hi everybody :) i have not been having a Fun And Sexy Time these past couple of years but i am doing better now i think. honestly i completely forgot what even happened in this story until i dug it up again. what can i say quarantine been hittin hard

The switches on the electrical panel hum as I flip them, grinning around the flashlight in my mouth as the generator picks up and the lights flicker back on. I slam the panel shut and trudge back down the hall in my fluffy socks.

"I've got the power back on!" I exclaim cheerfully.

Sauron raises his head to look at me from where he's curled up in the corner of the sofa, reading a book he'd picked off of my shelf. I'd found a pair of my brother's jogging pants and a sweatshirt in the closet and given them to him. He's somehow managing to look completely unbothered, which I envy.

"Hey, do you want some food?" I'd found a box of protein bars and some Gatorade in the pantry. I'm not sure how old they are, but they're better than nothing, I guess.

"I don't need to eat."

"Oh. Do you mean you're not hungry, or as, like, a general statement?"

"A general statement." He flips to the next page of a book he's got in his lap, Weapons of the World Wars, and lifts it up closer to his face in subtle but obvious interest. I wince.

"Great. Well, I do, so I need to get groceries, but my bank account's frozen, which means I need to call my mother, which I've been putting off..." I trail off, muttering to myself and picking up my phone.

I scuttle off to the kitchen and type in the number, dread welling up in my stomach as the line rings. I feel my nails nearly carving half-moons into the counter when the other end clicks and a familiar voice say, "Hello?"

"Uh, hi, Mom." I pull the phone a few inches away from my ear and wait for the explosion.

"WHAT?! ANA! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?! WHY HAVEN'T YOU CALLED?!"

"Uh... well..."

"Answer me! You've been missing for five months!"

"Uh, hm, yes. I have... been on a vacation. Yes."

"A vacation." My mother sounds skeptical, and I don't blame her.

"Yeah. Everything was just, you know, a little too much, and I needed to take a break and just spend some time alone. You know."

"No, I don'tknow. Why didn't you call?!"

"I, uh, forgot my phone at home. I was already a couple hours away when I realized, and I just didn't wanna go all the way back to get it, but I meant to call, I just... forgot. I guess." I can see the iron curtain of maternal concern slamming back down over my adult independence, further and further with every word that trips out of my mouth.

"You... forgot." I hear the coldness in her voice and wince.

"Also, um, my bank account got frozen, so... um..."

"Were you traveling with someone? Why haven't you accessed your bank account in five months?"

No no no no! Do Not Ask That!

"Uh... well... I do have a traveling buddy, sort of. I mean, it's not like I've been wandering around alone for five months."

"...is it a boy? Please tell me you didn't run off with a boy, Ana."

I press the phone into my chest and let out a long, low scream into the crook of my elbow, hopefully muffling it from both the phone and the living room.

"Fuck! Mom! I'm an adult! And no, I didn't run off with a boy. I'm not that much of a moron. And, um, anyways, i was wondering if you could maybe help me with-"

I hear her sigh crackle through the phone speaker. "Of course I'll help you; I'm not going to let my baby freeze and starve. And don't swear at me."

I let the 'baby' comment pass in exchange for a sigh of my own. "Thank you. Sorry. I was worried there, for a little bit, actually-"

"But only if you do something for me. You have to come and see us. And your siblings. And I'll have to tell people that you apparently just decided to drop off of the grid because of unsatisfactorily explained reasons." She sounds bitter. I cringe again.

"Yeah. Yeah, I can do that. Of course I can do that."

"Good. I love you, Ana. I hope you know that."

"I love you too, Mom. Bye." Thank God. I knew she would be more scared than angry, but this wasn't quite the disaster I had foreseen. Something in my stomach unclenches, and I let out a faint sigh.

"Bye. Oh, and you should bring your 'traveling buddy' with you. See you soon!"

WAIT A SECOND-

"MOM! Mom! What do you mean, bring my traveling buddy?!"

I hear a click and the other line goes dead. I throw the phone onto the rug and scream into my hands, curling up my body before taking a deep breath and relaxing.

This isn't the end of the world.

Oh, who am I kidding. My mom's going to try to ask Sauron relationship questions. I can see the flaming buildings in my mind. A siren goes off, distantly.

#####

The muffled scream spills into the living room, pulling Sauron out of a state of concentration. He had been reading the book- skimming it, actually- but he'd been plotting as well.

Landing in a foreign world with no definite hope of return home and no familiar elements except for one irritating, flighty girl is enough to throw a wrench in the works of anyone's plan, regardless of whether or not that person is a primordial spirit with plans for world domination. But this has happened to Sauron before- showing up in a foreign land, immersing himself in the culture, sorting out which people actually ran things, and which are convenient figureheads, ingratiating himself to those people, and gradually, so gradually shaping their ideals to match his own- and he's been successful.

But first, he's giving himself a little while to regroup, figure out what to do about his constant splitting headache, take stock of the available technology and its possible uses, observe Ana and her lifestyle, and formulate a plan.

Already, Ana has, from inside the kitchen, spoken with her mother, who he is assuming lives a distance away; the concept of the palantíri put to convenient, everyday use. He's very interested in figuring out the mechanism behind it, and already is building a few theories.

Now that he has a chance to sit and think, though, his mind keeps traveling back to the events of the last few days. Not only his fury at being defeated by a pair of halflingsand that wretched gollumcreature- no; Ana had known of these events for months, and had said nothing. She had lived in his tower, taken advantage of his (admittedly both grudging and lacking) hospitality, and she had still said nothing until it was too late.

He supposes that he had thrown her a dungeon cell- it was one of the cleanest, most brightly-lit cells in the whole fortress- and she is probably still upset about that, even though her anger seems to come and go like a summer breeze.

But still. Was she really willing to give up her life? There was no way she could have known that they would survive the collapse. Either she was riding on pure luck and battle-rush, or she had made her peace with dying. Considering how she had spilled at the very end, as if in a desperate attempt to get him to do something, he suspects it was the former.

Still, she's not insufferable. There are worse people to be trapped with and dependent upon in a strange world- he is fairly confident that Ana, despite how she may feel about him, is too kind-hearted to do anything but house him.

(He's forming contingency plans in the event that this is not the case, however.)

A piece of him thinks that she's doing this partly for her own amusement.

anyway thanks for dropping by and please dont hate me. future updates rest upon the whims of my short attention span so sorry :) i will try my best to keep up

hey do yall mind horribly if i switch to third-person perspective? turns out im kind of allergic to first-person now