AN: I'm terribly sorry (I seem to be saying that a lot lately, come to think of it) for not updating sooner. I've learned a valuable lesson these past few weeks. That being, never trust your sister to do her homework on her own and never bet on a sure thing. Allow me to explain…my sister had this mountain of homework to do and, of course, she put it off until the last minute. For the past few days, I've been trying to help her finish this assignment. Though, at times, it seems like I'm doing more of the work than she but, maybe, that's just me. Anyway, she's finally got her homework done and I'm I gave her a stiff talking to about getting her homework done on time. As for betting on a sure thing, I spent the past few weeks trying to fix a mistake my school made. Apparently, some exemption letter got lost and, without it, I can't graduate in May! I had to argue my way through offices and professors in order to get another exemption letter written so I can bring it down to prove I've done everything I need to get out of school. I appreciate all your reviews and your patience. I really, truly do. You guys are the best!
Ms. Unknown: I'm glad you like it! I hope you like this next part too!
Lindiel Eryn: It could be that or it could be some other meeting. You'll find out soon either way! Maybe sooner then you think…
Horsiegurl: I was hoping to have this story updated sooner but fate doesn't seem to like me all that much lately. Anywho, here's the newest update and I will try to resolve the mystery as soon as possible.
Lalaithofthebruinen: I'm glad you liked the update! Here's the next part, fresh from my hard drive. I hope you like this one as much as you did my other updates…the few and far between they've been.
Elven Script: Ah…Chemistry! What a wonderful subject that is. Those professors seem to like to pile up the coursework for some strange reason. I'm glad you liked the story so far, though!
Shay: You have some very good timing! I got your review just as I was writing this update. Yeah, Emma and Niphredil are two totally different sides of the same coin. Sure they're both princesses but you got it right when you said Emma's more soft spoken and Niphredil's a whole lot tougher. Here's the next update and I'll hopefully be able to update sooner next time.
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.
While Emma darted off to her lessons in the cave-compound that made up her home, another elf who had recently found her home in Middle Earth was heading towards a meeting that her logical mind told her she should never be going to. After all, in the other world, it was impossible to mix the world of the living with the world of the dead. That was a claim only crazy people and psychics- Usually fake ones since, in her experience with psychically powered mutants, Niphredil had never met one with the power to speak to the dead. - made. No sane person would ever claim they had such a skill for fear that they would be labeled a mutant; a "freak."
Then again, Niphredil was well aware of the fact she wasn't entirely a normal person….wasn't really a person in the definition of the word she knew. She was elf-kind- immortal, soundless when she moved, and, apparently, possessed of the rarest of gifts. Not that she'd asked for the gift she was using at the moment. Like her mutant friend Hope, it was something unlooked for though not entirely unwanted.
After all, she could help people by using it and there was nothing greater than helping people. At least, people who were worth helping.
If she hadn't done it before, Niphredil would have been properly scared out of her wits. All was cold and gray in the world Niphredil had landed herself in, if it could be called a world anyway. It was more like the physical equivalent of dead air, that gray staticy space when there was nothing to be seen on a Muggle world television screen.
The only thing that was not a sickly shade of gray was herself, strangely enough. She was covered in a strange golden covered film. At least, that's what it seemed to be to her. It could have appeared to be something else entirely to the figures moving about her in the gray expanse.
The golden film served a dual purpose. The first was to protecting her identity from the spirits surrounding her on all sides. She was not one of them and, as such, did not appear like them. The second was probably the more important of the film's two purposes. That being the fact it kept the forces keeping the spirits at bay from noticing she was there. Her mind could only imagine what they would do if they discovered a very much alive elven maiden wandering through their midst.
Niphredil took stock of her surroundings, settling herself down. The transition from the world of the living to the Halls of Mandos was always a little disconcerting.
"Now, where was I," she mused, trying her best to recall the vast library of information she'd been given about why she'd been sent to these halls.
Nearly hitting herself in the head, Niphredil recalled one of the most essential- and, arguably, strangest- things she'd been asked to do every time she was sent to the Halls of Mandos. For tracking purposes, she had to sing….something…from her world. The elven maiden only assumed that song, particularly Muggle World song, was used because she was the only one who would know such a song.
Plus, Niphredil had to admit that singing took her mind off the bleak surroundings she'd found herself in. After all, walking among the dead was no walk through the Golden Woods. It wasn't even a walk through her old Muggle home of Westchester.
Picking the first song- Of all the strange ones to think of, Aerosmith's "Dream On-" that came to mind, Niphredil started along a lonely path in the gray, cold world.
"Great….just great….what an inappropriate song," Niphredil mused, continuing to follow her feet down a familiar path, "I'm an elf, looking for an elf. We don't get old. At least, I think we don't."
The only reason the path was familiar to her was that she'd traveled to where the souls of the elves resided before. Part of a test, she now knew, to see if it could be done. Since it could be the mission she was currently on was being undertaken. Risks had to be weighed, after all, since Niphredil assumed Galadriel didn't want to be the one to have to tell her parents that she'd lost their daughter to the shadows of the Halls of Mandos.
Niphredil walked further on, continuing her song as she did. To her left and right, the images of the dead moved through their gray world. Some were distinct, mirror world images of their once living selves. They wore the same clothes and their features were distinct to them. Just like living, breathing individuals in her home world.
Others, though, were nothing more than shades. Shadowy forms of their other world selves. There was nothing distinct, unique about them. Some were so wholly lost by their fate- consumed by the fact that they no longer walked among the living- that they lost all form. Like living shadows they were, not even really touching the "ground" of the place in which they existed.
If Niphredil was going to be totally honest with herself, it was those spirits that put a cold knot of fear in her stomach. There was just something about them- Some natural malevolence, perhaps- that she didn't like.
Pausing along the path, Niphredil shaded her eyes and took stock of her surroundings. Of course, she knew that the shading of her eyes was totally and utterly unnecessary but it was something she did out of habit.
This place was different in subtle ways every time she entered it. The Halls, overall, were the same. It was just that little things change. Where there was once a fork in the path, there was not. A pile of rocks used to place oneself on a long path could be yards ahead where once it was close enough to touch.
"Where am I going," the elven maiden mused, taking a survey of her surroundings, "I have to get to where the elves are. I know where they are…I just have to get there and back in one piece."
One of the biggest concerns- Unvoiced, of course, since Niphredil didn't want to seem cowardly or frightened. -Niphredil had was that she feared she'd never find her way back to Lothlorien. There was never any failsafe for her to get back to Middle Earth. It wasn't included with the "gift" she'd been blessed with in about the same way certain mutant powers she'd heard about were both a blessing and a curse.
"I'm not getting anything done standing here. I'd better get a move on," Niphredil decided, going back to her solitary march across what appeared to be a path.
She was guessing at her direction, going by whatever instincts her "gift" provided her with. If she was wrong, Niphredil hoped she could only right herself and find her destination. If not, well, she was stuck in more ways than one.
There was no time in the Halls of Mandos. It wasn't a factor for the shades and spirits that walked its vast chambers. Then again, it didn't seem to be much of a factor in the Golden Woods of Lothlorien, the place in which Niphredil was currently residing.
Why it didn't bother her in Lothlorien, Niphredil would never be able to say, but, in the Halls of Mandos, the lack of time was very…bothersome. Growing up in a place, with a family, where time was one of the most important things its total absence was something she couldn't, comfortably, deal with.
That and, Niphredil longed to know just how long she'd been sneaking behind death's supposedly eternal veil. It was always a concern of her great-grandmother's that the golden veil that hid the young elven maiden only lasted for so long on the other side. If she was there for too long….she worried the veil would dissipate like the haze before the sunrise. Be burned off like the clouds to reveal the true nature of the day or, in Niphredil's case, the true nature of the trespasser.
Niphredil shook her worries off, trying to regain her atypical confident feelings. She knew she had to be getting close something in her gut told her so.
Snickering to herself, she mused, "Well, not all instinct. There were some elfish spirits passing by before."
The sprits, instead of mixing and mingling as they might have in life, tended to stay with their own kind in death. From experience and what she'd learned in her scant few lessons about Middle Earth, Niphredil had come to the conclusion that the spirits of men didn't know of the spirits of the elves and the two spirits were not aware of the spirits of the witches and wizards that were gathering alongside them.
She continued forward, moving along what her feet and eyes perceived as a path. It wended its way through a pale forest, trees as pale as the rest of their surroundings and making it nearly impossible for anyone passing through to separate the spirits from the surrounding ghostly forest.
It was a task, though, that Niphredil had to undertake. After all, that was her purpose for being at the moment. Her reason for wandering through a place that sent shivers of ice down her spin and forced her to worry about her very survival.
She started to stray from the path, moving on silent feet through the equally silent woods. She could see the spirits speaking to each other but their ghostly whispers fell on deaf ears. She couldn't hear them over the pounding of her own heart and the song she kept singing.
A song that had suddenly become highly ironic. There was now some strange truth to it, a silver ring she hadn't noticed before. Why was she here? Because she was trying to take someone away. Someone who used the same melodic speech of the elves. A speech that almost sounded like singing.
"Now how am I supposed to recognized this person?" Niphredil mumbled to herself, interrupting her song and looking at the vast field of elven spirits before her.
They were from every conceivable age, some dressed in what she liked to call "normal" clothing. Others were still armor clad as they had been when they'd fallen in battle. Here and there she recognized elven warriors fallen while wearing the burnished armor of Lothlorien. If her memory served her correctly, those elves had served under Fire and Ice's father in a battle fought not so long ago.
Sure, Galadriel had told her what the person she was looking for looked like but that was no indication in this place. The gray ghost paleness of everyone made finding specific features a chore to say the least. Still, Niphredil was determined to see the task done. Not just for her own personal pride but for the sake of her friend in Mirkwood. Whomever this person was, she was essential to Emma's wellbeing. However that worked.
Luck seemed to be on Niphredil's side, though. As she wandered the outskirts of the largest of the groups, she spotted her quarry off on her own. A smile crossed over the elven maiden's face as a pleased sigh escaped her lips. At least she wasn't going to have to wander aimlessly for who knew how long and look or, worse, admit defeat and turn back.
She paused, catching her breath and preparing herself for the proposal she had to make. This was never easy to do, especially since taking another person out of this place was never a sure thing. Sometimes they weren't allowed to leave for a variety of reasons. Reasons that seemed to be contrary to the ones she had for taking them out of the Halls of Mandos.
"What new devilry is this?" the elf blurted, shading her eyes from the brightness that had appeared before her.
"I'm no devil," Niphredil countered, "rather; I am an elf like yourself. In a way anyway because I'm half-elven but that's neither here nor there at the moment."
"You are not among the dead?" the elf asked, sounding rather stunned at the moment.
"And you're not among the living," Niphredil retorted with a hollow sounding laugh.
Getting control over herself again, Niphredil started, "My name is Niphredil, currently residing in the Golden Woods of Lothlorien, my lady. I was sent here by the Lady Galadriel to give you a message and a proposition of sorts."
The elf, a female of some status when she was still among the living motioned for Niphredil to continue speaking. For the longest time, she'd been wishing for something like this to happen. For something to break the monotony of her boring life among the dead. Unless this was some horrible trick played by some wicked spirit, she was more than willing to hear a message from the land of the living.
That was, if Galadriel was still among the living. Having not seen her here among the dead, the female elf could only assume the ancient elf was still alive.
"I was told to tell you, my lady, that the words from the past have come to the present and all has been fulfilled, though not in the way it was initially thought to be. I was also told to tell you that the child you were denied has arrived but requires your aid," Niphredil informed the female elf.
Before giving the elf a chance to understand or respond, she added, "I am here to give you the opportunity to return to the land of the living and become party of the situation unfolding in your home of Mirkwood."
For a moment, the elf was still and silent making Niphredil almost sure she didn't believe her words. Then realization dawned over her face, brightening it like the sun over the horizon. The words the young elf had used, the information she had given- Though it obviously made little or no sense to the other elf. - made perfect sense to her. The message was for her and for her alone. Plus, when hadn't she dreamed for a return to life, a return to the family she'd left behind and a chance to return to her former position as a pain in her husband's side? This was not an opportunity she could just look away from.
True, she could have waited to be reborn but that would have done her no good. She felt there was something else she had to do, another role she had to play that, in dying, she was denied. This seemed to be the only way to do that, to take the role she figured she was meant for.
"You have presented me with a great deal of information, much of which I sense you do not understand. It does make sense to me, though, and I thank you for passing it along. The offer you made, I will gladly take, as well," she informed a rather confused Niphredil.
"That's exactly what I wanted to hear, my lady," Niphredil stated, after pausing for a handful of moments to recover from her initial shock of hearing what she did, "if you would be so kind as to follow me, I can take you back to Middle Earth."
Feeling slightly giddy- After all, she'd accomplished what she'd set out to do. - Niphredil started back towards the general direction from which she came. Her eyes, wide as they tried to take in everything, searching about for the hole of light that was her exit back home to the Golden Woods. This time, though, she was not traveling alone.
Hoping that she was doing the right thing and that she was in time to help her friend, Niphredil lead the elven woman back to the bright, colorful, and cheery lands of the living.