I followed her request and ate my lunch while my friend worked in the kitchen. I didn't feel one bit like celebrating. Not today. But sitting here alone all evening waiting for the psycho to show up again? I sighed. Not a good idea either.

Julia soon returned and set two cups down in front of us. Then she slipped her hand into the pocket of her jeans, pulled out the necklace, and set it also down in front of me.

"This was on the floor. Looks expensive."

"Yeah." That was all she could get out of me. She joined me on the couch while I concentrated fully on my sandwich so I wouldn't have to answer any questions about the necklace.

Julia sipped her coffee. I had a feeling she wanted to say something, but didn't quite know how to start. She took another sip and lowered the cup. "Ina, we don't have to go to Alex's party. I feel more like DVD night anyway."

It was a huge relief to me. "Thanks," I murmured softly, and squeezed her hand. She was one hell of a friend. A better one than I could ever be.
"Nothing to speak of. After all, I twisted my foot last Friday at the gym. I wouldn't have been able to dance the night away anyway..."

We spent the rest of the afternoon talking about anything and everything. It felt good to just do nothing, and when evening came, we cooked dinner from the leftovers I still had in the fridge. Afterwards, Julia put on one of her favorite comedies, but had already fallen asleep on my shoulder halfway through the movie. Outside, it was pitch black and only an occasional sleet was tapping against the windows, whose glass was a little fogged up.

I turned my head and looked over at the balcony door. It was also fogged up, and the strange man's markings stood out clearly against the darkness. They looked familiar, but I couldn't have told where from. Carefully, I got up and covered Julia with a wool blanket before approaching the door. I stood right in front of it for a while, then sat down and stroked the signs with one finger. Did they mean something? Or were they just a drug fantasy?

Following an intuition, I pulled out my cell phone and googled. My first entry, "characters," was too general. I narrowed my search down with "fantasy writing." That was better, but it still didn't resemble anything on the glass.

I scrolled through page after page and eventually leaned wearily against the wall. What was that all about? Did I really think I was going to find something?

I clicked "next" one last time.

The preview of the first post showed a forum entry in which several users were talking shop about the languages invented by Tolkien. I paused and clicked on the link. It seemed to be a collective thread where everyone could ask their questions. Someone wanted to give his wall a special touch by having "Carpe Diem" translated into Elvish by the users of the forum. Okay... I kept scrolling. How could you imagine Elvish?

I opened the image search and compared what appeared in front of me with the characters on the glass. Now I remembered where I had seen something like that before. Of course in the Lord of the Rings, why hadn't I thought of that before? And the characters on the glass were damn close to the writing example given on the website.

My heart leapt forward, but I swallowed my excitement. What did it prove, anyway? That the psycho had studied Tolkien, nothing more.

Still, my curiosity was piqued, and I discovered rather quickly that Elvish, whether Sindarin or Quenya, was a trickily complicated thing. Could I perhaps simply ask a question, just like the others, by trying to transcribe what the stranger had scrawled on the glass and post it on the forum to find out what he was trying to tell me? It was worth a try and I couldn't sleep anyway.

I got up and got a pen and a sheet of paper.

It took me three quarters of an hour and a lot of effort before I had the text reasonably transferred, photographed and uploaded. I glanced at the clock. Half past two. Surely no one was on the forum now, and my question wouldn't be answered until tomorrow. I got up, stretched, and ran to the bathroom to brush my teeth. When I came back, my phone showed a new message. I opened it and couldn't suppress the flutter in my stomach. My translator had put an equals sign after the foreign writing and followed it with the English meaning.

I read and felt the icy hand close around my heart again. This was no drug fantasy, I knew exactly what he was referring to. I would have preferred never to have to think about it again. And yet he left me no other choice. The images of the accident burst upon me with such force as if it had happened yesterday. I stared at the translation. It said:

Give it back to me.