Yo ho! I'm BACK with a new chapter! I'm sooo happy to see that you guys enjoy the story! THANK YOU SO MUCH for the nice comments!

BY THE WAY, the chapter "an absolute nutter" has been changed, the beggining is re-written, cos when I uploaded the document, I forgot to paste the entire beggining...so i suppose it made NO SENSE! so if you are confused, you can read the chapter again...and it will make better sense...APOLOGIES FOR THAT!

The Hobbit is coming out NOW…I'm going crazy!

And Legolas will be appearing in the story very soon!

Chapter 26

You Were The Only Beast In Those Waters

Thranduil hauled Harlette's unconscious body up on the brim.

'Is she dead? Is she dead?' Bernard yelled, her fur spiky with panic and her voice trembling in a delirium of frantic meows.

Placing Harlette on her back, Thranduil loomed over her, biding her to wake up. He received no answer and he cursed in Elvish, much to Bernard's shock. Several times did he press on her chest, till at last, Harlette coughed water. Her eyes popped open and she gasped, and shot to a sitting position, her head banging violently against his own. Thranduil reared back, a hand to his forehead, while Harlette fell back to the ground with a shriek of pain.

'She is alive!' cried a relieved Bernard. Thranduil rose up to his feet, his expression glacial, his hand massaging his brow.

A little dizzy, Harlette rolled on her side, shivering profusely as she did. Bernard plunged within her master's arms, yet, the cat's frantic cries of joy did not erase Harlette's awareness of the second, very familiar presence behind her. Turning around to meet the face of her savior, her breath caught in her throat.

With his soaked black breeches and tunic gluing to his godly body like a second skin, there he was, standing up in all his glorious beauty, his disheveled and drenched golden hair framing his face, giving him a wickedly wild appearance.

'You saved me!' Harlette blurted out.

'Oh, spare me from this nonsense. I merely fished you out of the pond,' he deadpanned.

There was a silence. Harlette swallowed a stone of discomfort at his curt response. In all romance books, the knight in shining armor showed gentler mood when confronted with the damsel in distress; Thranduil most definitely could not be categorized as a romantic hero.

'Merely fished me out? Look at you, you are soaked to the bone!' she let out, pointing at his drenched frame. Her eyes lingered upon the sword strapped at his waist; with its hilt set with many precious stones, it was long and leaf-shaped, and of beautiful workmanship. However, her focus did not remain much longer upon the weapon, for it drifted past his waist, downwards, much further downwards...

'Let us say, I had to fish deep,' he explained curtly, interrupting her avid contemplation of the forbidden.

'When you stormed out of the palace, no one reacted, for the shock and amusement was so great,' the cat described, fighting a smile. 'However a couple of minutes later, when all had calmed down, word was sent that you had run into the woods, so I went outside, but the forest is so dense and enormous…I begged King Thranduil to assist me in my search…' Bernard paused. 'We searched for you lengthily. And when we did find you, you were diving in the pond with a warrior's cry,' she explained. 'We waited a while, but you were not emerging, and when we approached the brim, we realized you were most definitely not re-surfacing. The king dived in the water to fish you out.'

Harlette stood mute and immobile.

'What kind of lame, angry suicide attempt was this, Harley?!' the cat let out, her white paws striking her master's stomach.

'Wha-a-what?' Harlette stuttered. 'Suicide? No!' she disclaimed. 'I was rescuing the horse!'

'The horse? What horse?' Bernard inquired perplexed.

'The horse that brought me here! Surely you have seen him!'

Thranduil and Bernard exchanged astonished looks.

'There is absolutely no horse here, Harlette,' Bernard clarified slowly.

Harlette gazed around her frantically, her mouth opening and closing as her eyes searched the woods and its trees standing tall above her.

'What are you looking for, Harlette?' the king questioned.

'The goddamned horse!'

'There is no horse!' Bernard yelled, and before Harlette could reply, the cat had struck her cheek violently. The latter slapped a hand to her visage, her mouth in an O shape of shock. 'You beast!'

'Please, pull yourself together, Harlette! You are talking crazy!'

However, the girl would have none of that and she shot to her feet, her eyes large with fury and bamboozlement. 'The horse! It must have been killed by the monster!'

'Again with that mammal!' Bernard hissed, a paw to her forehead.

'What monster?' Thranduil asked, with slight impatience.

Harlette whirled to him, her wet fair slapping her own face. 'Have you not seen that huge beast? Have you not battled it when you dived in the water?'

Thranduil raised a brow. 'You are the only beast I saw in these waters.'

Harlette snarled at him before shrugging dismissively, and strutting towards the edge of the pond, she gawped at it. She closed her eyes, recalling her vision of the horse emerging from this murky liquid to stand at the brim, and watch with panic the blood shooting up to stain these waters red. Her heart began to slam in her chest when realizing that, if she had been unconscious, how could she have a detailed image of the horse watching the pond turn red, when clearly, she had been drowning inside it. This vision most definitely was a fantasy of her mind when it fell into unconsciousness. But, if there was no horse and no monster, could all this have been another dream, just like the one she had had with Sheliad? Her eyes round and alert, she began to tremble; she needed to bridle her imagination or else the folk would deem her crazy and lock her up.

Her hands shot to her head, gripping her hair. 'What is happening!' she exclaimed helplessly. 'I'm not insane! I did see a horse, and I did see a monster! And you,' she turned to Thranduil. 'You battled it and saved my life!'

Thranduil drew nearer, and he placed his hands upon her shoulders. 'Harlette,' he began, 'there is no monster,' he affirmed. Harlette slapped his hands away from her. 'I see you don't believe me!'

There was a long silence.

Harlette huffed angrily, her fists at her waist. 'Why would I have plunged in the pond for no reason?!'

There was another long silence.

'Because you are a child, Harlette.' Thranduil broke the ice. 'You are a child, and a distraught one.'

Harlette shrieked in outrage, and before she could insult him, Bernard was talking: 'You fell ill, gravely ill, and you are still recovering. So most definitely, your mind is taking time to adjust. And adjusting is a hard task since you find yourself in this unknown world, where your landmarks have vanished!'

'A horse guided me here! I was lured here! I am not crazy! There was a horse, and there was a monster and there was a sha_'.

'Harlette!' he interjected. 'Speak sensibly. There is no horse, and there is no monster within these waters. It was a dream, and a powerful one, which took hold of your senses.'

Harlette's mouth trembled with the need to let out a cry of despair.

'Please, Harley, the king speaks truthfully. We both would have noticed the horse and the monster if there were any to be found. You were utterly alone,' Bernard explained softly.

Harlette's eyes found Thranduil's which studied her expectantly.

'Yes, you are right, Bernard…' her voice rasped out. 'My senses are still very muddled; I was asleep for too long, and this world is so alien to me, I have difficulty in finding my landmarks…' she justified. 'And as for my behavior, I'm sorry,' she told Thranduil who watched her intently. 'I got carried away cos of that Bicthlian,'

'Melian,' Thranduil corrected.

'Whatever,' Harlette replied, with a dismissive flourish of her hand, jealousy and a need to murder coiling up in the pit of her stomach.

Thranduil heaved a sigh of exasperation, 'I fail to understand how I keep such patience with you. I treat you with gentleness and respect, even though you prove to deserve none.'

'Gentleness and respect?' Harlette snorted. 'Oh, please! Don't make me laugh!'

'Harlette, stop that…' Bernard muttered under her beard. Thranduil glared, and he advanced towards the defiant girl.

'What are you thinking?' she asked uncertainly, stepping back as he drew forth, his eyes sharp like that of a hawk, his step soundless and predator-like.

'I am amused,' he shrugged, and kept on approaching her rearing self with a growing grin, a grin which only rendered him more beautiful and wickedly wilder.

'You are amused?' her voice dripped with ire and concern when she found herself backed against a tree, with him right before her, both his hands resting on the wood, at either side of her face.

'Yes, is it a crime to be amused?' he whispered, smiling darkly, his nose grazing hers. At the contact, her heart slammed inside her, and she trembled, but not from fear...

Despite having the wheels of her brain turning, Bernard uncovered no solution to pull Harlette from that tricky situation.

'It's not a crime to be amused, but I'm very curious about the source of your amusement,' Harlette responded in a clipped manner, her heart slamming harder when her heaving chest touched his every now and then. She felt sudden heat between their bodies, and her whole inner self writhed, yearning for his touch. His beautiful face was so close to her scarlet one, she could not think of anything else than what would be his reaction if she were to lunge for his mouth.

'You.'

'Me?!' she let out, all thoughts of kissing him discarded in forgetfulness.

'Yes, you amuse me, for its side-splitting how you take everything for granted,' he started, his gaze leisurely traveling along her baffled features. 'You always manage to show such little gratefulness to those who save your life, and I have done so...' his voice trailed off as his eyes descended to her porcelain shoulder, which was left bare by the sleeve which had slipped downwards. 'Oh, I lost count,' he finished with a grin, his hand slowly pulling the sleeve upwards. Warmth radiated from his touch into her body. She watched his fingers upon her shoulder, and her trembling breath grew scarce when her mind plunged in erotic fantasies involving him and her, with not a stitch of clothing to their names, lost in a passionate embrace. Slowly she looked up at her interlocutor. Their eyes met. His sensual lips were curling up wickedly: he most definitely knew every dirty thought that had danced in her mind. But o lord, she would not be outdone!

'Oh, my sainted skirts!' she blurted out, almost spitting at his face. 'Please! You saved my life be-be-because it is your duty as king to watch over mighty and meek alike, and not because you sustain any particular fondness for my person!'

Thranduil frowned and drew back. 'My duty?'

'Oh dear…here we go again…' Bernard groaned.

'You think it is my duty to watch over you?' he laughed. 'I know not what triggers my heroic behaviors when your life is concerned, but I assure you, Harlette, it is not my duty to watch over you. You, who have, after all, nothing to do with Mirkwood, and I suspect, nothing to do with Middle Earth at all.' Thranduil could hardly believe he dared linger by her side when important matters solicited his immediate attention, for indeed, Gandalf had arrived this morning with news of an alarming nature_

'You should stop stalking me then! You are but a freak who wears dresses in his spare time!' Harlette shouted, interrupting the king's thoughts. Her hand shot up to slap his face, but his grasped hers. 'Let go of me, Thranduil!'

'Not before you apologize,' he replied casually.

'For what?!' she yelled.

Bernard meowed angrily at their childish behavior.

'For absolutely everything. Apologize, or I toss you in the water with the bloodied remains of our late foe.'

'There is no foe, you told me so yourself!'

'But in your distraught mind there is one.'

'You wouldn't dare throw me there!'

'By Mordor I would!' Upon these words, Harlette was lifted up in the air and thrown over his shoulder. 'Stop it!' Harlette bellowed, slapping his back with her fists.

He took long strides towards the pond.

Suddenly, her weight was lifted off from his shoulders.

Bernard screamed meows of alarm.

Thranduil looked up, to find her screaming self floating above him, upside down, her skirts over her face.