Disclaimer: Don't own.

"Should we go in?" Laura asked nervously. We were still sitting side by side, opposite the new hole in the library wall. I crossed my arms over my chest and squinted into the secret passage, trying to get a better view of what was down there to no avail.

"Well, I don't think we'll get killed. After all, neither of us has slept with an elven prince yet," I replied, getting to my feet and straightening my skirts automatically. My hands froze and I looked over at Laura, who was busy doing the same thing.

"Right?" I asked. She looked up, confused. "What?"

"Neither of us has slept with an elven prince?"

"God, Crystyna, of course! Just because I look like a bimbo thanks to that crap that fell on our heads doesn't mean I am one!" she snapped. I shrugged and brushed my hair back over my shoulder, picking my skirt up off the ground as I headed forward down the stairs. "Just making sure…" I said distractedly.

"Yeah, well, you'd be the first to know, sis." Laura sounded disgruntled and with a heavy sigh she followed me into the secret passage. With a rumbling, the wall closed behind us, leaving us in complete darkness.

"Shit, shit, shit!" Laura yelped. I whimpered my agreement, my hands going out to brace the narrow walls surrounding us. My legs froze and Laura was right behind me, practically breathing down my neck. "Back up!" I whispered. "Lean against the wall, maybe it'll let us out." I seriously had my doubts, though, and was proven correct when Laura let out a desperate groan. "We're stuck," she told me. It seemed the only way to go was down, towards the dim flickering candle light.

"Remind me to never follow you again," Laura muttered behind me as I crept cautiously down the stairs. "Stay here then!" I bit back, agitated. She sighed and I heard soft footfalls behind me, letting me know that she was following anyway. The stairs were a lot steeper than they had seemed from up in the safe confines of the library, so we traveled as slowly as possible, but before long we reached the bottom.

The stairs gave way to a large room lit by candles and torches. It was cool and almost dank; Laura and I both shivered and I found myself wishing I had brought my cloak with me. The room itself looked a bit like the library, except of course with fewer books. I wondered, with a sinking feeling in my stomach, if we had stumbled into the King's private drawing room. Thranduil didn't seem to be a very friendly guy - although, I'm sure Laura might beg to differ.

Shut up, Tuna! Laura hissed inside my head. I smiled thinly and noticed with a start that we weren't alone in the room.

What we saw was vaguely unexpected. We expected to see Gandalf, and hear from him some cryptic message about a quest we were to embark on. Instead, we were met by three women who sat scattered throughout the space. I swallowed hard. Clearly, we were somewhere we weren't supposed to be, although none of the women seemed surprised.

The first woman sat cloaked in gold with a spinning wheel in front of her. Her hair was a deep red-gold, which caused me to wonder if she was an elf at all, or just another maiden that had fallen into Mirkwood. I'd never seen an elf with red hair before. She sat calmly weaving, but there seemed to be a problem with her device, as there it often got caught and the threads ripped. I heard her sigh under her breath and cluck her tongue as she set about the task of removing whatever threads had ripped and unweaving whatever cloth she was making. She looked up and met my eyes with her own blue ones and I shivered. If she wasn't an elf, it seemed she wasn't a human either, because her eyes were stranger. Her eyes were the eyes of someone extremely powerful, almost otherworldly. Almost like Galadriel's, who, Laura reminded me, we hadn't even met yet.

She lowered her eyes slowly and concentrated again on her task of weaving. Her long pale fingers worked quickly and adeptly, as if weaving was something she was quite used to and very skilled at. It didn't explain why the thread kept getting caught, though.

"I'm sorry," I said quickly, realizing that they must have noticed by now that we'd been stuck staring silently, too shocked to move. "We didn't mean to intrude - we were just in the library, and the w-wall opened up," Laura added, stammering. There was something extremely unsettling about these three women.

"You do not belong here," a different woman said, not the weaver. She was sitting before a fireplace, whittling a small piece of wood with a surprisingly plain looking dagger. I blinked and Laura looked indignant.

"Well, we did apologize," she said sourly, and I nudged her in the side. She glared at me and then looked at the lady's dagger. Laura's face paled and she quickly let her arms slide from where they'd been perched on her hips. "But you're right, we shouldn't be here. So sorry." I let a long breath escape my lips, wishing that we hadn't been so stupid as to walk through a secret passageway. It only leads to meeting three freaky women with spinning needles and daggers.

Speaking of dagger lady, she was just as lovely as the weaver. She had long dark hair (because everyone's hair is long in Middle Earth) that was hanging freely in waves that were almost curls, and was wearing a deep green dress that was divided for riding. Her petticoats were a dusty red-brown, like the feathers of a hawk. She met my eyes with her own big, doe eyes; a deep insightful brown much darker than my own. A smile chased her lips, but she turned quickly back to whatever it was she was whittling, seemingly consumed by it and quite content to ignore Laura and I.

"What my sister means," the third woman said, "is that you do not belong in Mirkwood. You do not belong in Middle Earth at all." I felt another chill run through me and felt suddenly threatened.

"Who are you?" I asked rudely before I could stop myself, my voice petulant as a child's. Laura made a sound of warning in the back of her throat, but I was too frightened and too on edge to care. The third woman, who was sitting with a box of herbs on her lap, ignored my tone. Her sleeves were pushed up, a delicate translucent gray that seemed to shimmer in the dim light. The rest of her gown was gray as well, the bodice embroidered with delicate flowers. Her skin was pale and her long blond hair, resembling what Laura's once was before she hacked it off, was braided back and out of the way. Her eyes were strange, a gray so mixed with blue that the seemed a different color entirely - violet. She was selecting herbs very carefully and placing them into to tiny black satchels attached to strings like they were meant to be necklaces.

"My name is Estë ," she said. "These are my sisters, Vairë " she indicated the weaver, "and Nessa," the whittler. I frowned; for some reason, they're names were incredibly familiar to me. Everything about them was familiar, actually, but I couldn't quite place where I was remembering them from.

"Have we met?" I asked slowly. Estë smiled again and shook her head, her hands never pausing as she added more and more to the tiny satchels. "Where are you from?" My mouth tends very often to get away with me.

Tuna, don't you think its quite about time you stop interrogating these women? Laura asked nervously. I shook my head at her as discreetly as I could, but Vairë looked up and met my eyes. "Quite a talent you have there," she said to Laura.

"Excuse me?" Laura asked, steeling her voice so that it didn't tremble. I couldn't find a reason to explain why three seemingly harmless women had us so fidgety, but something about them reeked of power and so Laura and I were treading cautiously. Or at least Laura was.

I never met a mortal who could talk like this before, Vairë 's voice came into our heads. I saw Laura's eyes grow wide as mine surely must have been doing. To find two nonetheless, the weaver's voice continued, quite a discovery.

"Where are you from?" Nessa framed her question just when I was too shocked to remember that I had asked first. "The Blue Mountains," I said shakily. Nessa smiled and put her dagger down next to the piece of wood that was quickly resembling a deer. She walked over to me and lifted my chin with cool fingers. "You must forgive us," she said softly, no trace of malice or mockery in her face. "We did not mean to frighten you girls so, but we hadn't expected to be seeing you so soon. If at all."

"Please, come sit," Estë suggested calmly, going over to the fireplace and pulling a kettle from where it had been heating up. Nessa led us to two chairs where we could sit. Estë handed us tea which she had presumably prepared with her own herbs. It smelled sweet and minty, but neither Laura or I took a sip.

"Do not worry, I won't have poisoned it," Estë said, as if reading our minds. I opened my mouth to say something and found I had nothing to say. Estë sighed and took the cup from me, taking a sip of it before handing it back. "See?" I nodded and drank the tea slowly. It warmed me quickly and calmed me down enough so that my heartbeat was only twice its normal rate instead of quadruple it. Laura seemed to be waiting for Estë to prove that her tea wasn't poisoned either, which she did quickly.

"Now," Vairë said, her hands finally becoming still as she set down her spinning wheel, "would you mind explaining why two girls from America claim to be from the Blue Mountains of Middle Earth?"

A/N: Oooh, plot twist. I will give a cookie to the person who identifies who our three lovely new ladies are. Review!