A/N: So here we are... Day one... Terrifying. Someone, please give me a drink. Brandy or Whiskey if you please. But I'll settle quite happily for tea. Blame my mother and her tea obsession. It's probably genetic at this point.

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Much Love

JR

P.s. P-atreon and Ko-fi update: Why aren't there tiers and goals yet on either? Mainly because I'm trying to get used to writing regularly on them. I don't want to promise my patrons something and not be able to deliver. So I'm working on building slowly and getting my routine down, then I will be doing some patron-only content like polls for story design and personalized thank-yous and inspiration videos or packages that contain some of the things that inspire each story and other various things. So hang in there with me, I'm still learning, and sign up to follow me so that when the tiers and goals go live you'd be the first to know. (Edit: There is a poll up on my P-atreon page now!)

Pps. I've begun posting on Ao3 beginning with older stories. Any deleted "scenes" of the oldest stories will be posted there as well. What do I delete? Mainly anything that needs to be edited out to meet the rating rules on . But also little interesting snippets that just slowed down the pacing. Eventually, when I am caught up to present stories the snippets and deleted scenes will be posted first to patrons, then to Ao3. I will not be posting them to . Apologies. But has more "interesting" rules.

Also, I wanted to give my thanks for the unfailing support and thoughts of my reviewer and followers. Not only on The Singer Saga to this point (many many thanks for the continued support Nyx!) but also on my entire body of work to this point. All of you are rockstars and I would not have the desire to share my words and created worlds without all of you. So my most sincere and humble thanks.

Prologue "Welcome to Arda."

Some days you just know are going to be bad. You wake up and immediately that feeling of dread overwhelms you. You may not know why or how. But you do know it's going to be a bad day.

She had assumed that it was going to be a bad training day. That the blasted Scottish weather would start snowing in the middle of a sunny day and Caelann would come down with pneumonia that would scar her lungs or some such nonsense. Healing from her injuries wasn't hard enough, it had to depress her immune system while it was at it. Lovely.

She should have known better. Nothing would get that stubborn Scot down. After all, a bomb blast didn't kill her, what could possibly hurt her any more than that? She had been exploded in two worlds. Battered and brutalized in ways that no sane person could survive. She had been abandoned, found, lost, and loved. She had lived a life full of amazement and wonder and terrors beyond counting. But nothing had ever broken her.

Nothing but a damn car.

Sherilyn hated hospitals. Always had, always would. But after this indomitable woman, who had become closer to her than her own family ever could be, was taken to one where else was she to go but with her?

So there she was brushing out the hair of the woman who was more of a sister than a friend and she slipped on a ring. Then she disappeared.

And found herself submerged in water.

Blinking her eyes open, she twisted first one way, then back in shock. How in god's green earth had she wound up sitting hip-deep in the mud bottom of a river bed with weeds twisting about in her hair? This was a bad dream she thought. All I need to do is wake up.

Then her lungs began aching and burning.

Pushing the weeds back from her face, she nearly screamed when she saw the back of her hand was glowing in the murky depths. Actually glowing. Not pale in the darkness so it just seemed like it but actually shimmering. Her eyes widened in shock and she had to remind herself not to scream. Suddenly getting out of the water had become a priority. Because while she had never experienced it herself, this glow looked all too familiar.

She remembered it. Remembered it from dreams that had seemed all too real. Remembered it from dreams that her old granny, who no one else believed had the second sight, had told her that she needed to pay attention to. Dreams that had led her to the Scottish highlands.

Pushing to the surface, her muscles strained as if she had just been through a triathlon. They burned. And hurt in a way that she hadn't felt in years. Not since she left home and never looked back.

Breaking through the surface of the water with a gasp, she pushed towards the cattails that waved a soft breeze at the edge of the lazy river. Arms that ached and throbbed, shook with the strain. But it wasn't until her legs were trapped by one of the underwater weeds that she began to panic. "Help!"

Walking along the banks of the river Bruinen that ran alongside the great city of Imladris in the spring had always been a calming time for him since he returned back to Arda. Especially after a long day of training elves that he felt were too young to lift a sword, let alone take an orc's life. But they had just as much right to protect their home as any other he supposed.

That did not change the fact that he needed to relax and ease muscles that were sore with the strain of training them. Beings who did not know what to do with a sword, he had found over the years, were more dangerous in some ways than skilled fighters. You had to work that much harder not to hurt them before they actually learned.

Closing his eyes as he walked the long memorized path, he listened to the water gently lap at its banks. He heard the gentle breeze rustle the leaves of the fresh new shoots of the cattails and smelled the earliest of the springtime flowers responding to the bright sunlight.

It was this time of year that he missed Aman more than ever. Long years he had spent waiting for the time when Elrond decided to sail west. But it was not yet, he thought on a heavy breath. Opening his eyes once more, he started when before him on the path stood someone whom he had known long ago. An old friend. She had died. And yet there she stood, barefoot and dressed in a plain white shift of fabric so soft it could have been a cloud.

She was there but wasn't, he realized. Because neither her shift nor her long unbound hair moved in the breeze that gently whispered past his ears.

"Caelann?" He asked aloud. She was in the unseen realm, he realized, looking at her pristine feet that shone without a speck of the mud that would have been caked there had she been in this realm. He doubted anyone else would see her as he was one of the few beings in Arda that could see into the unseen realm. Maybe Mithrandir. But the grey wizard wasn't here currently.

Blinking, the singer turned to him, terror filling her glowing green eyes. "Glorfindel she's down there!" She pointed. "Ulmo willnae let me go!" She raced to get out. "I cannae touch her! I cannae touch anything! Even if I go I cannae pull her out! Please!"

Picking up speed, he jogged the last feet to her and reached a hand out to her shoulders. And it passed right through, just the way he had feared in his heart that it would. She was there but not. And now he had proof. "Who it in the water, Caelann?" He asked, pushing the issue of her being in the unseen realm aside for the moment. "Where?"

"Tis' Sherilyn!" She sobbed, pointing into the water just as a head broke through the water. "There!"

Kicking off his boots took but a moment, and in that moment he heard the most heart-wrenching thing an ellon or a man of good character could ever possibly hear. One female scream for help. And one scream in impotent fear.

Glorfindel leaped into the water.

Slicing through the water with powerful kicks, muscles strained as he chanted in his mind old words. Words that begged Ulmo for his aid and he felt the water push faster around him in response. Ulmo guarded his singers jealously.

She shone brightly in the darkness of the water, shimmering as the silmarils had so long ago. Shimmering with the light of the trees? But how, he wondered and then shoved the thoughts aside when he saw she still and the light begin to fade.

Catching at her floating arms, he yanked her up from the muck that she had sunk back down to and growled when it became obvious what held her down. Quickly he reached for the weed and yanked it from around her ankle, leaves, and slime coming off in his hands as he pulled.

And then she was free. Floating in the water alongside him like a macabre wraith.

There had been many sights in his long life, both times, that made him feel more than a little ill. This was one. It reminded him greatly of too many times he had watched his friends die. Of the kin slayings and frozen bodies and balrogs and wars with the dead floating in fetid marshes that no one ever won. It made his stomach roll.

But he had no time to dwell on it. Not if he wanted to prevent a similar outcome.

Pulling her away from the weeds and back to the surface, he broke through and gasped for air before digging through the water for shore dragging her leaden weight against his chest. "She is not breathing." He gasped to the female that waited anxiously on the shore.

Hauling the unconscious female into his arms, Glorfindel carried her past the weeds that lined the river. Tripping over the roots that covered the banks, his feet slid into the mud and he nearly fell. Pulling out with a grunt of effort, he finally made it to the shore, and there, inches from the water's edge, he dropped her to the damp leaves.

Silently Caelann appeared before him, kneeling in the mud that should have stained her snowy white shift but didn't touch her at all. "Do you ken CPR?" She asked, anxiously clenching her hands in the folds of her clothes.

"What?" He asked unfamiliar with the term.

"Check for a heartbeat." She ordered when he didn't move. "Ear against her chest." At his blush, she rolled her eyes. "Now!"

Pressing his ear to her chest he listened for the faintest sound. And after a moment, there it was. A soft thud. "I hear a beat."

"Good," she sighed. "Now thank the Valar ye're an elf and no human or I'd have ta do this a more difficult way. Ye have ta get the water from her lungs and get her breathing again."

Confusion filled his gaze. Breathe again? The only way to get someone breathing again was to have them pass through the Halls of Mandos and return.

"Do exactly as I tell ye." She ordered again. "Pinch her nose shut." She directed, carefully taking him through each step, her voice never rising or showing panic that colored her face. There was a tension in it though. Something that he recognized all too well from his time with battlefield healers and generals. It was the terrifying tenuous calm that was often found within someone who stood between life and death all too often.

The female beneath him gave a cough as he was pushing on her chest, having ignored the sickening crack of bone he felt beneath his palms.

"Roll her ta her side." Caelann directed, her hands moving as if to hold her head but knowing that she couldn't help. Couldn't touch.

Pushing the female beneath his palms onto her side, he sagged with relief when she spat up what seemed like half the river and began breathing on her own. It was the sweetest sound he had heard in quite some time.

Carefully he helped her to sit up, frowning at the muscle he felt along her shoulders. Females normally didn't have muscles that had enough definition that he could feel it beneath the fabric. Not even the rare ellith that decided to train with the guard. "Are you well?"

Caelann rolled her eyes. "Check her scalp. See if there are any injuries."

"I have had some experience with injuries." He reminded but threaded his long fingers through the rather odd-colored hair that lay matted against her scalp. It was as light pink as the blossoms of the apple trees. He had never seen a color like that. Against her unnaturally pale skin, which was normally darker than the tribes of the deserts to the south, it had the effect of making her look quite innocent, childlike even.

"She changes her hair almost every fortnight," Caelann guessed, seeing him mesmerized by the color. "She'll have ta go back to her true color for now though, I'm afraid."

"No head wounds." The ancient ellon murmured, returning to the matter at hand.

"See how her eyes react ta the light please."

Carefully he peeled her oddly shaded lids back and grunted in satisfaction when the female jerked away from him with a groan.

"Where am I?" She muttered, looking around to the trees and the river but not focusing on anything. "I was just in the hospital. How did I end up here?" Starting again when her dark stormy eyes landed on him, she jerked out of his hold. "Who are you?"

"Welcome to Arda." Her eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped dead away. Blinking, the Lord of the Golden Flower looked up to the Singer, puzzlement filling his gaze. "Not the normal reaction I get after rescuing a maiden."

Shaking her head, Caelann sighed like she was dealing with a trainee. "Take her up to my cottage and get Elrond."