By Aran'sApprentice-Meahow. Yup it's a weird name isn't it? not as weird
as some though... I used to only be registered on fictionpress, but that just
changed... Anyway here it is--
Yavi's POV
I pushed the enter button and everything went blank. I was floating. There was a newspaper in front of me and I picked it up and began to read.
Teens Die in Electrical Storm
The girls were killed by
electrocution, experts say.
Duh, I thought. If it was an electrical storm, that's the most likely explanation. I read the next line and started to freak.
Niamh Keltren, Yavanna Domingo, and Sabrina Bennet, all sixteen, were
killed in yesterday's electrical storm. All three girls attended Ivy
Wood high school, where they were working on a computer when a bolt of
lightning hit the school's power generators, sending electrical waves
throughout the system and causing a campus-wide blackout. The girls
were killed by power escaping a faulty electrical socket. No one else
in the room was injured.
If I'm dead, I thought, why am I still alive? Then I passed out.
When I came to, I was lying in wet sand...somewhere. I blinked, rolled over, and fell with a scream into water.
My head went under and came up again, only to be drenched as a torrent of water poured over me, my feet falling three feet down a miniature waterfall. I was swept downstream, struggling to no avail. I had never liked swimming, being more of a mountain-climber myself, and I had no doubt that this would do nothing to strengthen my tolerance of getting wet. The water carried me relentlessly along, until my stomach hit something hard.
Looking down between swells, I saw that my body had gotten stuck in in between the trunk and branch of a fallen tree, which spread out to the left bank about ten feet away. Once again, I was thankful that I'm definitely not the American dream.
This was what I was good at. I braced myself against the slippery wet wood, swinging my legs under the branch while holding onto it with both hands. There were four branches, including this one, at intervals along the trunk, which I could use to support myself until I reached the bank.
Keeping my body wedged in the crook of the branch, I pushed myself along, gathering my strength. Lunging at the next branch, I caught it and held on as the current tried to sweep me away, perhaps to my doom... I leapt again. two more...
The next one looked trickier. It was very thick, and I didn't know if my hands would fit around it. Waiting until the water seemed to lapse a little, I launched myself at it and caught on, slipping but swinging onto the next one before I fell.
I was feeling good with my skills now. The bank was right there, and all I needed to do was pull myself out and grab onto that jutting rock... then there was a loud crack, and I careened under the log with the branch still in my hands. I mentally cursed myself as I floundered in the rapids, knowing I would die—and I didn't even know where I was!
A savage jerk on my arm interrupted my denotation, and I felt hands on my wrist as I was dragged into the shallows, where I flopped on the bank, gasping. I heard noises—talking, but in some type of gibberish. Getting onto my hands and knees, I expelled at least a gallon of water from my lungs, then stood up, looking at my surroundings.
Standing around me were six tall, pale people, two women and four men from the looks of it, though it was sort of hard to tell. All were wearing green-brown tunics and no shoes, and had hair that extended at least to the middle of their backs. Only one, standing nearest to me and obviously my rescuer—he looked almost as drenched as I was—had dark hair; the rest were varying shades of blonde.
The people started babbling again, and to my surprise I recognized some of the words—they were talking...elvish? Then two words popped into my head: Setting: Rivendell.
No way, my brain said. Absolutely NO WAY. But here I was.
The people—no, elves—kept on talking, and I began to get frustrated. I was soaking wet and tired, and they were just sitting there blabbing in a language I didn't even understand. What did they think I had been doing, having a good time and not trying at all to get out?!
I stomped my foot—a childish habit I have never grown out of, ( never wanted to anyway) and said as loud as I could manage "hey elves? Umm, is there somewhere I can get food? Hey peop—I mean elves, or whatever you are!"
The dark haired one looked at me and said, normally for once, "Come here. I can't see your face." I stayed where I was, but met his deep green eyes squarely. As I'm not the tallest person in the world, my eyes were about neck-level to him, so this wasn't the easiest thing to do; I managed it without my neck cracking more than twice.
He had about the perfect face; they all were like that, though, so this wasn't very much of an acomplishment. I got a sudden, strange urge to see that beautiful face plastered with dirt and leaves, like me when I fell out of a tree once. Shaking the feeling off, I returned to reality. So much for getting away from the Johnny-boys.
He stared at me for a second, then he whispered to one of his companions, and they started gabbling again—"Laüre! Laüre-Hen!"
That, as I recalled, meant gold-eye. Were they talking about me? My eyes were brown! I tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned around, speaking rapidly before I could open my mouth, "I suppose we'd better take you to see my father, then, Laürehen—he'll know what to do with you." Without waiting for my answer he set off through the woods surrounding the river.
Jogging to keep up, I found myself next to an elf-lady who was slightly shorter than the others (but only slightly) and since nobody else was talking to me, I told her, "Actually, my name's Yavi. Where are we going anyway?"
"Elrond's house."
"His dad lives there?"
She laughed. "Elrond is Elladan's father."
"Oh."
I trudged into Elrond's house tired, out of breath, and complaining.
"Gad, I hate running. I HATE running. Running, I hate you. I hate running! I'm NEVER going to run AGAIN." The dark haired one, Elladan, elbowed me in the ribs. "You, Laürehen—shut up!"
"Its YAVI. Get it right, elf."
"Only if you call ME by MY name."
"No. Not until you can say Yavi."
"Fine then. Be an idiot. You'll see what happens when you mess with me..."
"I guess I will." Evidently this Elf was very fluent in English, or whatever we were talking; I had a feeling that what we were saying wasn't in my native language. Of course, this wasn't even my native planet, so who cared? If I knew how to talk in it, it didn't matter. I could annoy people...er, beings.
After walking through long corridors, shady gardens, and other nice places that take too long to describe, we arrived at Elrond's chambers, or room, or office or wherever he makes his decisions.
Out of the six elves that saw me down by the river, only two remained: the elf-lady who I had attempted to speak to earlier, and The Elf, aka Elladan, who seemed to have been grudgingly voted official spokes-elf of the group. For being my rescuer, he certainly hadn't been very friendly.
Elrond was there. Tall, and dark, and grim. He was the only one that didn't look like if you lined him up with all the other elves in this place you wouldn't be able to tell them apart.
The Elf was Elrond's son, eh? He had inherited his father's dark hair, but probably, from what I'd seen of him, no other good qualities.
As far as I knew there were no other dark-haired elves in the place, other than Arwen, who I hadn't seen yet, so this would make it easier to tell them apart. That wasn't, as in his son's case, the only way Elrond looked different from anyone else, though; he looked more powerful. And always mad.
Elrond looked me up and down as his son told him, with much embellishment on the part of the rescue, what had happened. Then, to my great joy, he dismissed The Elf and started, (not to my joy this time) asking me questions.
"My son provided me with little information on your background. What is your name?"
"Yavi, I mean, my real name's Yavanna, but that's like my nickname, you could say..."
"Where did you come from?"
Uh oh, I thought. Here it comes. "Um, well, I was in the library and my friends and I were working on the computer—wait um I mean this uh 'magic' thing called a computer sent us here."
"It sent you here, from where?"
"Earth! I mean, um, another world. A long ways away. And we were working on this 'computer' and it took us here—just took us. I mean, we told it the setting but we didn't expect it to do anything, we were just—"
Elrond interrupted my less-than-adequate speech. "You're telling me that a 'computer' sent you from a place called 'earth', which is another world. In this other world, you knew about Rivendell and told it to bring you here, even though you thought it wouldn't?"
"Umm, yes, that about sums it up." I could see he really didn't believe me though. I held my breath, waiting for it to pass.
"All right. How old are you?"
I opened my mouth to say sixteen, but what came out was "One thousand, seven hundred years. About." It was the first I'd heard of it.
"Really? I had judged, from your size, to be about one thousand three hundred, but I could be mistaken. Let me see your hand." Surprised but obedient, I stepped forward and let him take my hand—a hand that just didn't look quite right. It must be the light in here.
I felt some weird elf-magic touch my fingers for a moment, and jerked back. He didn't seem to notice.
"A shape-shifter. There aren't many around here any more, especially in bird-form... to be specific, a Phoenix."
"What the heck are you talking about?"
"You."
I gaped at him. Me a bird-thingy? I was a human, just like Bri and Niamh. My surprise was lost on him as he called, "Glorfindel! I need you to escort this girl to guest quarters, and find her an attendant." To me he added, "I'm finished with you. You may stay here, for now. Your attendant will tell you what you need to know, and answer your questions. Follow Glorfindel."
I couldn't see why he couldn't just take me there himself, but I supposed he was busy, what with having to keep all those elves in line. It must be pretty hard, especially if they were all like The Elf.
I followed Glorfindel, who as his name suggested had long, very golden hair. He led me down a few halls, through a couple gardens, out and in some doors, etc, etc, until we came to a long corridor of—gasp—more doors! He selected one by the entrance of the place and showed me to my room.
There was a large bedroom, with a low bed that had clean white sheets, blankets, and pillow. A table and chair were along one wall, and a wood chest for clothes rested at the foot of the bed. There was one window, whose shutters were open to let the sunlight in. Torch brackets held currently unlit torches for nighttime. Just like Motel Six, without the TV.
A door in the corner led to the bathroom, which had a chamber pot, a larger washbasin, right now dry, a counter, and a mirror.
Mirrors have this sort of freaky power that entices me to look into them whenever I pass one. Or maybe I just like the way I look. I looked into the mirror during my inspection of the bathroom, and—
It must be the light. The face in the mirror had my beautiful, wavy, red- gold hair, but other than that, she bore no likeness to me. Her face was small (I was used to that) with a sharp chin and nose, and her eyes stared back at me, wide, almond-shaped, and gold. Not brown-gold—real, 24-karat stuff.
It was the skin that really got me though. Not my skin, which was pale from sitting in the Ivy Wood torture chambers taking Cornell notes. Not black but a deep, sort of brown, bronzed color. I guess some people would call it brownish-copper, or something like that...
I gave a little gasp and whirled around to stare at Glorfindel, who was watching me with some semblance of interest.
"There's something wrong with that mirror," I cried, pointing at it. He frowned.
"Is it cracked? We can fix it, if its broken..."
"No, its like tinted or something—it changed the colors. Actually, that's sort of cool...I look freaky!
The elf moved forward to look at the mirror, and my heart gave a scary jolt. He looked totally normal! Then, that must mean...
"No, that's not me!" I cried, staring at the mirror in horror.
He was staring at ME now. "I see no problem with the mirror. Yet you speak as if you did not know your own face..."
"But I don't!"
I continued in this vein for some time. Eventually I annoyed Glorfindel so much that he left, grumbling about going to find me an attendant.
A.N. Funnier chapter next time, allright? We promise...actually Bri should, she's the next one. Review more pleeeeease!
Also, to our readers that think this is a MS fic, please read the next chapters. You will be surprised. (we promise) MS=EEEEEEEEVIL! If after the next few chappies you still think its MS, WE will be surprised.
Oh, by the way, whatever Niamh says I am definitely not a genius.
Our other fics—
Niamh—DRUIDGIRL (fanfic) Yavi—Aran'sApprentice-Meahow (fanfic) or Meahow (fictionpress) Bri—Night Genie (both)
Yavi's POV
I pushed the enter button and everything went blank. I was floating. There was a newspaper in front of me and I picked it up and began to read.
Teens Die in Electrical Storm
The girls were killed by
electrocution, experts say.
Duh, I thought. If it was an electrical storm, that's the most likely explanation. I read the next line and started to freak.
Niamh Keltren, Yavanna Domingo, and Sabrina Bennet, all sixteen, were
killed in yesterday's electrical storm. All three girls attended Ivy
Wood high school, where they were working on a computer when a bolt of
lightning hit the school's power generators, sending electrical waves
throughout the system and causing a campus-wide blackout. The girls
were killed by power escaping a faulty electrical socket. No one else
in the room was injured.
If I'm dead, I thought, why am I still alive? Then I passed out.
When I came to, I was lying in wet sand...somewhere. I blinked, rolled over, and fell with a scream into water.
My head went under and came up again, only to be drenched as a torrent of water poured over me, my feet falling three feet down a miniature waterfall. I was swept downstream, struggling to no avail. I had never liked swimming, being more of a mountain-climber myself, and I had no doubt that this would do nothing to strengthen my tolerance of getting wet. The water carried me relentlessly along, until my stomach hit something hard.
Looking down between swells, I saw that my body had gotten stuck in in between the trunk and branch of a fallen tree, which spread out to the left bank about ten feet away. Once again, I was thankful that I'm definitely not the American dream.
This was what I was good at. I braced myself against the slippery wet wood, swinging my legs under the branch while holding onto it with both hands. There were four branches, including this one, at intervals along the trunk, which I could use to support myself until I reached the bank.
Keeping my body wedged in the crook of the branch, I pushed myself along, gathering my strength. Lunging at the next branch, I caught it and held on as the current tried to sweep me away, perhaps to my doom... I leapt again. two more...
The next one looked trickier. It was very thick, and I didn't know if my hands would fit around it. Waiting until the water seemed to lapse a little, I launched myself at it and caught on, slipping but swinging onto the next one before I fell.
I was feeling good with my skills now. The bank was right there, and all I needed to do was pull myself out and grab onto that jutting rock... then there was a loud crack, and I careened under the log with the branch still in my hands. I mentally cursed myself as I floundered in the rapids, knowing I would die—and I didn't even know where I was!
A savage jerk on my arm interrupted my denotation, and I felt hands on my wrist as I was dragged into the shallows, where I flopped on the bank, gasping. I heard noises—talking, but in some type of gibberish. Getting onto my hands and knees, I expelled at least a gallon of water from my lungs, then stood up, looking at my surroundings.
Standing around me were six tall, pale people, two women and four men from the looks of it, though it was sort of hard to tell. All were wearing green-brown tunics and no shoes, and had hair that extended at least to the middle of their backs. Only one, standing nearest to me and obviously my rescuer—he looked almost as drenched as I was—had dark hair; the rest were varying shades of blonde.
The people started babbling again, and to my surprise I recognized some of the words—they were talking...elvish? Then two words popped into my head: Setting: Rivendell.
No way, my brain said. Absolutely NO WAY. But here I was.
The people—no, elves—kept on talking, and I began to get frustrated. I was soaking wet and tired, and they were just sitting there blabbing in a language I didn't even understand. What did they think I had been doing, having a good time and not trying at all to get out?!
I stomped my foot—a childish habit I have never grown out of, ( never wanted to anyway) and said as loud as I could manage "hey elves? Umm, is there somewhere I can get food? Hey peop—I mean elves, or whatever you are!"
The dark haired one looked at me and said, normally for once, "Come here. I can't see your face." I stayed where I was, but met his deep green eyes squarely. As I'm not the tallest person in the world, my eyes were about neck-level to him, so this wasn't the easiest thing to do; I managed it without my neck cracking more than twice.
He had about the perfect face; they all were like that, though, so this wasn't very much of an acomplishment. I got a sudden, strange urge to see that beautiful face plastered with dirt and leaves, like me when I fell out of a tree once. Shaking the feeling off, I returned to reality. So much for getting away from the Johnny-boys.
He stared at me for a second, then he whispered to one of his companions, and they started gabbling again—"Laüre! Laüre-Hen!"
That, as I recalled, meant gold-eye. Were they talking about me? My eyes were brown! I tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned around, speaking rapidly before I could open my mouth, "I suppose we'd better take you to see my father, then, Laürehen—he'll know what to do with you." Without waiting for my answer he set off through the woods surrounding the river.
Jogging to keep up, I found myself next to an elf-lady who was slightly shorter than the others (but only slightly) and since nobody else was talking to me, I told her, "Actually, my name's Yavi. Where are we going anyway?"
"Elrond's house."
"His dad lives there?"
She laughed. "Elrond is Elladan's father."
"Oh."
I trudged into Elrond's house tired, out of breath, and complaining.
"Gad, I hate running. I HATE running. Running, I hate you. I hate running! I'm NEVER going to run AGAIN." The dark haired one, Elladan, elbowed me in the ribs. "You, Laürehen—shut up!"
"Its YAVI. Get it right, elf."
"Only if you call ME by MY name."
"No. Not until you can say Yavi."
"Fine then. Be an idiot. You'll see what happens when you mess with me..."
"I guess I will." Evidently this Elf was very fluent in English, or whatever we were talking; I had a feeling that what we were saying wasn't in my native language. Of course, this wasn't even my native planet, so who cared? If I knew how to talk in it, it didn't matter. I could annoy people...er, beings.
After walking through long corridors, shady gardens, and other nice places that take too long to describe, we arrived at Elrond's chambers, or room, or office or wherever he makes his decisions.
Out of the six elves that saw me down by the river, only two remained: the elf-lady who I had attempted to speak to earlier, and The Elf, aka Elladan, who seemed to have been grudgingly voted official spokes-elf of the group. For being my rescuer, he certainly hadn't been very friendly.
Elrond was there. Tall, and dark, and grim. He was the only one that didn't look like if you lined him up with all the other elves in this place you wouldn't be able to tell them apart.
The Elf was Elrond's son, eh? He had inherited his father's dark hair, but probably, from what I'd seen of him, no other good qualities.
As far as I knew there were no other dark-haired elves in the place, other than Arwen, who I hadn't seen yet, so this would make it easier to tell them apart. That wasn't, as in his son's case, the only way Elrond looked different from anyone else, though; he looked more powerful. And always mad.
Elrond looked me up and down as his son told him, with much embellishment on the part of the rescue, what had happened. Then, to my great joy, he dismissed The Elf and started, (not to my joy this time) asking me questions.
"My son provided me with little information on your background. What is your name?"
"Yavi, I mean, my real name's Yavanna, but that's like my nickname, you could say..."
"Where did you come from?"
Uh oh, I thought. Here it comes. "Um, well, I was in the library and my friends and I were working on the computer—wait um I mean this uh 'magic' thing called a computer sent us here."
"It sent you here, from where?"
"Earth! I mean, um, another world. A long ways away. And we were working on this 'computer' and it took us here—just took us. I mean, we told it the setting but we didn't expect it to do anything, we were just—"
Elrond interrupted my less-than-adequate speech. "You're telling me that a 'computer' sent you from a place called 'earth', which is another world. In this other world, you knew about Rivendell and told it to bring you here, even though you thought it wouldn't?"
"Umm, yes, that about sums it up." I could see he really didn't believe me though. I held my breath, waiting for it to pass.
"All right. How old are you?"
I opened my mouth to say sixteen, but what came out was "One thousand, seven hundred years. About." It was the first I'd heard of it.
"Really? I had judged, from your size, to be about one thousand three hundred, but I could be mistaken. Let me see your hand." Surprised but obedient, I stepped forward and let him take my hand—a hand that just didn't look quite right. It must be the light in here.
I felt some weird elf-magic touch my fingers for a moment, and jerked back. He didn't seem to notice.
"A shape-shifter. There aren't many around here any more, especially in bird-form... to be specific, a Phoenix."
"What the heck are you talking about?"
"You."
I gaped at him. Me a bird-thingy? I was a human, just like Bri and Niamh. My surprise was lost on him as he called, "Glorfindel! I need you to escort this girl to guest quarters, and find her an attendant." To me he added, "I'm finished with you. You may stay here, for now. Your attendant will tell you what you need to know, and answer your questions. Follow Glorfindel."
I couldn't see why he couldn't just take me there himself, but I supposed he was busy, what with having to keep all those elves in line. It must be pretty hard, especially if they were all like The Elf.
I followed Glorfindel, who as his name suggested had long, very golden hair. He led me down a few halls, through a couple gardens, out and in some doors, etc, etc, until we came to a long corridor of—gasp—more doors! He selected one by the entrance of the place and showed me to my room.
There was a large bedroom, with a low bed that had clean white sheets, blankets, and pillow. A table and chair were along one wall, and a wood chest for clothes rested at the foot of the bed. There was one window, whose shutters were open to let the sunlight in. Torch brackets held currently unlit torches for nighttime. Just like Motel Six, without the TV.
A door in the corner led to the bathroom, which had a chamber pot, a larger washbasin, right now dry, a counter, and a mirror.
Mirrors have this sort of freaky power that entices me to look into them whenever I pass one. Or maybe I just like the way I look. I looked into the mirror during my inspection of the bathroom, and—
It must be the light. The face in the mirror had my beautiful, wavy, red- gold hair, but other than that, she bore no likeness to me. Her face was small (I was used to that) with a sharp chin and nose, and her eyes stared back at me, wide, almond-shaped, and gold. Not brown-gold—real, 24-karat stuff.
It was the skin that really got me though. Not my skin, which was pale from sitting in the Ivy Wood torture chambers taking Cornell notes. Not black but a deep, sort of brown, bronzed color. I guess some people would call it brownish-copper, or something like that...
I gave a little gasp and whirled around to stare at Glorfindel, who was watching me with some semblance of interest.
"There's something wrong with that mirror," I cried, pointing at it. He frowned.
"Is it cracked? We can fix it, if its broken..."
"No, its like tinted or something—it changed the colors. Actually, that's sort of cool...I look freaky!
The elf moved forward to look at the mirror, and my heart gave a scary jolt. He looked totally normal! Then, that must mean...
"No, that's not me!" I cried, staring at the mirror in horror.
He was staring at ME now. "I see no problem with the mirror. Yet you speak as if you did not know your own face..."
"But I don't!"
I continued in this vein for some time. Eventually I annoyed Glorfindel so much that he left, grumbling about going to find me an attendant.
A.N. Funnier chapter next time, allright? We promise...actually Bri should, she's the next one. Review more pleeeeease!
Also, to our readers that think this is a MS fic, please read the next chapters. You will be surprised. (we promise) MS=EEEEEEEEVIL! If after the next few chappies you still think its MS, WE will be surprised.
Oh, by the way, whatever Niamh says I am definitely not a genius.
Our other fics—
Niamh—DRUIDGIRL (fanfic) Yavi—Aran'sApprentice-Meahow (fanfic) or Meahow (fictionpress) Bri—Night Genie (both)