Chapter Two: On Vegetarians, Glasses, Small Talk, and Other
Miscellaneous Devices that Do Little to Move the Plot Forward
DISCLAIMER: Umm…I still don't own Lord of the Rings. I just own Estela, Adonnenniel, and the voices in my head that keep talking to each other, thus inspiring my dialogue. Sadly, they are not enough to get you money or a movie contract with Orlando Bloom. Apparently insanity doesn't pay well.
Random Quote: "Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." ~A fortune cookie I ate today. Thank you, profound Confucian philosophy.
When Estela woke again, the first thing she was aware of was a bandage secured tightly around her head. She didn't move, simply lay in silence, trying to take in as much of her surroundings as possible without alerting anyone she was awake yet. Her mind needed time to sort things out. Flashes of yesterday kept replaying in her mind like a film, and she couldn't seem to piece them together.
She hesitantly opened her eyes, and saw that it was dark outside and she was still in the forest. Two feet in front of her lay Adonnenniel. She was relieved to see that her sister's arm was bandaged. Suddenly, voices reached her ears and Estela squeezed her eyes shut.
"Who do you think they are, Aragorn? And how did the one who was conscious know our names?" a voice said. She recognized it immediately as belonging to Legolas.
"I do not know. They are dressed quite strangely, especially the red haired one." Overalls, Estrela thought gruffly, remembering her sister's words earlier in the stable.
"It is a strange twist of fate that we should find two women in the forest on the morning of our departure from Rivendell. Perhaps it was meant to be," Legolas mused. So the Fellowship has just begun, she realized.
"It is indeed strange," agreed Aragorn. "It is odd. They both appear to be human, yet they have Elvish features."
Just then, Adonnenniel's eyes flickered open. She gazed at Estela intently, who put a finger to her lips.
"What are we going to do? We cannot have two women traveling with us into Mordor," Legolas said. Despite herself and despite the situation they were in, Estela found herself wondering what difference he possibly thought I meant if they were women. There were plenty of brave and powerful women, in human history and in Middle Earth.
"I know," Aragorn sighed. "Perhaps Gandalf will know what to do come morning. We should be getting to sleep. These troubles should be taken step by step."
Ten minutes later, Legolas and Aragorn were asleep, as was Adonnenniel. Estela was restless, though, and sleep evaded her for nearly the entire night.
Adonnenniel woke to the smell of sizzling meat. Images of yesterday kept flitting through her mind, insubstantial and disorienting. She slowly raised her head.
"Well, hello there," said a cheerful voice. "Finally decided to join the living, have you?" Adonnenniel rubbed her eyes, and looked for the source of the voice. At first she thought he was a child because of his height, but then realized that his face was that of an adult's. He held an apple in one hand and held a frying pan in the other, intently focused on cooking a large slice of meat.
"Umm, hello," she said. "Who are you?"
"Merry. Meriadoc Brandybuck, if you will. But just call me Merry, everyone else does. And this is Peregrin Took, but he's just called Pippin," he said, motioning to another small figure at his side, who waved cheerfully.
"And what's your name?" Pippin asked.
"Adonnenniel."
"That's an Elvish name, that is. You sure you're human?" Merry asked between bites.
"Yes, the last time I checked I was. What else would I be?" Adonnenniel was confused, and questions began surfacing in her mind along with fear.
Pippin answered her. "Well, technically you could be a hobbit. But you're much too tall. So that leaves Elves, humans, Orcs, and trolls. But since your ears aren't pointed, we can rule out Elves. And forgive me for saying so, m'Lady, but your looks are far too beautiful for you to be an Orc or a troll."
"What?" she shrieked. "Where am I? Where's my sister?"
"Didn't mean to frighten you, sorry. Your sister is over there, talking with some of the others." Merry pointed to a clearing in the forest some distance away.
"I want to see her," Adonnenniel announced, and stood up. Pain shot through her arm, and she gasped.
"Are you alright?" Merry wore a look of concern.
"Yes, I'm fine," she said through her teeth, willing herself to ignore the pain.
"Would you like some meat before you go, My Lady?" asked Pippin. "You must be rather hungry."
"No, I'm a vegetarian, but thank you," she said. Merry and Pippin looked at her oddly.
"What's a vegetarian?" Merry asked. Adonnenniel looked at him with amusement.
"I'll explain later," she laughed, and walked off toward her sister.
"Yes," Estela said for what felt like the millionth time. "I've told you already. I read about all of you in a history book." This morning, as soon as she had woken, Legolas and Aragorn had wanted her to speak with them and the rest of the Fellowship.
"Where are we going?" she had asked them groggily, still not quite awake.
"We wish for you to speak with Gandalf and the rest of our company," Legolas had responded.
"I suppose you want to know how I knew who you were and who me and my sister are," Estela said. She worked to keep her face calm as she mentally devised a story to tell them.
"Yes," said Aragorn, "We would very much like to know that." He eyed her suspiciously.
"You are suspicious of me," she had said. "You're probably wondering if I'm a spy for Sauron. Well, I suppose it's perfectly normal of you to be cautious. You'd be stupid to trust any random person." Her bluntness seemed to surprise them. They froze in their tracks, staring at her intently.
"Well I'm not a spy," she insisted, looking Aragorn in the eye.
"How do we know we can trust you? You know too much. You speak of things said only in the utmost of secret," Legolas said sternly. Aragorn nodded.
"I don't lie." She looked at them levelly, willing them to contradict her. Something in her expression must have made them believe her somewhat, because they averted their gazes and kept walking.
It was the truth, though. For her entire life, Estela had made a point to not lie to people. Back home when her friends asked her opinion on things like makeup and outfits, she would be bluntly honest and tell them her opinion. It was part of her nature, and she would not give it up now. She would tell these people the truth, or as much of it as she could risk.
She had then spent the next hour trying to convince Boromir, Gandalf, Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas, Sam, and Frodo that she was from the future and had read about them in a history book. She covered up the fact that Adonnenniel would not be in on this by saying that her sister was never into history, and where they come from, studying it in depth as Estela did was optional. When they asked her about how they can come here, she didn't skip a beat. She told them the entire horseback riding story, and how her sister had wanted to learn. When she told them about the tiara, Legolas inhaled sharply.
"What did this tiara look like? What metal was it made from and what was the design?" he asked.
"Adonnenniel would be better fit to answer that than me. She knows more about jewelry." Just then, Adonnenniel herself appeared in the clearing. Her face lit into a brilliant smile when she saw her sister. Estela forgot about all her current troubles, and rushed toward Adonnenniel.
"Don't you ever scare me like that again, got it?" Estela said, allowing herself to be smothered in a hug. Then, in a lower voice Estela whispered, "We're in Middle Earth. You know, like from Lord of the Rings? I don't know how it happened, but I guess we have to just go along with it for now. I'm kind of playing it by ear. If they ask, we are from the future and I know who they are because I read about them in a history book. You know some things about them, but only vaguely, since I've told them I've studied about them more in depth. Besides that, I have told them truthfully everything that happened." Adonnenniel squeezed her hand to let her sister know she had gotten the message.
Together, they approached the Fellowship. Silence fell over the group. All the men, save for Gandalf and the hobbits, were staring at Adonnenniel in awe, taking in her beauty. Although the moment was over in an instant, Estela rolled her eyes. I guess whether we're in high school or Middle Earth, male hormones still exist. She felt annoyance and exasperation surge through her.
"They were just asking about the tiara you found, Adonnenniel," Estela said tersely, breaking the silence.
"Adonnenniel?" Gandalf said with surprise. "That is an Elvish name, child. And yet you say you do not come from this time period. What is your name?" he asked, addressing Estela, who realized with a jolt that she hadn't even told these people her name yet.
"Estela," she said. Aragorn looked at her sharply when she said it. "Is that also an Elvish name?"
"Yes, it is," said Legolas. "It means 'Hope' or 'Lady Hope' in the Elvish tongue. And Adonnenniel means 'Reborn'." Legolas sounded intrigued. He whispered something to Aragorn, who still looked surprised.
"You guys don't need to whisper," Estela said.
Aragorn stared at her for a long moment. "Legolas was simply commenting on how your name is a female version of my name in Elvish."
"Oh. Umm, okay." Estela dimly wondered why that hadn't been in the movies. Maybe it had been in the books, but she had never read them.
"I wonder how it is that if they are not from here and not even Elves that they posses Elvish names," grumbled Gimli.
"What?" Estela snapped, suddenly angry. They were still questioning her honesty. "Do you seriously still not believe me?" She threw her hands up exasperatedly. "You," she said, pointing at Aragorn. "Your lover is Arwen, the Evenstar of her people. Boromir, your brother's name is Faramir, and your father is the steward of Gondor. Your brother is second to you in your father's eyes, and this bothers you in ways. Frodo and Sam, you come from the Shire. Sam is crushing on Rosie Cotton, and Frodo's uncle is Biblo Baggins, who went on an adventure with Gandalf and fought the dragon Smaug. He's writing a book about it. Is that enough?" she growled.
Everyone looked shocked at her outburst.
"Everything she says is true," said Adonnenniel. All eyes turned to her. "What? I was right there with her in the forest. Ask me anything you want, our stories will align."
"If what you say is true," said Gandalf, holding Estela's gaze tightly, "You must not ever give away any events that are to yet take place. Do you understand me? We must not alter the course of history."
Estela nodded. "Yep. I've read enough time-slip novels to know that you shouldn't mess with the sequence of events in the past."
"What's a time-slip novel?" Sam asked.
"It's a story in which the main character is transported back into some point in history. Some of them are my favorite books because you get to read about history as if you're actually witnessing it, and not just an outsider looking in from a textbook. It's like historical fiction but you get it from the perspective of someone who has been in the present as well." Legolas, Aragorn, and Gimli were looking at her with strange expressions, as if their facial features couldn't decide between amusement and annoyance.
"Fascinating," Boromir interjected. "Now about the tiara…"
"I can tell you about that," Adonnenniel said cheerfully.
"What metals were used to forge it? And what design did it fashion?" Legolas asked.
"I couldn't identify the metal. It certainly wasn't a dull metal, though. Like, it was really shiny. It definitely had a kind of golden hue but if you looked at it under the sunlight it turned more silverish. The texture was perfect, it was unblemished and in prime condition. Heck, if I'd sold that thing on eBay or something it could've gone for a fortune." Adonnenniel seemed unaware of the questioning looks she was receiving. "Anyways, the design was all these leaves, intertwining in a circle. So yup. That was Tiara101 coming to you live from Adonnenniel. Dang, I could write a commercial for that thing."
Estela stifled a laugh and locked eyes with Gandalf, who looked amused.
"I do not know what tiara it is that you speak of," Legolas said, turning to Gandalf. "At first it thought it had to do something with Galadriel's prophecy, but I think I was mistaken." He said this last part so softly that only Gandalf could hear it.
"Ah, I see," Gandalf murmured. "Interesting. Very interesting."
Gandalf looked up at everyone else. "Well, suffice it to say that for the time being, we can trust these two," he said simply, as if Legolas' words had made up his mind.
"Are they coming with us then?" Frodo asked. He was looking at Estela and Adonnenniel fixedly. "I do not think they would be able to find their way back to where they came from."
"And unless we willing to risk being seen by people, I don't think we should get near any towns or cities where we could leave them," Sam added.
Gandalf closed his eyes, pondering. "Yes," he said after a moment. "They will come with us."
There was so much walking, thought Adonnenniel. For three days, they had been journeying over fairly redundant scenery. They walked over endless streams of rolling, green hills with a backdrop of snow-capped mountains always present in the distance. At first the scenery was pretty, but it got old real fast. And not only was the walking redundant and boring, but the members of the Fellowship insisted on assuming a stony silence in her or Estela's presence.
Estela and Adonnenniel stayed close to each other, sometimes filling the gaping silences with small talk. Whenever Adonnenniel tried to make conversation with someone else, they would talk for a minute and then would have nothing else to say. All except the hobbits, that is. The hobbits were intensely fascinated by 'the future', and had a seemingly endless supply of questions. It seemed as if the more information the hobbits had, the more insatiable their thirst for more was.
It had started with Estela's glasses. On the day when they had left the forest, Estela had asked Adonnenniel to hand them back to her. When she had put them on, everyone in the group turned to look at her with varying degrees of confusion etched on their faces.
"What are those?" asked Pippin.
"Umm…they're called glasses," Estela had muttered. Just like it was back home, Adonnenniel realized that her sister had taken to not talking very much.
"And what exactly do they do? They look kind of strange," said Sam.
"Well," said Estela, "In the future, there are people who have poor eyesight. Glasses magnify everything so you can see properly."
"That is bizarre," said Gimli gruffly.
"You did not seem to have an urgent need to wear them, though," stated Legolas. It was one of the first times he had directly addressed one of the sisters for the whole trip.
"Yeah, but that's just cuz her vision isn't that terrible. Back home, she only really needs them for reading. And she reads a lot. Like, seriously. During the summer when everyone else is shopping or at the pool, she's in her room reading. Reading textbooks, for that matter. Like, if you're gonna read during summer, then at least read books for fun. I mean, really. We get enough of reading history textbooks in school." The group suddenly stopped walking, and stared at Adonnenniel with vast confusion.
"What is shopping? And swimming pool?" Frodo asked, voicing questions that were clearly present in everyone else's mind. Adonnenniel burst out laughing, and a small smile played on Estela's lips.
So Adonnenniel launched into a lengthy explanation of shopping and swimming pools. The hobbits and sometimes even one of the others would often interrupt her with questions, asking her to define things like escalators or diving boards. It was times like this when the silences were broken, and they began tentatively becoming friends with the hobbits, and at the least polite and cheerful acquaintances with everyone else. Adonnenniel basked in this newfound friendship. She had hated the stony silences and was immensely glad the Fellowship was over not talking to her and Estela.
Coming Up Next!
-A history lesson on Byzantium!
-Broken glasses!
-Sappy things that will make you snicker!
Author's Note: Incase you haven't figured it out yet...Though, I'm sure most of you have...This is a parody of your typical girl falls into Middle Earth story. I'm making it as ridiculous as I can on purpose!
