'Great job stupid.' I thought to myself. 'You really screwed up this time.' Oddly though, somewhere through the embarrassment and fear, I heard myself thinking 'Screwed what up?' The voice was distant and tiny and easy to simply ignore, as if I had barely even acknowledged its presence. So ignored it is what I did, which was by no means a difficult task. After all, that one miniscule thought was only one in a sea of churning fear and confusion.

My eyes met Elladan's for a brief second before I looked away. Why I did, I wasn't sure. It could've been out of embarrassment or shame, but from what I had no clue, nor did I have to time to stop and contemplate it.

Elladan still stop in the same spot, however the shock in his eyes was slowly fading to confusion and of course, curiosity. When I noticed this, a fresh wave of frustration with myself welled up in my chest like a fire just waiting to get out or unleash its fury upon my insides. Curiosity was definitely what I didn't need right now. I really didn't feel like telling anyone, let alone Elladan who I barely knew and who knew me even less, who I was talking about, or more rather, why I said what I did. Of all the things I would've chosen as my first uttering into this world, what I had said was definitely low on the list.

My head felt like exploding from thinking too fast and too hard, but a death I would've gladly welcomed to escape the staring of Elladan and his curiosity. Sadly, my head didn't explode and Elladan's staring did not relent, so I went for the next best thing. . .running.

I took a testing step back as if to see if the earth still stood beneath me as it had moments before, and without so much as a second thought, I ran like a frightened rabbit. My legs didn't know where they were supposed to be taking me, but neither did my mind. I simply ran with all I had in me, narrowly avoiding obstacles such as roots and random stones. I ran up and down the sloping landscape dodging and darting between trees. My heart hammered faster than I could ever recall and my breathing was sharp and ragged.

Even though I didn't have the slightest clue as to where I was running, it did give me a few precious moments to sort my thoughts. However, all I could make sense of was that I screwed up immensely and that hiding myself would do me no good in this world. So I decided to finish what I started at that creek so seemingly long ago.

I realized that what I was doing may have seemed fairly stupid to someone with half an ounce of sanity in their blood, but the loss of that sanity can do strange things to you. It was hard to live without point or purpose or even a shred of hope to clutch in a strange world when all you wanted in the first place was to leave your life behind you. And at that very moment in time, death and therefore release was a comforting thought to me.

How to go about doing it was what puzzled me enough to slow my erratic sprinting down to a semi-controlled run. I couldn't keep this up forever I knew, acknowledging my furiously pumping heart and dizzying breathing patterns. Slowing down to a stumbling jog, I attempted to execute the first plan that came to my mind. This is how the tree and I became aquatinted.

Blackness forming at the corners of my vision, I eyed the tree. It looked climbable and high enough to do the job. I started clumsily scaling it, the darkness in my vision shadowing the whole scene. My heart furiously thumped out of rhythm as I grabbed for branch after branch, only trying to get high enough to sever my spine upon impact after I jumped. My mind was groggy and shutting itself down, despite my body's commands to keep going. My senses all jumbled together in one ringing, dark mess that was impossible to navigate. My hands lazily grasped at branches that were always just beyond my reach as I failed to hold myself up any further, plummeting towards the ground from an unknown height in the tree.

And everything slowed and eventually. . .stopped.

My mind stayed with my body I think, way back there on the ground beneath the tree. What it was I knew though, I could not honestly say. All that I could sense. . .not see nor feel nor hear, was darkness. Flowers and grasses brushed against my ankles, but I could not feel them or rightfully say they were even there. They smelled sweet and faintly perfumed the air which I could not smell or breathe, for it wasn't there either. Thick, swirling water bubbled in a far off spring, but I could not hear the water's call or see the spring in the distance, because there was no spring or distance. All that was there, was a void full of feeling which could not be felt because it too, was something between imaginary and real, something that did not exist. Nonexistent voices that were never to be heard called out and shook me from the void. I did not want to leave, I wanted to remain here, in a place that was nowhere, with no time or reality. This was what I wanted, but once again I couldn't have it because my mind was waking and this was not a place for thinking. That is why I reluctantly left the void that was my heaven and left my fate once again in the hands of myself.

I wished I would wake alone, but I had no such luck. My senses returned and informed me of the world I was once again trapped in, and I knew I wasn't alone. I was in a soft bed and in a great deal of pain. I remembered falling from the tree and began to unearth my memories from there, playing my day over again backwards in my head. I remembered talking and remembered thinking how horrible it was that I had done such a thing. However, now it didn't seem like such an atrocious thing, but then again not much else could make me feel much except the near crippling pain I was in.

I heard talking, and listened intently, trying to grasp as much as I could. All I could hear for now were just snippets of a conversation between what sounded like two elves and another I didn't know. The elves were Elladan and Elrond, and the third person sounded also like an elf judging by the calm tone of voice, but one I didn't know. From what I gathered, the conversation was about my condition and what had happened.

I began to feel worry as I listened and thought, first was about what I had said. It wasn't even so much what I had said, but the thought that I had said something in the first place. I didn't know if Elladan had told what I had said, and I couldn't figure it out from the conversation. Second was the fact that I may have broken plenty of bones, maybe my back. I couldn't tell, but judging from my pain, I'd sure broken something. My mind grew weary and tired from listening to the elves converse, and I slipped in and out of consciousness before I finally succumbed to the blackness tugging at me.