Truckin' right along,we've got the revision of the third chapter here.the original chapter 3 was a battle between kendra and aragorn about her retarded fake-japanese name,and then they killed an orc.the whole chapter complete with a post-chapter AN was not even a page long,so I intend to fix that.
Dislaimers:don't own LOTR 1-3,blah blah.
Copyrights:see chapter 1
Chapter 3:mapquest
Aragorn scrutinized me for a while, trying to soak in what I had just said. Gimli himself seemed a bit confused.
"What in god's name would we want to go there for?" he said.
"Merry and Pippin are there," I answered.
"The hobbits?" Legolas inquired. "But how did they end up in Fangorn Forest? And where are Frodo and Sam?" I held up my hand.
"I'm uncertain at this point if I really should be telling you what happens," I said. "I might crap up the future even more so than it already will be. I can tell you why Merry and Pippin are in Fangorn Forest, and I can tell you where Frodo and Sam are, but in doing so, I risk altering the future. And that's never a good thing."
"From what you're telling us, I only see an advantage," Aragorn said. "Your knowledge might give us the power to avoid casualties later on. That's a good thing."
"Too true," I said. "But consider this: what if avoiding casualties upraises more casualties? Those problems are beyond my knowledge and thus I cannot help you to solve them. But if you really want my help, just say the word." Aragorn looked back to his comrades. I had made my point, and although I wasn't sure if what I had just said accurate or not, it had given them a lot to think about.
It took the three of them several moments to think the situation over, and I used this time to rest up and nourish myself. We had plenty of water at the moment, but it seems that we are in lack of food. I lifted my eyes up to the three men in front of me and wondered if they were going to do anything about it.
"We've made a decision," Aragorn said, turning back to me.
"Oh really, I'd like to hear it," I said, setting the water skin down.
"We think it would be in best interest if we used your knowledge to our advantage," Legolas said. I leaned back against the cave wall and closed my eyes.
"All right then," I said. "I'll help you. But as I said before, I'm not going to share anything until we eat something and get a good night's rest. 'Cause I don't think I'm going to be of much use to you if I can't move."
"Take as much time as you need," Aragorn said. "Gimli, Legolas. If you'll kindly go out and bring back something to eat, I would be much obliged. I will stay here with Lady Kendra." Legolas nodded and he and Gimli headed out of the cave and into the forest.
"Oh, and as long as we're stuck on this journey together, please don't call me 'Lady'," I said. "It makes me feel weird." Aragorn hunched his eyebrows questioningly. "You don't even have to call me Kendra. If you'd rather, you can just call me Kennie, or Ken. I don't mind. That's what my friends call me." He leaned up against the opposite wall.
"All right then," he said. "Kennie it is." Still slumped up against the wall, I flipped open my cell phone. I had great reception, so I tried to call Charlotte. I didn't get a call tone, I didn't even get an answering message. Instead I got static.
Very loud static.
"GODDAMN!" I shouted, wrenching the cell phone away from my ear and slamming it shut. I glanced across the cave to Aragorn as I stuffed my phone back into my pants pocket. He stared at me quizzically, and opened his mouth to say something, but I intervened.
"My phone doesn't work here," I said quickly. "Looks like I'm going to be stuck here for a while." He closed his mouth and nodded understandingly, though I had a feeling that he did not, in fact, understand at all.
My head was throbbing now, and I decided that in retrospect, it had not been the best idea to shout at my phone. I clasped one hand onto the lump at the base of my skull, while the other hand gripped tightly onto my knee. And while I was unaware of it, I could barely feel my nails digging into my leg.
I did not have to open my eyes and look at him to know that Aragorn had a hard look of concern on his face. He had no reason to; we barely know each other.
"You didn't have to stay here with me," I said finally, resting my hands in my lap, but still keeping my eyes closed. "I would have been fine on my own." Aragorn fed a stick into the diminishing fire.
"La—Uh, Kendra," he said, "you seem like a bright young lady, but you still remain unaware of the creatures that lurk around these parts. If anything happened to you, then we would not be able to safely find our way to Mordor. I assume you do know where Mordor is." I shook my head feebly.
"No," I said. "If I had just brought my book with me to practice—." My eyes flew open. "That's it! The book!" I struggled to stand up. Aragorn was quick, quicker than I thought, and in seconds he was upon me, trying to force me to sit down again.
"Kendra, you're in no condition to be moving at this time," he said. I tried to push him off of me.
"Look, Strider," I said, "we've got to go back into that forest. I have a map of Middle Earth in my backpack, and if by some extraordinary stroke of luck that my backpack ended up here with me, then we should be able to find our way there while avoiding a lot of other nasty crap." Aragorn's eyes widened in surprise to my knowledge of his nickname.
"All right then," he said. "I'll go look for this bag of yours, but you stay—."
"No!" I said. "I have to go with you. All I need is the map. If it so happens that I never wake up from this coma again, then nothing else in that bag matters. Let me come with you." He contemplated the situation long and hard. It took him a while to decide, but when he did, he ended up pulling my arm over his shoulder and lifting me up and helping me to walk out of the cave.
He traced our steps back to the spot where he had found me, lying on the ground on the brink of death. My body had left a barely visible imprint on the damp leaves covering the forest ground. I looked around but I could not see my backpack anywhere.
"Let's move over this way some more," I said, pointing weakly ahead. Aragorn half-dragged half-carried me over in the direction I had indicated. Nothing.
I was about to give up and instruct him to take me back to the cave when I spotted it. My blue backpack, stuffed full of books, was leaning against a moderately sized rock. It was behind the rock, as my backpack would have been behind my baritone case back in the 21st century. I was barely able to see it from over the top of the rock.
"There it is!" I said. Aragorn swung his head around and spotted the blue bag sticking out from behind the rock. He led me over to the stone and laid me down on the ground. I dragged my backpack towards myself and wrenched open the zipper. The amount of books I had stuffed inside the cavity seemed to burst open the zipper for me. I dug through its contents and I finally managed to pull out The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. I had no intention of bringing the book with me; skimming the pages for events would take far too long. But rather I opened the back cover and found what I was looking for: a map of Middle Earth was glued to the inside back cover of the book. I yanked the map free of the book. I tossed the book onto my backpack and unfolded the map and splayed it across the ground so that Aragorn could see.
"Right," I said. "Where are we then?" Aragorn's sharp eyes scanned the map, tracing his grimy finger over rivers and mountains while muttering silently to himself.
"Here," he said, stopping his finger on a location on the map. I leaned forward to see where he was pointing. According to Aragorn, we were currently located. We were a few miles north of the Glanduin River. Using the scale, I determined that we were approximately a hundred miles north of the border of Fangorn Forest. I was slightly sad to see Rivendell so far north of us; I would have liked to visit the elves.
"We're a hundred miles north of Fangorn," I said. "How many day's travel is that?"
"About two or three," Aragorn replied. He sat back. "Now, let me ask you this: is it absolutely necessary to go into Fangorn Forest?"
"Absolutely," I replied. "While we won't run into Merry and Pippin until we reach Isengard—," I pointed to the spot on the map labeled Isengard, "—We will reunite with Gandalf. And Gandalf is crucial to the rest of our journey to Mordor." I pointed to the mass at the bottom corner of the map labeled Mordor. "Now then, we should probably be heading back to the cave. Legolas and Gimli might have already returned." I folded the map and stuffed it in my pocket.
"Would you like to take your bag with you?" Aragorn inquired. "We may be able to use it for carrying supplies."
"Excellent idea," I said. I shuffled through my backpack in search of anything else that might be of use.
"Where exactly will we be restocking on supplies?" Aragorn asked. "Isengard?"
"Oh no," I said. "Isengard is merely where we rest. Sauron is in Isengard right now. Merry and Pippin will later team up with the Ents and destroy Isengard. We don't really settle down and get more supplies until we reach Rohan." I emptied the contents of my bag onto the forest floor. My binder, homework, art portfolio, textbooks, and sheet music. Useless.
"All right, let's go," I said, pulling the empty backpack over my shoulder. Aragorn lifted my arm over his neck once again, and we were off towards the cave.
Legolas and Gimli had indeed already returned by the time Aragorn and I reached the cave. Two dead rabbits were lying by the fire, holes made by Legolas's arrows were still visible in the head of one, and the neck of the other.
"Where have you been?" Legolas said, standing up as soon as he saw us.
"We went to get this," I said, pulling the map out of my pocket and throwing it to him. The elf unfolded it and studied it.
"Where did you get this?" Legolas asked.
"This is terrific!" Gimli said, glancing at it over Legolas's arms.
"I found it," I said simply. I nodded towards the rabbits. "What's the haul?" Legolas handed the map to Gimli and stooped, grabbing the rabbits by the ears and holding them up.
"Look Aragorn!" he said, his voice brimming with excitement. "Two of them! This should be able to feed the four of us for two days!"
"Good," Aragorn said, releasing me to the floor and clasping his hand on Legolas's shoulder. "Let's eat quickly and go to sleep; I'll stand watch for the night. But we need to get a good rest. We've got a few day's journey ahead of us."
"Oh?" Legolas said as he sat down, a knife in one hand and a rabbit in the other. "Where are we headed first?"
"Fangorn Forest," Aragorn said. "Where we will meet up with Gandalf again."
"Gandalf?" Gimli said. Aragorn nodded.
"That's right," I said, leaning against the cave wall again. "Trust me, I know what I'm doing." I reached for one of the water skins. "We're about three or four miles north of the Glanduin River, where we'll be able to stock up on water. From there we will continue on to Fangorn." Aragorn nodded towards the others.
"You heard her," he said, taking hold of his own knife and the other rabbit. "We've got a long journey ahead of us. Let's make quick work of our stay."
While Aragorn and Legolas skinned and cooked the rabbits, the four of us shared stories amongst ourselves. The three of them seemed very intrigued by stories: tales of iPods and cars, and the most interesting of all, semi-automatic guns.
"With say two gattling guns, you could wipe out a whole army of Orcs, no sweat," I said.
"That could have been useful a few days ago," Legolas muttered to Aragorn. Instantly I knew that they were talking of Boromir. Again I wished I had arrived here earlier to have gotten the chance to meet not only the elves, but Boromir as well. If I had arrived here sooner, I might have been able to save him.
"—Speak of?" Aragorn said, snapping me out of my thoughts.
"Come again?" I said hastily.
"I said, what is this car that you speak of?" Aragorn said, glancing back at me.
"Oh," I said. "Well, think of it like an oliphaunt. Except it's a lot smaller, and it moves a lot faster. And you can fit people inside of it! If we had a car (and I knew how to drive), then our trip to Fangorn would take mere hours instead of days."
"Fascinating…" Aragorn muttered, smiling to himself. "Here." He tossed me a chunk of rabbit meat that he had cooked while we were all talking. He had divided one rabbit's worth of meat into four equal portions and handed one to Legolas and Gimli as well.
"Thanks," I said. "You can just put the other one in my bag. Here." I handed him my backpack, unzipping it for him in the process. "Just put whatever you want in there, it'll be fine." As I ate ravenously from the meat he had provided me with, I briefly watched Aragorn fitting the other rabbit and the three water skins into my backpack. He decided to keep the map with himself in the event that we should need to get it out quickly. I had the feeling that my backpack would be getting far heavier once we depart from Rohan.
We finished the meat and shared water from one of the skins, preserving the other two for until we reached the river.
"Normally I'd suggest that we head on to Glanduin River; it's only a few hours walk," Aragorn said. "But I feel that Kendra would be much stronger if we rest for the night and then continue on in the morning. Her health is crucial to the outcome of our journey. We will rest for the night."
"That seems best," Legolas said. "Would you like me to keep watch with you?" Aragorn bit his lip and glanced at me.
"No, you rest up as well," he said. "If I feel that I need to rest, then I will awaken you and you can take watch for the rest of the night."
"All right," Legolas said. He extinguished the fire, and the cave plunged into darkness. Aragorn permitted me to use his cloak as a blanket during the night. He sat himself at the mouth of the cave, while the rest of us found comfortable spots on the ground to sleep. I myself was bundled up beside the warm embers of the dead fire. Already I could feel my strength returning, but I was still exhausted. I feel into a deep sleep, my head full of excitement for what lay ahead.
End Chapter 3
ha!hints of slash!
And I actually DO have a book and a map like that.it's pretty awesome.
The backpack suddenly appearing in the middle of the forest,does seem a bit unlikely,but hey.when you're in a coma anything can happen.
…not that I know from personal experience…
I'm rather surprised.the old chapter 3 was barely even a page long.and somehow I managed to stretch it out to three and a half pages.how awesome am I?
Very.
So appreciate the story,if you will,and be so kind as to criticism and comments are always welcome.thank you all!