll have to kill those orcs."

"KILL?" she gasped. "How are we going to take out two big orcs? You don't even have your knife anymore."

"That's why I asked you to gather ideas for me, I've been kinda busy trying to not slit my own wrists or do more damage than absolutely necessary."

"Sorry."

"No, I am," Leigh sighed. "This is grating on my nerves here just a little bit."

"It's ok," Maylin replied. "Jaden suggested rocks... big ones."

"Ew," Leigh wrinkled her nose. "And you all say that I have a gory imagination! I guess that's what we'll have to do... or wait a minute..."

"What? What did you think of?"

"We might be able to just sneak off," she murmured.

"Sure, but then they'd try to track us."

"We could use that stream," Leigh nodded toward it. "All we have to do is wait for those two to go to sleep, and we can just run off using the stream to wash away our tracks. Very old trick."

"Maybe here it's a new trick," Maylin shrugged. "I think I'm willing to give it a try, and I know that the other two will do anything to avoid a fight with the orcs."

"It's a plan then," Leigh affirmed. "One last thing... my wrists are going to be a nice, bloody mess when I'm done here, and they'll be open to infection without some kind of healing plant or whatever. So we need to head for a town or something like that, where we can get help."

"While I see what you mean," Jaden spoke up from the other side of Mayiln. "I don't have the foggiest idea where we are. Do either of you? Well then, how are we supposed to get anywhere but lost?"

"Luck," Leigh muttered. "Pure, dumb luck."

"That is NOT reassuring," Maylin hissed.

"Tell me about it."

The water that splashed around Jaden's ankles was icy cold. While she saw the purpose of what they were doing, she desperately wished that there had been some warmer way to escape. It was so chilly out, that she was grateful that the water wasn't frozen over, that would have presented a major problem, and then they would probably have had to kill an orc or two to get away. Silently, she prayed that they found someplace where there were other people that could help them and possibly protect them from the orcs who would at least attempt hot pursuit. They must really think that they were dumb... at least orcs weren't known for their intellectual abilities.

Leigh had been wrong about her wrist... it didn't just hurt, it felt like they were on fire. Every time she bumped against something or someone in the dark, she hissed in pain and every time hoped that no one had heard the exclamation. Maybe they would reach someplace with a healer soon...

Winters had never been Jack's thing. He liked warm sun and cool swimming pools, and even in wintertime, he was always warm indoors. Really, this probably wasn't even winter, but it was NOT summer and they were fairly far to the North, that much he knew.

Part of him felt like Sam had: he wanted to see the Elves, and the Hobbits, and Dwarves and all the other races that populated Middle-Earth. The other side of him remembered that a guy had just been run through in front of him, he was on the run from orcs, he had no weapon, his friend was hurt, and no one had any idea where they were.

Maylin shivered as some animal splashed by the shore. Every sound made her jump now, she reminded herself that she did have a good excuse, considering that there were countless creatures there that would just love to kill her. Since she had been a kid, she had always gotten over her fear of the dark by reminding herself that the Elves were born under the stars with no moon and certainly no sun. Well, at the moment that wasn't helping very much.

"Leigh," Maylin said. "I've been thinking... you know... about why that Nazgul brought us here. Leigh, I think that Sauron knows about our world, knows that people there know how the story ends."

"And he's using us to find out where everyone is when," Leigh mused.

"Exactly," Maylin nodded. "Think about it. We could say who each of the Elven rings belongs to, where each of those bearers are at the moment, where the One is, who has the One, who and/or what is protecting the ringbearer... the list goes on and on..."

"So we absolutely cannot let ourselves be captured," Leigh muttered.

"If we do," Maylin paused. "Middle-Earth is lost for good. The One will be found, Aragorn will be killed, all of the Elves will be massacred..."

"Oh, boy. The question is then: what do we do with ourselves?"

"Good point," Maylin agreed. "We've already changed the story just by being here, and I don't think that we can play cat and mouse for the rest of the story without being caught before Frodo reaches Mount Doom."

"We have to find Rivendell," Leigh muttered. "Either that or just try to find the Hobbits and Aragorn, which is very close to impossible."

"That's just great," Jaden spoke up from the rear. "Don't we have to know things like where we are first to determine how to get somewhere else?"

"Yeah."

"We're in big trouble, aren't we?" Jack asked. Nobody bothered answering.

They continued moving until sunrise, counting on the orcs' dislike of sunlight to keep them at bay until nightfall. One thought and feeling was shared mutually among the weary escapees: hunger. Besides that there were varying degrees of frozen toes and fingers, and, in Leigh's case, troublesome pain. By the time it was thought safe to rest, all of them were more than ready for a week-long nap.

"Maylin..." Jaden frowned. "Your ears are pointy."

"It's the prosthetics," she replied, waving a hand in dismissal of the idea.

"No..." Jack paused. "You really do have pointy ears, Maylin."

"No I don't."

"Yes you do."

"No I don't!"

"Alright already," Leigh chastised. "I'll look and see, ok? Is that good enough for everyone?" She scooted over next to her friend and brushed away the few strands of hair that blocked her view of the ear. Quickly, she grabbed the delicate point and gave a hard jerk.

"OUCH!"

"Um..." Leigh stared. "You have pointy ears."

Maylin reached up and felt where Leigh had tugged and, sure enough, there was a graceful, pointy tip on her ear. "Am I an... an..."

"An Elf?" Jaden asked. "Yeah, so it would look... why, more importantly how, are you an elf for crying out loud?"

"The trip..." Jack frowned. Leigh nodded with wide eyes.

"Yeah, maybe," she murmured. "Either that or... if you had been born here instead of in our world... you'd be an Elf here..."

"I'm confused," Jaden sighed.

"Um, who's the one with the pointy ears, here?" Maylin pointed at her ear.

"Well..." Leigh started. "This is really weird." She reached up and checked her own ear, just to be safe. "I guess there's no point worrying about it, I don't think that there's anything that we can do to help..."

"What do you mean 'help?'" Jack asked. "She's an ELF for crying out loud, that means that she's better off than the rest of us!"

"At least we know that at least one of us won't get sick from walking through all that water," Leigh pointed out.

"Why didn't we notice this earlier?" Jaden demaned.

"It was dark... we were focusing on escaping..." Leigh shrugged. "Who knows."

"Look at it this way, Maylin," Jaden comforted. "You are now available to all the awesome Elf guys..."

"Guys are the last thing we should be thinking about right now," Leigh cautioned.

"Hey!" Jack whined. "I'm a 'guy' are you just gonna forget about me?"

"I think we should just keep walking," Leigh smiled.

There were only a few hours left of sunlight when they stopped again for a rest. All of them were surprised by the fact that they had lasted so long, it wasn't like any of them were used to walking for hours at a time over rough country in the cold. At least they weren't walking in the stream any more. Leigh had declared that it was probably safe to get out and walk through the woods about two hours before their second break that day.

So, with frozen feet, (except for Maylin) they plodded over the root-infested ground that seemed to have its heart set on tripping them up at every other step. Jack had only ever really gone out 'hiking' in the woods behind his house, and there all he'd really had to worry about was the mass of underbrush that seemed to be trying to choke out the massive trees. Here, there wasn't all that much underbrush, but the roots were little devils that snared his feet in some kind of twisted game. He would have preferred the underbrush.

"Anybody else discover anything... strange... about themselves?" Jaden asked as she panted along. "You know, big, hairy feet, tails, flaming body parts...?"

"No," Leigh laughed. "Besides, I think that she really turned into an Elf when we first arrived here, I don't think that we're all just gonna randomly turn into other creatures from Middle-Earth."

"Good," Jack sighed. "I was afraid that I was going to turn into a Hobbit or something."

"If you turned into one, so would Jaden," Maylin pointed out. Jaden threw a pine cone at her head.

"Watch it, Elfie," she warned.

"Ok," Leigh held up a hand. "Hold it right there, everybody. I know that this is all really, really weird, we are all stressed, we are all tired, we are all hungry, and we are all scared out of our minds. But you have to remember that everyone else in our group feels that way. Now, we cannot, MUST not, let things here tear us apart. In case you all haven't noticed, we are the only outsiders here, so we have to stick together. If we let things like Maylin's... change... break us apart, then we are in big trouble. We'll get caught, tortured, and probably killed when all is said and done if we don't hand on to each other. Only by working together can we survive this, and have any hope of even considering going back if we want to when we sit down and have time to think." The others hung their heads and Leigh continued. "Now, listen up. We are going to find someone who can help us, take us to Gandalf or Elrond. And then, we are going to calmly, and rationally think through what exactly we have to do."

"Rationally?" Jaden giggled. "Here we are, in the middle of a fictional story, and you're saying that we should be 'rational.'"

"That's more like it, Jay," Jack grinned, slapping her on the back.

"Now let's go and out-run those orcs," Maylin grined.

"All for one!" Jaden chered.

"And one for all!" the other shouted back.