Disclaimer: I do not own Lord of the Rings.

Author's Note: I had to re-load this chapter. Thankyou Breck, for your review, which I seem to have deleted. :sheepish grin: I'll keep your suggestion in mind. Thankyou also to Nomad6 and Niege.

This is a new chapter. I'm revamping the whole fic, which isn't hard since I only had one chapter up. So possibily expect some updates, although with school and band starting I can't promise anything.

Remember: This is AU, so characters can and will die. I can kill off chatracters that appear in Lord of the Rings, becouse this is AU.

Chapter One:
What happened after

61years later...

Legolas stood atop the wooden platform, the dry wind blowing his newly shorn hair in all directions. Mostly it blew in his face, whipping and stinging his eyes so much so that he finally resolved to keep them closed.

He didn't mind the sharp tingles, he had had worse, and at least the bitter wind gave him a reason for shutting his eyes tight.

And with his eyes shut he could pretend he was somewhere else, wasn't here, that he was anywhere but here.

Here was the center square of a tiny nameless dry town in the grassy dry hot plains of Haradwaith. The southern plains, in fact. Right on the edge of the deserts, so the heat was stifling in the baking sun and only the sparse gales could appease it. Yet today there were strong gusts blowing constantly, so was merely hot and not the searing and scorching dry heat that it had been during the week or so getting here.

If he had believed in omens he might have taken the kind turn of weather as a sign that life wasn't going to be so bad this time. That may hap, just maybe this time might not be so horrible, not so terribly bad¼

But he no longer found faith in such things as omens, so he stood still and did not hope, and tried to imagine that the breezes were blowing from tall forgotten trees and that the air was scented with pine and leaves and growth instead of the people and the dirt and the dry hot nothing of desert air.

With his eyes closed he could drown out the traders' shouts of wares, the loud bustle of the streets and the announcer's thin reedy yells.

With his eyes closed he could be in that green forest that he almost remembered, pretend that the noises were just rustles of leaves and birdcalls and that everything was calm and beautiful.

He could pretend he wasn't a slave.

A jerk on his rope startled him out of his mind and back to reality, where the announcer was starting the bids for him. The man walked over to him and he stood stock still.

"Ere we got a fine one, prettier than a lass" Pinching his face to show the roaring crowd, "and a nice bit o' muscle on 'im, " This time moving to grab an pale sunburned arm, "Bid starts at 60 terees. Do I 'ear 61!"

"61!"

"62!" called the thin young man up front, raising his hand.

"63!" came the call from the back. The younger man looked rather put out as he lowered his hand holding the stick.

The seller waited for a few moments, but no more bids were forth coming. An old man hobbled forward

"That would be me, sahib. " he called hoarsely to the seller, then patted the young man on the shoulder. "Sorry there Muhami, but this one'll make a perfect gift for my Sameia, she's been looking for a pretty one."

Muhami smiled good naturedly, "That's alright Grandfather" He said, respectfully. "I'll have more to spend on Ahali's gift. I doubt he'd want a slave anyway."

"Ahali's your littlest, right?" The old timer asked, stroked his thinning black beard as the market around them bustled back to life. "I think I saw a stall with those new foreign firecrackers, I'll get him one." He began to protest.

"Ready that is not necessary, Grandfather, I-" he said raising his hands.

"Nonsense. It'll be the least I can do for buying you out of a slave." The stooped man waved a hand at the announcer. "I'll be by to pick him up after I'm done shopping."

With that he hobbled off, holding the younger man as a crutch.

The slaver trader bowed to the man's retreating back, and Legolas was led off the block and shoved off to the side.

" An' now If I may turn your attention to this lovely¼"

The traders voice got father away and from behind the wooden stage it could barely be hear at all, as Legolas was shoved off the coarse wood platform, some splinters catching in his bare feet and ripping open the blisters near his toes. The big giant trader with muscles the size of barrels clapped his wrists together and then crudely tied them close with a length of the thick spiky rope.

"I'll buy that slave, trader" A voice spoke up, off to his left. Legolas did not lift his head to look up, but he felt the second trader shift his weight.

"Already sold."

There was a clink of gold and rustle of cloth and Legolas could almost hear the Burly trader thinking.

"Done."

He shoved him, grinning quite sadistically and already caressing his bag of gold., very hard toward his new owner. That is the Sahib and his daughter next to him. She was a little thing, possible 4 or 5 in a short grey robe. She did not wear sandels, but had a blue anklet, he noted as he barely avoided slamming into the girl. The new owne-Sahib pressed his mouth into a thin line, very clearly displeased.

Legolas knew that frown, that 'unhappy with something' crease in the man's brow as he glance down at Legolas, who was still trying to stand back up without falling back over. He'd seen that frown and knew what it meant: beatings.

The rope his wrists were tied to was given to the little girl who merrily skipped off as he awkwardly trailed behind her at precisely 6 paces away, (the correct length for a slave with no set duties) and his feet burned in the hot sand. The man angrily skulked next to her and Legolas took this moment to observe him

He wore his hair mid length, dark chocolate that brushed his stubble chin. His face was a pale tan of some one that hasn't seen much sun, and thus was rich to have others do the work. But that didn't seem to fit with this man. Maybe he had fairer skin somewhere in his blood.

One of the men outside the Dakamtna building called out greeting to the man's daughter who happy, in the way only little children can be, bowed back in mid stride. The man's right hand loosily griped his straight sword when the Dakama seemed to stare at the girl at little longer than needed.

The Dakamtna were always on the look out for young beauties that need money or with parents happy to sell the children for money. Sometimes however those ones unwilling to go into the body-selling business had simply- disappeared.

Legolas didn't smile, lest anyone think he was smiling at them, but he could see protective parent written all over this man. At least this Sahib wouldn't sell his children to slavery.

He didn't seem to belong in Harad, though. He didn't have the thin pointed beard the richer men wore and he didn't wear the short-cropped hair that was in fashion for everyone else. It could be that he was just so rich he didn't have to follow trends, so simply unfashionably, but something kept nagging Legolas that this man didn't belong here.

With all that black he must be sweating in this mild weather. Legolas, himself did not sweat a trait that he loved and cursed at times, for it set him apart and made him more likely to be singled out.

And to be singled out was bad, very bad.

The man stopped, and he nearly slammed into him, but stopped before and just chaffed his wrists a bit more. Beneath thick dark brows his brown eyes flicked from place to place, scanning the surrounding. This part of town was empty, deserted as former traders moved out to Triahim or Jahidisana, where trade was booming and water was less scarce.

The man seemed to have decided something and took Legolas's rope from his daughter. She wandered away a little, not caring about what the man did to Legolas- a beating he knew it, and examined instead the flowering weeds in the cracks. So young and already used to the beatings of the slavery that she'd just looked away.

That was the true reason, he knew, why slavery continues, because the young are used to it and see no reason to discontinue. They can just turn away and look at the flowers.

But Legolas pulled his mind away from that as the man leaned over to him andkept his head down and resolved not to flinch when his new 'master' decided to beat him. But instead the man only leaned in and whispered in his ear.

"Telin le thaed."

Legolas froze, his eyes widening beneath his blond bangs.

He knew that language.

He'd heard those sounds before; those flowing scripts that drops letters to sound prettier, and speaks to animals and tall trees that climb upward forever and ever... It should make sense, it would make sense, if only he could remember¼

The man's brown eyes bore holes into the top of his head searching for something. And the man seemed to realize something was wrong, repeatinghis words in Common Harad.

"My name is Estel, You will get your freedom, Master Elf, do not fear."

Sahib Estel gently touched his shoulder then turned away and yelled to his daughter, before Legolas could begin to blink.

" Kirlyrn! Go tell your mother we have another guest for tonight."

Kirlyrn gave a big happy smile, nodded and then raced down the lane to a house that looked no different from the others, except for the strange tough weeds with little white starred flowers climbing up the sides of the mud and cloth home. So little grew in this deserted place. There was only tough grass and spiny cactus and the summer weeds that stayed for short while before they withered and faded.

He followed Sahib Estel at a normal walking pace and at least 4 steps behind, until they reached the home where he stopped, unsure if he was going to be directed to the back entrance or told to stay outside. The manresolved that issue for him.

"Come!" He commanded, entering the little front yard, waving a hand back at Legolas, who awkwardly and very apprehensiblely followed, wondering just what type of beating he was in for.

Sahib Estel had held back the flap main room for Legolas to enter, like he really was a guest and a person, rather than a slave. Legolas entered and dusted his feet off on the rough mat right inside the overhang, being careful to not get a smudge of dirt on the floor.

He then stepped quickly aside to let Sahib through, who did so, leaving a fine layer of dirt on the floor where he stepped, not wiping off his leather clad feet.

"Estel! Wipe off your feet!" A musical voice called out from the room beyond the archway. And he turned to see her.

She was garbed in the women's traditional unmarried dress, white wrapped up to the shoulder, with plain leafed sandals and gripping a wooden ladle. Ordinary.

The unordinary was her face.

He could see her face, for one- she didn't wear the traditional half or full veil. Her eyes, a deep blue gray, seemed to light up from the insideand her face was tan and pink with sunburn. Her cheekbones were high and graceful, accented by the lock of raven hair that slipped out of her loose bun and she absentmindedly pushed it back behind an ear.

That's when he saw it. Her ear. Pale and small, it had a blue crystal with a metal pierced through the lobe.

And the tip was¼ a point

She was an elf.

End Chapter One

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