I still claim no ownership of Tolkien's works and am making no profit. I hope you're enjoying yourselves!
Alassiel came out of her cave and stretched. As she enjoyed the slight breeze and the sun beating down on her skin, her sensitive ears caught a strange sound. It was clashing, and loud, and different. She'd never heard anything like it. After a few moments thought, she decided to try sneaking up on the sounds.
She didn't want to announce that her mother's cave was near by. Her mother had warned her about the greed of other creatures and the importance of hiding your sleeping place. Thus, no need to announce she was there unless she had to. Besides, she didn't want to scare whatever it was off. After all, whatever it was, it was different.
As she ghosted through the trees, she came upon a sight the likes of which she'd never seen before. The most glorious creature she'd ever seen was...battling? A horde of unwashed, disgusting, twisted things. They revolted her. The first one, however...taller than her in this form, long dazzling golden hair, pointed ears just like hers and her mother's when her mother took two legged form...and the way it moved!
She found herself just staring at it, dazed...until she realized its motions were starting to slow and it wasn't as graceful as it had been. Its strange green and brown garb was looking dirty, and she was pretty sure that it was bleeding from several places. As she watched, an arrow sprouted from its shoulder, and it staggered, losing its sword and falling to one knee. She knew then that she had to do something.
For some strange reason, she didn't want it to see her as she truly was. She drifted back out of sight of the clearing quickly, then changed and let loose an enraged roar. As she lifted her head above the trees, she saw the filthy things had surrounded the strange creature, and one had a sword poised to bring down on its head.
They were frozen, however, staring at her. She stared at that particular creature and let it see her rage as she growled at it with a low, dangerous rumble. She didn't know what language it spoke, but apparently she didn't need to worry.
It got her point quite well. It backed away, all it's friends already running as fast as they could down the mountain. As soon as her attention turned back to the elf, it followed the rest as fast as it could.
It didn't know what the Dragon wanted, but it knew it wasn't welcome where it was. Let the Dragon have the elf. He would probably die rather horribly, anyway, if the Dragon was looking for answers about trespassers. The orc couldn't think of any other reason a Dragon would want to save an elf.
Alassiel stared down at the beautiful creature that had invaded her quiet day, and marveled. So lovely...but why did it appear to be sleeping? She looked it over. She was fairly certain bleeding like that couldn't be good for it.
Well, she couldn't do much for it in this shape, so she changed back into her two legged form.
She quickly knelt next to her new find, and once more tried to decide what she should do. Eventually she decided to try to stop the bleeding. Her hands didn't work very well, so she tried strips of her skirt. As she tightened the third one, she heard a faint groan, and looked up into the bluest eyes she'd ever seen.
While her eyes resembled her mothers (almost as golden as their treasure) these were such a bright blue she thought they must be bits of sky...with stars captured and placed within them to give them their light...as she stared, captivated, it started talking.
It took her a few moments to realize that it was speaking in one of the elvish tongues. Did that mean it was an elf? She'd never met an elf..maybe she should just ask?
"Are you an elf?"
It stared at her, nonplussed. She had just ignored everything it'd said, she supposed. As she tried to remember the words, it replied.
"Well yes. So are you, obviously. Now could you help get this arrow out of my shoulder?"
She looked back down, surprised.
"Am I?"
She'd never known an elf was her mother's favorite two legger form, and hers also , by extension. She looked at it's shoulder, remembering its words this time. She could learn about elves later.
"Are you sure? It looks like it would hurt a great deal."
It stared at her like she was insane.
"Of course you're an elf! How could you not know?! And the arrow has to come out so we can clean and wrap the wound so it'll heal. Don't you know anything about wounds?"
She didn't answer. It obviously thought she was an idiot, and it was rather rude. She knew plenty of things. Just nothing about these type of things. A little put out, she reached out and yanked the arrow out quite sharply. It promptly screamed and went back to sleep.
She stared at it for a moment longer. What a strange creature. The smell of blood got her attention once again. It'd said to clean it first, which meant she probably had to redo the rest of her work, too. She gave a huff, then proceeded to drag her prize to the stream to clean it, grumbling the whole way.
An hour later, she was finishing up her task and debating what to do now. She'd cleaned up the elf, and wrapped all the wounds she'd found. Unfortunately, this meant her dress was extremely short and she was definitely feeling a breeze. She watched it shiver in the breeze, too.
Well, being wet and not wearing anything but bandages would probably be cold for any creature without a Dragon's natural benefits. She hadn't wanted to do this, but she'd just have to take it back to her cave. She could give it some of her spare clothes while she fixed its original ones and a warm place to sleep. That was probably important.
She was a little worried that it hadn't woken up after being dumped in the stream. She was pretty sure that would have woken her up. Ah well. Now, how to get it home? Eventually she just transformed, carried it and all it's stuff to one of the empty tunnels, and transformed back.
Then she went to her storage cave and pulled out a bunch of the furs she and her mother had preserved over the years. While most dragons just ate everything, one of her first requests when she could speak was to ask for the occasional beautiful fur to be kept.
Her mother had indulged her, and even gone so far as to learn the proper techniques to make them last and stay soft and nice so she could teach her. She loved how soft they were, and shocked her mother by preferring to sleep on piles of soft beautiful furs than on the shiny golden horde. (As she'd gotten older, she'd added a few coins on top just to please her mother, but not that many.)
As she rolled it onto a pile of furs, and covered it with several more, she was pleased to notice that the bleeding had seemed to stop and it was getting some warmth and color back.
What followed next was two weeks of pure worry and nightmares.
If it hadn't woken up occasionally and begged for water and such she'd not have had any idea what to do with it. Truthfully, any healer would have been horrified by her incompetence. The elf, when he woke up and got an accounting later, was shocked he'd survived.
But really, how was she supposed to know? She'd never been sick or wounded. She'd never seen anyone else sick or wounded, either. She'd never even read about anything like it. The only books in the cave were the ones she'd written herself.
Still, she did her best, and she never left it's side. As the days wore on, she found herself getting very tired. She drank every time she visited the stream to get water to sooth it's parched throat, but she hadn't eaten in over a month, either. She'd been ready to hunt the morning that she'd heard the commotion.
She supposed she should be getting impatient with the sickly thing, but she found the longer she tended it the more fond of it she got, and the more worried. Finally, after two weeks, she found herself begging anyone that would listen for help as she slumped by it's bedside.
It wasn't getting better. In fact, it was getting worse. She couldn't bear the thought of losing it. As she waited for whatever would come, the most startling thing happened. As she recovered from the surprise and gratitude (and sheer awe) she did what she had been told to do.
Immediately, it stopped tossing and turning and the heat it had been throwing off went down. She went to get it more water, and when she returned she was pleased to see it's eyes opened at last. She gave a huge smile of relief. As it asked how long it had been, and how sick, she answered all it's questions.
It's eyes bugged out at some of her answers about her treatments.
From there, it asked about her life. She didn't mention her race, but answered truthfully that she'd been born here, and lived with her mother. She said she saw her father every few decades and that her mother had been pulled away by duty recently, but that she saw her every year or so.
She didn't realize that her guest was listening to all of this absolutely horrified. Her innocence and ignorance was making sense to him now. He also felt a growing desire to take her away from all of this and travel back to his home. He determined to try to convince her while he was recovering