A/N: I feel the obligation to apologise for the delay. I have been 'pre-occupied in other areas', but the fact is, I'm a lazy female fifteen year old with not much of a career or any long-term inspiration. I have no valid excuse. To those readers who still read this, I am truly awed by your patience and I kowtow to you. Enjoy the chapter anyway.


Part 11

It can be noted that when faced with extreme danger, the human brain will slow down time. This is a familiar circumstance for people who face those typical life-or-death situations. The heart rate speeds up, adrenalin is pumped through the body, and the eyes process several times more information per blink than customary.

This was what Ginny experienced, eyes wide open.

First she saw the sky, which was black, unsurprisingly. Stars twinkled cheerily down at her, and she watched, mesmerised briefly.

And then she remembered the wolves. Her sight suddenly became crystal clear as she blinked frantically at the creatures, and she remembered every detail.

The wolf closest to her had seven brown spots on his left flank. Its teeth was the colour of her yellow ochre oil paint. Its eyes were a glowing vermilion. And it smelled of decay and death.

Her pulse was racing, her breathing fast. She heard her blood rushing in her ears. She sat, still, hoping against hope they didn't see her.

This hope was somewhat thwarted by the wolf that immediately sprang, a black form that leapt into the air towards her.

She screamed, and moved.

She moved faster and more fluidly than she had ever done in her life. To her left was a bundle of blankets –Merry, still asleep. Beside his makeshift pillow was his belt. Hanging upon it, in her reach, was the small Numenorean knife that he used for a sword.

Hearing low growls some way behind her, she grabbed the hilt of the knife, cold and smooth in her palm, and swung it out to meet the foul creature.

The metal made a smooth, swishing sound, its surprising weight carrying her in her spin.

She turned around, blade shining in the darkness, ready to meet her foe...

...except her left foot got caught on the belt, like this, and her right foot skidded a little with the weight of the weapon, like so...

With a muffled "oof", Ginny fell over in the dirt.


"Thank God that's over." Ruth rubbed her forehead with her palm, eyes closed.

The Mirkwood prince said nothing. He did look very odd, she thought, in that loose, short sweater, and the cropped shorts. She could not find shoes to fit him, so he'd had to wear a pair of boots that were once part of a Santa Claus ensemble her husband bought. He had a tense look on his face, and his eyes were wide in a concentrated way. Even with his hair tied back and his strange unfitting garb, one could tell the aura of a hunter about him.

His head turned sharply, a quick movement that seemed so fluid - she did not notice LaRose had come back. The grandmother, past her youth, struggled to climb the ladder that lead up to the attic. Legolas moved to help her. He took one of her arms to support her, but LaRose brushed it aside indifferently.

Ruth stood up from the dusty suitcase she'd been sitting on for the last twenty minutes.

"What was all that about?" she said.

"Nothing. It was just my doctor checking on me." LaRose smoothly replied.

"A home call?!" Ruth had rarely heard of such a thing, a white elephant in the National Health Service.

"Well, she was just checking up on me."

"Why," Ruth took her arm, "Mother, you're not ill are you?"

"No, no, course not. Just a mild malady – we all have them." LaRose walked around, as if brushing dust off the jumbled antiques of her attic. She ignored her daughter's concerned expression, "I've been having trouble getting up in the morning... and some other things."

"Mother, I live five minutes away (fortunately or unfortunately), why did you never call me for help?"

"I don't need you. I'm not some disabled pensioner you know. I can brush my own teeth and vacuum my own house."

"I know you can mother, but why do you insist on doing everything by yourself?"

"Because I'm not old!" This was spoken with such force it came almost as a yell. Ruth bit her lip. Even Legolas seemed a little embarrassed by this outburst. LaRose was looking at him when she spoke. He could not understand English, but Elves can understand meaning within all tongues, and he felt a little sympathy for this aged yet resolute belle.

"Lady, you are by no means old," he spoke in the Common Tongue, which both mother and daughter seemed to understand, for reasons that he did not, "You must not believe yourself to be. You are past youth, but yet, so am I. Lady is healthy and fair and robust. Your daughter loves you very much, so do not think that your life is ending."

Ruth mentally rolled her eyes. Legolas spoke with a slight mocking smile at his own words, yet they came out with a real sincerity, that despite their feebleness, they made LaRose smile with real pleasure.

She went pink in the cheeks, and really, no one could call her old then.


The wolf-demon sprang.

And was felled immediately by a smart rock. Ginny looked up from the ground where she had been lying. The feller was Boromir.

The others were awake now.

"Gather in a circle!" Aragorn cried, already armed. His ranger sword reflected the light of the wan moon, and the red eyes followed it as he came forward. The hobbits had all drawn their swords (Merry had snatched his back from Ginny's trembling hands). They huddled together, but their eyes showed courage. Ginny hurriedly put on her glasses, in time to watch the wolves circle.

The Fellowship gathered in a circle shoulder to shoulder around their meagre fire, their backs to it. The air was thick with the hum of low growling.

So the battle began.

"Susie!" Gandalf cried at the girl, who, despite all the commotion, was still snoring. With a helpful kick from her friend from earth, the blonde girl woke, screamed, and dressed within the space of four seconds.

"Fuck! This didn't happen in the film!" she whined.

"Never mind. Can you use the bow?" Ginny shoved the Elven bow that Legolas had left behind into her hand, and threw a quiver of arrows at her.

"Not like this! I don't know how!"

Ginny opened her mouth to say something, but instead screamed as two wolves came at her. She ducked close to the ground, and heard the sound of Gimli's axe at work, mentally thanking him for saving her life. She closed her eyes and smelt blood, thanking god it wasn't her own; heard the tearing sound of flesh as sword hacked and axes swung, sometimes the yelp of a fallen wolf, a yell as Pippin ducked and Merry stabbed, or Gimli hacking. It sounded like a butcher's knife.

Shouldn't the bow of Legolas be singing here? She wondered cynically.

Scrambling through the melee, she found her own long knife, and prepared to do the Mary Sue deed, and fight for her life.

She looked up, backed by the other members of the fellowship. In front of her was a lone wolf. Foul smelling was its breath, and it paced the ground, metres in front of her, as if deciding whether to attack or not. Ginny trembled. The sweat of her hands was making the leather sword hilt slippery. She never remembered the knife to be so heavy.

The beast ran at her, mouth agape, its feet making padding sounds on the ground, and she stopped panicking and let her primal instincts work. Sure, they had been blunted by years of TV radiation and PC games, but they were still there.

Screaming something like a war cry ('die, Britney!'), she swung the sword like a club and by pure chance managed to hit the wolf with the sharp edge. The impact rocked her feeble arms. The beast was knocked aside, a bleeding gash at his side. Ginny felt the warm spray of blood on her hands.

She ran again at the fiend, this time with the pointy end. The wolf lunged at her, but she dodged its teeth and lunged for the space below its throat.

It took all the strength she had to push the pointy end into the body of the creature. It was like shoving a broom handle through a mattress. She cried out loud as she pushed, and the sharp metal finally sank into bloody flesh. Yet still the wolf tried to claw at her before it died.

Ginny almost screamed with sheer relief – she had survived her first encounter, but barely could she get her breath back, than she saw another wolf leaping at her from the darkness.

She could not run – there was nowhere to run to, and her sword was still stuck in the corpse of the other wolf. She tugged vainly at it. She screamed and shielded herself with her arms in vain hope.

Then she heard the unmistakeable sound of a bowstring.

Standing on an upturned pot on a high knoll, Susie was exercising Legolas' bow. Arrow after arrow flew glittering into the darkness, aimed by the determined, if absolutely terrified girl. She was blindly firing, yet Ginny saw some arrows had indeed reached their mark – three wolf corpses now lay around her, green flight feathers protruding from their hide.

Boromir stood near the once-divine girl, hacking at any wolf who got too close to him or Susie. He moved with great force, and each slash of his blade was lethal. Ginny tried not to look at Aragorn, because his furious, whirring movements made her dizzy.

She managed to retrieve her sword, and after the first kill, it became very (very) slightly easier. She hewed at another beast by whacking at its head with the flat edge of the sword, and Gimli the stout stood on her right, aiding her by driving his double headed axe into the beast's back.

And she realised she was not afraid.

Not because she realised that as long as you held a sword by the not-pointy end you'd know how to use it; not because her comrades were such good fighters, even Sam and Frodo; not because Susie had learned to shoot and was actually becoming quite a good Mary Sue; but because in the book, this was such an inconsequential thing. Susie was right – it wasn't even mentioned in the film.

This battle was totally unimportant; the fellowship come through completely unscathed and Legolas (absent as he now was) even finds all his arrows again.

She sighed as she hacked again, screaming as she drove her sword into a wolf barging at her.

So why was it such bloody hard work?

Turning her head, she saw Gandalf. Tall and menacing he stood, and he took up a burning brand, and flung it into the massing wolves.

He spoke, and his voice rolled like thunder. Ginny remembered reading the italic words from FotR, and whispered along to them.

"Naur an edraith ammen! Naur dan i ngaurhoth!"

There was a great roaring as a tree near the old wizard caught flame in a crown of red. The blaze spread from leaf to tree to tree-top, until the whole hill was crowned with dazzling light.

And to think Gandalf was a friend to Ents. What would they say to his tree-arson?

Swords glowed orange as they were lowered. Susie loosed an arrow at a wolf-chieftain who lunged for her. The arrow struck just as it was a metre away from her throat. The wolf fell, dead.

The others fled, and did not return.

"What did I tell you, Mr. Pippin?" said Sam, sheathing his sword in a resolved fashion, "Wolves won't get him. That was an eye opener, and no mistake! Nearly singed the hair of my head!"

Ginny laughed an exhausted laugh, happy with relief to be alive, but secretly, the conservationist inside was furious as smoke continued to rise from the tree-tops. In the morning there would only be stumps left.


The air was crisp the next day. Ginny knew with a sickening feeling that they would now be heading to Moria. Both she and Susie knew Gandalf's fate, yet Susie was strangely subdued the next day.

The smell of burning still lingered in the morning, yet all the walkers were cheery. Sam had cooked a tasty if meagre breakfast of wild fried mushrooms, and even the fully grown men were satiated.

Boromir was teaching Ginny to clean her sword. She had grown to like this man, despite his unclean odour, for which he could hardly be blamed for. He reminded her of the man her father was not.

"Grind it smoothly, like this," he said, with a forceful stroke of the stone by his powerful arm. He was a large man, somewhat grim, but not unkind, "You must clean it before putting it in your sheath. Blood is the enemy of every weapon."

Ginny nodded, "Thank you for throwing the rock last night,"

The man looked at her quirkily, a smile on his face, and she said, "You know? When I was screaming? You threw that rock and killed the first wolf."

Boromir laughed, a loud and hearty sound, "I could hardly throw my sword, could I? Alas, I am not the archer that my brother is, and I did not think I would need a bow for this quest. I found the only other available option." He took a cloth and wiped his own blade pensively, "I often think of Faramir. How will he cope without his bigger brother?" he laughed, a somewhat sad sound. Ginny suddenly remembered how she had shouted to the whole world at the council how he was going to die. She blushed at her immaturity. She had told this man about his death, yet still he went forward to it.

"You know..." she started, and then blushed. The tall man of Gondor peered at her critically.

"You have something to say. Speak, unless it be obscene, as so many of your words are."

"You know how in Rivendell I said you were going to die...?" she began softly.

"I do seem to have a distant recollection of that, yes." He replied curtly, staring at his sword blade.

"Well, um, you're not." She lied weakly.

He gave a grim laugh.

"I will. Even if not now, I am still mortal. Someday I will pass on, but it was not for you to know."

"No." Ginny said quietly. There was a hard, determined look on her face that had not been there before, "No, you will not die."

"What do you-"

But he did not have time to finish. They had to move. Susie had returned. All her arrows were intact from the nights affray, lying about on the grass. The wolves, alive or dead, were all vanished. Those were no ordinary wolves. In a purely metaphoric sense, Sauron's arm was long indeed.

It was strange how easily they decided to go to Moria. It was obvious that none of them particularly wanted to, except perhaps Gimli, yet still they went. Even Gandalf, who was pressing them.

For the first time that morning, Susie spoke.

"We should not go to Moria. There, one of our number will perish to something beyond the reckoning of the world." She meant the balrog, of course, but Ginny didn't understand why she had to be so dramatic about it. She was scaring the hobbits.

"There which path do you suppose we should follow?" Gandalf asked impatiently. Ginny felt a bit sorry for her friend. Her still menstrual friend. Susie had had to tear off the skirt of her gown to make rags after using up all the disposable amenities. Rags, to be used as sanitary towels. It was a very sordid affair, but Ginny's offered help to wash the rags had been declined. The Mary Sue was still too proud to show her vulnerability.

Like now, she had no answer for the supposedly wise wizard. Ginny noticed, with increasing irritation, how totally incompetent the wizard was to lead them. His answers were always vague. Didn't he know Moria was dead and abandoned? Why didn't he tell Gimli that? Didn't he had some suspicion that some timeless evil lurked in its depths? Didn't all the elves? And why weren't any other members of the Fellowship alerted to this option at the beginning of the quest? Did he plan to lead them into a dead underground city maze of stone without a map and only following his nose?

It was obvious how much the other walkers relied on him. Gandalf was indisputably the leader; even Aragorn succumbed to his will. He was the one with the Map, the Miruvor and the knobbly powerful staff which so far he had not used yet. He was the one with the pretty words that burned things. Yet sometimes Ginny wondered if he really knew what he was doing.

He was going to lead his entourage of dependants into sheer danger, play the hero by sacrificing himself supposedly to save them, only to leave them clueless and abandoned with no clue to what to do next.

No wonder they're so happy when he returns, whiter than white, she thought cynically. But why did he have to die before he could use his Valar-given powers?

And Ginny certainly didn't approve the way he made Frodo choose which way to go on Caradhras. The Ringbearer was already burdened with responsibility, so why burden him with another such heavy choice? He didn't want to take the ring – his conscience told him to. And it would reward him with a fate worse than death.

Still, it had already been decided, and the movie-invoked opinions of two alien teenage girls were not going to change anything.

But Ginny kept in mind the Elvish word for 'friend'.