AN: Hi all! Well, school's in full swing for me. I had my first week and everything. The only really disappointing thing is that my creative writing professor is very, very boring. He has this terrible voice that has only one pitch and stays very flat for the entire length of the THREE HOUR CLASS! I knew I should have signed up for a different professor! Oh well, I'm sure it'll be fine. I've survived worse classes (including a Chemistry professor that makes Sauron look like a kind, gentle, thoughtful fellow). I hope school's going well for everyone and that you all like your teachers/classes/classmates/other school related stuff! All of you rock for taking time out to review my story. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. It makes typing this story up extremely worthwhile and really does make me happy. I was convinced that no one was going to ever review anything I wrote. I'm being quite serious too. All of you rock!

Ms. Unknown: Sorry for my late review of your story...school and stuff got in the way. Research for my bioethics class and the like. Anywho, I'm glad you liked my story and I hope you like this up coming chapter.

IrethAncalime3791: I know, exactly, how school is. Between my sister and I, we have like a boat load of homework. (I usually wind up helping her with her home work even though she's in college too.) I'm glad you liked the conversation. I was sort of worried it was going to sound too clichéd or corny or something. You shall see what the last part of that update means shortly. Quite soon really...

LJP: EEP! I'm sorry for the confusion. It isn't so much meeting someone as meeting up with someone again. I hope this helps to clear up. Confusion was not my intention.

Disclaimer: I own nothing except for a handful of made up characters. Tolkien thought up the concept and, as such, it belongs to him. I'm just playing in his world. I'm broke and in college. All I own are Pointe Shoes.

Niphredil followed her feet, trying to keep away from where she thought Fire might wind up. The last thing she wanted was a battle of any kind- be it words or wits- with that elven warrior. From rumors she had heard- though she'd never had an ear for gossip even in the other world- Fire was a force to be reckoned with when she was angry.

And she got angry a lot, or so she heard.

Maybe angry wasn't the right word for it. More like, annoyed. Perhaps "annoyed" was the right word for the task. After all, she had her pride, apparently, wounded by the menial task she'd been asked to do. That would annoy anyone in this world and in the other world, Niphredil concluded.

Thankfully, Ice was around to temper her sister's volatile mannerisms. The elder sister was a bastion of calm. She possessed the strange ability to say cool and collected- as her moniker indicated- under any and all stressed.

"And Fire is one huge source of stress," Niphredil mused with a slight smile.

Ice was a rare breed. Her kind was something rare to find in the other world, the Muggle World. Not just because she was an elf but because she was so calm. Tempers in the other world could flare more often as solar flares on the sun and burned nearly one hundred times brighter more often than not.

Most people in that world, especially in the state and city she lived in could take offense to something as quickly and easily as she could snap her fingers. It made for difficult dealings with others to say the least.

She'd only known one person in that world who could withstand that sort of torment with little or no retort. Maybe that had to a lot to do with the way this person was raised and the environment in which she willingly subjected herself to. Not everyone wanted to go into a place where hostile people existed.

"Actually, Emma did but that's a different story," she, mentally, corrected catching a hold of a gossamer thin thread of a thought that wafted through her head.

Emma had told her all about the people she danced with and how she knew they didn't like her being there. She made sure Niphredil understood that she didn't care about that face. She was more than willing to deal with the backstabbing, double-talk, and other mentally damaging facets of the studio just so she could do something she loved.

The other person, though, the first person she encountered with the ability to withstand such taunting was, of course, Hope. That kid was dealt a bad hand from the start- since genetics was like cards in that is was just a matter of how the genes arrayed themselves like the cards in a deck- but played with the cards she had been given. She didn't really have a choice in the matter. One can't change the way they were born.

A single situation typified the assumption she was making and knew to be true. It was a fairly recent event, fresh in her mind like what she had spoken with her grandfather about.

FLASHBACK

They were sitting around a lunchroom table, the Cadette and Senior girls of Troop 6417, trying to have a "discussion." Their largely ineffectual leader, a ditzy woman named Fran, was off bothering the Brownie leader. Her own troop had the vaguest sense why she was doing that. Her daughters, as well as the daughters of several of her friends, were in that troop. For whatever reason, she felt her time was best spent there.

Before she wandered off- for it could be called wandering more than walking- she'd given her girls an assignment. They were working on their "Conflict Resolution" patch at the moment, much to their communal surprise. After all, Fran was about as savvy to the world outside of her own little mental space as a dim bulb. Doing patches- doing anything for that matter- didn't seem like something Fran would do.

Since she had to keep them quiet and keep parents off her back, she gave them "work" to do. They were supposed to be talking about conflicts in society that needed to be resolved. A simple enough task to say the least. How much trouble could taking get them into?

A whole lot more trouble than they had bargained for!

The conversation had degenerated to the point where Jane and her gang were giving everyone their unsolicited views on the "mutant problem."

It was fair game to discuss, since it was on every television show, news program, radio show, and every other media outlet one could find, but most tended to shy away from it. No one knew where they next "evil, disease spreading, freakishly hideous," mutant was hiding, waiting to pounce on some unsuspecting person.

Little did they know, there was a mutant sitting among them. Listening to every word they spoke about her "kind." Apparently they weren't part of the human race anymore.

"They're all hideous and they spread horrible disease. One touch and you're just like them. Have to go live on the outskirts of society because you're all oozy pus and skin and stuff," someone stated, with the air of telling some kind of ghost story.

"Man. Imagine not even being wanted by your family that you have to go live on the streets," another quipped, "Not having a television to watch or new clothes."

"They should all be rounded up and kept away from us. I do hope no one at school or here are mutants. That would be horrible since we could catch what they have," yet another stated, wiping her hands on the fringe of her tan vest.

Hope, sitting next to Niphredil as she always did, seemed to be taking everything in placidly. Despite the fact they were spewing lies about mutants. The group to which Hope belonged.

Niphredil wanted to her to get mad, to rant and rail against them. To defend her people and give them a piece of her vast mind.

It wasn't to be, though.

With more logic than she could muster at the moment, Hope spoke up, "But don't they have a right to live? They're human just like you and they deserve the same natural rights. No one asked to be born with super strength or fur or anything else that would mark them as a mutant. What gives you the right to condemn them?"

All eyes fell on the tiny Cadette. Her words were about as welcome as she was in the troop most weeks. They couldn't figure out where she had gotten the right to paint a picture of a mutant as a human when they did such a wonderful job of spraying over that canvas with their own image of what a mutant was.

"Figured you'd say something like that," Jane stated, rounding on Hope, "After all you're one step above being a mutant, yourself. They're not human and they never will be. That's that."

Hope shrugged and went back to her "idle doodling" on a sheet of lined paper. Of course, it wasn't just little pictures and scribbles. It seemed to be a diagram of some kind, though Niphredil couldn't tell what kind.

"Doesn't that bother you?" Niphredil asked, as the attention Hope had garnered melted like ice in the sun.

"What?" Hope countered, "The stuff Jane and her buddies said about me?"

Niphredil nodded to which the mutant scout continued, "Not anymore. They're allowed to think what they want and say what they want. It's their opinion and everyone has one. I may not like it. I many not agree with it but I'm not going to give them the satisfaction of knowing that."

Niphredil couldn't help but laugh at that reasoning. In one way it was quite adult in nature but in others it was quite juvenile. It, simply, made good sense though. Hope could be bothered about everything they had said but she didn't want to speak on that fact. Allow them to see her cool demeanor slip.

"Plus," she added, "I don't want to lose control. Who knows what would happen then?!"

END FLASHBACK

Hope was odd like that, though. A good mix of adult and child all wrapped up in something deceptively small and powerful.

So caught up in her own memories was she that Niphredil failed to notice where her feet had taken her.

She had found her way down to one of the kitchens. At this hour, though, the wide room was deserted. Those who worked there were out at market replenishing their stores or doing whatever else they did to keep the room well stocked.

It was there she spotted Ice and Fire and a few others of their merry band. There were a good number of them- at one point Niphredil had guess upwards from twenty-five- and she couldn't properly recall all their names. With the two sisters, though, were two easily recognizable and memorable members of the band.

Dancing from foot to foot, like a little boy who could decided whether he wanted to wait on line of a carnival ride or go to the bathroom, was an odd looking elf with strange ridges in his hair. His "name," as he called it, was Mac.

Leading against a wall, chest oddly puffed out and hair tousled as if he'd just woken up from a nice long sleep, was an elf called Goose. Hs voice, a honking sort of sound, attested to why that name had been given to him. It didn't, however, explain why he looked the way he did but that was a story for another day she guessed.

They were, at the moment, gathering food from one of the shelves and placing what they could in large sacs.

"Guess, they're leaving," Niphredil mused, knowing these four, like the others members of their group, were apt to be found wandering about Middle Earth.

The exact reason for that appeared to be immensely complex and, somehow, involve her father. At best, she understood that they were "Rangers" and it was their duty to protect specific places from the evil creatures found in Middle Earth.

"My friends, my sister. See what has decided to grace us with her presence," Fire stated, calling their attention to the front of the room where Niphredil stood.

She dropped the sac she was holding and strode across the room's length, booted feet making no sound on the cobbled floor. Face to face, nose to nose with Niphredil she gave her a most sarcastic smile.

"I am glad to see the young princess has decided to grace us with her mere appearance. Tell me, have you been listening to us speak with each other?" Fire started a strong challenge in her voice.

"Fire, she is a member of the ruling family. You have no right to speak to her like that. Stand down," Ice ordered, both as Fire's sister and as someone holding a higher rank.

"Dear sister, I wish I could but I cannot. You see, while I was running an errand for the dear Lord Aragorn, this one decided to call my honor into question. I have every right to do the same to hers," the younger elven warrior informed her older counterpart.

Ice said something to her sister in a melodic sounding language. One Niphredil recognized as some form of elvish, though it was not the form she knew. It seemed to be an admonishment of sorts for Fire faltered. Albeit for only the briefest of moments.

She did not, however, feel the need to stand down.

"My princess, do tell the truth...were you listening in on our private words? Are you here to spy on us somehow?" Fire continued, her voice gaining strength and an edge of mocking seeping in somehow.

Niphredil opened her mouth to say something, to answer the as yet unspoken challenge with a verbal assault when Fire, unexpectedly, quailed.

She stepped back, retreating to a spot next to her sister and friend's.

"What seems to be the trouble, my friend?" questioned one voice, its owner on Niphredil's right.

"Has our, dear friend, Fire been causing more chaos than she is allowed?" added a second, its owner on Niphredil's left.

From left to right, Niphredil looked. A confused expression spread all over her face like an odd sort of dye. The faces on either side of her were alike, down to the smallest detail, the tinniest fleck of color in their matching eyes.

It was like looking at mirror images...not exactly but about the same idea. Two alike images.

"Who are you?" she asked, looking left to right.