Author's note: Another chapter redone. I am going to leave a little note at the very top for every chapter that is lingering from the original edition, saying something along the lines of "Not yet edited." Please review! Or flame. Flames are welcome. Flames are funny. Flames amuse me.

Mel and Liz: Thank you so much for reviewing, my luffly fellow Trelizers! *glomps Melsh and Lizzikins*

Disclaimer: *whines* Do I have to do this? I hate disclaimers, I hates them, we hates them forever!

"Speak," said the extraordinarily tall, weather-beaten, sinister- looking man, roughly shaking them, perhaps a little harder than he'd meant to, causing Libby another slight spasm of pain in her highly overused, overly abused ankle. The shin splints had eased up the previous weekend, but she had exerted herself a bit much at the county meets she'd attended Tuesday and Thursday. She hadn't even had to race Tuesday, but she had spent a good portion of the meet just wandering around the field, bleachers, and refreshments/bathroom area. Could she really have crossed the finish line just yesterday, just ten feet behind the last person who had earned a metal? So close, yet not close enough. Libby couldn't get over her berating herself; several of her friends had told her she was being too hard on herself when she'd told them earlier that day.

Libby now felt as she were in an entirely different universe: and perhaps she was. This, and April's strange behavior, most likely a gift from the meds she was a prisoner of. "Give me your names, and where you hail from, and what the business of two girls who can't be more than twenty or so is here." Libby thought she could detect a strange emphasis on the word "girls." Was it a shocked tone or merely condescending?

If she hadn't felt so stupefied, Libby would have laughed right out loud? More than twenty or so? Did he seriously think there was a possibility that she and April were older than their sixteen and fifteen years, respectively? Libby wasn't wearing any more makeup than her usual mascara, sparkly lip gloss, eyeliner, and eye-shadow. Nor was she wearing an exceptionally large amount of jewelry (at least not for her, as she often got wisecracks from others about how she could set off metal detectors with all the jewelry on her wrists, fingers, ankles, around her neck, and in her ears.), or particularly mature clothes (patchwork studded capris, and a fancy 3-quarter sleeve shirts were not unusual attire for the fashionista, nor were her glittery, rhinestone-studded slip-on sneakers) or hairstyle. Her hair was crimped, down, and kept out of her face with a headband, but that was a style Libby wore at least once every two weeks or so, whenever she could muster up the free time. April was clad in her usual black, this time her leather lace-up pants and her black guess shirt with the enormous sparkly butterfly on the front. Her hair was loose, and she wore a choker, bracelet, and a ring on both her ring fingers and her left index finger.

The man impetuously shook the girls again, causing April to accidentally graze the side of her face against a rough, protruding piece of rock. The teenager's face began to bleed from the fresh scrape. "Are you going to speak and tell if you are friend or foe or will I have to bind you or more?" Libby felt dizzy with fear- this was a madman!- and watched April's face etiolate. She had never been physically threatened like this- this was much worse than the incident involving a girl who had attacked her because she had heard a false rumor that Libby had been gossiping about her cousin. The girl at least had been shorter.. Sturdily built, maybe, but at least shorter than herself (though not April), not to mention unarmed. Finally screwing up her quailing courage, Libby said, a quiver in her slightly deep (for a teenaged girl) speaking voice, "Um.. My name is Liberty Artlong, but I er, normally go by Libby. My friend here is April Neverton, please don't hurt her." Libby had always felt slightly protective towards the younger girl: despite the age difference of only six and a half months, Libby was one grade higher than April. "We're only sixteen, not 'twenty or so'" Libby knew she was starting to seem slightly impertinent bout couldn't help it; her mouth had always been one of her personality flaws, even when she'd been a little kid. "We're from River City.. Can you please release us?"

To the girls' utmost surprise, the man complied to Libby's request, and he tore off a small, relatively clean piece of cloth from his cloak and handed it to April, presumably for her scratch. April held it to her face, and then the normally taciturn girl asked, "Why were you hurting us?" There was the faintest of nervous quivers in her tone, though she maintained a fearless front.

"My apologies," said the man, "but you can't be too careful these days. However, I do sense, apart from your being kids, that you're at least slightly trustworthy. I will be keeping my eye on you two, though. Tell me.. Where are your parents? How did you two come to be here? And why are you dressed in such a queer manner? Your attire is quite unlike the norm of Men, or any races that I can speak of."

"Er. How did we come to be here?" Libby screwed up her face in thought, trying to remember. She sighed with frustration, having suddenly felt as if her mind had been wiped of all she ever knew. She no longer felt as if the man was somebody she knew from somewhere, and began to feel alarmed again. April, from her demeanor, was experiencing the same sort of feelings, although she had an unidentifiable emotion mixed in with the confusion on the face; one unlike what Libby had ever seen on her friend's face. "I- I suddenly don't remember!" Her blue eyes studied her own outfit and April's, and she suddenly felt extremely out of place, as if she belonged in a different sort of outfit; perhaps a dress or skirt. This was odd, as Libby had never actually wanted to wear what she haughtily deemed "overly girlie clothes." Names remained in her mind, names other than Libby Artlong and April Neverton, names she couldn't attach any significance to. "I was in a graveyard" Libby blanched. What was she talking about? What graveyard? "And then I was here. Both of us. I just don't know.." The girl inadvertently shivered, from a combination of agitation and from the cold of the October air. She had dressed for a day at the end of May, on the cusp of finals season. "It's almost as if we're in a different time." Even as she spoke, Libby knew she sounded absurd, possibly demented.

"I am called Strider," said the man, a shadow of a sympathetic smile flitting across his sober expression. Were these two girls perhaps orphans, like himself? Were they hungry, in need of a home or shelter or protection? The Ringwraiths were abroad, and Aragorn did not want to leave these girls to wander about in vain. It seemed cruel to bring females into possible danger, but death was almost a certainty for them if they were abandoned again. The girls showed no signs of having any helpful weapons or food on them. They did not appear to have been in the Wild a long time, as they were completely kempt in appearance, though they seemed damp for some reason. But were they trustworthy? That bothersome question was the principal dilemma.

"Can you cope with danger?" Aragorn found himself asking. April and Libby exchanged surprised looks. Danger? What was this man Strider on about? The two girls had dealt with unpleasantness in the form of bullies and results of their own foolhardy wanderings, but the man seemed to be talking about a more serious kind of danger; both felt a sense of foreboding within themselves.

"Can you please." April's voice suddenly trailed off as a surprised gape crossed her expression. Libby averted her attention to where April's attention was focused, and the gawking was immediately explained. Four barefoot people, who were no taller than children of around six or seven years of age, had suddenly come up behind Strider. They did not have the faces of children, but adults in the prime of life. Asides from size, the girls also noted other peculiarities in the appearances of these newcomers. Their ears were rather large and pointed on top, and they wore no shoes. Their feet were covered on the tops with what looked like curly hair.

"What are you?" Libby flushed, suddenly realizing the impudence of her query. She didn't know what these people, or creatures, as the case may be, were, but "Who are you?" would have been a more respectful question for suddenly meeting strangers. The one who appeared the youngest of them all laughed, sympathizing with the quickness of the blonde girl's tongue. It seemed that he had something in common with the tall blonde. The sharp- faced creature was the hobbit Pippin.

"Strider, perhaps we should know what is going on?" asked another creature, who was standing directly next to the pointed-faced Halfling: he couldn't have been much older. He was taller, with a more oblong face. Halfling: the name had come to Libby out of thin air.

Aragorn laughed, a rarity for the stern man. "Keep your voices down," he muttered. "The fellow who just asked me to explain everything is Meriadoc Brandybuck, although we just call him Merry. His littler friend here is Peregrin Took, also known as Pippin. Those two lagging behind are Frodo Baggins," Libby noticed that Strider's voice had dropped especially low upon mention the name of Frodo Baggins, "and Samwise, or Sam, Gamgee. Frodo is the tallest of the hobbits, with a thin build, not unlike yourself, er, tall blonde, and Sam is the plumper one."

Libby smirked slightly, this time insulting herself alone. Thin? Libby had always felt chubby, especially when stepping on the scale. Even her mom insisting that extraordinarily dense bones ran in the family failed to prevent her from feeling as if she needed to diet, or exercise more vigorously. Lately, Libby was resorting to very drastic measures indeed in her endeavor to lose excess weight. Shaking off her annoyingly automatic putting herself down, Libby said, " Hi, erm. Maris, Pippy, Frodo, and Sam? No, Merry and Pippin, and Frodo and Sam, sorry, I suck at names. I'm Liberty, but /I/ go by Libby." Libby shook her head slightly, trying to clear out the cobwebs.

"And I'm April, April Neverton" added the petite Asian, smiling at Libby's fumbling over the names of the hobbits. The younger ones, evidently Merry and Pippin, were sniggering slightly from the errors in their names. "You can also call Libby Libbers."

Libby scowled at April, that was the name April gave her every time she fumbled over the memory of someone else's identity. After completing her feigned indignation, Libby retorted, "Okay, whatever, Ape." Ape was actually a nickname dating back from when Libby had been an eighth grader and April a seventh. They had both been members of the Library Club in River City Middle School, and they and a third friend called Violette called each other only by the first syllables of their names, thus transforming into Ape, Lib, and Vi.

A small smile appeared on April's face, followed by hearty chuckling. At the same time, Libby went into peals of giggling. As the small, timid titter from the more solemn April equaled one of Libby's frequent giggling fits, booms of laughter from April were literally the equivalent of helpless convulsions in Libby. Aragorn smiled to himself a bit as he watched the girls' mirth, but at the same time felt a sense of trepidation. Now he had six charges on his hands, four including those who ages were the equivalent with youngsters in his eyes, and the elder two merely more frivolous than was good for them. Even Frodo and Samwise still seemed to throw caution to the winds sometimes, and he felt as if no good would come of it. Although the joyfulness of the young often warmed one's heart, it grieved him to know that evildoers such as Sauron and the Ringwraiths got a sadistic pleasure out of tormenting people like his companions. Sauron preferred the miserable, wretched, and enslaved over the merry-making free.

Suddenly, the hobbit called Frodo gave a frightened cry, seizing a hold of Strider's arm and pointing downwards. April and Libby immediately desisted and looked in the direction. Five black shapes were converging below, and a sense of cold filled the pit of Libby's stomach. Strider flung himself down, pulling Frodo on the left and April on the right with him. Merry and Libby immediately followed suit. Libby winced slightly as she misstepped in her descent, slightly jolting her temperamental ankle. Merry's attention focused on the blonde for a fleeting second before reverting his attention to the black shapes. Although Libby and April were staring bemusedly at the shapes, the others knew within their hearts what the shapes were: Black Riders, the notorious Ringwraiths of Mordor. All the two teens from the early twenty-first century knew was that the shapes seemed to denote peril.

"What is it?" April whispered apprehensively, ironically at the same moment as Frodo. At any other time, April would have found amusement in saying the same exact thing as somebody else simultaneously, but instinct told her this was not a time for noise. Thus she kept her tongue in check, merely waiting to see what would happen. Okay, April, calm yourself. it could just be those meds giving me another slap in the face. Perhaps none of the others are this worried.

"I do not know, but I fear the worst," Strider replied, answering the question of Frodo and one of many for April. Libby raised herself on her elbows slightly, catching her friend's eye and mouthing, "What does he mean by the worst?" She hoped she didn't mean what her common definition of the worst was. April cringed and shook her head in reply.

Watching the shapes, Strider caught the movement of the two teenagers out of the corner of his eyes, and hissed, "Keep still!" April and Libby complied, going flat on the land once again. After a few eerie moments, Strider spoke again, in no more than a whisper. His sharp eyes had confirmed his fears. "Without a doubt, the enemy is here! What a mercy Merry and Sam returned right before we found these two girls!" His eyes fell on them, taking in the faces of utmost confusion. I'll explain when and if it's safe," he hissed, before falling silent. He thought about what they could do trapped atop of the ancient watch-tower, then said, "Come. Follow me." The six companions crept down the northern side of Weathertop, Libby walking with a limp because slopes caused her discomfort in her bum ankle. Besides, River City, unlike this unknown terrain, was flat and not very high above sea level.

"What is it? Will someone please explain what is going on here?" Libby asked, impatiently and slightly louder than she meant to. April clapped a hand over Libby's mouth, releasing her hand after a few seconds. Her friend was definitely being rather imprudent.

"Not so loudly," Strider warned, despite knowing that April had done so by muzzling her friend. "I'll explain everything. April, Libby, come, walk on either side of me." As April walked on Aragorn's left and Libby his right, Strider recounted the stories of the Ringwraiths as briefly as he could while still including all the vital details. except the Ring itself, and Frodo's perilous mission. All in good time, he thought to himself. The hobbits, Sam in particular, still seemed to have slight doubts to his own reliability, and he wasn't yet sure of the honesty and caution of the girls. Libby, in particular, seemed to speak and act before thinking. April seemed more withdrawn, more cautious, not unlike himself, but Libby seemed to be a free spirit, perhaps a mischievous sort not unlike Merry and Pippin. Chances were she could draw out another side of April, their friendship seemed close like that. Libby's intentions boded to be benign, yet, there was always the possibility of the girl letting something slip which could prove dire for the whole group. He would have to wait and see. Perhaps April would call a more demure side to Libby and not the reverse, more dangerous possibility.

Libby shuddered as Strider told the tale of the malevolent specters. What on earth had she and April gotten themselves into? How did they find themselves in this clinch in the first place? She knew she had screwed up before, but never this badly, and the worst was, she didn't even know what her mistake was! Slip of the tongue? Overactive curiosity? She felt a fondness growing for these people, but she detested the danger. She liked adventure, but this was really a bit much for her taste. Her idea of risking her neck extended to riding even the wildest of carnival rides, but on those at least there was no chance of anyone being after her blood.

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As night begin to fall, the hobbits and Strider began to debate whether to remain on Weathertop for the night or not. Frodo seemed particularly distressed, especially after Strider said, "The Ring draws them." Did that mean a ring was involved in this scrape? April nudged Libby, pointing to each of the eight fingers bearing a ring, and smiled. Beneath her ribbing exterior, April felt confused and more than a little suspicious. Libby rolled her eyes and pointed out the three April had on.

"Libby, you're attracting the enemy," April ribbed, in the tone which Libby knew displayed the fact that she was kidding. "I do believe you took my ring advice for if we should ever wind up in another fight a little /too/ seriously."

"Oh, stop, it could as easily be one of yours, and only two of mine actually have stones," Libby said. Both girls tittered before remembering caution and growing sober again. They were also slightly anxious by Frodo's conduct. "Is there no escape, then? If I move, I'll be seen and hunted! If I stay, I'll draw them to me!" the hobbit was lamenting in a spooked manner.

"It's him, then," April mouthed, nodding towards Frodo and then glancing at Strider, who had laid a hand on the small being's shoulder. Strider pointed out a pile of wood ready for a fire, then mentioned that the Riders feared fire, like all animals. Apparently there was a lot more about Frodo than anyone was letting on to them. They were keeping secrets. But then, they had just encountered each other, almost nobody ever made snap decisions to trust a person.

"It is also like a good way of saying 'we are here" Sam muttered audibly, not convinced in the least. Libby privately agreed with the timid hobbit, although she didn't admit this out loud.

After the group had reached the decision to stay, they prepared a meager meal. When Pippin complained of the frugal ration, Frodo pointed out that they only had a small food supply. Libby felt a slight twinge of guilt, knowing that herself and April were two more mouths to feed. The girls were to travel with the four hobbits and the peculiar, yet benevolent- seeming, man. Strider had warned them that they would be walking extraordinary distances, and said, "I hope you two are in somewhat decent physical shape."

"We walk everywhere. all over town," April had said, grinning, "from when Libby gets out of her last class to five. At least we did before stuff happened, her sports and such."

"Yeah, I'm on the school track team," Libby had confirmed, once more feeling as if she were talking about a separate life and a whole other world. She lifted up her right heel slightly and rolled her foot in an effort to stretch her sore shin as she spoke. Oddly, those shin splints had only affected this one foot. Aragorn nodded as he listened to April and Libby talk about things he did not know. Different culture? He'd have to ask them to explain later if they got around to it. Either April and Libby came from quite the prosperous family, judging by the amount of jewelry they donned, or their whole area of living was well-to-do. Their backgrounds were a mystery, and it could be useful to find out more about their history if there was time. For now, they were just doubts and curiosities. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~

As the frigidity of the weather increased and the darkness of night fell, the hobbits, April, and Libby huddled close to the fire. The hobbits wrapped themselves in every garment they possessed, while Strider was content with a cloak. Even Libby, who did not get cold so easily as she did overheated, was shivering, leaning against April, who, despite her heavy suede jacket, was little more comfortable. Noting the lack of wraps for the two girls, Strider gave them two spares out of his pack for them to make use of. April and Libby laid one atop of the other, and huddled underneath the makeshift cloak.

"Would you like to hear some stories?" Strider asked, hoping to lighten the mood. His companions, especially April and Libby, vehemently answered in the affirmative. Libby and April had the mindset of hoping to learn more about this sudden quest. After a few tales concerning Elves and Men in what Strider called the "Elder Days," Merry asked if Strider knew more of somebody called Gil-Galad. Apparently, Strider had previously mentioned this person, before April and Libby had turned up.

"I do indeed, and so does Frodo, for it concerns us closely." Most of the companions save Sam glanced at Frodo, who seemed to be glancing within the depths of the roaring fire, deep in thought.

"I only know what I learned from Gandalf," Frodo finally mused, slowly. "Everyone, Gil-Galad was the last of the great Elf-Kings of Middle- earth. He is called Starlight in Elvish. With the Elf-Friend Elendil, he wend to the land of.."

Just as Frodo was about to name the mysterious land, Strider told Frodo not to name the place with the servants of the Enemy at hand. Sam asked for a different tale, and Aragorn began a song of Beren, Luthien, the Silmarils. It was at this point that April and Libby finally learned the name of the Enemy: Sauron.

Suddenly, Merry sprang to his feet, earnestly saying, "Look, it is getting very late!" As everyone else looked up, they saw something cold and dark, and felt a sense of dread over their hearts. The hobbits began to speak of "something creeping up the side of the slopes," and the sense of foreboding returned in full measure. At the mention of black shapes, Strider instructed the group to keep close to the fire, facing outwards, torches ready. They bunched around in fire just in time. Tall black figures appeared on the slope, bearing down on them. Libby felt a sense of chill, before fear came over her and she and April gripped each other, quaking, waiting for the certain end. April's heart sank, wondering if she had blown this already.