The Imperfect One
By: JDArc

Disclaimer: Everything Middle Earth belongs to the creative genius, Tolkien. I am merely borrowing a few of his characters and places for a while, and no money is being made from this. All other unfamiliar characters and original plotlines belong to me. Now, with that out of the way…I hope you enjoy my story!

Author's Note: I haven't read all of Tolkien's books, this story probably will not be true to the cultures of Middle Earth, and I apologize to all purists out there, but in order for this story to work, a few things need to happen that may seem out of character.

01/10/06: I've decided to continue with this story because I owe it to all of you who've invested long hours to read it. However, because it's been so long since I've last connected with my main character, as well as with the general Lord of the Rings story itself, it'll be a little difficult to get back into the flow of things. I am rereading and editing each chapter to fix any plot holes that I may have missed when I first started this story, and once that step is complete, I will finally upload a new chapter that starts where I last left off: at the beginning of the Two Towers. My writing style has changed somewhat in my long absence, so I can only hope that the later chapters will match well with what I had written before my long hiatus. Once again, I give you one of my many apologies for putting this story on hold for an incredibly long amount of time, and I can only hope that there are still those of you who will stick with this story until the very end.

Prologue: Elenmírë

She was not beautiful, not by many standards. Her dark hair was rather dry, bushy and lined with split ends. Her nose was too flat to be flattering and her overall figure was a bit too thick. Her only two appealing physical features were her grey eyes and her perfectly shaped red lips. They almost made up for her lack of overall appeal…almost, but not quite. It was rather unusual to see such a physically imperfect she-elf, and though Elenmírë was usually kind (she did have quite a temper when teased, however) and fairly courageous, her strengths were overlooked by many with one glance.

Her home was in Rivendell where she was orphaned nearly two thousands years ago at the very young age of fifty years. Her father, a Ranger and a Mortal Man, from whom she acquired her less than attractive looks, died in a skirmish with a gigantic spider in the realm of Mirkwood, and her mother, from whom she received her wondrous grey eyes and lips, met a similar fate when a group of orcs captured her as she wandered around the edges of the city limits, taking her far away before help could reach her and was never to be heard from again. Lord Elrond took the young Elenmírë under his wing for her mother, Aldarial, was his pupil in the art of healing before she was seized by orcs, and the Lord of Rivendell thought it only right to take up his pupil's daughter into the same education. Elenmírë, however, had slightly different plans.

Elenmírë was drawn to the art of war and weaponry and took training under Elrond's twins, Elrohir and Elladan. Though her love was lured to the bow and arrow and especially to the Elven blade, it took her half a century to get through basic training for she was neither as graceful nor as coordinated as the other Elves, but once she had the basics down, she was a swift learner, and after a century of grueling instruction, she had advanced to second in command to Elrohir and Elladan. Although this title gained respect from those around her, she was still looked upon as less feminine and even less attractive, for her comrades in war now saw her as no more than as one of their own, not as one to fall in love with. In the depths of her heart, she wanted nothing more than for someone to look beyond her rough exterior, but growing up next to the Evenstar and watching the reactions to her, Elenmírë was under nothing short of torment.

Arwen was beautiful, graceful, loved by all, and almost everything that Elenmírë wished to be, and she envied her, knowing that it would take a miracle for one to look upon her the way everyone did Arwen. Arwen's demeanor never lacked amiability, and she did see Arwen as a sister, a sister that she simultaneously admired and resented. Her feelings were always at battle when she gazed upon the Evenstar for Arwen was the loving confidante and best friend, but at the same time, she also reminded Elenmírë of what she would never become.

Her low self-esteem was eating away at her, but when she took out her aggression on traveling bands of orcs, her Elven glow would sustain her a while longer for she was in her element when in combat. But she was slowly fading, and none knew exactly what to do, not knowing that the only things she longed for were the only three things no one, besides her surrogate family, seemed to want to give her: acceptance, friendship, and most importantly, love…not the paternal or familial sort of love that she found with Lord Elrond, Elrohir, Elladan and Arwen, but true love that songs had been sung about many millennia before she was born.

Bit by bit, she was losing hope, and yet she prayed to the Valar out of desperation for her one wish to come true: to find the unconditional love that she so frantically longed for. Yet, as fate would have it, her prayers did not go unheard to deaf ears. There was something in store for the valiant Imperfect One; that much the Valar knew, for they had seen it in the themes of the Great Music, and they waited, for the one to save her would do so, but only in the time when the fate of Middle Earth hung the balance of a great Fellowship…

And so began her journey…