Chapter One
Two-thousand years later.
"No, I do not want four billion free hours on AOL," said Estela Autumn, throwing the tin cased CD in her kitchen trash bin. "No, I do not want a free vacation that I have to pay for in six years. No, I don't want a free shrinking T-shirt, no I do not want a--oh wait, maybe I do."
She threw away five junk mail parcels then walked into her blue and white decorated living room and flopped down on the light blue loveseat near the apartment window that had a beautiful view of the street.
"Dear Ms. Autumn," she read, "We have enclosed one of our Visa cards for you to...oh, blah, blah, blah, blah!" She rolled her eyes and threw the letter behind her which--thanks to the extra weight of the Visa card--conveniently landed in the trash bin.
She opened the next letter. "'Do you want to see beautiful landscapes and wonderful, sharp images in you living room? If so, then you will want the TV 'O Matic!'" She sighed and threw the letter behind her which landed on the spotless white carpet a few inches away from the loveseat.
She skimmed through the rest of the mail--all junk--then threw it away and sat on the loveseat, staring up at the ceiling.
"Why does my mail always stink?" said Estela, looking down at her black and white spotted cat, Miffin, who was sprawled out on the floor, its eyes squinted shut. "Do you think it's the mailman? Do you think he might throw my real mail away and give me bills and spam?" The cat looked up at her, bored. "Mrow?" it meowed, yawning. "I knew it," said Estela.
The telephone on the table at the end of the loveseat rang, interrupting their 'conversation'.
"Hello?" said Estela said after she picked up the phone and positioned it against her ear.
"Estela!" A voice squealed into her ear.
Estela gave a pained look at her cat who just laid there, staring at her with a placid look on his face.
"Adrian?" asked Estela knowingly.
"Yes! Listen, do you think you could teach me to use that bow you gave me last year? Well, since it's just been sitting in the attic for forever."
"Why didn't you ask sooner?"
"Because I heard that this guy at school, Jason, totally digs it when people use bows and arrows!"
"Um...yeah."
"So could you, like, meet me in the forest behind the old shoe factory? In that clearing with the big tree?"
"Sure."
"Thanks, bye!"
Adrian hung up leaving Estela with the annoying dial tone ringing in her ear.
"Miff, why do I have to go?" said Estela to her cat. The cat answered with another "Mrow." then squinted his eyes shut, intending to go to sleep.
"Pain-in-the-butt."
~~~~~~~~~~~
Estela ran silently into a small clearing deep in the forest with a giant oak tree and a small pond, her long slightly curled, pale blonde hair streaming behind her because of the speed in which she ran.
She ran until she reached the tree, jumped up and grabbed onto one of the low branches then swung herself up on top of it.
She climbed to the top-most branches of the tree with ease and settled on her stomach on a giant branch that snaked above the pond, fingering the silver four pointed star that had a blue diamond shaped jewel set in it on the necklace that she wore around neck that her mother had given to her when she was a little girl.
She brushed a strand of hair behind her pointed ear then frowned and quickly brushed it back in front of her ear, hiding it.
Sighing, she shifted her weight and lay as still as possible, tuning all her senses to the forest life around her.
The different coloured fish swarmed around the top of the water, every once in a while jumping up making an arch then landing back in the water with a little plop!
The birds in the trees shifted and shuffled their feathers, sometimes jumping out and flying away or starting a soft song.
The animals on the forest floor crept back out of their hiding places that they had darted into when she had ran into the clearing.
The rabbits and other small animals crept, hopped, and walked to the pond to get a drink then jumped back into the forest to start looking for food or go back to their dens or holes.
A squirrel sat on a branch a few feet away from her, staring, then quickly darted up the tree and into a hole on one of the top branches.
Then a deer stepped out of the trees and looked around cautiously before it looked back toward the trees, her tail twitching slightly. The deer made a soft noise and a young deer walked out of the trees and stepped up behind the mother.
The doe nudged her fawn toward the water and the young deer started to drink.
"Vanima onna en' i' taure," whispered Estela in a language called Sindarin that was only know to her and her family.
The doe's head shot up and it stared at Estela from the ground.
"Beautiful creature of the forest," she said to herself in English.
The doe continued to stare at Estela and she smiled. "'Quel re," she laughed. "Good morning!"
The fawn stopped drinking and looked up at her, curiously.
"'Quel re, baru laito," Estela called down to it. "Amin did il think ai'nat' could be tanya anfaugy!"
The fawn took another drink, keeping one eye on Estela, then bounded away with it's mother back into the forest.
"Bye."
All was quiet for a moment when loud footfalls that she had heard fifteen minutes ago for some reason or another were coming in her direction and someone started yelling her name.
"I guess that's the only perk about being a freak with pointy ears," sighed Estela, watching the animals dart back into their hiding places and the birds explode out of the trees with a deafening sound of flapping wings.
The noisy creature, a fifteen-year-old girl, Adrian, that had startled the animals squealed in horror and ran into the clearing, waving her hands around her head and swiping through the short, dark brown hair that was pulled back in a ponytail.
"Estela! Help me!" squealed Adrian while she ran to the tree and tried to climb it.
Estela watched the girl try to climb the tree for a few minutes then give up, sit down on the ground and pout.
"Stop laughing at me and help me up!" shouted Adrian at Estela who was practically gasping for breath from laughing so hard. "Stop it!"
Estela wiped a tear from her eye, smiling, and stepped down onto a smaller branch and offered her hand down to the girl.
Adrian stood up and made a grab for Estela's hand but was short by a few inches and instead lost her balance and fell on her face.
Estela started to laugh again but stopped abruptly when the branch started creaking and cracking.
"Uh oh..." she managed to say before the branch snapped, making her fall to the ground and land in a heap on the forest floor.
She rubbed her head and pushed herself up off the ground, dusted herself off and looked at Adrian who was laughing and pointing at her.
"It wasn't that funny," she grumbled, wiping mud off her light blue shirt, as Adrian sat on the ground, dirt on her pretty face, and clutched her sides as she laughed.
"It wasn't that funny," she repeated.
"Your right," Adrian said, slowly calming down. "It was hilarious!"
Estela scowled. "What did you come all the way into the woods to bother me with?"
Adrian stood up and smiled, wiping her dirty hands on her blue jeans and leaving muddy handprints marked on the sides. "You said you would teach me how to use a bow an arrow, remember?"
"Oh yeah."
Adrian smiled another huge, hundred-watt smile and ran back into the woods to get her bow.
When the girl came back with her bow and a navy blue backpack her smile disappeared when she saw the horrified look that Estela gave her.
"What's wrong?" asked Adrian, concerned.
"What did you do to the bow I gave you?" Estela gasped.
Adrian looked at her bow and smiled. "Oh, I just spray painted it hot pink. Do you like it?"
"I can't teach you how to fire an arrow from that thing!"
"Why not? Is it ugly?"
"No..."
"Then why can't you teach me?"
Estela sighed in frustration and snatched the bow out of the girl's hands with a movement to fast for Adrian to see.
"Fine," said Estela, holding the hot pink bow in her hands, "We'll use it only for today then I want you to go and spray paint it back to it's normal colour, understand?"
Adrian nodded sadly then followed Estela to another part of the woods.
~~~~~~~~~~~
"You have to hold it steady," Estela said to Adrian while she held the bow firmly in her left hand and drew the string back with her gloved right hand.
She paused a moment and looked at Adrian, annoyed, who was humming some song from the Backstreet Boys and occasionally singing a few verses.
"And you have to be able to concentrate!"
Adrian stopped her singing, abruptly, and stared at Estela with a sheepish look on her face. "Sorry."
Estela sighed and looked back at the bow. "Then you aim," she said, "and...fire!" She let go of the string and the arrow flew toward a target that they had pinned to a tree two hundred yards away.
"Whoa!" yelled Adrian as she watched the arrow sail through the air in a straight line toward the target. "Let's go see where it went!"
The two walked toward the target and saw that the arrow was stuck right in the middle.
"Bull's-eye," Estela smiled, lightly touching the feathered end of the arrow.
"This was a lot of fun, Estela," said Adrian, "but can I show you something I found when I was practicing yesterday?"
Estela looked away from the arrow and the target. "Sure," she said.
Adrian dug around in her pockets for a moment then brought up a crumpled yellowing letter that had "Hope" written on the front and handed it to Estela.
"I found it in front of this arch thing in another clearing not far from here. I opened it and thought that you might want to read it."
Estela looked at her confused then looked down at the yellowed letter that lay in her hands.
She turned it over to the back and gently opened the flap and removed the letter that was inside.
"I didn't understand what it said," Adrian said. "That Chinese part right there." She pointed to the single written line that was visible amidst the rest of the run-together lettering. It read: I' ando is neva.
"That's...strange."
"What? Do you know Chinese?"
"No, it's French," Estela lied. "I think. My mom and dad taught it to me before they died."
"What does it say?"
"Just a moment." Estela read the paper a few more times before asking, "Where did you find this?"
"Over there," said Adrian, pointing to the left. "I'll show you."
They walked in the direction Adrian had pointed until they reached the small clearing that Adrian had spoke of earlier.
There was a small bubbling creek that ran behind a huge stone arch that had smooth, short, green, grass surrounding it and beautiful flowers blooming all around.
The trees blocked the sun out except a small area where the branches seemed to part and the sun shone through and illuminated the arch.
"This doesn't look like it belongs in this forest," Estela marveled, "Or in any forest."
"I found it over there," said Adrian, completely ignoring her surroundings, and pointing toward the arch. "Right on the ground in front of that thing."
Estela walked to the arch and rubbed her the palm of her hand against the gritty stone and a little of it crumbled away.
"What are you doing?" asked Adrian.
"Nothing," answered Estela.
She looked a little closer at the stone and rubbed her hand against it again. More of the rock crumbled away, and fell to the ground, revealing a small engraved message and a four-pointed star indented near the bottom of the right leg.
"Yaikotaneoio wields i' key aa' have tarna imya i' ando," read Estela. "Hmm, I think---"
"What does it say, Miss French?" said Adrian. She had walked over to Estela and was now looking at the engraved message and the arch.
"Whosoever holds the key may have passage through the gate," Estela translated
Adrian rolled her eyes. "This is getting really boring. The key! The key! This is like a really bad and long story I read once called Lord of the Rings. Instead of Earth the author called the planet Middle-Earth. I mean, come on! Middle-Earth? Ha! Anyways, people died and there were these weird dudes on horses--they're dressed in black--and this old wizard guy named Gandalf dies in the mines of Mafia or something and this king guy named Aragorn who is waiting for the hobbits in Blee or something has to help these short, fat people--the hobbits--named Frodo Baggins, Sam Gamgee, Pippin Took, and Merry Brandybuck destroy this evil ring that could destroy the whole world by tossing it into some volcano. Oh, and some Gondor guy, his name is Boromir, he also dies and there are these orcs and troll things and this huge tree thing named Tree-man or something...oh! And Elves. There's a prince dude named Legolas and another old guy named Elrond that heals the leader of the fat hobbits, Frodo, because the black dressy people stabbed the poor child with a knife and there's this other guy--actually it's a dwarf--that is as fat and as short as the hobbits but he has this ax that he cuts people with and his short, fat dwarf-friend, Balin, he dies also. They all live on this weird place called Middle-Earth. And there's another wizard guy named Saruman and he's all evil and stuff but that's not the evil dude that wants to take over the world, no, that's Sauron. He's this flaming eyeball that's all evil like Saruman but Sauron's more evil and---"
"Are you finished yet?"
"Yeah, sorry."
"As I was saying, I think this may fit in that space right there," said Estela, unhooking her necklace and holding her silver star up to the star in the arch. "See?"
"Oh! That's wicked cool."
"Yeah..."
Estela shook her head and placed her star into the star on the arch and held her breath, waiting for something to happen.
"Well?" said Adrian, breaking the silence, after it nothing happened.
Estela sighed, removed the star and re-hooked it around her neck. "Well, we tried."
"Okay. Anyway, there's this lady from the city of Rivendell or something, Éowyn, and, personally, I think she's the only worthwhile person that the author guy wrote about---"
"Look!" exclaimed Estela, interrupting her and pointing at the arch.
The arch began to glow with a pure white light that made them shield their eyes to save themselves from possible blindness.
Estela turned in the other direction, blindly trying to get away, and tripped over what she later said looked like a rock. She fell on the ground hard, knocking the wind out of her.
"Estela!" Adrian called. Her voice sounded faint, far away, and frantic.
Estela rolled over on her back, trying to breathe, and looked up at Adrian's face.
The white light from the arch surrounded them and it was hard to see anything more than three inches away.
"Estela, we have to get out of here!" cried Adrian, pulling Estela to her feet. She put the older woman's arm around her neck and started walking in a random direction, trying to get away as fast as possible.
They kept walking trying to get away from the light but instead of getting dimmer it kept getting brighter until they saw nothing. Then, when it seemed that they would never get away, a dark outline broke through and Adrian started walking toward it, Estela hobbling next to her.
"We're almost there," Adrian yelled above the increasing whirring noise. Her hair blew in her face from the wind that had suddenly started blowing all around them as she walked, making it harder to see.
The outline soon turned into an arch and the light suddenly grew intensely bright and the noise blocked out any other sound that could have been heard.
Estela squinted, trying to see something, anything, and looked at Adrian. The girl's eyes were wild with fear and her head had a bloody cut that ran from her left ear to her forehead. Adrian opened her mouth and tried to say something but no sound could make it above the noise.
The arch, for some reason, was the only thing that they could see so that's what they headed for.
Estela, who had been keeping her eyes squeezed shut, opened them suddenly when they stopped, abruptly.
The arch stood before her, glowing brightly, making her feel small and insignificant. It seemed to be whispering something. "Lle coiasira has arrived, Estela. Make asca, nessa er, ten' Heru Elrond is waiting."
Her mind was working enough for her to understand that it meant: "Your time has come, Estela. Make haste, young one, for Lord Elrond is waiting."
She looked to Adrian but the girl had let go of Estela and had disappeared. Estela tried to walk, but stumbled again and fell toward the arch.
Her muscles tensed, waiting for the pain of the ground hitting her to come but it didn't. She fell through the arch, but instead of landing on the ground she kept falling.
The light was diminishing and soon everything turned black and she kept falling.
"Like a bottomless pit," she thought distantly.
The black that surrounded her cleared suddenly, allowing her to see the forest again, except she was seeing the tops of the trees instead of the clear, cloudless blue skies of the early afternoon.
The panic she felt in the dark faded a little but quickly returned when she saw the ground rushing toward her.
She caught a glimpse of a black or blue, she couldn't see it clear enough to know which colour, object hurtling toward the ground at her side.
For a quick moment she thought that she saw the top of a curly brown haired head and the sudden flash of bright brown eyes and a horrified expression from the forest floor, but it disappeared when she closed her eyes as the ground became only a few yards away from her.
"I'm going to die," was the last thought she had before hitting the ground.
What do you guys think? "'Quel re, baru laito, Amin did il think ai'nat' could be tanya anfaugy" means "Good morning, brown baby, I did not think anything could be so thirsty." I hope you like it so far, Lúthien Arnatuilë.
Two-thousand years later.
"No, I do not want four billion free hours on AOL," said Estela Autumn, throwing the tin cased CD in her kitchen trash bin. "No, I do not want a free vacation that I have to pay for in six years. No, I don't want a free shrinking T-shirt, no I do not want a--oh wait, maybe I do."
She threw away five junk mail parcels then walked into her blue and white decorated living room and flopped down on the light blue loveseat near the apartment window that had a beautiful view of the street.
"Dear Ms. Autumn," she read, "We have enclosed one of our Visa cards for you to...oh, blah, blah, blah, blah!" She rolled her eyes and threw the letter behind her which--thanks to the extra weight of the Visa card--conveniently landed in the trash bin.
She opened the next letter. "'Do you want to see beautiful landscapes and wonderful, sharp images in you living room? If so, then you will want the TV 'O Matic!'" She sighed and threw the letter behind her which landed on the spotless white carpet a few inches away from the loveseat.
She skimmed through the rest of the mail--all junk--then threw it away and sat on the loveseat, staring up at the ceiling.
"Why does my mail always stink?" said Estela, looking down at her black and white spotted cat, Miffin, who was sprawled out on the floor, its eyes squinted shut. "Do you think it's the mailman? Do you think he might throw my real mail away and give me bills and spam?" The cat looked up at her, bored. "Mrow?" it meowed, yawning. "I knew it," said Estela.
The telephone on the table at the end of the loveseat rang, interrupting their 'conversation'.
"Hello?" said Estela said after she picked up the phone and positioned it against her ear.
"Estela!" A voice squealed into her ear.
Estela gave a pained look at her cat who just laid there, staring at her with a placid look on his face.
"Adrian?" asked Estela knowingly.
"Yes! Listen, do you think you could teach me to use that bow you gave me last year? Well, since it's just been sitting in the attic for forever."
"Why didn't you ask sooner?"
"Because I heard that this guy at school, Jason, totally digs it when people use bows and arrows!"
"Um...yeah."
"So could you, like, meet me in the forest behind the old shoe factory? In that clearing with the big tree?"
"Sure."
"Thanks, bye!"
Adrian hung up leaving Estela with the annoying dial tone ringing in her ear.
"Miff, why do I have to go?" said Estela to her cat. The cat answered with another "Mrow." then squinted his eyes shut, intending to go to sleep.
"Pain-in-the-butt."
~~~~~~~~~~~
Estela ran silently into a small clearing deep in the forest with a giant oak tree and a small pond, her long slightly curled, pale blonde hair streaming behind her because of the speed in which she ran.
She ran until she reached the tree, jumped up and grabbed onto one of the low branches then swung herself up on top of it.
She climbed to the top-most branches of the tree with ease and settled on her stomach on a giant branch that snaked above the pond, fingering the silver four pointed star that had a blue diamond shaped jewel set in it on the necklace that she wore around neck that her mother had given to her when she was a little girl.
She brushed a strand of hair behind her pointed ear then frowned and quickly brushed it back in front of her ear, hiding it.
Sighing, she shifted her weight and lay as still as possible, tuning all her senses to the forest life around her.
The different coloured fish swarmed around the top of the water, every once in a while jumping up making an arch then landing back in the water with a little plop!
The birds in the trees shifted and shuffled their feathers, sometimes jumping out and flying away or starting a soft song.
The animals on the forest floor crept back out of their hiding places that they had darted into when she had ran into the clearing.
The rabbits and other small animals crept, hopped, and walked to the pond to get a drink then jumped back into the forest to start looking for food or go back to their dens or holes.
A squirrel sat on a branch a few feet away from her, staring, then quickly darted up the tree and into a hole on one of the top branches.
Then a deer stepped out of the trees and looked around cautiously before it looked back toward the trees, her tail twitching slightly. The deer made a soft noise and a young deer walked out of the trees and stepped up behind the mother.
The doe nudged her fawn toward the water and the young deer started to drink.
"Vanima onna en' i' taure," whispered Estela in a language called Sindarin that was only know to her and her family.
The doe's head shot up and it stared at Estela from the ground.
"Beautiful creature of the forest," she said to herself in English.
The doe continued to stare at Estela and she smiled. "'Quel re," she laughed. "Good morning!"
The fawn stopped drinking and looked up at her, curiously.
"'Quel re, baru laito," Estela called down to it. "Amin did il think ai'nat' could be tanya anfaugy!"
The fawn took another drink, keeping one eye on Estela, then bounded away with it's mother back into the forest.
"Bye."
All was quiet for a moment when loud footfalls that she had heard fifteen minutes ago for some reason or another were coming in her direction and someone started yelling her name.
"I guess that's the only perk about being a freak with pointy ears," sighed Estela, watching the animals dart back into their hiding places and the birds explode out of the trees with a deafening sound of flapping wings.
The noisy creature, a fifteen-year-old girl, Adrian, that had startled the animals squealed in horror and ran into the clearing, waving her hands around her head and swiping through the short, dark brown hair that was pulled back in a ponytail.
"Estela! Help me!" squealed Adrian while she ran to the tree and tried to climb it.
Estela watched the girl try to climb the tree for a few minutes then give up, sit down on the ground and pout.
"Stop laughing at me and help me up!" shouted Adrian at Estela who was practically gasping for breath from laughing so hard. "Stop it!"
Estela wiped a tear from her eye, smiling, and stepped down onto a smaller branch and offered her hand down to the girl.
Adrian stood up and made a grab for Estela's hand but was short by a few inches and instead lost her balance and fell on her face.
Estela started to laugh again but stopped abruptly when the branch started creaking and cracking.
"Uh oh..." she managed to say before the branch snapped, making her fall to the ground and land in a heap on the forest floor.
She rubbed her head and pushed herself up off the ground, dusted herself off and looked at Adrian who was laughing and pointing at her.
"It wasn't that funny," she grumbled, wiping mud off her light blue shirt, as Adrian sat on the ground, dirt on her pretty face, and clutched her sides as she laughed.
"It wasn't that funny," she repeated.
"Your right," Adrian said, slowly calming down. "It was hilarious!"
Estela scowled. "What did you come all the way into the woods to bother me with?"
Adrian stood up and smiled, wiping her dirty hands on her blue jeans and leaving muddy handprints marked on the sides. "You said you would teach me how to use a bow an arrow, remember?"
"Oh yeah."
Adrian smiled another huge, hundred-watt smile and ran back into the woods to get her bow.
When the girl came back with her bow and a navy blue backpack her smile disappeared when she saw the horrified look that Estela gave her.
"What's wrong?" asked Adrian, concerned.
"What did you do to the bow I gave you?" Estela gasped.
Adrian looked at her bow and smiled. "Oh, I just spray painted it hot pink. Do you like it?"
"I can't teach you how to fire an arrow from that thing!"
"Why not? Is it ugly?"
"No..."
"Then why can't you teach me?"
Estela sighed in frustration and snatched the bow out of the girl's hands with a movement to fast for Adrian to see.
"Fine," said Estela, holding the hot pink bow in her hands, "We'll use it only for today then I want you to go and spray paint it back to it's normal colour, understand?"
Adrian nodded sadly then followed Estela to another part of the woods.
~~~~~~~~~~~
"You have to hold it steady," Estela said to Adrian while she held the bow firmly in her left hand and drew the string back with her gloved right hand.
She paused a moment and looked at Adrian, annoyed, who was humming some song from the Backstreet Boys and occasionally singing a few verses.
"And you have to be able to concentrate!"
Adrian stopped her singing, abruptly, and stared at Estela with a sheepish look on her face. "Sorry."
Estela sighed and looked back at the bow. "Then you aim," she said, "and...fire!" She let go of the string and the arrow flew toward a target that they had pinned to a tree two hundred yards away.
"Whoa!" yelled Adrian as she watched the arrow sail through the air in a straight line toward the target. "Let's go see where it went!"
The two walked toward the target and saw that the arrow was stuck right in the middle.
"Bull's-eye," Estela smiled, lightly touching the feathered end of the arrow.
"This was a lot of fun, Estela," said Adrian, "but can I show you something I found when I was practicing yesterday?"
Estela looked away from the arrow and the target. "Sure," she said.
Adrian dug around in her pockets for a moment then brought up a crumpled yellowing letter that had "Hope" written on the front and handed it to Estela.
"I found it in front of this arch thing in another clearing not far from here. I opened it and thought that you might want to read it."
Estela looked at her confused then looked down at the yellowed letter that lay in her hands.
She turned it over to the back and gently opened the flap and removed the letter that was inside.
"I didn't understand what it said," Adrian said. "That Chinese part right there." She pointed to the single written line that was visible amidst the rest of the run-together lettering. It read: I' ando is neva.
"That's...strange."
"What? Do you know Chinese?"
"No, it's French," Estela lied. "I think. My mom and dad taught it to me before they died."
"What does it say?"
"Just a moment." Estela read the paper a few more times before asking, "Where did you find this?"
"Over there," said Adrian, pointing to the left. "I'll show you."
They walked in the direction Adrian had pointed until they reached the small clearing that Adrian had spoke of earlier.
There was a small bubbling creek that ran behind a huge stone arch that had smooth, short, green, grass surrounding it and beautiful flowers blooming all around.
The trees blocked the sun out except a small area where the branches seemed to part and the sun shone through and illuminated the arch.
"This doesn't look like it belongs in this forest," Estela marveled, "Or in any forest."
"I found it over there," said Adrian, completely ignoring her surroundings, and pointing toward the arch. "Right on the ground in front of that thing."
Estela walked to the arch and rubbed her the palm of her hand against the gritty stone and a little of it crumbled away.
"What are you doing?" asked Adrian.
"Nothing," answered Estela.
She looked a little closer at the stone and rubbed her hand against it again. More of the rock crumbled away, and fell to the ground, revealing a small engraved message and a four-pointed star indented near the bottom of the right leg.
"Yaikotaneoio wields i' key aa' have tarna imya i' ando," read Estela. "Hmm, I think---"
"What does it say, Miss French?" said Adrian. She had walked over to Estela and was now looking at the engraved message and the arch.
"Whosoever holds the key may have passage through the gate," Estela translated
Adrian rolled her eyes. "This is getting really boring. The key! The key! This is like a really bad and long story I read once called Lord of the Rings. Instead of Earth the author called the planet Middle-Earth. I mean, come on! Middle-Earth? Ha! Anyways, people died and there were these weird dudes on horses--they're dressed in black--and this old wizard guy named Gandalf dies in the mines of Mafia or something and this king guy named Aragorn who is waiting for the hobbits in Blee or something has to help these short, fat people--the hobbits--named Frodo Baggins, Sam Gamgee, Pippin Took, and Merry Brandybuck destroy this evil ring that could destroy the whole world by tossing it into some volcano. Oh, and some Gondor guy, his name is Boromir, he also dies and there are these orcs and troll things and this huge tree thing named Tree-man or something...oh! And Elves. There's a prince dude named Legolas and another old guy named Elrond that heals the leader of the fat hobbits, Frodo, because the black dressy people stabbed the poor child with a knife and there's this other guy--actually it's a dwarf--that is as fat and as short as the hobbits but he has this ax that he cuts people with and his short, fat dwarf-friend, Balin, he dies also. They all live on this weird place called Middle-Earth. And there's another wizard guy named Saruman and he's all evil and stuff but that's not the evil dude that wants to take over the world, no, that's Sauron. He's this flaming eyeball that's all evil like Saruman but Sauron's more evil and---"
"Are you finished yet?"
"Yeah, sorry."
"As I was saying, I think this may fit in that space right there," said Estela, unhooking her necklace and holding her silver star up to the star in the arch. "See?"
"Oh! That's wicked cool."
"Yeah..."
Estela shook her head and placed her star into the star on the arch and held her breath, waiting for something to happen.
"Well?" said Adrian, breaking the silence, after it nothing happened.
Estela sighed, removed the star and re-hooked it around her neck. "Well, we tried."
"Okay. Anyway, there's this lady from the city of Rivendell or something, Éowyn, and, personally, I think she's the only worthwhile person that the author guy wrote about---"
"Look!" exclaimed Estela, interrupting her and pointing at the arch.
The arch began to glow with a pure white light that made them shield their eyes to save themselves from possible blindness.
Estela turned in the other direction, blindly trying to get away, and tripped over what she later said looked like a rock. She fell on the ground hard, knocking the wind out of her.
"Estela!" Adrian called. Her voice sounded faint, far away, and frantic.
Estela rolled over on her back, trying to breathe, and looked up at Adrian's face.
The white light from the arch surrounded them and it was hard to see anything more than three inches away.
"Estela, we have to get out of here!" cried Adrian, pulling Estela to her feet. She put the older woman's arm around her neck and started walking in a random direction, trying to get away as fast as possible.
They kept walking trying to get away from the light but instead of getting dimmer it kept getting brighter until they saw nothing. Then, when it seemed that they would never get away, a dark outline broke through and Adrian started walking toward it, Estela hobbling next to her.
"We're almost there," Adrian yelled above the increasing whirring noise. Her hair blew in her face from the wind that had suddenly started blowing all around them as she walked, making it harder to see.
The outline soon turned into an arch and the light suddenly grew intensely bright and the noise blocked out any other sound that could have been heard.
Estela squinted, trying to see something, anything, and looked at Adrian. The girl's eyes were wild with fear and her head had a bloody cut that ran from her left ear to her forehead. Adrian opened her mouth and tried to say something but no sound could make it above the noise.
The arch, for some reason, was the only thing that they could see so that's what they headed for.
Estela, who had been keeping her eyes squeezed shut, opened them suddenly when they stopped, abruptly.
The arch stood before her, glowing brightly, making her feel small and insignificant. It seemed to be whispering something. "Lle coiasira has arrived, Estela. Make asca, nessa er, ten' Heru Elrond is waiting."
Her mind was working enough for her to understand that it meant: "Your time has come, Estela. Make haste, young one, for Lord Elrond is waiting."
She looked to Adrian but the girl had let go of Estela and had disappeared. Estela tried to walk, but stumbled again and fell toward the arch.
Her muscles tensed, waiting for the pain of the ground hitting her to come but it didn't. She fell through the arch, but instead of landing on the ground she kept falling.
The light was diminishing and soon everything turned black and she kept falling.
"Like a bottomless pit," she thought distantly.
The black that surrounded her cleared suddenly, allowing her to see the forest again, except she was seeing the tops of the trees instead of the clear, cloudless blue skies of the early afternoon.
The panic she felt in the dark faded a little but quickly returned when she saw the ground rushing toward her.
She caught a glimpse of a black or blue, she couldn't see it clear enough to know which colour, object hurtling toward the ground at her side.
For a quick moment she thought that she saw the top of a curly brown haired head and the sudden flash of bright brown eyes and a horrified expression from the forest floor, but it disappeared when she closed her eyes as the ground became only a few yards away from her.
"I'm going to die," was the last thought she had before hitting the ground.
What do you guys think? "'Quel re, baru laito, Amin did il think ai'nat' could be tanya anfaugy" means "Good morning, brown baby, I did not think anything could be so thirsty." I hope you like it so far, Lúthien Arnatuilë.