Disclaimer: I do not own it, J R R Tolkien does.
A/N: This story will be based on me and my classmates dropping-into-Middle-Earth fic in DIFFERENT time zone : The second age of the sun. Just before the Fall of Gondolin, at least. In the Silmarillion like period. Please excuse my incorrigible Elvish. Don't worry. No romance whatsoever. Pure humor. Heh. Revision 3.
*
Ren shook her head in a blurry daze. She looked up from her position on the unusually cold floor where she had been lying. One second, she had been in her room, happily reading, the next... The sky looked different. There were no clouds, and the azure blue colour was so perfect it seemed almost glaring in comparison the the cloudly day that it had been a minute ago. The floor seemed rather cold compared to her bed, and it was made of... rock? Realization hit her rather suddenly.
Sitting up, Ren took brief a look around her and promptly fell straight back down again. Everything suddenly seemd surreal.
I did not see what I thought I saw. Not here. Not now.
Ren closed her eyes, taking a deep breath and thought things through as thoroughly as possible in her rather insane position. She was only twelve. She did not deserve this torture that she was going through.
Fact one: I have half of my class behind me here in this place. Fact two: Definitely not where I'm supposed to be. Fact Three: It's cold. Too cold. I live near the equator, not the north pole. Observation One: Probably not on earth anymore. Observation two: Others should be waking up.
Ren reopened her eyes, and saw something blonde staring in her face. She nearly shouted out in alarm. Scrambling up into a proper sitting position at long last, she took a good look at the person who was regarding her curiously from his position. The person had long blonde hair, shorter than hers, a bow and a long, sharp sword, and was kneeling down and looking at her curiously.
Blonde? There are no blondes on my side of earth. At least not long haired blondes.
'Heri...?'
Ren did not move. She froze at the voice, which seemed more musical than anything she had heard beforehand. All hopes of the place being Earth flew out the back window and shrivelled up in the ditch.
Heri is not English. Heri? Wasn't that? Quenya? For "lady"?
On the other side of Ren's brain, namely the sane one:
You've read too much Tolkien, you dolt. Too much Elvish. Quenya is NOT spoken on earth.
We. On. Earth. In. First. Place?
The blonde creature in front of her broke the silence with a sentence that most definitely was not English, which only served to confirm Ren's suspicions and fears.
'Le..?' [You..?]
Think Elvish. Quenya. Don't panic, this is only a dream, a nightmare. You'll wake up soon.
Stumbling, Ren racked her brains for her extremely faulty Elvish memory. Mad, some called her when they found out that she liked the language, but she really liked the series. Same went for the Hobbit and the Silmarillion. She slowly responded to his unspoken question, though trying not to answer it.
Evade, Ren, evade!
'Mane na sinome?' [Where is this place?]
Please allow me to get out of this alive...
The Elf, as the human concluded he was, looked at her for a while, his face slightly puzzled at her extremely faulty Elvish before understanding. A look of enlightenment came over his face as he stood, pulling her up in the process.
'Sinome? Si na Gondolin.' [This place? This is Gondolin.]
Gondolin? That's from the Silmarillion. Fall of Gondolin. Balrog. Eep. Blonde?
Ren looked behind her. Besides her friends that were rousing, she saw the gates. The famed Gates of the Hidden Rock. The world was crashing, burning and altogether melting into a small puddle of goo.
Gates? Blonde? Elf? Gondolin? Middle Earth?
Suddenly, everything seemed to click in place.
Middle Earth. With class. In Gondolin. After coming of Elves. Elf= Glorfindel, most likely. Me= Only Elvish speaker.
From behind her, a drowsy Inez shook Ren's shoulder roughly. The girl was looking extremely confused and lost as she should have been.
'Where on Earth are we?!'
Ren tried to get her tongue to cooperate with her.
'Tell the others to be quite. It's Glorfindel.'
The elf spoke again, much to Ren's alarm.
'Maneya nin, a nin mellyn tulya?'
Ren panicked again, her brain trying to process the Elvish.
Mane= Where. Ya=Which. Nin=You, A=and, mellyn=friends, wait. Isn't that Sindarin? Tulya=come. Put it together? Where, which, you, and, friends, came? Where did you and your friends come from.
Ren panicked slightly, afraid that she had misinterpreted the elf's question and answer as a complete fool, or that the elf would come to the conclusion that she was a raving lunatic and stick her through with one of those prickly looking arrows.She replied extremely tentatively. By now most of her friends had recovered and were looking in on her conversation in interest.
'Nin? Ah... Vahaiya.' [Me? Ah.. Far away.]
The elf cocked an unbelieving eyebrow at her. The bow and sword were not helping either. His original concern had faded away, and disbelief and distrust, even for a tiny (compared to him, at least) girl was not spared. His home was supposed to be hidden, and the elves did not invite a boatload of humans into their home during a warring period for no reason.
'Vahaiya? Le áva tulya sina luume.' [Far away? You do not come [from] this time.]
Ren smiled weakly, resisting the urge to back away from that dangerous looking eyebrow, realizing that jeans and a tee shirt were not exactly the most Middle-Earth-ish attire to be found around.
'Eh... Le ávaista... Nin... Uh...' [Eh... You do not understand. I... Uh...]
The elf looked at her shrewdly, disbelief now very evident. From behind, one of her friends shouted.
'What is going on?'
Turning around sharply, Ren hissed back, venom spitting from her lips.
'Not now! I'm in serious trouble here, so shut up!'
The elf shot her a sharp look and rattled off a long, quick sentence of Elvish. Ren had trouble keeping up.
'Ya quentet na adan-lambe, nin ista. Nan menna are, nin u lasto... yelwa, feuya nostale lambe.' [What you speak [of] is the tounge of man. But until (to)day, I have not heard [such]... loathsome, disgust[ing] tounge.]
Ren smiled faintly, promptly elbowing Inez and telling her and Shuwen to shut the others up. Now, Ren had no choice but to mix Sindarin and Quenya, due to her limited [and lousy] vocabulary. And gammar? What was Gammar?
'Ahh... nin gwaith lambe na uve sinome Westron a elda, quendi lambe.' [Ahh... My people's tounge is not like that of this places' Westron [common tounge, english], and the elvish tounge.]
'En u Elda, quendi?' [There are no elves?]
'U.' [No.]
'Le istama Quenya a Sindarin. Eldarinwa...?' [[Yet] You have knowledge of Quenya and Sindarin. Elvish...?'
I was hoping he would overlook that.
'Ahh... Nin... Nin naa, uh..., istima Eldarinwa, e parma.' [Ahh... I... I am, uh..., learned in Elvish, from books.]
Well, the internet and other resources that she used were all books, but still...
'Parma? En u Elda, nan en na parma Eldarinwa?' [Books? There are no Elves, but there are books of Elvish?]
'Heru, le u-ista, a nin u-noa an nayra heera an le.' [Lord, you do not understand, and I have no idea on how to tell [explain] to you.]
'A?' [Oh?]
'Heru, Im u-hanna Eldarinwa, nin mellyn u-hanya Eldarinwa. Va le quente Westron? Nin ' [Lord, I am not gift[ed] in Elvish, my friends do not speak Elvish [at all]. Do you speak Westron?]
The blonde elf looked at her sceptically, then peered at her half scared, half curious, half infuriated, half lost company of elven behind her. Ren crossed her fingers behind her back and prayed.
'Nin quente Westron? Nin va. Le merne quente Westron?' [[Do] I speak Westron? I do. You desire to talk [in] Westron?]
Ren nodded, not knowing the Elvish word for yes. The blonde elf probably thought her grammer was atrocious, and her tongues even worse. Chinese was bad enough. The elf made a quick switch to English, to her great relief.
'What brings you here to the Hidden Rock? Who lead you here? No mortal can possibly cross our boundaries, nor any elf, without guidance. One so young as yourself, along with your friends, should not be anywhere near here.'
Ren disliked being called 'one so young as yourself'. Sure, she was young, but she was not stupid. Then again, she probably seemed idiotic compared to this elf.
Mental note: Kick elf at next possible opening.
'My knowledge of how my friends and I got to Gondolin is not more than yours, maybe less. I was in my home, in a place nowhere near Middle Earth nor Valinor, if you must know, reading, and before I knew it, I appeared here.'
'And what is your name, young one?'
'It depends.'
The elf nearly laughed. Ren scowled at him.
'How can one's name depend?'
'My Elvish name, my English name, or one of my nicknames? There are many.'
'Your Elvish name would be nice. You are in Elvish territory, after all.'
'Sirithbrethil, I suppose, if my books are true. And if this is truly Gondolin, and you are the guard, I suppose that you shall be Glorfindel of the house of the Golden Flower.'
Glorfindel looked surprised at her knowledge. Ren could not blame him. This one's personality and fame obviously did not precede him.
'You speak true. Come, rouse your friends. I cannot leave you here alone, even though we are inside Elvish territory.'
Ren nodded. Quickly, she turned to have a rushed, extremely confusing conversation with her friends. Kemin was the first to let out an outburst, as she expected.
'Where the hell are we?'
Though harsh, it expressed the question that all the others asked. The looked at her expectantly. Ren gulped.
'I have no idea how to explain this, but we seemed to have landed in Middle Earth.'
Inez spoke up.
'This wasn't in the movie, y'know. I don't recognize it.'
'I know. I watched the movie six times already.'
Shuwen piped up.
'Wasn't in the books either.'
'I know. That only because none of you here have read the Silmarillon. You know, Gondolin...? Glorfindel...?'
Shuwen recognized that name.
'Glorfindel? That was the flight to the ford. The Third Age.'
'Well, if memory recalls, this isn't the third age. By far. This is most likely the age of Melkor, before Sauron's first rising to power. Of course, Sauron is here, but as a Maia in the times when Vala still walked, he is not powerful enough.'
Eleven blank faces stared back at her. Ren sighed.
'Never mind. Here's the low-down: We are in Middle Earth, for some reason I cannot fathom, we landed before the original Lord of the Rings timing, we are in a place called Gondolin, which is meant to be hidden, and we are being led away, most probably to Turgon, the King. The people here are Elves, and so you have no reason to fear, unless one of you go and do something stupid. If you can, help me out, but if I should start to converse in Elvish... Shut the hell up, for my sake.'
The others nodded, using the classroom innocence whereby you understand by not understanding.
'Questions?'
Sam did.
'How are we going to get out of here?'
Ren shrugged.
'I have no idea.'