CHAPTER TWO

Escape

I ran, ducking between people and turning left and right into different hallways to confuse the angry grown-up. Sometimes I would find stairs going up, and I went up those stairs. Going up all the stairs might make the angry grown-up tired, or at least I hoped it would, and eventually I would get to the roof, or a high window where I could get out of the building and climb down the walls to find some normal people.

I ran through halls with wood-colored walls, halls with white walls, halls with blue walls. Halls with lots of people, halls with no people, halls with a few very bored-looking people. But I did not stop running, even though my legs hurt and my head hurt and my throat hurt from breathing so quickly. If I stopped running, I would be in a hall long enough for people to notice me.

Halls were small, that was the problem. I needed to get into a big room, so the people would be spread out too far to bother themselves with me.

Ah! There was a door over there, and it looked quite big enough for me to run through without being noticed.

I ran. The door got closer… closer… closer…

Through! I was through. And… there was a massive room, and a bigger door at the end of it— But there were trees through that one! Surely I would be able to get away once I was in the forest.

I ran. There must have been hundreds of people in the big room, and every one of them turned their heads to look at me as I ran by. Did I look so strange?

I did vaguely remember looking more like Father (and, by that, Grandmother) than I looked like anybody else back home, but nobody stared about it.

Oh, no— Somebody was running up behind me— not just staring, but chasing me. I ran faster, so fast that I nearly lost all my breath. My chest hurt from gulping in air with every jarring step.

The new door got closer, and with it the trees, and outside, and freedom, and people who could talk—

But the angry grown-up was surely getting closer, and I was getting tired. As soon as I had found a town of normal people I thought I would just about fall down and sleep for three days.

I kept running, and running, and running, and just when I was starting to think there was nothing else in life but running— I was out! The air smelled a good deal nicer, and when I looked up I could see little bits and pieces of sky between the leaves.

When I looked back, though, I could see the angry grown-up, and quite a few other people she must have convinced to help her. They looked angry too, and were probably less tired. I kept running.

This went on for what felt like a very long time but was probably not that long. Every few moments I looked back to see what the angry grown-up and the people she had convinced to help her were doing, and nearly every time they had gotten closer.

The frequent back-looking was my downfall— I tripped. And fell. Down. I might have hit my head again, now that I think about it. It would surely explain why everything for a while after that got so fuzzy, and furthermore it would explain why I fainted.

I woke up in the room whose walls were made of some sort of wood that was neither light nor dark.

I sat up, and immediately flopped back down again. I shut my eyes tight, but the spinning colors just got brighter.

My head hurt terribly— You know, I really think I had hit it again when I fell. That explains a lot of things.

For example, it explains why everything looked so hazy, and why there always seemed to be a cluster of concerned grown-ups. I did not see the angry grown-up during that time— probably a good thing. Even through the haze I might have tried to tackle her.

But eventually the world got un-hazy, and I was stuck listening to all sorts of jabbering I could not understand.

I tried to learn it. There was nothing else to do. Some words were easy to figure out— water, food, time to sleep.

But when all the grown-ups started talking more quickly than I had ever heard, and they gave me back my party dress, I had no words to ask what was going on.

Fin

A/N

A question has come up in the reviews: Is the main character of this story Tauriel? To which I say yes and no. Yes, she is heavily inspired by Tauriel in appearance and profession; indeed, the story never would have existed if Tauriel had not. But my main character (who will get a name soon, making discussions like these much less tedious) has a very different personality, is not Silvan, and will never be romantically interested in either Legolas or Kili. So in the end, I say more no than yes. I hope this has been helpful.