I banged on the door of Henry's apartment so hard that I felt like my hand would break apart. It was sometime after five in the morning, the sun wouldn't rise for another few hours. Despite the Texas summer heat, I was cold standing outside in just an oversized shirt. The second I had woken up I hopped in my car and rushed to Henry's. My whole body felt stiff, as though every movement took more out of me than the one that came before it.

After a few more moments the door flew open, Henry staring angrily back at me in only a pair of basketball shorts. "Unless something terrible happened, I'll never forgive you for this," he nearly growled at me.

I took a deep breath and pushed past him, entering the apartments living room. I pulled the laptop out of the bag I had hanging from my shoulder and sat down on the small couch. Henry stayed in the doorway for a second more before groaning as he shut and locked the door.

"Is this about your dreams? It's five o'clock in the fucking morning, you couldn't wait?"

I glanced from the laptop's screen that was acting as the rooms only light source and looked up at him. Though his voice sounded angry, livid even, his face was soft. Almost like he felt sorry for me. I squinted my eyes as he turned on the light before walking over to the couch and taking a seat beside me, "Don't look at me like that. I'm not crazy."

He let out a small laugh, "Come on. You're talking to me of all people, I don't think you're crazy. This is just…. inconvenient is all." I nodded and turned my attention back to the laptop which had fully powered on.

Henry waited a moment before continuing, "What ever happened really fucked you up, huh? You hate driving so late." I hated driving past midnight, especially on the weekends. When I was a teenager, my high school shoved anti drinking and driving campaigns down our throats. Of course, this made sure that I would never drink before getting behind the wheel, but it also made me paranoid to venture out at night should I be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"I just learned some new things," I said absently as I began to search through the bag for the piece of paper I had scribbled notes on before leaving my house. Once it was in my hands, I eyed it wearily. My panicked state combined with my fear of forgetting meant that the words I had written down were barely legible. I held the paper up for him to see.

He leaned back in the couch beside me, taking the paper and squinting at it. "Elves? Ada? Mi-rec-wood? Greenwood? What is this?"

"Arda. And it's Mirkwood," I corrected him, typing the word into a search engine. "It's where the guy told me he was from."

Henry's eyes opened wide, "You mean you talked to that thing?"

I nodded but kept my eyes on the screen in front of me, feeling myself become more and more irritated as I glanced over page after page and found nothing.

Henry jumped forward and put a hand on my arm, "Are you okay? Did it hurt you?" I pulled my attention away from the computer and looked over at him. It had been a while since I had seen him so concerned about me.

"It was a dream, Henry."

His mouth fell open and then snapped shut, his arm falling from my shoulder. He stood up then, "Okay you need to make up your mind because honestly this is getting very hard for me to keep track of. Do you think it's real or not?"

I didn't know the answer to that question. I was torn between a dream and a reality. The logical side of me believed that my brain was just trying to give me something I longed for that I was lacking in everyday life. Your brain will do anything it can to keep you alive, so maybe my mental health had gotten worse than I thought. Maybe my mind was just trying to help me handle the emotions I felt throughout the day. But I knew in my heart the dreams were real. I felt everything; the wind, the grass under me, the bark of the trees. There was no way my brain held so much talent that it could offer me a virtual reality when I was meant to be asleep. I had never heard the language that the 'elf' spoke in when we first met. I had never heard of a Mirkwood, Greenwood or an Arda. Still, it was easier to say that what I was experiencing was a figment of my imagination. At least until I could find something better.

My voice came out in barely a whisper after a few moments, "It's real. I think it's real. It's just, I meant that I don't think I can actually be hurt in it."

Henry nodded and then walked out of the living room without a word. I took this time to turn my attention back to the device in my lap. I decided to give up on Mirkwood, as well as Greenwood. It seemed that the two searches only offered me information on types of actual wood. Not what I was interested in. I looked down at the paper Henry had laid on the table. Arda.

It only had one result, and I clicked on it immediately. An amateur webpage greeted me, and I sighed at the neon green text on a black background. I felt the couch shift beside me and saw that Henry had returned, carrying his own laptop.

"I found something," as soon as I spoke, he moved closer to me. Noticing he had opened up a word document, I raised a brow in question at him. He shrugged, "For notes."

The site looked more like a blog than a webpage, the title was the same as the sites link, which looked like absolute gibberish, ' '. I clicked on a tab at the top which read, "Meet the Channeler". A video popped up in a new webpage, and a middle-aged man looked back at us. My gut clenched at the site of him, just his appearance gave off an unappealing feeling. He had short strawberry blonde hair and a round face. A pointed nose, smaller than what would be considered normal, sat above a mouth that housed uneven, yellow teeth. He looked as through he was malnourished, his cheeks almost sinking in. When he began to speak, I shivered as Henry voiced a quiet "ew". His voice was grainy and high pitched, and he had a strong British accent. The tone carried an unexplainable maliciousness in it.

"Hello! My name is John Powell. Welcome to I dass carnen dot com, if you are here, I suppose you should know that I track the location of all visitors!" I shared a glance with Henry, thankful that I had allowed him to update my computer a few months back. He had read a story on some form about the deep web and how predators find their victims through IP addresses and insisted I allowed him to make the changes necessary to keep me 'safe'. "Do not fret! I have no ill will, just a simple curiosity for this information.

"If you have found this page, perhaps it is by luck, though I do not believe in such. The gift of knowledge regarding Arda is not one that is handed out by chance. It is a privilege that should not be taken lightly! The goal of this site is to spread the word of my leader through this Earth, so that when the time comes, we are prepared to serve him. It is through Mairon that I know of the information displayed here, and for that I owe him my life. Please, take your time to read the tales, and have a great night!"

The screen went black before the tab was closed. Henry let out a dramatic sigh and started typing the name mentioned on his laptop, "I don't know the fuck kind of demonic-ass-deep-web shit this is but it's kind of creeping me out."

I was quiet for a moment before speaking, "What if Mairon is speaking to me to? What if he's who I met?"

Henry looked at me like I was crazy, "You didn't catch a name?"

"He asked for mine but I couldn't say it. Every time I tried it felt like my throat was closing. I assumed he couldn't either," I turned my attention back to the page.

"I don't want to freak you out, but those types of dudes- the ones that communicate through people like this freak- are never the good guys."

I ignored him and read the information that was displayed in front of me, "'The kingdom of Arda, and that was but a small realm in the halls of Eä, whose life is Time, which flows ever from the first note to the last chord of Eru….'"

I read and Henry took notes for the next hour. We read through the development of Arda, a world in a universe known as Eä. It had been created by a being known as Ilúvatar for the The Ainur. Of course, most of this made no sense to us, but we made note of it anyway.

"I hate that this is only, like, the base level stuff we needed to know," I said with a yawn.

Henry was quiet for a moment before he spoke, "You know this is literally just the fucking bible, right?"

I looked from him to the computer screen, my eyes tired from the strain it took to read the text. It all clicked for me suddenly. I threw my head against the back of the couch, "You've got to be fucking kidding me."

Henry's arm wrapped around my me, his head resting on my shoulder. "It's okay, so a demon known as Mairon is possessing you. Eddie is an ordained minister; we can hold an exorcism. It'll be fun, we can film it. Like Emily Rose."

I glared at him and pushed him off of me. Though the story we had read was a rework of the Christian creation story, it didn't explain everything. We hadn't yet gotten to who exactly Mairon was, or what he was. Was he God? He couldn't be, that seemed to be Ilúvatar. Or an Angel? Lucifer? I rubbed my eyes hard and let out a groan. How did the word Arda even make its way into my brain? I was sure I had never heard it before. And from the looks of the google search, the only other person that had was this, possibly mentally ill, man.

Henry closed his laptop and stood, stretching out his arms with a yawn. I favorited the website and turned off the computer before setting it on the small table in front of me. I stared at the wall for a few minutes, trying to decide what to do next. It was almost seven am, but I was too tired to drive back home. I felt as though I could pass out at any time just sitting there on the couch, I didn't want to chance it in a moving vehicle.

I reached for the remote and turned on the TV, the sound of the morning news immediately gracing my ears.

"The mom whose security camera captured that creepy creature is speaking out today, and she's seriously freaked out." The image on the screen switched to grainy security footage that looked to be taken at night. A figure that looked kind of like Dobby from Harry Potter was struggling to walk next to a car. "This is the driveway in Colorado Springs where Katherine Reyes says the strange figure was recorded frolicking in the dead of night."

"What the fuck is that?" Henry asked. I hadn't realized he had left the room. Keeping my eyes on the TV, the segment continued.

"Social media is going nuts! Some say it looks like an alien, or an elf-"

I heard Henry cackle, "Is that the handsome elf from your dreams? I knew you liked your men weird but this is too much." I reached for a discarded piece of paper that set on the coffee table and threw it at him after crumbling it up. I narrowed my eyes, regretting having mentioned that the elf was abnormally attractive.

"I think it's just a kid," I said after a few seconds. The news had switched to an early morning weather report, having run out of details on the strange creature.

Henry shrugged, "Cryptids like this are spotted all the time and nothing ever happens. Eddie and I saw a weird one in the woods out by the lake a few months ago."

Before I could ask, Henry handed me a pillow he had retrieved from his room, as well as a blanket. "I don't care about chivalry; you're sleeping on the couch. It's what you get for waking me up."

I snatched it from his hands, "I don't want to sleep in your dirty ass bed anyway, when was the last time you washed it?"

He turned and began walking to his room, "I honestly don't remember!"

A few days passed and I was alone in the clearing each night. I found myself disappointed when I would wake in the new world and the elf wasn't there. I wanted to ask him if he knew who Mairon was, and what he could have to do with it. I remembered he had mentioned that he didn't sleep often, and was only able to present himself in the dreams when he was truly exhausted. I wondered how long it would take until I saw him again. The longer we went in between meetings, the longer these dreams would continue. I didn't want to wait another week to see him again.

I didn't worry over Chris much, he never called me. Just a few texts here and there. I would humor him when my phone lit up at random points through the day, but when he wouldn't respond for hours I didn't fret. I wasn't one to play chase with a man just because he was cute. It wasn't my thing. I had been alone for so long. I was comfortable in the silence. He did, however, mention that he was coming to the crew's comedy gig the coming Monday.

I was nervous to see the others in a crowd setting, knowing that they would question me over the British boy. Not only that, but I wasn't looking forward to seeing how far the news of my dreams had spread. I felt like a crackpot enough just telling Henry, I didn't want to know how it was going to feel with all my friends asking questions about it. The night we found the website, Henry had sworn to me he wouldn't tell anyone any more about them. "You never hear of this shit making anyone's lives better when they start talking about it," he had said. I was relieved that should the topic come up again Henry would back me up by saying it was all just a joke that crashed before it landed.

He had taken almost more of an interest in researching Arda and Mairon than I had. I would get random phone calls all throughout the day, and more annoyingly the middle of the night, detailing something he found interesting that he had learned. His favorite story so far had been the story of the fall of Melkor.

It was essentially the tale of Satan's fall from grace. He had been the greatest of the Ainur, until he defied the will of Ilúvatar. He then swayed some of the other Ainur to fall with him and went on to roam Arda. I had grown up with this story, and it wasn't the story that bothered me. It was how John, or Mairon, had decided to tell it. If I hadn't grown up knowing the base material, I would have felt sorry for Melkor. It was told as though Ilúvatar was a cruel being, that did not long for the peace his creation, Melkor, wanted for Arda.

Henry had pointed this out, "It's like they want you to feel bad for the evil dude. Like he's Loki and his daddy didn't love him as much as Thor and that's why he's a piece of shit."

There had been brief mention of Elves. Not nearly as much as I would have liked to know, however. They one of the two races that were considered the Children of Ilúvatar, alongside men, that lived on Arda. Of course, Melkor only wanted the best for them, and when they fought against his love, he had been forced to fight back. After a couple of battles, he was forced into chains and thrown into something called 'The Void'.

I didn't buy it for a second. Not once did the blog mention why the elves didn't want his help. It all seemed so biased, and I wanted to know more. But the blog had been limited on history and flourishing with blatant propaganda. I couldn't really imagine how many other people were actually seeing this site, but I wondered if the creators were reliant on people that were easily swayed without putting much thought into things. I had a weird feeling that it was meant for me.

"I wish they would have taught this version in bible study," I said looking over at Henry. It was Sunday night, and he had come over after a long day of rehearsing his routine for his show the next day, and we had turned the spare bedroom of my father's house into something out of noir film from the 50's. "I wish elves existed here, it would be so cool," I said tacking up a printed-out picture of Link from Legend of Zelda.

On a plain wall we had put up notes, starting with the date my dreams first began and what was in them, all the way up until a note card that read, 'alone again August 10th- '. We also had a spot designated for the history of Arda as we had learned it. Henry insisted on connecting everything with a red piece of yarn for aesthetic purposes. He also added pictures, all of which had been enhanced by him in photoshop. My father walked in about half way through us setting it up, and only raised an eyebrow when Henry assured him it was for an acting job he was working on.

"Like, I've always wanted to live on Asgard or something. I imagine it's like Monty Python and the Holy Grail but better," I continued on.

Henry had his laptop in his arms as he was pacing around the room, studying the blog. He stopped for a second and turned to me, "Doesn't Norse mythology have nine realms?"

I nodded, having always been a mythology buff, I constantly found myself wishing to tag along in the tales of different culture's Gods. My favorite fantasies had taken place in the world of Norse mythology. I found myself enjoying the tales more than I did Greek or Egyptian. Our grandmother was a German immigrant, while our grandfather was raised in Norway. The stories were practically forced down our throats as children, not that Henry nor I minded the violent nature of most of them. When the Thor movies had come out, Henry dragged me along to see them all opening night with him. Though neither of us where fans of how the myths were changed to "fit Hollywood", as Henry would say, but it was still enjoyable to see the fantasy world of our childhoods come to life.

He sat down on the bed and closed the laptop, "What if that's like, actually true?"

I stared at him for a few moments before walking and taking a seat next to him. "You think this is Norse Mythology but real? Wasn't the realm that had elves called Alfheim? And this guy said that Arda had men on it to."

He shook his head, "I don't think it's that. But what if there actually are other realms besides the one we are on? …In? ... I don't know."

"You think I'm somehow dreaming my way into another world?"

Henry shrugged and fell back on the bed, "I don't see why that can't be an option. Who said this God dude had to make only one world?"

I raised an eyebrow, "Why me though? Why am I the one that sees into it?"

"That's the real question, huh?" He was quiet for a moment more before getting up to gaze at the wall. "What if this isn't supposed to be happening at all?"

"Regardless of if it's supposed to happen or not, I don't want it." I got up and stood behind Henry.

We spent another few hours researching the theories behind multiverses and trying to find clues on how and why this could be happening. Everything I found was only circumstantial evidence, 'what if' scientific theories. They didn't offer much help to my current situation. When Henry finally left just before midnight, he promised to spend more time researching it on his own.

"Don't worry about it," I said walking him to the door. "You have a big day tomorrow!"

With this his face lit up. I felt like a terrible friend to him. So much was happening in his career, yet he spent as much time as he could helping me research this weird dream land. I felt like I needed to put more time and energy into him. Growing up, Henry had always been my backbone. Even when he needed someone to be there for him, he would put his needs aside and aid me. Any time he saw that I was struggling, he was by my side. Even at 25, I still didn't feel like I had ever returned the favor to him. I didn't know how.

"I'm so excited!" He turned and gave me a hug, "Be at the venue about five tomorrow, text me when you're there and I'll let you in!"

Once he was gone, I made my way to my room and got comfortable in my bed. There wasn't much for me to do, as I had already gone through my nighttime routine before Henry had even come over. I wasn't expecting him over tonight at all, but he insisted that we meet up and create the "conspiracy board".

Within a few moments I had fallen asleep. The clearing looked and felt the same as it always did. I stretched and made a move to stand when a voice startled me.

"It took you long enough, I thought you had found a way out."

I turned to see the elf leaning against a tree, his weight rested on one leg while the other was bent, his foot on the trunk.

"I wish," I said walking over to him. There was a soft breeze tonight, and small strands of his hair were floating in the air around his face.

"I found nothing." He spoke before I reached him and pushed himself off of the tree. He walked towards me, closing the gap between us.

I felt my shoulders fall as I stopped. I was hoping that he would have learned something of importance, that maybe he was three steps ahead of me in this situation. After all, his world was the one with the magic. His world was responsible for this. Someone had to know something.

He sat down on the ground directly underneath him and I followed, sitting about two feet away. He looked off into the space ahead of us, his eyes seemed unfocused, as though he was deep in thought. "I found some things out," I spoke quietly.

He tilted his head just an inch to the side and glanced over at me, before fixing his gaze ahead of him. "Well go on," he spoke. "We know not when our meeting will be cut short."

This was something I hadn't thought of, and I was glad that he had brought up the abrupt way our last meeting ended. I nodded and began to speak quickly, "Okay well my cousin and I found this website- Do you know what that is? Like a book, I guess. Anyway, some guy had the creation of Arda written out, all of it. We haven't made it all the way through though, so I don't know everything. I'm sure you do. Anyway, it's weird that he knows it because, like, this isn't a thing in my world. He said that Mairon-"

In less than a second the elf had stood, pulling me with him by my arms. He held my arms so tightly that it stung, making my eyes water. His eyes were bulging out of his head, and at first glance you would think he was livid, but if you looked hard enough you could see fear deep within his eyes. "Did you say Mairon?" His voice was low, and sounded very threatening. It was unlike anything I had ever heard before, almost predatory.

My voice caught and I felt my throat begin to close up, signaling the beginning of a panic attack. I tried to control my breathing but found that it was easier to give in and let myself take quick, shallow, breaths. "I don't know who that is it was just that the guy that wrote the book I found said that's who told him about it," my words came out faster than before, and I couldn't figure out how the elf understood them. He eyed me for a second before I spoke again, "Please let go of my arms, you're hurting me." A tear fell from my eye.

He let go but did not move away, "You don't know Mairon? You are in no contact with him?"

"No!" I nearly screamed, "You're the only person from that world that I've ever even talked to! I don't even believe you're real."

From the elf's reaction, I gathered that my initial feelings on Melkor were correct. He wasn't the good guy, and that Mairon was somehow connected to it. Still, that didn't mean that the elf could manhandle me. I was surprised that he was even able to touch me within a dream. I had always imagined that if we were to ever try, our hands would float through each other's bodies like ghosts in movies. It scared me. He was obviously a lot stronger and faster than I was, and if he thought I was a threat he could take me out in a second. It didn't seem like he spent much time thinking about his decisions regarding it either.

The air around us began to sparkle, and this time I was relieved by it. The elf, however, looked panicked.

"Do not speak of your dreams," he said quickly. "Do not speak to anyone by that name. I am to leave on a quest a few hours after sunrise. I know of a man that may know more, there is a chance we might cross paths."

He continued to speak, but his voice faded into silence. I could see his mouth moving, but as the world around me began to dim, he went with it.

A/N: Here it is! I am sorry that it took so long to get out, but unlike Eisley I am taking summer classes and working a full time job. I also had a hard time writing this chapter, as it is all starting to feel a bit repetitive to me, and I know it is to you guys as well! We just have to set the scene. I have gotten several messages, as well as a review, that asks what 'GIME' means. It means 'girl in middle earth', at least that is what I have seen it used as and that is how I am using it. Eisley will get there very very very soon. I am dying for her to be there just as much as everyone else, trust me!

Thank you to everyone for the reviews and follows. Please leave a review if you enjoy this, and if you don't... leave one to tell me what I'm doing wrong!

Timeline of Eisley:

July 15th- Dreams begin.

July 24th- Able to move around the clearing, hears a voice.

July 27th- Tree man first seen.

August 2nd- Attends a pasture party, has her cards read.

August 9th- Talks to the tree man, learns he is an elf. Finds the blog.

August 18/19th- Multiverse Theory arises. Tells elf of Mairon.