Disclaimer: Don't own.
Author's Note: SO here I am, listening to Ewan McGregor singing "Your Song" from Moulin Rouge, and writing about life in the freakishly perfect Mirkwood. Oy, and I'm ecstatic, because told me in a review that it reminds her of the freakishly perfect place in Big Fish (Ewan oh-so-sexy McGregor was in Big Fish.) You don't know how much that made my day. Seriously. I wasn't even thinking about Big Fish when I wrote this! I was thinking of this little place that I go to in my nightmares called Mary-Sueland.
-Yeah, the princelings were getting to be a little overbearing, right? whacks them
-And you are absolutely 100 right. Este, Nessa, and Vaire are the three of the seven Queens of the Valar. hands over massive Ewan McGregor sized cookie Hey…I want to keep that cookie for myself!
"What did you say?" the words were out of my mouth before I could swallow them and Laura let out a little moue of worry. Good job, Tuna. "These women reek of power" - so you go around being a rude little -
"I can understand why you both would be frightened, but I promise you - you have nothing to fear from us," Nessa smiled again, looking perfectly friendly. I took another deep steadying breath, and heard Laura do the same next to me. Nessa exchanged a look with her two friends and I knew they were speaking to each other in their minds. It didn't seem fair to me that they could say whatever they pleased behind the closed doors of their mind, and yet when Laura and I did the very same they could hear us as if we'd spoken aloud.
"First of all, you are perfectly capable of guarding your thoughts as we do, you merely need to try," Vairë said sharply, causing Laura and I to flinch. Estë looked at her rather severely, and the expression on her face clearly portrayed that she was telling Vairë to mind her manners and her mouth.
"My sister, such as she is, is right. We don't mean to frighten you, but we feel we must warn you. Terrible things are taking root in Mirkwood, and they shall soon spread to cover Middle Earth," Estë said. Vairë scowled, looking rather like a spoiled princess, until Estë acknowledged her with a nod.
"I assume you want to first know your part in all this," Vairë said dryly. I raised an eyebrow, my dislike for the woman temporarily replacing my fear. Laura was growing impatient as well. Neither of us dealt with fear in productive ways, as was certainly evident now. "First, I think I'd like to know who the hell you are," Laura said nastily. Mentally I gave her a high-five.
"I was under the impression that we had already introduced ourselves. You, however, have not returned the favor." Vairë was just as snippy. She looked like the beginnings of a thunder-head, her red-gold eyebrows drawing together unpleasantly as she wrenched a tangled part of her weaving out and held it over a flame. I swallowed hard, vaguely remembering something from a book I'd read long ago in a different dimension. Vairë the Weaver… I couldn't place the significance of her name anywhere, however, which could quite possibly end up being my downfall. I did know, however, that I'd never heard of a Vairë, or an Estë or Nessa anywhere in the Lord of the Rings trilogy or the Hobbit, which just left the Books of Lost Tales and the Silmarillion.
Then again, I hadn't really been able to get through the Lost Tales I and II at all. Which just left me with the Silmarillion to go by.
And the Silmarillion was about the forming of Middle Earth, the gods, goddesses, demi-gods…the Valar.
No. Way. Laura thoughts were nervous and flittering, much like the butterflies that were quickly turning to lead in my stomach. Calm down. There is no way they could be the Valar Queens. The Valar hardly even made themselves known during the War of the Ring, why would they come to see us? That doesn't even happen in the worst Mary-Sues…I clenched my hands in my lap and tried not to look at the flames consumed the fragile thread that Vairë held over it. Supposedly, she weaved everything that ever had been into tapestries or something of the like that decorated the Halls of Mandos. I shuddered to think what would happen if those weavings were burned - and hoped fervently that the spinning wheel she was seated at now was only symbolic.
"Your names, children," Estë said kindly. I decided that for my own sanity I would believe that these women were not the Valar Queens, but rather some astonishingly beautiful heretics that just dressed up like that and assumed their names.
"Laura." It seemed that Laura had decided that it would be no used lying to these women, as they already knew about America. I sighed, conceding to her point and giving my name as well. "You see," Vairë said, the mockery in her voice held down to a bare minimum. "That wasn't so bad."
"How did you get here?" Nessa asked us, looking rather witheringly at Vairë behind her back. Laura and I exchanged uncomfortable glances - it would sound entirely false if we told her that we had simply laid down to sleep one night and ended up falling from the sky. Then again, that did seem to be rather routine for Mirkwood, so maybe they would understand. "We…fell here," I said anxiously, meeting Nessa's eyes. She grinned impishly and bobbed her head. "That is often the case, I believe," was her answer. Laura shifted in her seat. "Wait…so if girls just happen to crash here so often, how is it the elves haven't seen a pattern? I mean, they certainly seem to remember," she said.
"Not only that - do you know what's been happening to us since we got here?" I asked Nessa, who I liked more than the other two. Vairë just seemed mean and Estë was kind of disconcerting with the way she stared so hard at you with her strange violet eyes. Nessa was the only one that seemed normal, like someone I'd be comfortable being friends with.
"We have heard of what happens to the girls who come here, but we have never seen it," Estë said. Always with the "we." She reminded me of a certain emaciated gray former-hobbit that just happened to fall into a puddle of lava. "Yeah…we're like different people now. If you'd seen us when we got here compared to now…" Estë shook her head slightly.
"You are not different people. The mind is still the same. You surprise us, the both of you. First, the girls that have come to Mirkwood rarely come to the library. Secondly, we have never been found here. We have never been sent here by, technically speaking, what you would call 'Fate,' because we were never needed. You two certainly are strange," she finished.
"Excuse me but come again?" Laura said, chewing her lip nervously. I nodded. Nessa smiled. "Estë you have spent too much time sleeping. These girls are scared and confused and if you try to tell them too much at once, they'll never be able to accept it."
"Girls have been falling through time and ending up somewhere or another in Middle Earth for many years, although there has been a noticeable increase lately," Vairë started, with the air of someone who would much rather be someplace else. Weaving, perhaps.
The movies, Laura thought to me, and we shared a grin. For the first time since we'd met them, the trio looked rather confused. Vairë looked as if she was about to open her mouth and complain, but Estë silenced her with a strict look and shake of her head. Nessa decided to continue the story. "The girls tend to end up wherever their personality suits them - or, if you will, wherever their hearts' desire. Some go to Imladris, some to Rohan and some to Gondor. Some even go to the Shire or the Grey Havens, although that is very rare. Often, of late, girls have been falling into Mirkwood and Lothlorien."
Legolas and Haldir, Laura thought to me. I bit the inside of my cheeks to keep from laughing, but this time the three women did sense our thoughts. Estë smiled faintly, Nessa laughed outright, and Vairë's lips pursed into a thin, disapproving line.
Well, it definitely wouldn't be Celeborn, now would it? Galadriel would have a conniption! Laura snorted to herself. Vairë sighed a long-suffering sigh and went back to untangling the threads. Well, let her, the old maid.
Her head shot up and I struggled to somehow find a way to guard my thoughts before they got my into trouble. "I doubt you could truly guard your thoughts from me, little one," she said lowly. I trembled against my will and dropped my eyes from her flashing blue gaze.
"You must excuse my sister. You see, we are very worried, Vairë more than Nessa or myself. As the Weaver, she is sometimes gifted with glances into the future. There has never been a problem with the threads before, but now it seems there is…" Estë trailed off, looking worriedly at Vairë. "We do not know what is causing it, but it started just after you arrived here."
Oh, great. Psyho goddesses thought we were screwing up their world. Vairë glared at me again and I cleared my throat and looked at my hands. "We do not think it is directly related to you - we have been sent here to watch you, and we detect no ill-will in your souls. You may a victim of this event just as surely as Middle Earth will be," Nessa said. Not quite so encouraging, but it was good to know Laura and I were not going to be the scapegoats here.
"We know the strange things that have been happening to you since you've arrived here," Estë said. "There has been a change in your physical appearance, but also in some ways your minds have been altered as well." That made me shudder. She spoke in such a soft voice, a bit like Arwen thought slightly higher pitched, that it was creepy enough. As soon as she said something about mind altering, I wanted out of that room, and fast. Laura agreed with me fully.
"You have discovered the role of the amulets in this." Vairë's words were more of a statement than a question and Laura nodded. "When they glow, we start to act and speak like Mary-Sues," she explained. All three would-be Valar looked puzzled. "Uhm…perfect fantasy heroines. Flawless." Laura sounded uncomfortable referring to herself as flawless, but once again, we only speak the truth. And in this case, with the mind altering, it wasn't a very happy truth, either.
Vairë didn't seem to catch on to Laura's discomfort. "Quite," she said, indolent, finally giving up on the thread. "That in itself isn't quite so remarkable. The girls that come here are almost always physically changed, whether that be into more beautiful human girls or into the Firstborn themselves. They do retain their own psyche, however, and so do the people around them."
Laura thought of Elladan and Elrohir fighting over her. It occurred to her that maybe that wasn't their regular psyche. I recalled our own conversation about how the princelings were hardly acting like we'd believed they would. I never would have imagined Legolas, for example, to be someone who would so rashly ask for a roll in the hay.
"This time they're not," Nessa said bluntly, catching onto my thoughts. I felt my face heat. "What happened to the other girls?" Laura asked quietly, as if afraid of the answer. I looked up and met Estë's eyes. "They all remembered who they really were throughout their stay here. Some stays only weeks, other's months, and yet other's years. Some established relationships with the elves who now admire you so, or whoever they came here to meet."
"How is that possible? Wouldn't they have remembered, after the girls left?" I asked sharply, thinking about Legolas' eager pursuit of yours truly. To think that he was married while he did that - well, I might just have to smack him silly the next time I saw him. Nessa grinned, as if the image of my smacking the Prince of Mirkwood upside his braided little skirt chasing head amused her. "The girls have always gone back to your world, mostly in the still of the night. From what we have learned, they were simply called from bed in the middle of the night into the forest. From there, they made it back to their own realm."
"And, what, everyone else just forgot about them?" Laura demanded.
"That is where I come in," Vairë said, indicating some of the burned threads that rested on the table next to her. My eyes widened as I realized what she meant - she had burned the history of the other girls stay in Middle Earth. It was as if it didn't exist. That was probably for the best, actually. It would have caused a lot of turmoil if husbands were allowed to remember their wives who had fallen from the sky, bloomed into perfect beings, and then vanished into thin air. Besides, knowing Mary-Sues, Aragorn and Faramir would have been having illicit affairs a lot of the time. Affairs amongst royalty could lead to more unpleasant things, like war.
"I don't see what this had to do with us," I said shakily. Estë smiled at me sadly. "Quite a lot, I'm afraid," she said. "There were no records taken by mortal hands, and so you shall have to wait here."
"For what?" Laura asked. It was getting quite chilly in this little hidden cellar.
"A member of the Istari will be joining us soon."
A/N: Read and review, please. I should listen to Moulin Rouge while I write more often. This chapter actually came pretty easily. Ewan just inspires me, that's all.