Disclaimer: I claim no ownership over anything Tolkien created.

THE CAVE OF WORLDS
Chapter Two -
Ki-sâphdi ni? (Do you understand me?)

Jessica lay back down and stared at the tree above her. The image was out of focus, and the tree seemed to be reaching down to touch her, but trees couldn't move like that, she knew. She closed her eyes, hoping her universe would stop behaving so silly.

The world was nothing but pain and grass tickling her ears. Her head hurt; her neck hurt; and a blade of white-hot agony stabbed through her right shin. She opened her eyes again. At first her vision was clear, but something trickled into her eyes, clouding them. She rubbed the stuff out. It warmed her fingers and clung to them, oddly viscous. Curious, she held her hands before her face. Blood stained palms, like a brand upon a wrongdoer. She tried to wipe it off on the grass, but blood was already there.

Feeling bile rise in her throat, she sat up and tried to scoot herself out of the red smear, but her right leg screamed in protest, using waves of agony to give Jessica a strict lecture in what not to do with a broken leg. She cried out, the lesson learned. All of the birds flew out of the tree she was under, causing a shower of wilted leaves. Careful not to move her broken leg, she lay down and closed her eyes to keep herself from crying.

A single blade of grass had somehow gotten into her ear and tickled it fearfully like a bug. She turned her head away from it, to find herself looking into a man's eyes. At first, she was too startled to move and only stared back. She blinked, but the man didn't. His expression was frozen. His mouth gaped, and his steel-grey eyes were open wide, as though in terror. There was something not quite right about the way his face was shaped; his cheeks were too high, his eyes too big, his nose too long, his ears too big. She felt like Little Red Riding Hood looking into the wolf's face. This wolf in a man's skin didn't move, but his hippy-length, black hair hung over his face and stirred with every breath he took.

After a while, she became tired of staring at only his face, waiting for him to blink or move, and pulled herself up onto her elbow. The man was really tall. He lay on his side curled into a ball, and even then he appeared to be over six feet. All six feet, except his head, were covered with green and grey clothing and a warm looking, dark green cloak.

So this is what lay beyond the metaphorical door. Suddenly, Jessica disliked her subconscious mind much more. She was there. Now what? Perhaps if she fell asleep, she could go back to her real bed.

She lay her head down and tried to sleep, but she couldn't stop shivering. Would he mind if she used his cloak? She cleared her throat. "Excuse me, mister."

The man didn't respond.

"Pardon me. Can I borrow your cloak? I'm cold."

The man didn't move.

Perhaps if she pulled a corner of the cloak out from under him she could wrap herself in that. She grabbed a corner of it and yanked. The man took a deep breath. "Curulaer, iuitho i goll în," he muttered.

"Huh?"

The man sat up as though someone had poured icy water all over him. "Man le?" he shouted. "Man carnen an Gurulaer?"

"What? What did you say?"

The man looked confused for a moment, but then he sighed and lay back in the grass. "Ni cheniol?"

Jessica stared at him.

"Hanyalyen?" He spoke this sentence with a different accent, one that had longer vowels and a slower cadence. It reminded Jessica of her mother praying in Arabic.

"Ki-sâphdi ni?" This language had harsher consonants in it, but something seemed familiar about the odd tongue. He was trying to figure out what language she spoke, she realized.

"Ki-sâphdi ni?" he repeated, watching her face.

The words separated themselves, and a high-pitched voice whispered inside her head, "You-understand-me?" She nodded.

"Ki-sâphdi ni?" This time the translator used the man's voice as he spoke. "Do you understand me?"

"Yes!" Jessica grinned and nodded her head vigorously.

The man let loose a relieved sigh. "Good. This will be easier."

"What will be easier?"

"Conversing," he mumbled. "I am a Nimir from Inzilolôrêth, as I believe you call us. Forgive me if I make errors when speaking in your language; I have not spoken it for many years."

"I didn't understand you at first, but you're doing fine now."

"I am relieved." The Nimir sat up and examined her face. He pursed his lips and furrowed his eyebrows to make a worried expression. "Child, there is a cut on your forehead that I need to mend before we waste more time talking, and your leg needs to be set in a splint. I am not a healer, but I can help." He pulled his pack off his shoulders and unbuckled his blanket. Taking out his knife, he cut a long strip of cloth off of his bedroll. "Be still, this will sting," he whispered. "The cut on your face has tree bark in it."

She nodded and closed her eyes as tightly as she could. First, he splashed lukewarm water from his canteen on the wound; then he picked the bits of bark out so quickly that Jessica didn't have a chance to feel pain until it was over. The man wrapped her head very carefully, so that he didn't touch the wound with his hands, but the cloth put enough pressure on the cut to slow the bleeding and numb the pain. Then it was time to see to her leg.

"This is going to hurt a lot, isn't it?" Jessica's voice squeaked involuntarily.

The man gave her a comforting smile. "Lie still. Squeeze a handful of grass to keep your mind off it. This break isn't very bad; I've had to mend such an injury before. All that needs to be done is move the two pieces together and hope they heal correctly. Lie as still as you can." He pulled her nightgown away from the break and peered at it.

"Are you sure you know how to do this?"

"My son broke his arm when he fell from a horse two summers ago. I set the break." He laid his hands gently on her leg; her skin ached at the touch.

The man suddenly leapt back, gasping and shaking his hands as though to rid them of something.

"What?" Jessica's voice reached new octaves. "What's wrong? Is it bad?"

"I need to rest," he paused to catch his breath, "before trying something that requires a steady hand." He collapsed onto the ground.

"What happened?"

"I am not certain." A wilted leaf fell to the ground before him. "I was searching for a good grip on your leg, and my hands became numb."

The Nimir picked up the wilted leaf and twisted it in the air above him, then flexed each of his fingers. "Their feeling has returned."

Jessica nodded and squeezed her eyes shut, yanking out two large handfuls of grass.

The man lightly touched her leg, and jerked his hand back. He tried again with the other hand but yanked it away. He glanced at Jessica. The grass in her hands wilted and shriveled up. He leapt back with a yell, his eyes wide with horror. "Man ci? Man nad?" the man stuttered.

"Nimir, I can't understand you! What's wrong? Is my leg going to be able to heal?"

"Balan? Ithril? Raug? Gollor? Ûn?"

"What are you saying? Speak Eng… I mean, speak my language!" yelled Jessica, gesturing wildly. The man stared at her, his face regaining color. "Please?" she added quietly.

"Your words don't move with your face."

"Neither do yours."

Standing up, the Nimir pointed at her hand. "The grass is dead." Jessica opened her palm and looked at it. The blades were brittle and brown.

"But, I'm lying in a spot of dead grass."

He pointed to the tree behind her. "That tree was green and healthy when I arrived. Now it wilts."

"Maybe it wasn't healthy."

Stooping, the man plucked a green branch covered in fresh leaves from a bush by his knee and tossed it to Jessica. It landed in her lap. "What do you want me to do with it?"

"Pick it up. Hold it."

Scowling, Jessica picked the branch up, but her scowl vanished in a shriek as she hurled the dead limb from her. "Child, what are you?" the man asked.

"I don't know; I thought I was a child." Gingerly she dusted the dead leaves off her lap; unwilling tears began to form in her eyes. She began to mumble, as though she was trying to convince herself, "It's all in my head. It's all in my head!"

Suddenly, the man picked up his pack and opened it. "Are you hungry?"

Confused, Jessica nodded.

He pulled a wafer of some sort out of his pack and tossed it into her lap. "What is it?"

He shrugged. "Eat it."

"It's not poisonous, is it?"

"It depends," he said. "If you like, I'll take a bite of it first."

Jessica nodded, and the man took a large bite of it, chewed, and swallowed it. "The worst of it is that it is dry. It isn't poisonous." Then he gave her the wafer.

She studied it closely. It looked a little like a homemade graham cracker. Cautiously, she nibbled the edge of it, watching the Nimir's reaction. Surprisingly, it was sweet, with a sharp spice that she'd never tasted before, which lingered pleasantly on her tongue. She took a larger nibble. The cold disappeared as the first nibble reached her stomach. She took a bite. The Nimir smiled gently. "That is lembas, as it is called in my language. I don't know your word for it. Don't eat too much at one time, or you will sicken. If you were evil, you wouldn't have been able to eat it. It would be like poison."

"So, I'm good?"

Laughing, he replied, "I don't know if you are a good person, but I know that you aren't a slave of Morgoth. I don't know what sort of curse you are under, but I know that you are the victim, not the cause." He plucked a green blade of grass and touched it to her hand. It withered away in seconds. He plucked another blade of grass and touched it to the fabric of Jessica's nightgown. Nothing happened. "I believe that I have found a way around this curse."

"Really? What?"

Unpinning his cloak, he wrapped it around his hands, laid his hands on Jessica's leg, and held them there for a few seconds. Nothing happened. "This is a curse on your skin, and cloth protects me from it. Ready yourself for the setting of the bone." Jessica nodded and wadded up as much grass as she could in her hands. Without a warning, the man wrenched the bone in place. Jessica's mouth and eyes were wide open from surprise; she couldn't breath for a few seconds.

When she finally could move, all that she could say came out as high-pitched, unintelligible blubbering. The Nimir shoved a piece of lembas in her mouth as he tied straight, dead branches to her leg. After her hands stopped shaking and her voice came out of the stratosphere, she glowered at the man and asked, "So, what's your name?"

He looked up, eyebrows arched, and said, "Handirion Ladrengil."

"What? Can you say it again?"

"Han-di-ri-on Lad-ren-gil," he repeated. "I'm not certain how to say it as a name in your language, but it has a special meaning. Ladrengil means 'a valley of stars', and it comes from a vision that my mother had in the hour of my birth. She saw me in a circular valley with mountains so high and dark all that could be seen were the stars above. And Handirion simply means 'son of Handir', my father."

"Ladrengil," Jessica said, trying out the sound of it. "Nice to meet you. My name is Jessica Lisa Albright. My mom is an immigrant from Palestine and she wanted me to have an American name, so she picked the name that came up the most often in the phone book."

"What is a fon-bûc?"

"A phone book is a book full of names and addresses."

"That sounds useful for city life, Chessecalisa Albraet."

"No, you're saying it wrong! Jess-i-ca Al-bright."

"Hesseca Albraet?"

"Jessica Albright."

"Gess? Iess? Forgive me, but I cannot pronounce it. May I give you a name to call you by?"

Jessica nodded.

"Nethwen," he said with barely a second of thought.

"Does it have a meaning?"

"It means 'youthful girl'. You are a child in these perilous woods, for that I named you." He sighed heavily. "I don't recognize the places that you spoke of, Amérecan and Palestaen. Where are your parents?"

"My parents are at home, in America." Jessica paused. How could she explain that he was in her head, her subconscious mind? Where would America be in comparison to this strange medieval world that seemed to be conjured from various fantasy novels that she'd read? Would Eddard Stark appear next? Would Merlin pop out of a bush? What about the tooth fairy?


Author's Note:

"What do 'Ni chenial?' 'Hanyalyen?' and 'Ki-sâphdi ni?' mean?"
Ladrengil was asking, "Do you understand me?" in every language he knew. The first is Sindarin; the second is Quenya; and the third is Adûnaic.

Translations from Sindarin:
Curulaer, iuitho i goll în - Curulaer, use your own cloak.
Man le? - Who are you?
Man carnen an Gurulaer? - What happened to Curulaer?
Man ci? Man nad? - What are you? What thing?
Balan? Ithril? Raug? Gollor? Ûn? - Vala? Witch? Demon? Magician? Monster?

Translations from Adûnaic:
Nimir - Elf
Inzilolôrêth - Lothlórien (reconstructed)

The reviewer's guide:

Did you understand what was happening?
What made your Mary Sue alarm bells ring, if anything?So, what are your theories about how I crossed the language block?Was there too much pain?
Was the dialogue believable?
Does it leave you wanting to read on?
What do you expect to happen next?
What parts of the prose do you think need to be improved?
What grammar or spelling mistakes did you see?
Did anything in this chapter bother you while reading it?
What did you like about it?