Dude! I actually reviewed your story, Melime, and I didn't even realize it! Only my computer is screwed up (as you all probably know) so it only showed half my comment, heh... We who write fics on weird (ahem, excuse me, ORIGINAL) topics hafta stick together! ^_^ Oh, and also, here is where it stops being Eowyn-ish.

Thankee Queen Isis, I now have FOUR reviewers instead of three! (By the way my friend loves that song you said was your favorite in your bio.... let the bodies hit the floor... I personally think the lyrics are extremely morbid. Not that that's bad or anything.) And we wouldn't want all mumaks to die, then Reni would have no place in the story! So I've updated! ^_^

Red Mage, your mary sue and gary stu story rawwwwks ^_^ I like your spoofery

Disclaimer: My name is not Tolkien, unfortunately, since I always thought it was a cool name. It's an authorish name. But anyway, since my name is not Tolkien, I don't own anything, unfortunately again, since LOTR is so cool. But even though my name is not Tolkien, unfortunately, I own Saali. Ye savvy?
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Chapter Four: True Identity

 Saali wanted to crawl under the sand and stay there for the rest of her life. She shrank against the back wall of the tent and squeezed her eyes shut. Maybe if she didn't think about it, it would just go away... stop staring at me, she thought fiercely... her plan had lasted all of a day; she was so disappointed .... what would she do...

Kentai stood there for what seemed like an eternity, dark eyes darting from her widow's lock to her face, and eventually to her chest, which was why it was a good thing that she had her eyes closed, or she might have attacked him. His eyebrows appeared permanently raised.

Saali opened one eye. "Please," she said hoarsely. "I mean no harm..."

When all of a sudden, Tai did the most unexpected thing he could have done under the circumstances.

He laughed.

He laughed until he doubled over; he laughed until tears ran down his cheeks, he laughed until he was completely out of breath and lay on his bedroll, gasping for breath and letting out short bursts of laughter in between gasps.

Saali stared.

Finally, the man gained enough air to speak. "And to think..." Ha, ha, ha. "And to think... you had me fooled... all along..."

Saali stared at him. Finally, she decided the most appropriate facial expression was a scowl. "I do not think it is so funny," she snapped.

"Oh..." Tai wiped tears from his cheeks. "Oh, but it is. You fooled everyone completely... even Sir..." He began to laugh again, but it had acquired a sort of wheezelike quality from his breathlessness.

Since it appeared he was not going to ask the most obvious question, Saali decided to answer it anyway. "I - I wanted revenge," she explained awkwardly, "for the death of my father and husband."

"Do we... do we all not," Tai responded in a pointless sort of way, and finally got enough control over himself to stop laughing.

Saali wondered if he had gone mad. "I am a widow," she pointed out, "and you are speaking to me."

"Well, I touched you earlier," Tai announced merrily, "so according to tradition, that gives me until exactly tomorrow at the same time to live."

"And you... don't... care." Saali looked quite blankly at her tentie.

"No, not particularly," Kentai shrugged. "I am only religious when I want to curse things. Fate curse it!" he said in order to demonstrate.

Suddenly, relief swept over Saali, and she slumped against the tent wall with a huge sigh. He was not going to do anything to her. He didn't care. "You must swear to me you will keep this a secret," she said, looking gravely into his cheery eyes. "SWEAR it. Now."

He held up his hand and passed it over his heart. "On my honor," he promised. "Then again, I do not have much honor, so I may not be the best person..."

"KENTAI!" she hissed. "You CANNOT TELL ANYONE! I do not even want to KNOW what Sir, and anyone else, would DO to me..."

For just a fleeting moment, the merriment left his eyes. "All right. I promise." It returned just as quickly, however. "So. What is your name when you decide to be a woman?"

"Tasaali," she said, staring at her feet. "Moroke was my father. You may call me Saali, if you still wish to associate with me." Shame had replaced shock.

"Of course I do. Who is more interesting to associate with than a woman pretending to be a man?" Kentai grinned maniacally. "Wait until Reni hears this. He will give you a really strange look, I guarantee it. He is good at that look. Actually, he excels at looks in general, for he communicates mostly -"

"I cannot believe you." Amusement had replaced shame. "Here you are, in a tent with a widow -"

"It adds a certain element of danger," Tai said overdramatically.

"-And all you can talk about is how Reni is good at giving looks."

"He is." Tai, Saali noticed, did not seem to have lost interest in looking her over.

"Stop it," she snapped irritably.

"What?" Tai asked innocently, his eyes wandering.

"Stop LOOKING at me!" she screeched a bit louder than intended, her hand darting to her jeweled sword hilt. She could not, personally, see why he was, as there was not much to look at.

Tai blushed dramatically. "Sorry," he mumbled. "I could not help myself," he added in a much more Kentai-like tone.

Saali snorted. "Well, you are going to have to, or people will get suspicious," she informed him, releasing the hilt. Then, she thought of something. "So," she said rather awkwardly. "We are sharing a tent."

"Yes, we are," Kentai agreed happily.

"So... how... are we going to do this?"

"Well, first, you lay down, then you close your eyes," said the ever-clueless Tai.

"I mean," Saali sighed, "it is not exactly... suitable, for me to sleep with - next to you," she corrected herself hastily and blushed, "now that you know my identity."

"Oh," said Kentai, the light obviously dawning. "I will not try anything, I promise."

"I KNOW," Saali said in aggravation. "It is still not..."

Kentai had already crawled into his bedroll. "They will not give you another tent. We are stuck, unfortunately," he murmured into his mattress.

Saali bit a thin lip. "You - you promise not to... you know..."

"SwearbyFate," Kentai slurred before falling fast asleep, leaving Saali to blow out the candle.
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The next morning, the two encountered a bit of a difficulty. "How," Saali asked Kentai as she rubbed sleep from her eyes, "do we intend to dress?"

"Go right ahead," Tai offered mischievously.

"Get out," she snarled, shoving him outside to meet the burning sun and, she suspected, the stares of his fellow soldiers.

When they were both properly clothed and had both taken their turn at being stared at, Kentai insisted on telling Emreni about Saali. She protested, but he came back with the fact that Reni certainly wasn't about to tell anyone, a fact the truth of which which Saali found irrefutable. So, to the Mumak-man they went.

Reni, as promised, gave her a very strange look. On a piece of paper, he scrawled, WHY?

"Because I wanted revenge for family deaths and my widowing. Can you not guess?" Saali half-shouted, louder than she had intended. She clapped a bony hand over her mouth.

Reni shrugged and returned to feeding his mumaks. It was funny, Saali thought, how he was shorter than her, yet the mumaks listened to him as if he were their size. Apparently, he was not superstitious either, or he did not care for death, or for Fate. It seemed to the young widow that one who would disagree with a war would also disagree with a tradition The mumak-man simply peered at her with wide-set, deep black eyes, an expression that said as clearly as words: You puzzle me, and I admire that.

"Thank you for understanding," she murmured, and slipped away silent as the dew that did not come in the desert.
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Kentai lived past the same time that day that he had touched her the day before.
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The men marched on for day after day after sweaty, stifling day, and Saali found herself out of water. She did not ask Kentai for some of his, as she was still slightly shamed from the revealing of her identity, and besides, she did not want him to run out as well. She stopped talking as much - she suspected Reni approved - because it dried out her throat, and often lay and coughed at night after Tai had been reassured she was fine.

This was how she found herself being awoken by a sharp slap on the face. She lay sprawled clumsily over both her and Kentai's bedroll. Slowly, Tai's face pieced itself together through the black dots that swam in her vision. "What...?" She began to cough violently, each hacking breath tearing at her dry throat. She wanted to cry, but her eyes remained painfully dry.

Tai bent down and slapped her on the back several times, until the fit ceased. "You fainted," he informed her, the grin gone altogether from his face.

"Oh," she rasped, sounding quite as awful as Sir.

"Do you want a healer?" Kentai sounded genuinely concerned.

"No!" she exclaimed fiercely, though it felt like the word would rip out her very throat. She staggered drunkenly to her feet, flinching with the effort, and tripped out into the sunlight.

That was when the black dots came together to block out everything else, and she did not feel herself collapse.
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The flaps of Sir's tent exploded open, and in leaped Private Kentai. "Yes?" the captain rasped, quite unfazed by the soldier's dramatic entrance.

"I need water and a healer. NOW," Kentai commanded.

"We do not have either to spare," Sir drawled. How many times the soldiers had pulled this very act, just to get more precious water for themselves, he did not even know. "The bandages are kept in the -"

"I do not NEED a bandage!" Kentai roared.

"Do not shout at me, Private," Sir said dangerously. "I have no use for one of your childish pranks. Now, if you will stop wasting my time..."

Kentai let out what sounded quite authentically like an animal roar. "It is NOT a prank! Listen, you, I have a dying woman on my hands -"

Sir began to shake his head knowingly, then stopped to really look at the soldier, eyes wide. "Did you say 'woman'?"