Chapter 5
Ari's POV

I woke up from my fitful sleep to find that my head didn't hurt as badly as it had before, and felt a light pressure on each of my hands. What the fuck? I thought before blinking a few times, trying to make the world come into focus. It was probably mid-evening. Damn, I slept a whole day!

I looked to my left, and there was Leggy, holding onto my hand as if trying to protect me from pain. Aw. He's such a sweetie…remind me to marry him. And then I looked to my right, and nearly cried with joy as I saw my sister. She was half asleep, but squeezing my hand for dear life. And she was cutting off the circulation in my arm. Dammit. I reluctantly slid my hand from Legolas' and whacked my sister lightly.

"OW! BLOODY FUCKING MOTHER!" she exclaimed as I smirked, and Leggy looked up from the ground, which he had been concentrating on as if his life depended on it. I wonder why. But I saw that he was also trying to hide a smile as Blondie looked up at me and prepared to whack me back, but then focused on my face and squealed loud enough to wake the fucking dead. My head still hurt a little bit, and that didn't help matters much.

"ARI!" she squealed, throwing her arms around me in a hug. "AH! Christ!" I yelled, though laughing and hugging her back. Sneaking a peek at Leggy, who was chuckling, I smiled at him. He had saved my life, after all. After managing to escape my older sister's embrace, I looked at him.

"Legolas?" I asked cautiously, as it was still weird talking to the very elf I'd read about in the trilogy and seen in the movie. And for the record, the real Leggy is way hotter than Orlando Bloom.

"Yes, Ari?" he replied with a smile. Damn, if you've never had the object of your affections dazzle you with a smile like Leggy's, then you're missing out big-time! Cause I nearly melted and turned into a puddle under his gaze. His eyes are BLUE. And they like…stare right through you, but it's not scary.

"Thank you. Thank you so much. I owe you my life," I said, the truth of the fact that I'd nearly died causing my voice to crack.

"Think nothing of it. I am simply glad you survived," he said back to me, reaching out and brushing a strand of my black-streaked hair from my eyes.

Then my goddamned sister had to go and ruin a very nice moment, coming back from wherever the hell she'd gone with a distressed look on her face.

"Hey Ari…" she said cautiously to me. Her tone of voice alone made me grab Leggy's hand, expecting horrible, earth-shattering news. "What?" I asked, dreading the answer, as my stupid brain was coming up with increasingly horrifying scenarios of the bad news my sister was preparing me for.

She pushed back a lock of her raven black hair and pointed to her ear. "Look at this," she said, looking distressed. I looked.

Instead of rounded like a normal human being, it was pointy, like…an elf's. "Uhm, you and me are apparently…we're kinda…" she stuttered, obviously stalling.

"Kinda WHAT?" I asked, giving her a 'holy shit!' stare.

"Kinda elves," she finished, staring at me as if expecting me to launch myself into the nearest creek and drown myself.

"Oh, is that all- WAIT A MINUTE! How can I be an elf? By elven standards, I'm an INFANT! DAMN IT!" How was this fair? I was just getting to know Leggy, and then BOOM, I find out that by his race's-our race's-standards, I was young enough to be his GREAT GRANDDAUGHTER! TIMES TEN!

At this, I started crying, I admit it. As in, tears streamed down my face. It was no fair. I'd waited 22 years to be grown-up, and now I get transferred to some fucking weird planet with old but sexy elves, and suddenly, I'm a baby again! NO FAIR, NO FAIR, NO FUCKING FAIR! I just sat there and sobbed like a little kid- wait! I was a little kid- and wished desperately to wake up from this nightmare.

My sister just looked at me, looking forlorn, but Leggy knelt beside me and embraced me tightly. I clung to him, sobbing. First I almost die, and then I find out that the elf of my dreams is old enough to be my fucking grandfather! There's gotta be some law against that. Damn. Damn the man and his rules. Hmph. Damn man. Damn rules. But maybe elf rules are different, because the elf version of the man is cool.

I finally calmed down enough to stop crying and simply clung to Legolas. At any other moment I would have been reveling in the glory of being in his arms, but at that moment, everything was just too much. The world spun as one of the dizzy spells I was prone to under stress hit me, and I had to close my eyes; my head hurt again.

"It's no fair," I choked through tears as Legolas gently lowered me back down to my bedroll and drew the blankets up to my chin, gently smoothing my dual-colored curls from my face, which I knew was probably chalk white as it always was when I was startled or afraid. And I was both.

Nearly dying does that to a person. It's scary, because after I fainted in the forest, I was like hovering between life and death. Sometimes I could hear conversations and wanted to open my eyes and tell everyone that I was okay, but I couldn't. And there were some times when I felt nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing. Everything was dark, and the darkness was engulfing me, strangling me slowly, seeping into my lungs, my blood, and tearing me apart until there was nothing left of me. I didn't want to die. I wanted to live and feel the sunlight on my face, feel the rain on my skin, see Legolas, see Blondie, see my family, even my annoying brothers and pesky younger sister.

Thinking of my family only made the tears come faster. I wondered if they missed us. If they thought we were dead, or believed we were alive. What had our parents told the younger kids? How would I say it if it was my kids who were missing? How do you tell a 13 year old, an 11 year old and a 9 year old that their big sisters are never coming home? I sure would never want to tell my children that, and I hope I never will. Hell, at this rate, I'll never have children, because the only elf that I could ever come to love is like several thousand years older than I am.

It was only when my throat had stopped seizing up and the tears had quit falling that I noticed Legolas' presence beside me, kneeling next to me on the ground, looking a little lost, like he wanted to say something to me but was afraid because of my current emotional state. I managed a weak smile and reached for his hand, my own hand white and shaking. We just sat there in silence for a moment, me clinging to his hand, him still looking a little lost.

Funny, lost was how I felt. In a few days, I'd gotten torn from everything I ever knew, nearly been killed, found out that I'd somehow turned into an elf, and found myself falling in love with an elven prince who was thousands of years older than I was. Damn. Life sure has gotten fucked up lately.

There was just one thought running through my battered little brain at that moment: I want my mommy.