Even If You Were The Last Person On Earth

By Colorain

Disclaimer: Sorry this hasn't been up in a while; my comp hates me and wouldn't let me open what I'd already typed for this chapter. So I rewrote it by hand, and had to type it up in a one-time-only shot. Hope that's ok.

Susan is mine, Legolas isn't, and neither is The Wizard of Oz. They belong to Tolkien and Baum, respectively. And sorry, the nickname "Norolinde" isn't explained yet. You'll live! Now read and review. You know you want to. (Let me know if I'm losing my touch.)

Things were rushing by Susan's head too quickly for her to even begin to understand.

Woah, girl, slow down, she mentally chided. It's just like a puzzle. You find your pieces, you group them and then you put what you know together. Susan almost scoffed at her logic. Where they were, what they were doing there—how to get out of it—were not exactly easy answers.

This is going to be one damned big puzzle.

Susan wasn't that good with mysteries. She sucked at word problems in school—all that distracting extraneous information—and had always sympathized more with Dr. Watson than Sherlock Holmes. But . . . . but she could at least try and find some of those pieces, even if she couldn't decipher their meaning.

What did she know?

There was that storm from yesterday. Despite not being fond of camping, Susan wasn't an idiot. She had checked the weather forecast before leaving. It was supposed to have been clear until at least the middle of next week.

Then again, weathermen were notoriously idiotic when it came to accuracy and wouldn't know a raindrop from a hippopotamus if it fell on them.

Moving right along. Her cell phone hadn't been useful since yesterday afternoon. Which, now that she thought about it, wasn't too out of the ordinary. Susan was pretty sure that in order for most phones to work, you had to be remotely close to a phone line. And, she thought sadly, looking around, there didn't seem to be any telephone lines, anywhere around. At all.

There was also the small matter of her taking aspirin when she had tripped the first time on the trail. Was her water bad?

Crap. Had she overdosed?

It was entirely possible that Susan Blackweld wasn't hanging out with an elf named Legolas. Maybe the storm hadn't happened at all, and she was lying somewhere on the trail, comatose. Or dead. No one would find her in time to help. Out of all the things parents could be right about, Susan desperately hoped this wasn't one of them.

She shivered. Glad to see I'm still my usual, optimistic self, she thought sarcastically. Was that it? Was that every possible thing that could explain what had happened to her?

Well, no. Now that Susan wracked her brain, she remembered falling off a crevasse in the storm last night. She turned her head, looking around her.

She wasn't anywhere near a crevasse.

~*~

"This isn't real," Susan told herself firmly. "I'm imagining this all. I'm . . . I'm gonna wake up and it's going to be just like The Wizard of Oz, except out in the woods. And I'm going to have cell phone reception, and call my parents, and get the hell out of here."

Legolas sat a short distance away from her, politely ignoring her rant and taking inventory of his stuff. He was real. No unreal thing could fall on her and make her muscles ache so badly. Susan fingered the hole in her backpack. That was real, too.

Susan squinted her eyes. Hole . . . arrow . . . Legolas . . . duh! Her absolute idiocy smacked her hard in the face. Why hadn't she bothered to ask Legolas what had happened to him? Some detective she was turning out to be.

Well, okay, the only problem that remained with that plan was how to go about it. Gee, Legolas, anything terribly funky happen to you lately, or is this pretty normal?

Obviously, Susan's problem was second-guessing herself. What if this Legolas guy did have the answer? She'd be incredibly stupid not to ask.

"Legolas?" she said quietly. Immediately, his head turned so he was looking straight at her. It was unnerving, to say the least. Susan closed her eyes and exhaled, steeling herself.

"Where did you come from? Really?" Crap! Wrong question. Might as well see how he answers this time.

Legolas blinked. "Perhaps I was not clear the first time I told you. I am from Mirkwood, in Middle-Earth. Do you not know of these places?"

Obviously! "Never heard of them. This is Earth, buddy, no 'middle' about it. We've got humans. We don't have elves. Most people don't own bows and arrows. And nobody dresses like that, either."

Legolas frowned. "Is there something wrong with my attire?"

Susan snorted. "Nooooo, of course not. I mean, until you decide to go somewhere with other people."

"This is not your Earth." The elf's tone was quiet, and Susan had to prick her ears in order to hear him.

"What!" she exclaimed. "Of course this is Earth. Where else would we be?" Legolas began pacing. It was annoying to watch.

"I am not in Middle-Earth anymore; that mist almost ensures it." He stopped, staring at Susan. He looked scary. "Did anything strange happen to you before I came here?"

Susan barely bit back a laugh. "Do you want the edited version or the unabridged? I kept falling yesterday, there was a big rainstorm and the ground shook all funny, I fell off this crevasse that that has miraculously disappeared . . . Crap." She hadn't moved. She hadn't been moved. She wasn't where she had started out, and drawing on her earlier observations on how everything seemed different, she was willing to bet she wasn't on the same planet anymore.

Her ears were ringing with the epiphany. "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."