Disclaimer: I am American. Any Europeon sayings or ways of talking I will ultimitely slaughter I take full responsibility of. I apologize. This chapter is also very choppy and I'm not pleased with it at all. I think I tried to hard on it. I'm going to let it fester for a while before deciding whether I should either change it and repost or totally trash it and try it all over again.
Chapter Three: Middle Earth
The mist hung low on the ground. Leaves looked gold, sun shining through them so that their veins could be seen like small golden maps on silver wooden sticks. Even the smell of the wood was enchanting.
The smell of freshness, flowers, and soothing herbs filled the air. The trees seemed to be alive as they rustled with a small breeze. Golden leaves shivered and one fell, drifting back and forth in the air before finally landing on the ground.
Two figures, one male and one female, stood, silhouetted against the scenery.
"Bloody hell." The male voice seemed to be the only sound in the forest.
The other figure was silent for a moment before commenting, "That's so generic," said the higher voice.
"What do you mean?" asked the first, turning his head to look at the scenery that surrounded him.
"Haven't you ever seen any American shows?" There was no response, the feminine voice continued, "They always depict British characters so generic and they always say 'bloody hell' to everything."
There was a pause.
"We aren't British though," the lower voice replied.
There was another pause as the female considered this for a moment.
"Good point," replied the second.
His and Jane's fingers untwined as Emmanuel stepped away from her and moved towards a tree, hesitating for a moment to put his fingers upon the bark.
"Its bark is bigger than its bite," Jane suddenly said.
Emmanuel turned around as if he had forgotten that she was there. He smiled, "Aren't we the witty one?" he said.
"I try," Jane said simply, picking up a leaf that had fallen to the ground. She inspected it. It looked green shaded by her shadow. Then she held it up to the light, looking much like a small child, and watched as it turned gold with the light of the sun.
"Very trying," Emmanuel muttered to himself in a whisper smiling slightly at Jane's inspection of the leaf.
"What was that?" she asked, acting as if she had not heard him.
"Oh, nothing." Emmanuel at last touched the tree, finding it strangely warm to his fingers. It was almost as if the tree had a heartbeat, or it could've been his own heart echoing in the tips of his fingers.
The smell of the woods was, indeed, intoxicating. Emmanuel almost swooned in it as he held the Leaf of Lorien in his palm; it had become warm as well, almost as if it knew where it was. He looked at the emerald-green leaf and wished he had had enough time to get his cloak before they left. Shrugging he tried to pin the leaf on his lab coat. Strange, he had never noticed through all of his experiments that the leaf wasn't a pin at all but a clasp meant to hold two pieces of fabric together. He studied this for a minute before securing it to the top of his coat. Emmanuel looked up to find Jane looking at him bemused.
"What?" he protested.
"Nothing," she said innocently smirking. Jane had never seen Emmanuel this content. Come to think of it, she had never felt this content in a long time either. She breathed in, once again, the sun and the nature, things hard pressed to find in modern-day earth no matter where you went.
* * *
Another figure was present in the forest. He crept silently on feet that cats would envy. Behind him, though he could barely hear them, were his comrades, his brothers. He paused for a moment, squinting just barely to compensate for the sun.
They were still there, the two intruders. They stood talking about things that even he, even in all of his years of living, knew nothing about. His sleek figure turned towards his comrades. With a silky movement of his hand as a signal the figures behind him flew up various trees.
He did not want to approach them yet. These creatures were strange; he wished to know more about them. So, in a flicker of an eye, he flew, on a silver ladder, up a golden tree and crept through the branches until he was right over them.
The curious eyes stared at the dark skinned one, never seeing such a being in the woods of Lorien before. Never before had he seen skin so rich and dark, like the color of the earth soil beneath the grass. Her hair flew wildly in small black curls. She took a breath and sighed it out contently.
The other one sported hair of stark red. His skin was almost as pale as the one-observing-from-the-tree's skin, though his form was definitely a man. The man took a moment to touch the trees and even the being watching from above had to smile at his appreciation for the bark. He would watch these curious creatures a little more and then make his move.
* * *
"So, what now?" Jane said becoming uncomfortable with the quiet in the forest.
Emmanuel shrugged, admiring his Leaf of Lorien while fingering the corners. "Try and find some elves?" he suggested lamely. All that the former scientist wanted to do was find a nice tree and sit under it basking in the rays of his dream come true.
"Well that should be really simple..." Jane took a breath and yelled, "Hey elves!" She giggled at her own adolescence until she felt an arm cross her upper chest and looked back to find Emmanuel glaring at her with furious green eyes.
* * *
There was a shifting beside him and he looked to see one of his men with a smirk on his face, "*They called us to come*," he said in soft elvish, a twinkle in his eyes.
"*That they did*," replied the other, he would have laughed if it would not have given away their position.
* * *
It was one of those blink of an eye moments. In one moment Jane was yelling at the top of her lungs to see elves and the next they were dropping down from trees, arrows pointed at them. All around them they came, like drops of rain from the sky, and with as much sound as such.
It was the universe's idea of instant gratification, and boy did the universe have a sense of humor. Emmanuel didn't even have time to notice that they weren't human before he noticed that arrows were pointed very close to some very vital regions of his body.
When the former scientist got over the shock of being surrounded he had a bit of time to look closely at his assailants. They were elves! They weren't movie elves but real-live elves. They were so close to Emmanuel that he could see the intricate fibers of their gray tunics and inside their hoods. He could see the minuet splinters in their bows and the pure cut of their arrows. Of course, their arrows where pointed at his face, but better to see the positive right?
But more than their attire Emmanuel explored the faces of the elves. Though shadowed by hoods the light of the sun from the east provided enough illumination to see the contours of the elves' faces. Their cheekbones were very prominent, not that they were high, but they were very strongly defined. He explored the soft contours of their faces until he got to the chin, which was, like the cheekbones, strongly defined. It was an inhuman kind of contrast between soft and strong features that offered a certain androgyny to the beings.
Their hair was pale and long. It wasn't blond but more of a gold, a lighter rendition of the golden leaves which the sun shown through on the trees around them. The hair spilled out of the hoods that the elves wore and their skin seemed to emit a strange glow. Emmanuel wasn't quite sure whether the glow came from the creatures themselves or, rather, reflected off of the sun.
The eyes were, by far, the most magnificent feature. Almost hidden beneath the folds of the hoods, they conveyed humor, curiosity, aggressiveness, tenderness, longevity, and bravery all at the same time. It was as if the elvin eyes were aged, that they knew all, revealed nothing, but conveyed so much. But more than all of this was the color. All of the pairs of eyes that stared at the two friends were blue. They weren't just any blue but a blue found only in the sky amidst clouds and birds. They seemed to spark in the sun as well as to reflect Jane and Emmanuel's scared faces in their pupils as they stood, arrow to nose, with the humans.
The silence became uncomfortable when both parties failed to say anything. Jane and Emmanuel stood quietly, eyes wide in the face of the weapons and the briskness of their arrival.
"If you have any weapons please dispose of them now," said a soft low voice from one of the lead elves. His eyes zeroed in on the leaf that held together Emmanuel's long white coat. He said nothing as of yet, but the fact that the human possessed such an object was a curiosity to the elf nonetheless.
"English?" Emmanuel asked, more to himself, as if--for a moment--putting a pause on the dangerous situation at hand, "Westron Speech is English? That's impossible, the age of this leaf..." he fingered the emerald clasp absently, "is older than the age of the dinosaurs. Isn't English derived from the combination of French Latin and the Germanic language? It's impossible," he repeated again to himself.
A bit of confusion came onto the lead elf. His eyes faltered for a moment. He did not like dealing with things that he knew nothing about, especially at his age.
"Emmanuel!" Jane exclaimed with a growl, "We have bigger problems than that now." She nudged an elbow in the direction of the dozen elves pointing with their arrows.
Emmanuel said nothing but fingered his lower lip in thought. He scratched the inside of his sleeve, feeling the loose string from earlier that morning and pushed it deeper into the folds of his clothing.
"Do you possess any weapons?" the elf asked, his voice was soft and soothing yet it held something of confusion in it.
"No," Emmanuel said as if the question meant nothing to him. He seemed to brush off the elves all together as he thrust himself back in thought. His thoughts were of the Common Language and it being English and the fact that the elves' skin seemed to glow and whether the source was exterior or interior.
Slowly arrows lowered. The elves shifted the hoods from their heads, showing their golden hair and the curving points of their ears. The entire demeanor of the situation seemed to change. Instead of tense, the emotion quickly went to confusion. The elves spoke to each other briskly in their own language causing Emmanuel to look up suddenly, putting a hold on his thoughts.
He had read about Elvish, Sindarin, and even learned some elementary words and phrases. But to hear the language spoken was a completely different experience. Emmanuel listened on in awe as he tried to pick out words or phrases, but failed miserably. Tolkien described it correctly when he said the language was like a song. But in its briskness it sounded more like a jig. Emmanuel chuckled silently at his metaphor.
"Who are you? And what is your business in these woods?" The elf held back a smirk as the humans stumbled over their own names, names that were strange and drawn out like that of halflings, with a first and a last label.
"E...Emmanuel Parlor, I'm a scientist, though you probably aren't familiar with that term are you? Alchemist perhaps? Though I'm not exactly sure if you're familiar with that term either. There isn't any mention of alchemi..." The woman beside him put Emmanuel's hurried speech to a stop, much to the relief of the elves.
"I'm...Jane Suntry. We're very sorry to have bothered you. We just came for a visit, we can go now..."
"I'm afraid that is impossible. The Lord and Lady will want to see who has been wandering around in their woods, especially if one of these beings has on a Leaf of Lorien." He stared at Emmanuel's coat again with a bit of unease.
"Oh this?" Emmanuel asked pointed the leaf on his coat, "This...this isn't anything. It's...um...I bought it. At a...er..." he looked at Jane with longing eyes as if to say "You're free to step in here anytime".
"In town!" she said, inspiration striking her, "An old mysterious woman with a long nose and a cape sold it to us. We were just...er..."
"Tracking down the owner!" Emmanuel said with excitement as Jane nodded over-enthusiastically.
"Which led us here!" Jane threw in.
The elf was careful to keep the amusement from his eyes. "And from what town was it that you came upon this treasure that you so bravely decided to return?"
Both beings froze and the elf fought even harder to keep his eyes hard and aggressive. This was a serious matter, the elf thought. But at the sight of the two exchanging glances at each other like fumbling thieves escaped from prison it was hard to grasp the seriousness of the matter.
"A...very-very-smaaaalll town," Emmanuel said slowly when nothing else came to his head. -So much for scientists being quick thinkers. - He thought miserably.
"Ah," said the elf, unbelieving, "I should kill you both right now for trespassing," he said, amusement now showing clearly in his eyes. Though the amusement was not seen by the two humans who were clearly too afraid to notice it. "But," he said holding a hand up at the woman-known-as-Jane's open mouth, "I will, instead, take you to the Lord and Lady of the Galadhrim and let them decide what shall be done with you. They will find all of this most..." his tongue worked for the right word, "interesting," he said finally.
"Galadriel?" Emmanuel whispered to himself, finally capturing the reality of the situation. Thoughtlessly, he fiddled once again with the string at his cuff. He failed to see the curious look of the lead elf, who was confused by him, not for the first time.
Chapter Three: Middle Earth
The mist hung low on the ground. Leaves looked gold, sun shining through them so that their veins could be seen like small golden maps on silver wooden sticks. Even the smell of the wood was enchanting.
The smell of freshness, flowers, and soothing herbs filled the air. The trees seemed to be alive as they rustled with a small breeze. Golden leaves shivered and one fell, drifting back and forth in the air before finally landing on the ground.
Two figures, one male and one female, stood, silhouetted against the scenery.
"Bloody hell." The male voice seemed to be the only sound in the forest.
The other figure was silent for a moment before commenting, "That's so generic," said the higher voice.
"What do you mean?" asked the first, turning his head to look at the scenery that surrounded him.
"Haven't you ever seen any American shows?" There was no response, the feminine voice continued, "They always depict British characters so generic and they always say 'bloody hell' to everything."
There was a pause.
"We aren't British though," the lower voice replied.
There was another pause as the female considered this for a moment.
"Good point," replied the second.
His and Jane's fingers untwined as Emmanuel stepped away from her and moved towards a tree, hesitating for a moment to put his fingers upon the bark.
"Its bark is bigger than its bite," Jane suddenly said.
Emmanuel turned around as if he had forgotten that she was there. He smiled, "Aren't we the witty one?" he said.
"I try," Jane said simply, picking up a leaf that had fallen to the ground. She inspected it. It looked green shaded by her shadow. Then she held it up to the light, looking much like a small child, and watched as it turned gold with the light of the sun.
"Very trying," Emmanuel muttered to himself in a whisper smiling slightly at Jane's inspection of the leaf.
"What was that?" she asked, acting as if she had not heard him.
"Oh, nothing." Emmanuel at last touched the tree, finding it strangely warm to his fingers. It was almost as if the tree had a heartbeat, or it could've been his own heart echoing in the tips of his fingers.
The smell of the woods was, indeed, intoxicating. Emmanuel almost swooned in it as he held the Leaf of Lorien in his palm; it had become warm as well, almost as if it knew where it was. He looked at the emerald-green leaf and wished he had had enough time to get his cloak before they left. Shrugging he tried to pin the leaf on his lab coat. Strange, he had never noticed through all of his experiments that the leaf wasn't a pin at all but a clasp meant to hold two pieces of fabric together. He studied this for a minute before securing it to the top of his coat. Emmanuel looked up to find Jane looking at him bemused.
"What?" he protested.
"Nothing," she said innocently smirking. Jane had never seen Emmanuel this content. Come to think of it, she had never felt this content in a long time either. She breathed in, once again, the sun and the nature, things hard pressed to find in modern-day earth no matter where you went.
* * *
Another figure was present in the forest. He crept silently on feet that cats would envy. Behind him, though he could barely hear them, were his comrades, his brothers. He paused for a moment, squinting just barely to compensate for the sun.
They were still there, the two intruders. They stood talking about things that even he, even in all of his years of living, knew nothing about. His sleek figure turned towards his comrades. With a silky movement of his hand as a signal the figures behind him flew up various trees.
He did not want to approach them yet. These creatures were strange; he wished to know more about them. So, in a flicker of an eye, he flew, on a silver ladder, up a golden tree and crept through the branches until he was right over them.
The curious eyes stared at the dark skinned one, never seeing such a being in the woods of Lorien before. Never before had he seen skin so rich and dark, like the color of the earth soil beneath the grass. Her hair flew wildly in small black curls. She took a breath and sighed it out contently.
The other one sported hair of stark red. His skin was almost as pale as the one-observing-from-the-tree's skin, though his form was definitely a man. The man took a moment to touch the trees and even the being watching from above had to smile at his appreciation for the bark. He would watch these curious creatures a little more and then make his move.
* * *
"So, what now?" Jane said becoming uncomfortable with the quiet in the forest.
Emmanuel shrugged, admiring his Leaf of Lorien while fingering the corners. "Try and find some elves?" he suggested lamely. All that the former scientist wanted to do was find a nice tree and sit under it basking in the rays of his dream come true.
"Well that should be really simple..." Jane took a breath and yelled, "Hey elves!" She giggled at her own adolescence until she felt an arm cross her upper chest and looked back to find Emmanuel glaring at her with furious green eyes.
* * *
There was a shifting beside him and he looked to see one of his men with a smirk on his face, "*They called us to come*," he said in soft elvish, a twinkle in his eyes.
"*That they did*," replied the other, he would have laughed if it would not have given away their position.
* * *
It was one of those blink of an eye moments. In one moment Jane was yelling at the top of her lungs to see elves and the next they were dropping down from trees, arrows pointed at them. All around them they came, like drops of rain from the sky, and with as much sound as such.
It was the universe's idea of instant gratification, and boy did the universe have a sense of humor. Emmanuel didn't even have time to notice that they weren't human before he noticed that arrows were pointed very close to some very vital regions of his body.
When the former scientist got over the shock of being surrounded he had a bit of time to look closely at his assailants. They were elves! They weren't movie elves but real-live elves. They were so close to Emmanuel that he could see the intricate fibers of their gray tunics and inside their hoods. He could see the minuet splinters in their bows and the pure cut of their arrows. Of course, their arrows where pointed at his face, but better to see the positive right?
But more than their attire Emmanuel explored the faces of the elves. Though shadowed by hoods the light of the sun from the east provided enough illumination to see the contours of the elves' faces. Their cheekbones were very prominent, not that they were high, but they were very strongly defined. He explored the soft contours of their faces until he got to the chin, which was, like the cheekbones, strongly defined. It was an inhuman kind of contrast between soft and strong features that offered a certain androgyny to the beings.
Their hair was pale and long. It wasn't blond but more of a gold, a lighter rendition of the golden leaves which the sun shown through on the trees around them. The hair spilled out of the hoods that the elves wore and their skin seemed to emit a strange glow. Emmanuel wasn't quite sure whether the glow came from the creatures themselves or, rather, reflected off of the sun.
The eyes were, by far, the most magnificent feature. Almost hidden beneath the folds of the hoods, they conveyed humor, curiosity, aggressiveness, tenderness, longevity, and bravery all at the same time. It was as if the elvin eyes were aged, that they knew all, revealed nothing, but conveyed so much. But more than all of this was the color. All of the pairs of eyes that stared at the two friends were blue. They weren't just any blue but a blue found only in the sky amidst clouds and birds. They seemed to spark in the sun as well as to reflect Jane and Emmanuel's scared faces in their pupils as they stood, arrow to nose, with the humans.
The silence became uncomfortable when both parties failed to say anything. Jane and Emmanuel stood quietly, eyes wide in the face of the weapons and the briskness of their arrival.
"If you have any weapons please dispose of them now," said a soft low voice from one of the lead elves. His eyes zeroed in on the leaf that held together Emmanuel's long white coat. He said nothing as of yet, but the fact that the human possessed such an object was a curiosity to the elf nonetheless.
"English?" Emmanuel asked, more to himself, as if--for a moment--putting a pause on the dangerous situation at hand, "Westron Speech is English? That's impossible, the age of this leaf..." he fingered the emerald clasp absently, "is older than the age of the dinosaurs. Isn't English derived from the combination of French Latin and the Germanic language? It's impossible," he repeated again to himself.
A bit of confusion came onto the lead elf. His eyes faltered for a moment. He did not like dealing with things that he knew nothing about, especially at his age.
"Emmanuel!" Jane exclaimed with a growl, "We have bigger problems than that now." She nudged an elbow in the direction of the dozen elves pointing with their arrows.
Emmanuel said nothing but fingered his lower lip in thought. He scratched the inside of his sleeve, feeling the loose string from earlier that morning and pushed it deeper into the folds of his clothing.
"Do you possess any weapons?" the elf asked, his voice was soft and soothing yet it held something of confusion in it.
"No," Emmanuel said as if the question meant nothing to him. He seemed to brush off the elves all together as he thrust himself back in thought. His thoughts were of the Common Language and it being English and the fact that the elves' skin seemed to glow and whether the source was exterior or interior.
Slowly arrows lowered. The elves shifted the hoods from their heads, showing their golden hair and the curving points of their ears. The entire demeanor of the situation seemed to change. Instead of tense, the emotion quickly went to confusion. The elves spoke to each other briskly in their own language causing Emmanuel to look up suddenly, putting a hold on his thoughts.
He had read about Elvish, Sindarin, and even learned some elementary words and phrases. But to hear the language spoken was a completely different experience. Emmanuel listened on in awe as he tried to pick out words or phrases, but failed miserably. Tolkien described it correctly when he said the language was like a song. But in its briskness it sounded more like a jig. Emmanuel chuckled silently at his metaphor.
"Who are you? And what is your business in these woods?" The elf held back a smirk as the humans stumbled over their own names, names that were strange and drawn out like that of halflings, with a first and a last label.
"E...Emmanuel Parlor, I'm a scientist, though you probably aren't familiar with that term are you? Alchemist perhaps? Though I'm not exactly sure if you're familiar with that term either. There isn't any mention of alchemi..." The woman beside him put Emmanuel's hurried speech to a stop, much to the relief of the elves.
"I'm...Jane Suntry. We're very sorry to have bothered you. We just came for a visit, we can go now..."
"I'm afraid that is impossible. The Lord and Lady will want to see who has been wandering around in their woods, especially if one of these beings has on a Leaf of Lorien." He stared at Emmanuel's coat again with a bit of unease.
"Oh this?" Emmanuel asked pointed the leaf on his coat, "This...this isn't anything. It's...um...I bought it. At a...er..." he looked at Jane with longing eyes as if to say "You're free to step in here anytime".
"In town!" she said, inspiration striking her, "An old mysterious woman with a long nose and a cape sold it to us. We were just...er..."
"Tracking down the owner!" Emmanuel said with excitement as Jane nodded over-enthusiastically.
"Which led us here!" Jane threw in.
The elf was careful to keep the amusement from his eyes. "And from what town was it that you came upon this treasure that you so bravely decided to return?"
Both beings froze and the elf fought even harder to keep his eyes hard and aggressive. This was a serious matter, the elf thought. But at the sight of the two exchanging glances at each other like fumbling thieves escaped from prison it was hard to grasp the seriousness of the matter.
"A...very-very-smaaaalll town," Emmanuel said slowly when nothing else came to his head. -So much for scientists being quick thinkers. - He thought miserably.
"Ah," said the elf, unbelieving, "I should kill you both right now for trespassing," he said, amusement now showing clearly in his eyes. Though the amusement was not seen by the two humans who were clearly too afraid to notice it. "But," he said holding a hand up at the woman-known-as-Jane's open mouth, "I will, instead, take you to the Lord and Lady of the Galadhrim and let them decide what shall be done with you. They will find all of this most..." his tongue worked for the right word, "interesting," he said finally.
"Galadriel?" Emmanuel whispered to himself, finally capturing the reality of the situation. Thoughtlessly, he fiddled once again with the string at his cuff. He failed to see the curious look of the lead elf, who was confused by him, not for the first time.