a/n: i am so ANGRY! i just almost had to pay $105 for a replacement cell phone which would have been the peak of ridicule, so i just got a refurbished one. piss on that one, punkers. damn it all. so i guess i will just deal with it. other than that, my grandma's going to die today, i'm not there and i can't get a hold of eric. great. so eat it up, darlings. this is the only thing i have to do. thanks for reading and leaving your reviews; it's very encouraging.
Legolas noticed that she had once more placed her hand on her stomach. "Rita, are you with child?" he asked.
Rita looked pained, and she shut her eyes and squealed. "Eeee! You're not supposed to ask that!" She looked at him helplessly. "Yessss," she said reluctantly. Rita then pointed an indignant finger at him. "But you and Phil are the only ones that know that. So you better not say anything." Legolas smiled at her.
"Surely, milady if you would like for the others to be surprised, I will say nothing of this. But why is this a secret?" he asked her.
a/n: hey my grandma died on wednesday, so i will be busy for the next couple of days so forgive me if this is slow going. please please please, even if you read this and don't like it, please leave me a review, because it makes me very happy, even bad reviews O.o. it makes me happy to know that someone out there is reading my story. loves, sarah.
Rita thought about it a minute. She didn't actually know why she hadn't told anyone. Really, I should tell Marie at least. She is my best friend, and here she is, doesn't know about me being pregnant but some stranger does. "I don't really know," she finally replied, somewhat guiltily. "I guess just cause..." she paused. "Cause I think they would be upset?" she said, nearly asking Legolas.
Legolas looked puzzled, and answered, "Nay, Rita, they would not be upset. I feel sure they would be glad for you. They-" he paused. "What the-" he cried, showing how quickly the vernacular of Bear had rubbed off on him. Rita looked down to where he was staring, at her wrist. In all the excitement of the wreck, her long flowing sleeves had come up, revealing her wrists, in particular her right one, where there was another tattoo. "Aglar'ni faidwen!" Legolas cried. I've never been so happy to see a fragment of Sindarin in my life, even such a small one, he realized. Rita smiled happily.
"Do you understand what it means? You would know, probably, you look like you would anyway, is it right? Does it look right?" she babbled away happily, glad to be off the subject of her pregnancy. Also glad to be on the subject of last year's tattoo, which other than her D&D group, had failed to make such a splash as her notorious leg's markings that made her "The Great Eye Wonder." In fact, Red, she and Phil's good friend and tattoo artist, had looked perplexed. 'What the hell do you want all this for? Rita, if you want a bracelet, you should get a vine with a flower, look at this picture here,' Red had suggested. 'No, dammit! I want this, if you can't do it, I'll just have to go somewhere else, Red,' Rita had warned. Phil had simply shrugged, and pushed Rita into the chair and pushed Red over her wrist. 'Do this,' he said, ever being the great peacenik. Rita now examined the markings around her wrist. They looked fairly good to her. But here next to her appeared to be the greatest Tolkien fan ever, so she wanted his opinion. "Really can you read it? That's so awesome, Doug; do the characters look right? I wasn't sure, do they look readable, do they look-"
"They are absolutely beautiful," Legolas told her, cutting her off, and apparently quite pleasing her. It was actually not so, that the characters were beautiful. They were graceful, but incorrectly so. But they were readable, and seeing something in Sindarin in this fell world was the most beautiful thing he had seen in three days.
"So you know what it means?" she shrieked, clapping her hands.
Legolas was slightly put off, and a little exasperated. "Yes," (he stressed the syllable), "it means 'glory to the freedom.'"
"Yes, yes! In Sindarin!" she added happily. "Oh, it took me so long to figure out how to write it in Sindarin, but I think I finally got it right. Is it?" she asked, in a frightfully happy tone, thrusting her wrist at Legolas. He took it, and upon closer examination, found that one of the characters in 'faidwen' was actually downside-up.
"Perfect," he proclaimed, and returned her wrist to her.
Rita looked ecsatic. Then she remembered where she was and looked around her. The police had arrived, and were now blocking any exit she might have had out of the scene of the wreck. Dammit, I leave my cell phone with Phil one freaking time and that's when I need it. Just my damn Spanish luck. Silly Spain. Ireland is so much luckier. I need Phil with me, he's Irish, he's my lucky Irish charm, she thought randomly, her thoughts following no particular train of thought. She smiled. I wonder what our baby will look like, she thought. Rita was startled out of her thoughts as a cop knocked on her window and motioned for her to get out of the car. "Oh, Christ, 'har standeth ye ole authoritee'," she slurred, annoyed. She started to open the door, thought twice, and then rolled down the window.
A young scared-looking cop with large black mirroring sunglasses peered into the car. "Ma'am, could you please step out of the car?" he asked, as if to say, 'Please but only if you want?'
Rita looked at Legolas with much doubting relish, and then back at the cop. "Look, sweetie, I'm not stepping out anywhere. I just about went into labour so you can just talk to me where I am. What do you need?" she asked him condenscendingly.
The young man looked horrified. "You did wha-" he turned around, "what do I need from her, she-" Someone, a higher cop, barked something at him, and he whipped his head back around, looking more scared than ever. "Ma'am could you please answer a few questions?" he asked, his voice wavering.
Legolas saw Rita's face, pitying, but disgusted. "Son, take off those damn sunglasses, you look like Richard Burton." Legolas was amazed as the man took off his sunglasses, and revealed huge brown eyes, full of doubt and fear. "Jesus, kid, what are you 19?"
"I'm 20!" he retorted, his voice nearly breaking into a whine, then looked quite ashamed. Legolas couldn't help it, and burst into a short spurt of laughter, then stifled it with the back of his hand. This was authority? This was a child. The cop looked slightly peeved, but the fear never left his eyes. "Ma'am, Sir, are you two alright? Didja get hurt?" he asked, annoyed, tapping his finger on the window sill.
"I'm fine like wine, sonny," Rita drawled, grinning away. Legolas smiled, noting this little pun. It reeked of Shawn, and Legolas figured she had probably borrowed it from him. "You, Douglas?"
Legolas smiled. "Never have I felt more happy or invigorated in this filthy world of fell beasts." The cop looked from Legolas to Rita, Rita to Legolas, then back from Legolas to Rita.
"Nice, very nice." He nodded. "Yeah, I see. Well you two can just be...'chillin like villians'" (he wildly waved his hands around during this phrase to show his sarcasm), "and I'll just be over here," (he pointed over his shoulder at a tree and Rita nodded with a smile), "doing my job. Mm-hm." He nodded, and put his sunglasses on nervously and with much difficulty, nearly putting an eye out. "Mm-hm, yeah, you just-" he waggled a finger at them, "you two just, just, just, stay there." Rita and Legolas nodded solemnly. He nodded, with his hands on his hips offensively, "Ye-ye-yeah- MA'AM." He then wandered off and then changed direction and hurried away with his hands still on his hips.
They stared after him for a moment.
Rita looked to Legolas with eyes wide and innocent. "Do you think I was a little too rough on him?" she asked. The two of them broke down laughing.
"What a baby he was!" Legolas finally managed. "Only 20 years of age. That would make me...849 years older than him!" Legolas said, still laughing. Rita burst into another fit of giggles.
"Yeah, I know, huh?" She shook her head. "Wow, but really! Man." She looked at the roof of the car absently, as if the math she was doing was written there. Legolas looked there too, but could not see whatever she was squinting at. She shook her head again. "I dunno. You're probly younger than me, too."
"Really?" He shook his head. "I do not believe so, Rita."
"Oh really, Padre? Is that so?" she said, crooking her head to one side. "I'm 24, how old are you?"
Legolas knotted his eyebrows and shook his head, "869 years?" he asked, sure he had just made that quite clear.
Rita waved this fact away. "Well you can't be more than 22." She studied his smooth, unblemished face, nearly (was it?) perfect. "If that." Legolas sighed and gave his head a half shake. He hadn't really expected that to take well. He wondered why everyone just assumed he had to have human characteristics. Rita saw his dissappointed look. "Don't worry, hon, you shoulda seen Phil when he shaved off his beard, he looked 12!" She wrinkled her nose and pressed her hands together over her mouth. "Eww, I felt like I was sleeping with a little boy, so I made him sleep on the couch until he grew it back!" She laughed, and Legolas laughed, too, mystified that she was so open about her personal life. Almost frighteningly, she seemed to sense this, and said, "I'm sorry, I guess I don't know you well enough to be talking about my sex life with my little boy husband."
Legolas mimicked her earlier hand motions and waved the apology away. "Do not trouble yourself with it."
Rita smiled. "You're so nice," she cooed. He is really nice, she thought. How the hell did he end up knowing Bear and Jane and all them? She decided to ask him. "How do you know Bear?"
Legolas had wondered when someone was finally going to ask him. They had kind of just taken it for granted that he was Bear's friend, so Legolas figured that between bringing him and Sandy nonchalantly into his home and group of friends, he must do this often. "Actually," he started. "I just had the good chance to run into him this morning, and he took Shawn and I to the Rennaissance Festival." He paused for her comment, but surprisingly enough, she just nodded, as if for him to go on. "Then we came back to his house..." he trailed off. Legolas looked at her sideways. "Is it commonplace for Bear to drag in new persons often enough for the lot of you to be so accostomed to it?"
Rita rolled her sparkling green eyes and smiled. "Yesssss," she hissed. "Oh, he's always making new friends. I don't understand how, I mean, he looks like a monster, doesn't he!" Legolas laughed. "See! I knew you saw it too." Rita shook her head impatiently. "Sometimes I feel like that boy's mother. He's always bringing girls to me, and showing new friends" (she indicated Legolas) "to me, and so on, and so on." She shrugged and looked at Legolas confused. "For God's sake, when he was in college that one semester, I had to study with him for tests, and then he'd show me the grade he got!" From her tone of voice in this sentence Legolas figured it necessary to mirror her gaze of amazement in this pause. She seemed satisfied with his reaction, and went on. "I don't know. Me and Phil love him just like a little brother, so we play his little game. He's such a good boy," she insisted to Legolas, in what he thought to be a somewhat motherly tone. She smiled off at something on the windshield, another thing that Legolas couldn't find with any amount of squinting. She finally shook herself free of the stare and looked back at Legolas confidentially and with a bit of mischief.
"You think he likes this Sandy girl?" she asked with a high degree of fascination. Legolas could think of nothing to say that would really appease her, so he merely shrugged. "I mean, but really, do you think he likes her?" she asked again with one eyebrow raised and a slightly evil grin, as though this new rephrasing of her former question held a hidden power or strength separate and apart from the first.
Legolas thought he'd give her something to talk about. "Sandy really seems to like him," he tried, not sure if he approved of this word 'like.' He wasn't even sure how it was being used.
Rita was highly satisfied with this answer. "Oooooooh," she cooed. "Ohhhh, my. Well, we'll see about this," she assured Legolas, patting his arm. She smiled to herself and murmured again, "We'll see about this." Legolas was not sure what she was referring to, however vaguely, and wondered if he ought not to have just kept his mouth shut.
Rita looked around, and noticed that the traffic seemed to be clearing up a bit. The police cars had moved a little, and the wreckers were currently attempting to tow the pathetic Honda Civic and (somewhat) triumphant Toyota Camry away. Rita clapped her hands. "Oh, hooray!" she cried. Legolas stared at her in alarm. "It's going away!" she explained, still clapping.
Legolas' face cleared and brightened. "That is wonderful!" he cried, and laughed aloud. Rita went through the entire process of revving the engine twice, and then a third time for real, and they began to pull away. They had not been in the car for more than 30 seconds when she pulled the car over at a small building reading, "SPEC'S LIQUOR." Legolas looked at her in disgust. "Are you serious?" he cried?
"What?" she asked in complete confusion.
"We were that close the entire time? I could have-- You could-- Anytime would have been--" he stammered.
Rita threw her head back and laughed. "Oh, quiet down, Padre." She opened her door and got out. Legolas followed, and they shut their doors together. "This is America, home of the laziest people in the whole world." Legolas was still shaking his head in amazement at her when they walked through the door with the ring of a bell.
a/n: well, i have to go in a minute to the viewing at the funeral home, tomorrow's the funeral. sorry if this took a little longer, but remember i'm not basing rita on anyone of my friends. i'm creating her, so it's more of a creative process than that of the natural process of simply describing my little friends. and there's the whole deal of 'half way paying attention in class.' it only about two hours to write from the second a/n down, but before that was difficult. it's hard being inspired. remember to VOTE FOR YOUR FAVOURITE NON-LEGOLAS CHARACTER and for god's sake, PLEASE LEAVE ME A NOTE, PRAISE OR FLAME I CARE NOT. thank you. kisses, sarah.