It has been thirty years since she dropped unexpectedly into a younger world at war with a very real darkness. She hasn't aged; the reflection that stares back at her from the waters of rivers, lakes, and ponds are a foreign image of a young woman she hadn't been when she was abandoned in the wild.

It hadn't made any sense at first, the pull to travel ever westward, over mountains and rivers and streams. But the first time she ran afoul of those hideous creatures which only wanted for her cruel death, she understood.

The world was at war, and though the war was the worst in the west of its land, she had been called.

The first orc pack she runs across is quite small compared to ones she will battle with later on, but still they are dangerous. She has no weapons like the crude iron and steel the vile creatures use to hack at trees and flesh, but she is not unarmed. Her body, her blood, her very soul is her weapon. When she awoke in the strange, wild green of this new world, her inborn talents were stronger and she was faster than she had ever been before, even if she looked quite different to how she knows she used to look before.

She was lucky, in a way, that the first people she comes across are kind, if not suspicious and wary. She had not understood their language, and neither could they understand any of those she was fluent in, but they taught her with patience and she learned quickly. She learned the languages and history of the world she had somehow come into. And she learned, finally, what she was.

Elves. They had been elves, Laiquendi in one of the languages she learned—which they had taught her reluctantly, and only because her coloring suggested to them that she was of that race of eldar, dark haired and grey-eyed as she was. They had said the only reason they bothered with her at all was because the trees spoke excitedly of her and to her. Trees could speak, and hadn't that been such a strange thing she had noticed shortly after coming into Arda—the name of the world the green elves taught her—but magic which was bound to her very soul had taught her many other strange things before, and so she did not think too much on the trees which spoke to her.

But still, the orcs. The green elves had not steel to give her for her journey west—which they advised her not to go, but understood a calling nonetheless—but a bow and a quiver of arrow which she had been taught to make were on her back when she left them after ten years. Gifts, they had said, to the one who came from the stars, and a name they gave her also—Elraneth

But her bow and arrows were not on her as the first group of orcs passed the river in which she had been bathing, and so instead of killing them in the traditional fashion of the elves—a race which she had not long accepted she belonged to, though she did nonetheless—she felled them with magic fire, burning them to ash.

She did so many more times on her journey westwards, using her arrows only to hunt for food. Magic to kill the creatures of darkness, arrows for her food.

Until she came upon a small band of elves, different looking than the laiquendi and geared for war, battling against a much larger force of orcs. Then, she used both magical fire and arrows to subdue their foes. The looks on the faces of those to whom she was supposedly kin, however, were not of thankful gratitude, but fear and suspicion. So using the woodcraft taught to her years prior, she disappeared into the forest from which she came and left them to clean up the orcs which surely would have slaughtered them all without her assistance.

She had no need for fear from others, she'd lived through that once before. So she took it as a lesson, fashioned more arrows, and went on westwards, more cautious of using her magic when not sure she was alone.

More orcs she found, in ever-increasing numbers, though few elves. When there were only orcs, she burned them all. When there were elves, she fired arrows and retreated, never meeting with the small numbers in person to receive any thanks that might come from them.

She was called west, and she would not stop until the call itself loosed its hold on her. She had faith in only two things: her magic, and that the darkness of the world needed to be ended. Her magic called her west so west she would go, and orcs were creatures of foul darkness, so orcs she would slay.

She met no more elves for many seasons, and did not mind this in the least. But a rather large number of orcs she came upon one day, years after a new, bright star had risen in the sky, and they were attacking a very small number of elves. She fired arrows as the five elves held their own with steel, but she knew it would not be enough. As one elf was downed, she loosed her hold on her magic. Instead of fire, she rent the earth beneath the orcs advancing upon the elves and the fell into the new chasm.

The orcs slain, she went to turn around and disappear once more, but a voice called out to her.

"Wait!" it said in a clear tone, and she halted her steps but did not turn around. "Please let us know who me may thank for our survival."

Slowly, she turned around to appraise the surviving four elves which had done battle with a mutual enemy. Two were twins, nearly identical to her eye, though one had a scar above his left brow and the other's face was free of blemish though dirty. One had dark hair, taller than the twins, and more thinly built as well, he had dark grey, nearly black eyes. The fourth elf had hair which was a light brown and blue-green eyes, and her form was lithe but well-built for running and fighting.

"I am called Elraneth," she replied, a hand still wrapped around her bow at her side. "Well met."

The four elves walked towards her and she did not flee though there was a desire to, but they were not very far from her at all, not even fifty feet, and she knew they would see where she ran to as the trees were much farther away from her than they.

"Well met, Elraneth," the other twin said with a slight incline of his head. "I am Elrond, my twin is Elros, and these are Erestor and Gilmeth."

"We thank you for your kindly intervention," Elros continued smoothly, though this did not surprise Elraneth, for such was the way of twins of her old world. "Without it, all five of us may have been slain. It is too late for Gilorn, but he would thank you as well."

Elraneth did not know what to make of these elves. Did they not fear her and her magic? Did they not know she was the cause of the earth opening up beneath the orcs' feet? She said nothing though, in hope that they would allow her to simply move on.

"I am sorry for your loss," she replied, bowing her head in a show of respect. Impulsively she asked, "Would you accept help in the burying of your lost companion?"

Four heads bowed to her in return and all was silent for a moment, even the trees behind her. "We would appreciate it," the one called Elrond answered with a somber face. "These are dangerous times to be numbered so few."

Elraneth wanted to curse herself. They would never let her leave alone now. But to reject the offer she herself made would make her situation worse, so she said, "Indeed."

With that, she followed the four elves to where their friend Gilorn had fallen, and they prepared two pyres. One for the burning of the orcs which had not fallen into the chasm, and one for the body of Gilorn. They did not have the tools to dig, but lighting fires was simple enough. Gilorn's pyre was made as nicely as could be, but the orcs were burned mostly in a pile with only enough dead wood and debris to catch fire.

"We must move," the one named Erestor said, his dark eyes searching the tree line. "It is not safe here."

"The horses have fled," Gilmeth remarked with a long face. "And with them our supplies."

"We are close enough to the shore that we should reach it by nightfall at least," Erestor sighed. "Let us be thankful for that."

"Where is it you head to?" Elraneth asked with a tilt of her head. It sounded as if they too were journeying westward, and they were right. It was dangerous to travel alone, though more so for the four of them than herself. She could always burn any orcs she came across.

"To the Isle of Balar, where most of the rest of the elves in Beleriand now stay while the Host of Valinor makes war with the Enemy and his forces," Elrond replied, and there was something in his voice which sounded both angry and sad.

Elraneth did not comment on what seemed to her a heavy reluctance to gather with other elves. She only said, "I myself head west, or as west as I may be able. Might I join you?"

All four looked to her with wide eyes. "Of course!" said Elros. "It is not as if we would leave you to fend for yourself."

Elraneth wanted to smirk, but she merely raised a brow. "I have come this far on my own."

The raised brows of both Erestor and Gilmeth told Elraneth that she might have been better off not saying anything but a thank you, but it was too late now to take back her words. She could not do much complicated magic without a wand, and so she could not simply obliviate these elves, if such a magic would even work on elves.

"Indeed," Erestor said, face gone back to a neutral impassivity which impressed Elraneth in how quickly his shock had been hidden after her ill-thought statement. He had an impressive mask as well as an impressive sword arm. "Since you have obviously lost your sword," he continued as he took the other sword tied to his right hip—the one of his dead friend Gilorn—and held it out to her, "you may make use of Gilorn's. He would rather his blade be useful in slaying the creatures which felled him instead of being left to be picked up by any of the enemy."

"I thank you," Elraneth replied as she took the hilt of the long, though plainly wrought, sword. It was possibly too long for her, but she would make do.

"Well," Gilmeth said, "we ought to be off. The sooner we hit the shore, the sooner we can figure out a way to get to Balar."

With that statement, the five elves gathered themselves, and walked off westward.