Disclaimer: If I owned any of these characters, I would definitely not be the poor college student that I am. Oh, and I also can't write songs, so all the song lyrics I'm stealing from Alanis Morissette's "Precious Illusions" belong to her, too.
A/N: Decided to have some fun with the Lord of the Rings, since I love both the movie and the series. R&R please! ^_^
A/N: (3/5/02) Okay my fellow fanfiction.net readers and visitors…I thought that this story was a good idea when I started it (just like millions of other storywriters before me), but I'm not sure if I want to continue with it. Please, give me some direction, people! I know this isn't like my Diaries, but I do enjoy writing longer stories. Just…R&R so I can figure out whether I should lay this story to rest or not.
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Sometimes, my dreams haunt me. Every once in awhile, when I fall asleep, I become somebody else. I look into a mirror and it's not my own features staring back at me, but a stranger's. Whenever this happens, I'll panic and try to scramble away from the disconcerting (and frankly frightening) image, tripping and stumbling. It doesn't matter how or at what cost, just as long as I get away. Eventually, I'll fall. When this happens, there's always a strong arm behind me. No matter what, he always catches me.
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Marion Young jolted awake, the sensation of falling lingering on her skin. For a second, she was completely disoriented. Blinking, her eyes adjusted to the night to find that she was not surrounded by her covers or her bed, but grass and trees. She sat up and rubbed her arms, hoping to rid herself of the goosebumps that had arisen. Retracing her steps, she remembered; she had been relaxing in the forest by her house. The last thing she recalled was lying on the grass and watching the clouds lazily drift above her. Now it had to be at least 8, for the crescent moon was low but steadily rising over her head. Her mother was going to kill her.
Standing up, Marion stretched, wincing as various muscles made their discomfort known. What had she been thinking, falling asleep like that in the middle of a forest? A million different crimes - each one more terrible than the last - could have been committed against her while she slept: theft, kidnapping, rape, murder. Sure, it was a small town, but crimes of that nature were not unknown there. And what had she risked her life over? A bit of sleep and a dream; not even a good dream at that. Retracing her steps back through the tiny forest, images of her dream flashed in her mind. It had been a bit different this time. Instead of just walking aimlessly, she had been searching for something…no, someone.
That's right, while wandering through unfamiliar territory, she heard someone scream a name. It wasn't even that she heard, but felt it inside of her. That was when the crying started. Not the sobbing that would accompany such grief that she knew the person was feeling, but the heart-wrenching quiet tears that had to be fought back. The sound simply continued to echo in the back of her mind, driving her to search for the source. The need to help this individual filled her, not because he (she was sure it was a he now) was crying, but because he was holding his tears back. The action made her want to find him, wrap him in a hug, and assure him that it would all be alright. Her need grew more and more frenzied and soon she began to run blindly, oblivious to the branches cutting her arms and face. Then she tripped, landing right at the bank of a small brook. While picking herself up, she noticed her reflection only by chance. Forgetting the search, she staggered away from the stranger she saw there. That was when she fell backwards and those strong arms were around her, supporting her.
Shivering, Marion wrapped her own arms around herself. The cold night and pervasive dark did nothing to lighten her mood. Coming to a stop, Marion noticed that cutting off the path in front of her was a thick bramble of trees and branches. Sighing, Marion awkwardly set to climbing over them. When one foot was on the opposite side, she noticed that she must have been turned around somewhere in the dark. Once over the road-block she found, not the short mass of trees signifying the end of the forest in front of her, but a sharply descending hill. Annoyed, she turned herself around and began to climb back onto the bramble. But when she put her weight on the pile, her foot stepped through the weaker branches. Irritated, she tried to pull her foot back to no avail. Setting her free foot down on sturdier ground, she yanked again to find herself thoroughly stuck. Now grumbling at how horrible this night was shaping out to be, she hopped on one foot and pivoted to a near by branch. When she had a firm hold on it, she tugged with varying degrees of strength until with a final, vicious heave, her foot broke free of its trap. But she'd pulled too hard and lost her balance, somersaulting backwards down the hill. What had seemed to be a sturdy branch broke with a resonating snap and Marion tumbled backwards, then sideways with increasing speed. Closing her eyes to the spinning world, Marion tucked herself into a ball as best she could, feeling stones slash her arms and face.
Then, she was airborne. Terrified, Marion had enough time to think, 'Did the hill end in a cliff? I'm going to die…' before she plunged into a deep river. Shocked by the cold, Marion gasped involuntarily, water filling her mouth and trickling down her throat. Opening her eyes, all she could see was a blur of water and streams of light as she slowly sunk to the bottom. She tried frantically to thrash her arms and legs, but her clothes ballooned around her, making it impossible for her to swim back to the surface. Her vision was beginning to ink out around the edges; her limbs were so very tired; she was very tired. She was so tired that she stopped struggling, stopped fighting the water that was welcoming her into its home. Suddenly, there was a tug around her neck. Vaguely, she noticed the water fly in reverse.
With a great gasp, Marion sucked in as much air as she could manage. Someone had grabbed her shirt around the collar and plucked her from the river, depositing her in a boat. Lying where she had been placed, all she had the strength to do was cough up the water that had filled her lungs. Weakly, she managed to gaze up at her savior to find a man towering over her. He had long blonde hair, blue eyes, and…pointy ears? That wasn't right…
Averting her eyes, she coughed up some more water. When she faced the man again, he had turned away from her and there were no pointy ears. What had she learned in her life-guarding class? That when water is inhaled, a person slips into a pleasant and dream-like state, inducing hallucinations? Didn't Brad Pitt say something like that in Fight Club?
Resting her head on the bottom boat, Marion closed her eyes, but, even though she was exhausted, did not sleep. The lack of oxygen made her thinking muddy and harder to follow, but she knew that the river she had just fallen into should not be there. Throughout the eighteen years she'd lived in her house by the small forest, she had trekked over every inch of it. Not only was there no river, but there wasn't even a creek, a brook, nor any other collection of water bigger than a puddle. Certainly two acres of trees couldn't conceal a river of that size. What was going on? Perhaps she had knocked herself out when she'd fallen down the hill. But, it all seemed so real. The wood underneath her, the cling of soaked clothes on her body, her hair stringy and pasted to her neck, even the sound of water lapping against the side of the boat was all just too real to be a figment of her subconscious. So what had happened? How had she gotten there?
Opening her eyes again, the scenery was swiftly shifting as the man who had saved her paddled upstream. Weakly, she pushed herself into a sitting position. As she did so, the collar of her shirt dipped dangerously low on her chest.
"Christ," Marion swore under her breath, as she hugged the soaked material close to her, hoping that nothing else was showing. When she had been dragged out of the water, her shirt must have been stretched out. But as she investigated, it wasn't just her collar; the hem was at her knees and what used to be short sleeves were now at three-quarter length. Her shorts were baggy around her waist. Everything couldn't have been stretched out when all she had been pulled out by was her shirt. While she had been thinking, the boat bumped against the bank.
To her right, was a city, but all the houses were balanced on the branches of enormous trees, staircases circling around the trunks connecting them to the ground. All the structures were bathed in incandescent light, giving it a fairy-tale like feel. Faintly, she could hear chorused voices singing slowly and beautifully a lament, the words indiscernible. As she soaked in the new surroundings, someone on the shore came to investigate.
Marion's savior leapt out of the boat to confront the newcomer. A few words were exchanged in a different language and the newcomer threw her a sidelong glance. Studying him, he also had long blonde hair and blue eyes, but half of his hair was pulled back to prominently display his pointed ears. Shaking her head to clear it of the hallucination, she sprayed water droplets in a small circle around her.
Around her, a puddle had formed from all the water soaked up in her clothes and hair by the river. A drip rippled the small collection of water while Marion focused on it. All the strangeness around her was not feeling real again. Arms grabbed her underneath the arms and dragged her roughly out of the boat as she tried to keep inside her grossly oversized clothes. Her eyes fixed on her reflection in the water, stomach churning and knees weakening, she could not rip her gaze from what she saw. Instead of wet, stringy straight black hair, dripping curls were drying around her face. Poking out of her new hairstyle were pointed ears. Slowly it registered that more people had surrounded her and that someone was talking to her. Forcibly, a hand grabbed her chin and jerked her head to face him. He was comparably larger and wore a menacing frown.
"Who are you to trespass on the lands of Lothlorien?" He growled dangerously.
Hazily, she realized that he was yelling at her to answer. Marion looked up at the pointed-ears man slowly, but then a blackness rushed up to meet her.