Narya

I stared at the raindrops running across the window pane, illuminated by a flickering candle. At the same time, I tried to concentrate on the voices coming from the next room. Now and then individual words reached my ear, but overall my efforts were more than pitiful.

Several hours had passed since Legolas had saved me from Morag's grasping ways, and I still didn't know who this strange man was, what he wanted from us, and why in three devils' names we had followed him.

But what did it mean? And what did we mean? Legolas had decided to go with him, and so I had no choice but to follow him. Morag had led us through half the city, always careful not to leave any traces, before we stayed in the industrial district. And now I was sitting here: in a warehouse, listening to the voices of the two men like a child to its parents' argument.

Frustrating.

I got up and stepped closer to the window. It was pitch black outside, but I could glimpse the river Elbe and the ships sailing on it. How I would love to be on one of them right now: independent and free to go wherever I wanted.

Something cracked and I spun around. The door of the next room had been torn open and Morag came rushing out. It took him only five big steps to reach me and grab me by the arm. His eyes sparkled as dangerously as those of an angry cat.

I reflexively tried to escape his grip, but he was relentless. With a jerk, he pulled me so close to his face that I could feel his breath and hissed, "You'd better watch out for your rescuer, princess. He doesn't seem too interested in keeping you alive."

I didn't dare say anything in response, because anything I might have wanted to say certainly wouldn't have eased the situation. Morag seemed to sense this as well, because he held me for a moment longer as if waiting for me to fight back, but then turned and stomped away. Not a minute later, I heard a door slam.

I breathed a sigh of relief. Damn, Rumplestiltskin was in an extremely bad mood. Hopefully Legolas wasn't in an identical mood.

As if on cue, I felt the elf next to me. I flinched in shock. He must have slipped out of the next room on silent soles, as he always did. The fact that I could not stand it did not seem to interest him at all. I watched him cautiously from the corner of my eye and tried to gauge his spirits. For the fact that Morag had just rolled out of the hall like a steam train, Legolas seemed very even-tempered to me. Clearly, he had won the argument.

"Thank you."

I frowned in surprise and turned my head to look at him. "For what?"

"Your patience."

Now I could have said something like: No big deal. Or: you do what you can. But my curiosity was too strong for that. So I crossed my arms in front of my chest and asked, "How do you know Morag?"

Legolas' lips curled into a smile. "You do not let go."

"So?"

"We are old acquaintances."

I pinched my lips together. " `What else?"

"Ina, it would be going too far to reveal this to you."

"Oh come on!" How I hated it when he let hang out the superior elf. "You won't tell me why you're here, you won't tell me what the port is all about, and you won't tell me why we're being followed. I think I at least have a right to know who almost sent me to the afterlife earlier!"

I had been talking myself into a frenzy and realized too late that I was angrily stabbing the air with my index finger at each new argument.

Legolas raised an eyebrow. "I have told you why I am here."

"Yes, in cryptic hints, as you always do."

He averted his eyes and looked out the window. Then he stepped to the candle and extinguished the light. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, and I noticed Legolas leaning against the wall again, looking outside. "I want to protect you."

"I know." I closed my eyes, took a deep breath in and out, and then followed up, "But you don't when I'm in the dark."

It wasn't the first time we'd discussed this, after all. And until now I had assumed that he understood what I was asking for, but that seemed to have been a misconception.

I sighed.

Either he couldn't or wouldn't understand that he had to involve me in decisions that affected my life as much as his. But should I really accuse him of malicious intent?

Should I assume that his behavior was planned and calculated? Should I unwrap the mistrust again that had been gone in the last few days? And could I do it so easily?

I lifted my head and noticed that he was looking at me with his piercing gaze. At least, I thought he was. It was dark, after all.

"All right."

I was confused. "What?"

"I told you that I'm here to preserve your present - and my past, as it should be."

That sounded promising. "Yes?"

"I didn't tell you why that was even necessary."

Indeed, he hadn't. Now that Legolas mentioned it, I wondered why I hadn't thought of it myself before. "Well?"

"It has to do with the Elven rings."

"The rings of power?"

"Yes."

If I remembered correctly, the three rings that Sauron left to the Elves had lost their power after the destruction of the one ring and had gone with their keepers. So how could they be of any importance?

"They were given to the humans after Sauron had been defeated and most of the Elves had decided to leave Middle-earth. They were meant to be a warning and a hope to them, and a reminder of what their freedom cost."

This was new. But I did not interrupt Legolas, as he spread a quite unfamiliar amount of information out in front of me.

"For decades, the kings ruled Middle Earth. The Rings helped them, for they were considered the embodiment of the will to survive. And the people believed that the rings were not just relics from a bygone era, but that they actually helped to sustain their society. And so the rings did good, even though their magic power was long gone."

"But then something happened that made people doubt?"

He nodded. "One of them was stolen. Narya, the ring of fire. It was believed to have the power to keep people's hearts pure and full of confidence."

"But did you not say that the rings no longer had power?"

Legolas shook his head slightly. "I said that they no longer held magic power, but power they still had. It existed in the minds of the people and made them believe."

"And the theft of a ring then led to the whole society going down the drain?", I asked in disbelief.

"It led people to doubt - the peace, the kingdom, everything. They fell out among themselves, fought wars."

"But we've always done that, at all times."

"Does that make it better?"

"No, but it's the way of things."

He nodded again. "That might be so. But my job is still to bring Narya back and not let everything we fought for evaporate like ashes in the wind."

I fell silent and thought. A noble goal he had, unfortunately completely pointless if I took a look at the history of mankind as I knew it. Nonetheless, another question, which seemed more important to me than enlightening Legolas about the conflicted past of Earth and its inhabitants, pressed in on me: "What makes you think you can simply undo history? The Ring was stolen, yes, but perhaps that is the will of fate?"

Legolas averted his gaze from the window and took a step toward me. "True, if it were an ordinary theft, neither I nor anyone else would have the right to undo it. Even if it meant watching the downfall of the previous order."

An uneasy feeling crept over me. "But?"

"Narya wasn't stolen by just anyone, but by a time traveler."

"That means someone deliberately changed history?"

"Yes."

"But why would anyone do that?"