Eli could hear her teeth chattering as she trudged through the snow, her thick clothes suddenly feeling VERY insufficient in the biting wind. This is SO not good…I HATE the cold!!!
She blinked, trying to clear out the snowflakes that had settled on her eyelashes, and peered at the others, who were walking at a slight distance ahead of them. Leading them was Legolas, because the Elf could actually walk OVER the snow, and didn't have to trudge THROUGH it. Behind him was Gandalf, then Gimli, then the Hobbits, then Boromir, then themselves, and Aragorn brought up the rear.
Beside her, Camille started to grumble, Eli amazed at the fact that she managed to keep herself from stuttering. "And to think that I always wanted to see snow. Now I don't want to see it ever again!"
Aragorn came up behind them, putting his arms over their shoulders and giving them some protection from the cold. "You have never seen snow before?"
Eli shook her head, finally confident that she could talk without her chattering teeth interfering with her. "Nope. Our country's too far south for us to be able to experience winter. The coldest temperature we get isn't enough to allow for snow. We only have two seasons: rainy season, which is basically what autumn and winter are for us, and dry season, which is our spring and summer combined."
Camille sighed. "You know how I always complain about how hot it gets during summer? Now, I sure wish I could feel that instead of this cold."
"Try to get used to it, Ladies," Aragorn said with a sympathetic chuckle. "I know that this cold must be hard on you who are not used to it, but I know also that you are strong, and that you will be able to handle it."
Eli nodded. She did her best to smile at Aragorn. ^Thank you, Aragorn.^
The Ranger smiled at her. ^'Twas nothing, Eli.^
Just then, those ahead of them stopped, apparently unable to continue. Eli looked ahead, and noticed that Gandalf seemed to be standing at a bend in the path, and was shouting against the wind in a strange language. Huh? What's he doing?
It was only then that she heard a strange voice in the air around them. It sounded like a man's voice, drifting over to them through the winds. As she continued to listen to the voice, she felt herself beginning to weaken. She fell to her knees, the snow rising higher and higher around her. There was a loud CRACK, and she lost consciousness as tons of snow and ice fell over her, knocking her out.
* * *
Camille woke up to a MASSIVE headache throbbing its way through her brain. "Uuugh…" Slowly, she sat up, and rubbed her hand against her head. "What the hell happened?"
"You were buried under more than six feet of ice, my dear. Legolas, Boromir, Aragorn and Gimli took quite a while to get you out," Gandalf answered as he smiled down at her from his seat. He was smoking his pipe, and didn't look the worse for wear after that snowstorm.
Camille's mind was still working at a rather sluggish pace, but she managed to digest all the information Gandalf had told her, her head throbbing all the way. "Thank you for the update Gandalf. I don't need another reminder of that past experience." She knew that she sounded very cranky, but she didn't care. How do you expect me to act with this headache?!
Aragorn approached them then, holding a small bowl from which small curls of steam rose. He handed the bowl to her with a kind smile. "Here, inhale the steam for as long as you can. It should relieve some of the pain you have and make it more bearable."
Camille moved in an automatic fashion, taking the bowl from the Ranger's hand and holding it below her nose. The steam curled up from the water, and it carried a sweet, slightly pungent odor that went right to her head, and immediately cleared out the headache, as well as some of the other pains in her body. She felt her muscles relax, and she let out a long sigh. "Wow, that felt good…"
She opened her eyes, and noticed Aragorn looking at her with a smile on his face. "Do you feel better now?"
Camille nodded. "Uh huh, most definitely. And thank you for getting me out." She gave the bowl back to him, and stood up. Though she felt a little pain in her legs and back, it was dull and tolerable, so she just decided to grin and bear it. She walked over to where the Hobbits, Gimli, Legolas and Boromir were, sinking in the space between the Elf and the Dwarf. She smiled at them. "Thanks for helping me and Eli back there on Caradhras, you two. I owe you big time now."
Legolas smiled kindly at her in response, but Gimli chuckled. "You should thank the Elf, Camille. It was he who was most desperate to reach you through the snowfall. I only helped. You should have seen him when the ice fell on top of you, Lady! He became as pale as the snow that covered you, and he constantly shouted your name, and a lot of other words in Elvish."
"He was admonishing you, actually," said Gandalf from behind them. "He was saying that you should live, else he would throw himself down from the peaks of Caradhras."
Camille felt her eyes widen involuntarily as the rest of the Fellowship roared with laughter, and Legolas turned away, his face suddenly flushing crimson. Camille lowered her head, her mind running at top speed. Oh my God…did he really say that?! Was he REALLY intent on following me to the next world should I die?!
Her thoughts drifted back to the day before they left Rivendell, to the time when he told her that he loved her while she was standing on the viewing deck that overlooked the Bruinen River. She still remembered his words, for they were forever burned in her memory. I love you, Eriol. I love you, more so than you could ever imagine. My heart has longed for you since I saw you many moons ago, and that longing has only grown through time…
"Hey Camille, you okay?"
Camille jerked her head up, and noticed Eli standing in front of her. Apparently, she had woken up just a few minutes after she had, and was also treated by Aragorn. She blinked to clear her thoughts, and grinned, nodding at her friend. "Yeah, just fine. Never been better."
Pippin and Merry snorted a bit just then, but Eli chose to ignore them. She shrugged, and jerked her thumb over her shoulder. "Gandalf says that there's a cave nearby where we can take shelter in for the rest of the time before we continue on our journey. He thinks that we ALL need a break after what happened on Caradhras."
"Yeah, that we DO need." Camille got up, and followed Eli to where Gandalf was standing in front of a cave. She looked at the mouth of the place, and felt that something was weird about it. The entrance is shaped like a perfect rectangle… Filled with curiosity, she looked towards the sides, and rubbed her fingers over the edges to remove the dirt and moss that covered them. Sure enough, she found grooves in the stone where large hinges would have been fitted, and managed to clear out what looked like an intricate pattern cut into the stone.
Huh? What's this? Her curiosity fully aroused, she started to clear more and more of the dirt from the edge, and uncovered the motif of a border pattern that apparently went all around the opening of the "cave". And stranger still, the pattern was neither Elvish nor Dwarfish, but ORIENTAL. It looks like something that would be placed around the doors to a Chinese temple or a Japanese pagoda.
A cold wave rushed through her then. She turned to Eli, and cried, "Eli, take a look at this!"
The girl, who had been talking with Aragorn, turned to her, a slightly annoyed expression on her face. "What?"
"Just come here and look at this!" Camille exclaimed urgently.
The Ranger and her best friend looked at each other for a minute before walking up to her. Camille stepped back so that Eli could see the motif clearly, and she heard her gasp. "Oh my God, you've GOT to be kidding me…"
"What is the matter? Why do you seem so troubled by seeing this?" Aragorn asked, concerned.
Eli shook her head. "We're not troubled, just…shocked." She looked up towards the edge of the cave's mouth. "That pattern would have run around the edges over there." She pointed with her finger to the very top part of the entrance. "But since we can't reach that part, we're just going to have to assume." She scowled. "But how did it GET here in the first place?! This isn't an Elven design, and I can also safely say that it isn't Dwarfish. It looks like…it looks like a Chinese or Japanese pattern."
Aragorn was clearly confused. "Chinese? Japanese? You speak in riddles now, Eli."
Camille wasn't really concerned with them now. A huge slab of stone was standing there, and though the edges were now smooth and weatherworn, she could still make out the shape of it. It was rectangular and flat, cut in such a way that it could NOT have been made by Nature alone. She approached it, and started to wipe her hands over it, clearing off the grime of the ages.
Slowly, shapes began to appear beneath her searching fingers. An intricate design etched in the stone began to take form, along with a series of regularly made scratches that were apparently a form of writing. Soon, the whole face of the stone had been cleared, and Camille stood back to look at it.
Her jaw dropped. "Oh…my…GOD…"
* * *
Legolas sensed Camille's surprise, and he approached her to see if she was alright. ^Eriol?^ He found her standing in front of a stone slab that stood near the entrance of a cave, and she was staring at it as though it was the most amazing sight. What could be so special about a piece of rock? As he moved closer, however, he realized why she was staring at it.
A complicated pattern was carved near the top of the slab. There was a circle in the middle, with a wavy line down the middle and two dots on each half. Around it was a strange arrangement of creatures: a serpent-tortoise; a dragon similar to the one that was inlaid into Eli's scabbard; a phoenix, also quite similar to the one that Camille's sheaths bore; and a cat-like creature with stripes. Below this was a series of scratches, but they looked too regularly made to be considered as having been done by natural forces.
Camille was staring at the slab in awe. "I don't believe this… ELI! Get your little butt down here NOW!!!"
Eli ran over to her best friend's side, and the moment she saw the slab, she uttered a loud gasp. "Oh God, is that real?! But…but what is THAT doing here?! I thought that we were the only people from our world to have ever made it here!!!"
Legolas was stunned. "What are you trying to imply? That these things we see here are from YOUR world?"
Camille nodded her head vigorously. "Yeah, we're positive." She pointed at the design at the top. "You see that? The circle in the middle is the symbol for Yin and Yang, the forces that control the energies of the world. They are supposed to be opposites, but they complement each other. If there is too much or too little of either one, then there will be imbalances in the energies of the universe.
"And the animals around the symbol…those are supposed to be the Four Gods, from an ancient legend from China: Genbu, serpent god of the North; Seiryuu, dragon god of the East; Suzako, phoenix god of the South; and Byakko, tiger god of the West. They used to be worshipped in our world in another country called China, but their cult has long since died away."
Legolas lightly touched the rock, his fingertips lingering over the scratches. "But what are these other carvings? They seem to be runes of some sort, though I do not know exactly. They do not resemble the Elvish runes."
"That's because they AREN'T Elvish runes," Eli said quietly. She glanced at Camille. "They look like kanji, don't you think?"
Camille nodded. "Yeah, looks like it."
"Can you translate it then? I know how good you are when it comes to this sort of thing…"
"I don't know. I haven't memorized all the characters yet." Camille walked up to the slab, touching a pattern of scratches. "See, I know this one here is 'hoshi', or 'star', and that this one over here is 'yama'; 'mountain'." She closed her eyes. "I think I could translate it, but I'll need some time. And I'll need my dictionary to work it out accurately." She turned to Eli then. "Eli, could you do me a favor? Go check my backpack, and get me my pencil case, a notebook, and my kanji dictionary. The dictionary will be in the right side pocket."
Eli raised an eyebrow in amusement. "You brought your dictionary with you? Jeez Camille, you really DO love your books, don't you?"
Camille flashed a half-smile. "Books are always better than real, live boyfriends any day of the week, Eli. They don't talk back and they're always there for you. You can have as many of them as you want and they won't complain. Now could you just go and get my things for me now? I'm itching to find out what this all means."
As Eli ran off towards the packs, Legolas turned to Camille, and asked, "Are you sure you know what you are doing?"
The girl gave a slow nod. "I'm very sure. In fact, I've never been so sure in my entire life. There's something going on here, and whatever it is, I'm going to do my best to unravel it." She turned to him, and smiled. "You'd better tell the others about this. Tell Gandalf not to let the others go further into the cave until Eli and I manage to figure out what this all means."
Legolas smiled, and bowed to her. "As you wish, Camille."
* * *
Aragorn waited patiently for the two girls to finish their translation of the writings on the stone. For the most part, they worked in silence, but occasionally broke that to debate upon the meaning of a certain character or another. The debates did not last long, for they were usually resolved quickly.
Gimli shifted irritably. "What is taking them so long? I thought that they
would just have to translate a few characters."
"Patience, Gimli son of Gloin," Gandalf told the Dwarf. "I am certain that the Ladies will finish soon. After all, it is best not to go into dark caves without prior knowledge about them first."
At long last, Aragorn caught sight of Camille and Eli walking towards them the two of them talking excitedly over something. When they got nearer, he caught Eli saying, "But this is just a freaking LEGEND, Camille!"
"Don't shout at me like that!" Camille shot back with a matching glare. "And I don't give a damn about whether this is supposed to be a legend or not! In this world, ANYTHING'S possible, but WHY it had to be something along the lines of Fushigi Yuugi, I will never know."
Aragorn looked at them as they approached. "Have you translated it, Ladies?"
Eli sighed, and nodded, sitting down beside him. "Yeah, Camille managed to figure everything out. Camille?"
The girl being spoken to nodded, and looked at a piece of paper in her hand. "Okay, this is what I managed to figure out from the stone:
"To you who find this Temple, here in the Mountains of the Stars, hear first our tale. We are the Priestesses of the Four Gods.
"Know that we four maidens were once ordinary girls living in a world torn by war and strife. It was the year 1945, and our land was the center of an epic battle between countries of great military might. We have lost our families to the enemy, and it seemed that there was no hope for us. Until a great light took us away, and sent us here, to this world. We do not know what to call this place, and perhaps never will.
"The moment we came here, we were greeted by the Four Gods, from an ancient myth that only one of us knew about. They had called us here to fill this world with life, and to act as its guardians until others could be found to care for it.
"We did this task as best as we could. We brought forth trees and flowers and animals of many kinds, creating what we could in accordance to our world, and creating our own from our own whims. And the Four Gods were kind to us, lending us their power to do what we pleased. We raised mountains and hills, made springs and rivers, and filled the valleys with grass and forests. All this we made with joy and happiness.
"But our time is running short. We are but mortal, and our strength is failing us. Though the Gods were kind and helped extend our lives, we are meant to die. And where better to die than here, in this land we shaped with our own hands, and among friends with whom we have grown as close as sisters. And so, by their leave, we have sealed the Gods within this cave, and have decided to leave here, to die on our own in the places we loved best.
"Hark then, whoever comes across this cave! If dire need should require that you unseal the Four Gods, then go within and seek their Sanctuary. But if you come here with an evil heart, seeking only to gain power and use it for evil ends, then beware! The Four Gods know when a heart is pure, and they shall yield only to one with such. Enter, and face their trials. Only then shall they give you their power."
Camille looked up from the paper, her eyes drifting towards the shadowy interior of the cave. "Well, the way I see it, this cave is where the Four Great Spirits of Middle-Earth are sealed. The legend Gandalf spoke of was true, but wasn't, in a way, for the Spirits didn't sleep, they were sealed. Long ago, four girls from our world came here, and through them, the Spirits created what is now known as Middle-Earth. They extended the lifespan of the four girls, but since they were only mortal, they had to die sometime soon. Before they did, they sealed the Spirits within this cave."
Gandalf was the one who spoke first. "What does this mean then? That THIS is where the Four Spirits are hidden?"
Camille nodded. "Yeah, that's what it said." She stood up, tucking the paper in her tunic. "Well, it looks like Eli and I can finally become full-fledged Summoners. We're just going to have to walk in here, find the Sanctuary, pass the tests of the Four Gods, and get them. After that, we can go on our merry little way."
"Do not be so confident of yourself, Camille," Aragorn warned. "You do not know what tests you will be facing."
Eli shrugged. "We'll be fine, Aragorn." She walked over to where Gandalf was standing with a torch in his hand. "Let's go then, everyone."
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Ooh, they've found it! Finally, the girls are going to become Summoners…that is, if they can past the trials first laughs wickedly!!!! You thought I'd let them get the Spirits WITHOUT making them work a little to get them?! Fat chance of that! Anyway, I'm sure other anime fans that have read this story thus far will be making comparisons to Fushigi Yuugi. Actually, yeah, I DID get the entire Summoning idea from Fushigi Yuugi, but I twisted it a little to work with this story. I decided to get right to the Summoning part, skipping all that Seishi-finding in between. Anyway, on with the story! The Fellowship goes deeper into the cave, seeking out the Sanctuary where the Four Spirits are sealed. The stone outside the entrance spoke of a trial…will the girls be able to pass it? You'll find out soon! Namarie!!!