A/N: Chapter revised March 11, 2016

Chapter IV: A Stranger Cometh

Lucy liked hobbit holes, oddly enough.

She didn't have much in common with their owners besides her height, but her fondness for them had started with Tommy, who – when they were younger – had read The Hobbit to Lucy aloud. Tommy had told her tales of Bilbo and Bag End, of bright green fields thick with daisies and tiny farms amongst quaint, pastoral-type towns. Lucy had zoned out for most of it, because she had a short attention span for long-winded stories, but she'd listened with rapt attention to the parts concerning hobbits themselves. She admired the simplicity of them, and by extension their homes.

Unfortunately for her, she also liked tall towers.

Massive, spiraling towers that pierced the sky like darkened javelins. Towers that stood watch over blackened flood plains that were manned by fiery, disembodied eyes. Lucy liked places like Barad-dûr for the same reason that she liked The Shire: they were both uncomplicated and entirely functional, with their insides on their outsides and their owners unconcerned with pretense. Tommy had told her more than once that she was crazy for associating Mordorian towers with hobbit holes, but everyone already knew that Lucy was short a few screws, so this didn't bother either of the girls that much. Tommy also had a bias all her own, and one that they both acknowledged. In the end, everything had evened out.

Rivendell was Tommy's favourite place, and after that Thranduil's Court. The reason for this was simple, really: Tommy may have trusted humans more, but it was the elves she loved most of all. There were cities in the First Age that she admired too, but it was a love of a different sort. The First Age, Tommy had said, was nothing but one long, unmitigated tragedy where elves died in the thousands, cities were razed, and whole hosts of humans were utterly wiped out. The entire region of Beleriand – just northwest of where Tommy's books took place – had been drowned, sunken under the sea like Atlantis.

"That's why I don't like the First Age as much." Tommy had said sadly. "The cities are beautiful, but everything dies."

Lucy hadn't seen the difference, because to her they'd just been part of The Books. She wasn't going to get hung up over something that merely existed as a collection of words.

"You know it's fake, right?" she'd said one day, slightly churlish and definitely pouting. Tommy had been distracted for most of the afternoon, and Lucy had been feeling alone and very much ignored.

Normally Tommy would have gotten mad over such a proclamation, because she was as fiercely protective over the elves as Lucy was of Tommy. Only that day, her best friend had smiled, her eyes distant and soft. She'd been in love even then, and Lucy had known with whom.

"He's not like that." Tommy had argued without malice. "He's wonderful. You'll see what I mean when we get there."

And Lucy had felt rage. Blind, encompassing rage that made her want to scream in fury and rip Tommy's precious books from her short, stubby little hands. Her best friend was in love with a sun god with hair like gold, but her love was a hopeless sort of thing, as it hadn't been real in the first place. There was no way she could compete against something like that. So Lucy went back to her thoughts of hobbit holes and dark stone towers, to delusions of rot and veneers that were lacking. In an effort to bite back her rage, she'd comforted herself with the notion that Tommy's Middle-earth wasn't real, and later, she'd promised herself that if she ever did meet him, she would throw her best friend's paramour off the tallest tower. That would teach him, she decided. Tommy had been Lucy's first.

The dungeon felt real, though. The way that Silver Hair had gripped her arm as he tossed her back into her cell felt real, too. The history she was choking on was especially tangible, so much so that Lucy found herself clawing at her throat as she fought against the sensation of drowning. It was a delayed reaction to her current situation, she decided; the jump-starting of dead emotions that were now being brought back to life.

The Third Age, Tommy had said. The Third Age was important, but this was the First.

Several minutes later, when the full enormity of where she was and what time she was in actually computed, Lucy screamed. She screamed until her throat was raw, tearing at her hair and throwing herself against the door repeatedly until Black Eyes and several of the guards returned to calm her.

In between the screams and the sobs and the desperate pleas to go home, Black Eyes whispered frantic reassurances, none of which Lucy understood.

"Please!" she sobbed on the bed, writhing beneath the guards' hands and kicking frantically. "Please, let me see Tommy! Let me see Tommy, I have to go back –"

"Im aiféa." Black Eyes said through a despairing grimace, her hands shaking as she searched for something in her satchel. "Im aiféa, Im aiféa, Im aiféa." Like before, the elleth removed a tiny bottle and pinched Lucy's nose to force another sleeping draught down her throat. It took effect immediately.

After that there was nothing. Blissful silence perhaps, mingled with indefinable blackness.

With the exception of her initial breakdown, Lucy remained disturbingly calm in the days and weeks to follow. She spent most of her time trying to sleep away the persistent cold, and when she wasn't sleeping she was lying on her side staring blankly at the wall, humming softly. The sound of her own voice calmed her, as it was familiar.

There was a weird kind of dissonance in her head now, one that she heard whenever the elves were speaking; a strange sort of double echo that tickled at the back of her brain. Lucy could almost guess what the elves were saying by the tone of their voice, but this half-knowing was worse than not knowing at all, as it made her strain her ears searching for recognizable sounds. As a result, her migraines returned full force, and the pain they induced was crippling.

Lucy didn't see Maeglin again, but this in itself was not surprising. He didn't like her and she didn't like him, and collectively they meant nothing to each other beyond a passing threat and a vague annoyance. He seemed like the type to kill his enemies, however, and when Lucy didn't wake up to feel a dagger being drawn across her throat, she became confused. Between her bouts of catatonia and rising despair, she surmised the elves didn't kill her because they wanted to question her, but no matter which way she tried to wrap her head around it, she didn't see how their plan would work. Lucy didn't know their language and they didn't know hers, and even if she had arrived in the Third Age, there was a cultural divide between her and her captors that was so massive it was easily discernible. Lucy wouldn't have called it medieval, per say, but it was definitely along those lines. The elves were bigger and stronger. More intense, and angry. Some were downright trigger happy, and when you combined that with their physical presence – the shortest elf Lucy had seen was at least six foot – it made them incredibly dangerous. Even from the confines of her cell, sick as she was, Lucy could tell that everyone was on edge. Something was wrong, and it wouldn't take much to set them off like a keg of gunpowder. The elves she was seeing now were nothing like the ones that Tommy had described in her books.

Gandalf, Lucy thought miserably. I have to talk to Gandalf. It was Tommy's idea, not hers, but she had no idea what to do on her own, and no way to ask for him, either.

Silver Hair visited her with ever-punctual frequency, and soon Lucy began to register little ticks in his movement: nervous tells and twitches that he fell prey to whenever he got too comfortable. The ellon had a habit of biting the inside of his left cheek whenever he was upset, and when he happened to be sitting down he would drag his right heel across the ground ever so slightly, leaning forward on his elbows and tilting his head up. The sombre elf was smaller than Maeglin had been, and definitely more delicate looking, but Lucy got the impression that he was infinitely older. Every day, he would ask her the same questions, holding up each of Tommy's battered books while he tapped his slim fingers against the glossy trade-back covers.

"Man thel pent?"

"Car le buio i Fëanorians?"

"Mana lín eneth?"

"Car le buio i Sauron?"

Eventually, it became clear that questioning her from across the room wasn't doing any good. Lucy was growing more lethargic, and often she was barely able to stay conscious long enough to see the elf leave at the end of each session. Sometime in the second week – or maybe it was even the third – Silver Hair came into her cell and sat especially close to Lucy's cot, reaching into his satchel and pulling out one of Tommy's books. He placed it firmly in Lucy's hands. It was The Silmarillion, and instantly Lucy felt a swell of regret as she gazed at the cover. Tommy. Tommy was dead, and she was alone. Lucy wished she hadn't jumped. She was miserable.

"Tengwane." Silver Hair said, placing one of his hands over hers to keep her steady as he opened the book. He tapped a random page with his forefinger. For someone as old as he was, he had remarkable soft hands. Lucy's head lolled against the pillow as she stared blankly at the book, but she could vaguely guess what the elf wanted. Slowly, she began to read the page he had pointed to. Her voice was flat and monotonous, broken only by fits of coughing made wet and hoarse by the chill.

It made no sense, the part she was reading. Lucy supposed this was because The Silmarillion was about as familiar to her as the elf doing the interrogation. The chapter talked about the "Three Kindreds of the Eldar" and their golden years in Valinor, followed by the escape of a Vala named Melkor. After that, there was a long, boring paragraph about his absolute loathing for the elves of Middle-earth. Silver Hair tensed at the mention of "Melkor," clenching his jaw as he bit at the inside of his cheek. When Lucy got to the part about the Noldor swearing vengeance against "Morgoth," Silver Hair sat up completely, yanking the book from her hands. Lucy let him do so without complaint. She was too tired to fight him.

Silver Hair turned the book around so it was facing him, his eyes scanning frantically over the English letters. It was obvious from his expression that he didn't understand. Lucy watched as the ellon stared at the page, and when he finally seemed to come to the conclusion that deciphering the words was hopeless, he cursed colorfully under his breath. Then he stood, swiftly leaving the cell in a swirl of black and slamming the door, the book tucked under his left arm. The pale elf did not return, and the silence that ensued was unbearable.

Every now and then, someone – something – would start whispering in her ear. Lucy tried to ignore the sensation, but it didn't work, and soon the whispering got worse.

How do you know about Valinor? The voice would ask, words slithering along her spine and making her shudder. What do you know about the trees?

The guards at Lucy's door were doubled, as if their presence alone would prevent her escape. The notion was laughable, of course. Lucy was still injured, and she was getting sicker. The constant chill and thick air made the fluid build-up in her lungs even worse. That, combined with her decreased appetite and her inability to stomach what food they gave her was slowly turning her into a wraith. Lucy had always been petite, with her size and delicate bone structure giving her a misleading air of innocence that made certain types of people prone to underestimating her. Now, her inability to stomach even the most basic of foods was taking its toll. Breathing was torturous, and everywhere her joints ached. Often, she would wake up from dozing most of the day to find Black Eyes standing over her, petting her head and offering her a plate of dry, tasteless crackers with a horribly sympathetic look on her face.

"Medi, hên." she would beg incessantly, shoving the crackers forward like a misplaced peace offering. "Lá medi."

Lucy would rarely eat, and when she hadn't touched any of the wafers for three days in a row, the elf resorted to spoon-feeding her liquids. First it was soup, and when that upset her stomach, the elleth switched to something that looked like gruel. Lucy was able to eat it without vomiting, but by that time she was too weak to sit up. In what appeared to be a desperate last ditch effort, Black Eyes gave her something that looked like baby biscuits, small enough to fit in Lucy's palm and soft enough that she could chew on them without difficulty. The fact that she was able to stomach them made Black Eyes inordinately pleased.

So Lucy slept, and sometimes she ate, and when she was awake she would hum beneath her breath until she no longer had the energy to do so. Every two days Black Eyes would bathe her, and whenever her nightgown became too soiled from sleeping, the elleth would exchange the garment for another shift that was just as shapeless and over-sized as the last. The only illumination Lucy received came from the stone hole in the ceiling, where the daylight tracked from left to right as the sun rose and fell in steady intervals. A breeze would sometimes wind its way through the opening, and it was through this that Lucy discovered that the corridor above her was connected to an open courtyard, which was what brought in the chill.

Lucy hated the cold, and was always freezing, but it was the nightmares that affected her the worst. When she closed her eyes, she could see Tommy's brains splattered against the stone steppes like so much red paint, her best friend's dull eyes staring upwards. Always, she would lie still after it happened, and as the weeks dragged on Lucy began to marinate in a concoction of despair. She didn't want the dreams. She didn't want any of this.

The weight of her memories was suffocating.

Nearly a month went by before they brought the woman to her cell. By that time, Lucy was so ill she was sleeping for days in a row, utterly listless and pale as death, her small form shrunken and unresponsive on the cot. Black Eyes had continued to be worried over her deteriorating state and her inability to fix it. More than once, she had brought the doctor-elf along to check on her without any discernible progress.

On the day of the stranger's arrival, there was the squeaking of hinges as her door was opened yet again. Lucy was so used to having visitors flit in and out of her cell that she didn't bother to turn to see whom it was that entered. Soft footsteps padded across the floor, mingling with the loud rustle of skirts as they were dragged over the rush-strewn ground. It didn't sound like Black Eyes, who wore clothes of a lighter sort, but Lucy decided in her illness-induced stupor that the elleth had simply changed her dress for something warmer.

Lying on the cot as she was, with her left hand draped over the edge and facing outwards, she was able to watch the swirl of dark purple fabric as it came into view. Still, Lucy didn't look up, closing her eyes after her initial inspection and wishing that sleep would take her. If she pretended the person wasn't there, then maybe they would leave.

"You are the child?" someone asked in heavily accented English. Lucy's eyes snapped open. The sound of her own tongue was so unfamiliar that at first she didn't recognize it, and it had little to do with the way the woman rolled her r's or slurred her way through her words. It was because Lucy had gotten used to the silence, and when she didn't hear the silence she heard the elves, their lyrical tongue translating to gibberish against her ears. The fact that the woman was speaking a language she understood finally sunk in, and Lucy tilted her face away from the pillow, looking apprehensively towards the owner's voice.

There was an unfamiliar woman standing by her cot, her eye wide and face expressive. She was an ordinary looking individual, with olive toned skin and dark brown hair partially hidden beneath an ornately woven navy veil. Over her shoulders was thrown a large fox fur cape, and beneath that she was dressed all in purple. She wasn't young, but neither was she old. If Lucy had to place her age, she would have said that the woman was between thirty and thirty-five. Forty, at the most.

Beside her stood Black Eyes, wringing her hands nervously. Standing behind them in the doorway was Silver Hair, a slight frown marring his features.

"Ai, you are so thin." the woman exclaimed, her voice full of concern. She reached down and placed her hand against Lucy's long hair, brushing it aside. Lucy coughed at the slight contact, her hacking strong enough that it caused her to curl inwards to try and contain the spasms. "They told me you were ill," the woman confessed gravely. "But I did not think it was so much. Faster, they said to come, faster, faster! But it is hard to go fast these days. Too many orcs." She gave Lucy a tremulous smile, almost apologetic, and when she spoke again her expression made sense.

"You must forgive them," she said, gesturing briefly to Black Eyes. "These Noldor elves are not like their cousins. They are newcomers, yes? Not so used to humans. They often forget we are different."

Lucy – who was by now horribly confused and increasingly fuzzy-headed from hearing English being spoken aloud – merely raised her head off the pillow and stared at the woman with eyes swollen from sleep, her expression deep with suspicion. If she'd been thinking clearly, she would have thought to ask certain things. Important things, like how the woman knew English and where she came from, or if she could show her to Gandalf. But Lucy was cold, always cold, and there was a chill in her bones, sapping away her strength.

Lucy, someone crooned, and she couldn't place the voice, nor the itching sensation against her ear. Lucy, come to me. I will take you somewhere warm. She ignored the offer.

"Do you have an extra blanket?" she asked the woman, before breaking into a fit of coughing. It was the only thing her mind could process in its muddled state, and her voice was hoarse from not speaking for so long.

The woman made a sound of sympathy and immediately slid of her cloak. She draped it over Lucy, who simply crumpled under its weight. She felt so insubstantial and she was.

"Poor child." the woman said. She sounded like she meant it. "It is a sad thing, to be claimed by elves." There was an edge of bitterness to her voice that Lucy couldn't place, so she didn't try. Lucy simply rolled over and closed her eyes, basking in the warmth of the woman's cloak. A few moments later, she went to sleep.

The woman's name was Morwen, Lucy learned after she woke up.

She came from the east, past the mountain range of Ered Luin along the westernmost edge of Rhovanion, in between the river Greylin and the northern tip of the Eryn Galen forest. The distance she'd had to traverse was only part of the reason why it had taken so long for her to arrive. They had ridden day and night for nearly a month on the fastest horses the elves could find, but everywhere the orcs were lurking. Morgoth was growing restless, and everyone was fleeing south.

None of this meant anything to Lucy, whose only impression of Morwen's long-winded explanation was that the woman came from very, very far away. So far away that Lucy wondered why she'd bothered to come in the first place.

Because she was asked, the woman said with a nervous glance towards the door. The elves had insisted, and elves being elves, she could not refuse. Lucy read between the lines well enough.

Morwen explained her arrival with the apologetic gaze of someone who knows their audience is barely listening, and Lucy was so sick that this wasn't far from the truth. The woman spoke the elvish tongue, called Sindarin, and after a long conversation with Black Eyes in which she told the elf that Lucy was sick from the constant chill, the elleth became desperate to overcompensate. Currently, she had Lucy sitting upright on the bed so she could swaddle her in blankets, constantly checking her temperature every minute or so with a slender hand pressed to her forehead.

Morwen talked over the elf's haphazard ministrations, and Lucy watched her with saucer-wide eyes, not really processing the fact that she was once again having a conversation in English. It felt so surreal.

"This is why they wanted me to come." Morwen said in her heavily accented tone. "To speak to you, yes? This tongue, they do not know it. I am surprised you are fluent. You do not look of the east."

"Why the east?" Lucy croaked out. Morwen looked down, picking balls of lint off the front of her dark purple dress.

"There are no men from the west," she intoned. "Only elves. Lots of elves. This is their land. My people do not have dealings with the Noldor, you see? We only hear of them through the Sindar." Morwen then assured her that English was her mother tongue, but they did not call it that where she came from. They called it Hûthem, after the ancient scholar who'd created it. Morwen's speech may have sounded like English, but the differences were apparent in the offbeat way in which she arranged her words. Their written language varied, too. Silver Hair – whose name was Anaduilin – had show Morwen the books, but she could not read them. The only reason the woman was there was because the prison warden was from the east, and he'd recognized some of the words that Lucy had spoken.

"This tongue, they do not think to know it." Morwen continued, sniffing with condescension. "I am sure they are regretting it now. But this Anaduilin – you know him, the Sinda with the silver hair? His kind were here long before the Noldor came. We do not see the Sindar often, my people, but they know of us, yes. And I know their tongue. I am a Council Member among my people. A wise woman, like my grandmother and her grandmother before her. We have had dealings with the elves from the east before."

Silver Hair was different from the other elves. When Lucy asked Morwen about it half-heartedly – because she was struggling to keep up with the conversation even at the best of times – the woman explained that Sindar were Middle-earth elves, and Noldor were something else. Her tone of voice implied this was not a good thing.

"They are from the sea." Morwen said, in relation to the Noldor. "The big ones, they left. They left and then they came back, and there was much killing and death and now there is war. There has been war for a very long time, you see. For my mother's generation and her mother's generation, and the generation before hers. The Sindar, they do not like these Noldor elves that came from beyond, because they killed the Sindar cousins too. The Noldor like their jewels. They like their swords. They make their precious metals and they swear their oaths, and they poked Morgoth like an evergreen hunter pokes a sleeping bear. Many hundreds of years have passed, and still there is war. Most of the north is lost. Their plan was foolish."

Morwen waved in Black Eyes direction, pointing to the elleth before gesturing to her own nose and mouth.

"The Noldor, you can tell they are Noldor by how they look, you see? This one – Limbrethil, she named herself to me – she is Noldo. They are bigger than Sindar. Much bigger, and always dark-haired. They have straight noses like this –" Morwen gestured to her own nose, making it appear straighter "because there is different bones beneath. Different from my people. Different from your people. Different from Sindar, although not so much." At this proclamation, Morwen made a vague gesture towards the door, where Anaduilin had disappeared to. He'd made himself scarce once Morwen had started talking, and Lucy wondered if it was because Morwen was talking. She talked an awful lot.

"The Sindar, you will not see so many of them here." she confessed. "Or not so many as there are in the East. This is a Noldor city, ruled by one of their princes. The Noldor have many, many, many princes. Too many to count, I think."

At this Lucy perked up, coughing slightly as she stared at Morwen from beneath sleep-heavy eyelids. "Where am I?" she asked, already short of breath. "Tommy… Tommy said we needed to arrive in the Third Age. She said there would be a white city, and there would be seven gates. We need to use the library. I have to find Gandalf." She wanted to go home, more than anything, but in lieu of home Lucy decided she would stick to Tommy's plan. She felt bereft without her best friend to guide her, and didn't know what to do with herself.

Morwen frowned in confusion, crossing her arms defensively over her chest. She turned to Black Eyes – now dubbed Limbrethil – who was currently making cooing noises like one would do to a baby as she attempted to feed Lucy a biscuit. Morwen said a few words, and the two of them conversed rapidly for a moment, with Limbrethil shaking her head no and nodding yes several times over. The older woman finally turned around.

"I am sorry." Morwen said. "I do not know of Gandalf or this Third Age you speak of. I did not know if I was allowed to tell you this, but Limbrethil says there is to be a trial and you are to be taken above, so it does not matter much anymore. They think you are a spy, you see. But you are in Gondolin, yes? It is a white city. A Noldor city. They good kind of Noldor, Limbrethil insists I tell you. She is worried you will think they are Fëanorians and try to escape. I am not so sure of this term, but I think they are another type of elf."

Lucy only clued in to the first half of the conversation, and immediately it filled her with a dull sort of dread.

"They think I'm a spy?" she croaked out. "They're going to put me on trial?" If she were feeling more charitable, Lucy might have laughed at the absurdity of it all. If she'd had the energy to feel despair, she would have cried and wailed.

Morwen hmmed, seeming to mull over her words before she spoke again.

"To be truthful, they think you are a baby-witch. A creation of Sauron's, no? Limbrethil has told me a different word from baby-witch, but I do not know how to speak it, so this is the closest thing I can say to what they believe you are."

"A baby-witch?" Lucy warbled. Morwen nodded.

"A not-so-grown witch. You speak in strange tongues and carry dangerous scrolls in scripts they cannot read. You whispered a spell to their lord, and it has made him sick. Sauron takes children all the time, you see. He takes them and he shapes them into servants of darkness. But elves like children, yes? They always want children, more and more, but too many of their children have died in the war. It is hurting them, I think. Limbrethil, she wants to know if you are an orphan."

"Why?" Lucy asked with trepidation, still reeling and feeling discombobulated. The request was odd. When Lucy questioned it, the older woman gave her a smile that looked and felt false. Lucy knew it was false. "Why?" she demanded, her tone rising to a wail. At that moment Limbrethil took the opportunity to tuck Lucy's blankets snugly beneath her chin, smiling hopefully as she held up another biscuit and made a cooing sound as she tried to manoeuvre it past her lips. Lucy glared at her and coughed fitfully, turning her head away.

"I'm not a baby," she said, pleading for understanding from the strange woman who was sitting on the stool across from her bed. "Tell her I'm not a baby!"

Morwen looked uncomfortable, as if she were trying to find a way to word what she wanted to say in the most diplomatic manner possible. "The elves think you are a child." she began gently.

"But I'm sixteen!"

As if on cue, Limbrethil seemed to decide the best cure for Lucy's rising distress was a fresh round of biscuits, and she quickly grabbed Lucy's chin to pop her mouth open, sticking a cracker in-between her teeth. Lucy glared at the elf, and Morwen gave her an apologetic shrug.

"Limbrethil has told me that all you eat is baby food without being sick, and these biscuits you eat are of such. You are short and small and not very strong, and your skin is still soft and new. To them, this is a baby."

Immediately Lucy spat the biscuit out.

Limbrethil clicked her tongue in admonishment, quickly reaching up to clean Lucy's face with the edge of her sleeve like a fastidious mother hen. Lucy tried to bat her hands away, but she was far too weak, and her flailing only seemed to make the black-eyed elf even more smothering in her attention. Morwen stood, gathering her heavy skirts around her as she made to move towards them. She lifted one of her hands in a soothing motion, trying to calm her down.

"Sweetness, it is good if they think you are young. Better that they think you are young. Please. You must calm yourself."

"But I'm not a child!" Lucy insisted, feeling her frustration mounting. It was tempered only by her utter lack of energy. "I'm sixteen and my name is Lucy, and I jumped off a building because Tommy told me to. She said we needed to come to Middle-earth. I want to go back!"

Morwen frowned heavily and took another step closer, maneuvering around Limbrethil to sit on Lucy's bed. Despite her age she was rather pleasant to look at, and although she was not nearly as beautiful as the elves, there was something striking about her features. The woman took Lucy's right hand between hers, rubbing it for warmth. Lucy huddled defensively beneath her blankets, glaring outwards. When Morwen began talking, her words were slow and full of warning.

"I am sorry Sweetness. I know you are sick, and when one is sick and such things happen, they do not always understand. In truth, among my own people sixteen is rightfully a woman, when children can start having children of their own. I have had four myself. But these elves, they love children, you see? Always, they want more. It is better that they think you are young."

It was the way in which she said her final words that caused Lucy's sense of terror to rise. The woman was smiling falsely, and she could tell that beneath the veneer Morwen's intentions were not benign.

"What do you mean?" Lucy asked with trepidation. Morwen sighed and leaned in close, her words quiet but harsh. It was a warning.

"Sweetness." she said. "These are Noldor. The only reason you are alive is because they think you a child. If you were full grown, they would have killed you."

Author's Note

A huge thank you to those of you who reviewed/favorited/followed. I'm thrilled you guys are enjoying it. To guest reviewer Sammi: thank you for your wonderful comment. Tension and drama are hugely important to me, so I'd glad this story achieves at least a bit of that.

A note on Morwen's name: Elves don't reuse names (canonically) but humans do, and as such there are a gazillion Morwens in Middle-earth. It can get a bit confusing, but for the sake of clarity I should state that the Morwen of this story is an OC: the name has simply been used because it's a recognizably human one, and it fits canonically within Tolkien's universe.

Thanks goes to msg839 and EpitomyofShyness for beta'ing.

Glossary

There isn't that much this time, but I've basically come to the point where I'm unable to find certain words in either Sindarin or Quenya. Since Sindarin was originally based on Welsh, I've had to do some creative extrapolation from that. I've marked with asterisks which words fall under that category.

Im aiféa – I'm *sorry

Tengwane – Read (Quenya)

Medi, hên. Lá medi. – Eat, child. Please eat