AN: I'M SO SORRY! I kept meaning to update this story and my X-Men story but, it seems, that the "Real World" decided to throw a bunch of things at me at once. I had to take my GREs in order to be able to apply to Graduate's School and then I had to hunt down applications for the schools I want to apply to. After that was done, my semester at school started. I had to figure out how to fit in new classes with everything else and go buy text books (which I'm not done with because the lousy bookstore didn't have two of the books I needed). I'm sorry for the terrible delay and I promise to try not to let it happen again. Anywho, thank you for the reviews. You guys rock like a box of socks. I always appreciate your review and, please, keep them coming.
Ms. Unknown: Wait no longer! Her powers, and their purpose, shall be revealed shortly. Since everything needs a purpose but that's a horse of a different color.
horsiegurl: Many thanks for the compliment. Here's my update, a whole lot later then I actually wanted to put it up but, like a said before, I'm going to try my best to update either sooner or with a little more regularity.
LalaithoftheBruinen: Well, I'm glad you're excited and I'm equally glad you liked the beginning of my little adventure. I hope you like this chapter just as much!
pixie88: First things first, good luck in Calculus II and I hope you understand everything that goes on in that blasted subject. Calculus is absolutely no fun when you don't understand what's going on in it. There's going to be plenty of Legolas and Emma in this story…eventually. I'm glad you're still interested in reading my little adventure even though you found my website (which I have to update one of these days). As for the Ewoks, I'm a huge Star Wars fan and I figured I might as well throw them in there for a bit.
Lindiel Eryn: Right in one! That's how Niphredil does what she does and it'll come into play again in a short while. You are very much correct; it is going to be more of a sequel to Il Ballerina Piccolo than anything else. As for the Queen that's making her return, you shall soon see who that is as well. I will tell you the returning queen is going to find she has to help another soul who has recently returned to Middle Earth by wholly other means, though.
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.
Silently, though no matter what she wore on her feet, she moved silently, Niphredil followed the gray clad page through the tall trees of Lothlorien. Having no clue what was going on still wreaking havoc with the back of her mind, she still followed. If she'd learned anything during her time in Lothlorien, it was that answers would be given to her in time. There was no rushing things in the ancient woods where time seemed to move of its own accord.
The continued presence of the gray clad figure, acting in the position of guide, was a luxury Niphredil felt she didn't need. After all, she'd gone to and from her great-grandmother's mirror on her own several times before.
The young elven maiden was the first to admit that she'd once been unable to find her way there on her own- Since the woods seemed to be vast and the tall trees were enough to throw anyone off if they didn't know how to look for differences between then.- when she'd first come to Lothlorien. She could count on both hands the number of times guards had brought her down to where her Galadriel was waiting just because she was lost someplace in the woods.
Now, though, she could say she knew how to get there on her own. It was a feeling akin to being able to find a classroom or the, all important lunch room, in a new school A feeling akin to realizing one's head was not so close to a leaky cauldron as one had once thought. Really, a strange sense of satisfaction, if anything.
Through golden tinted trees and sunlight dappled forest floor the elven pair treaded, neither one of them making any sounds as they moved. Niphredil knew where they were headed but not what they were headed into. To her, though, the oddest aspect of the situation was the fact she wasn't really headed for any type of mirror she understood.
Back in the Muggle World- or the Other World as some called it- mirrors were reflective surfaces as fragile as any sort of glass Niphredil could think of. When told of her great-grandmother's mirror, she assumed that it followed in the grand tradition of magic mirrors in Muggle World fairy tales.
Much to her shock, it wasn't a mirror at all. Rather it was a basin full of water. True water could reflect like a mirror's surface but it could also warp an image, changing it to appear as something it wasn't. Maybe that was the point, really, since the mirror could show the past, present, and future. Well, show one path the future could take since it was always changing, always in flux, depending on the decisions made in the present.
Niphredil, upon her arrival to Lothlorien, had been offered a chance to look into said basin-as-a-mirror. A chance she declined for a variety of reasons. The main one being the fact she was an immortal elf and she assumed her future was going to be quite long because of the fact. She really had no need to know what her future held, especially if that future could be changed with a single. Simple decision.
Better to leave the unknown, unknown she figured was the best policy.
The guard took his leave as they approached the natural crater in the forest's floor that was the location of Galadriel's mirror. Down the stony steps, Niphredil descended trying to hurry up without it looking like she was doing so.
Standing, obviously waiting for her very young great-granddaughter was Galadriel. The ancient elven female had the unique honor of making Niphredil feel very small and very much like a child who'd done something wrong whenever she was in her sights. There were very few people, in both Middle Earth and the Muggle World, who could claim they held that auspicious honor.
As a matter of reference, the list was only three people long. There was her former Tae Kwan Do instructor, Doc, who, when he was angry, could scare anyone in either world. Following him was the headmaster at the school her friend Hope's parents taught in. Niphredil held the sinking suspicion that he could look into your very mind and see what was going on. Suspicions that were affirmed when she found out that Hope and her friends and family were mutants.
The latest addition to her mental list was Galadriel. The elven female, like her friend's headmaster, seemed to have the ability to know just what one was thinking at all times. She was far older than Niphredil could ever comprehend and far wiser than Niphredil could ever hope to be. Given her tall stature and the powerful air about her, Niphredil felt very tiny when compared to her great-grandmother.
"I'm sorry to keep you waiting, Galadriel. I came as quickly as I could," Niphredil, meekly, offered.
"There was no need to rush, Niphredil," the ancient elf commented, "Though I wish there was more time for this to be done in."
The given reply confused Niphredil greatly. It was almost as if she was being given a "yes" and "no" answer at the same time. Though, according to Ice, that was typical of all the "ancient ones. She'd been told never to ask them for advice since they would tell you two opposing things at once. How Ice knew this, Niphredil couldn't say and she wasn't keen on asking lest she get an answer she couldn't understand.
"If I may ask, what are we doing here?" Niphredil broached, "What was so urgent?"
That was the crux of the situation, for the young elven maiden. She was sure just why her great-grandmother had requested her presence. Especially in this specific place in the Golden Woods.
"As you are now aware, my child, you possess a great and powerful gift. A gift that has a great purpose and comes with responsibilities that not even the wise can fully comprehend. One of your friends is in great need of this gift," Galadriel explained, baffling Niphredil further.
The idea of a friend being in need immediately brought one individual to Niphredil's confused mind. That being her friend from the Muggle World, Hope. The small mutant child lived in a world that wasn't particularly kind to her "type" of people: the mutants. Violent actions were taken against mutants in that world on a frighteningly regular basis.
Still, Niphredil couldn't understand how her martial arts skills would be of any use to Hope, her friends, and her family. They had their mutant abilities. Abilities that her meager skills in hand-to-hand combat and with a sword paled against.
"I'm not sure who you're referring to. Is my friend, Hope, in any kind of danger?" she asked, sounding concerned.
"It is not your friend Hope I speak of, Niphredil,' Galadriel replied, "Can you think of no one else?"
Niphredil sighed, trying to wrack her already confused brain for an answer. It seemed to her that any answer she wanted wasn't going to simply be given to her. She was either going to have to figure them out herself or earn them in some other way.
Faces parade themselves through her mind as she tried to figure out this massive puzzle that had been set before her. She wasn't quite sure who she could consider a friend, though, there was one person she could most definitely call a rival. She was thankful, at least that much was clear at the moment.
Then it hit her like a bolt of lightening. There had been one person, one single individual that had made the attempt to be her friend. Part of her assumed her father had one of his hands in the situation, urging the young girl to befriend his daughter. Not that she was angry at him for doing so. After all, there were only a handful of people who could claim to have made the transition from the Muggle World to Middle Earth.
As if to affirm her suspicions as being correct, Galadriel began, "There is something going on in Emma's home of Mirkwood and, though she does not know it, she is at the center of the situation."
Niphredil shook her head and gave a small, annoyed sounding laugh. Emma was, among other things, the crowned princess of Mirkwood forest, sister to the Prince Legolas, and all around thorn in the side of Thranduil, the Lord of Mirkwood forest.
From many different people, Niphredil had heard about the….dislike….Thranduil had for his youngest child. It made a strange sort of sense, then, for something to be happening and for Emma to be blissfully unaware of it.
"What do I have to do?" Niphredil asked, sounding a bit more determined.
"I must ask you to, once again, go into the Halls of Mandos and seek out a specific spirit. I am hoping that she will be allowed to return to life with you as her guide. There may yet be a way to undo what is being done with in the halls of Mirkwood," Galadriel informed the very young elf.
"Just tell me who I'm looking for, Galadriel," Niphredil stated, trying her best to sound as brave as possible, "and I will try my best to get it done."
Opening her ears to the necessary information she was being given, Niphredil steeled herself for what she knew was to come. Going into the Halls of Mandos, walking among those who had gone before her, was a task she couldn't take lightly and care and discretion were things that needed to be practiced lest she finds herself permanently trapped among the dead.