Oh god, I'm evil aren't I? I'm sorry! I didn't mean for it to take this long!

REALLY!

Please!

(cue the whimpering)

Chapter Nine

"What in the name of the Valar are you?"

Naomi's first reaction was to, of course, huff and reply, "A human, last time I checked." However, considering the somber tone of the events unraveling before her eyes, she decided this to be too flippant a comment.

Tell him the truth and you lose another finger, warned the voice, and an ache in her already shattered right hand had her reevaluating her options.

She'd opened her mouth, a decidedly more polite – and less truthful – reply on the tip of her tongue, when a pair of golden, long-fingered hands wrapped themselves around her mouth.

"Shh," hissed the owner of these hands – it truly was despicable how perfect the elfin race was – and Naomi did so, hands clenching around the hem of her grey dress, now brown from the speckled dust of the landscape.

While Naomi certainly couldn't hear anything, apparently what Legolas did frightened him, because a second later he was propelling her upward and towards camp, and, not even bothering to keep his voice down anymore, said, "Wake them up! We're being attacked!"

All the terror of her first head-on meeting with violence slammed into Naomi's temples and then down into the pit of her stomach. The hot breath of the creature on the back of her neck as he hunted her through the treacherous turns of the forest; the malevolent speed lent to her by the voice echoing through her mind . . .

dear Valar help me, oh please, oh please, help me, save me, oh god

With an impatient huff laced with anger, the elfin prince drew his sword from its position on his side, apparently deeming the threat too close for his precious bow to be of use. He clutched his hilt loosely, just as practiced in this sort of weaponry as he was of archery.

Not daring to draw his eyes away from the surrounding darkness, he slowly positioned himself so he was best protecting Naomi and the camp behind her from whatever it was that was fast approaching. "By the Valar, if you do not move . . ."

He didn't finish, but Naomi grasped the implicit threat nicely.

She turned, her breath still being drawn in short gasps, realizing that the camp was much farther back than it had seemed when the flicker of the firelight was drawing her towards Legolas. Grimacing, she stumbled towards the camp, attempting to gather enough breath to voice a warning that would be loud enough to wake both Aragorn and the snoring dwarf.

Her hair had been loosened when she had undone the plait to sleep, and its ends tickled the corners of her eyes, blinding her as she half-ran, half-shuffled her way to the bedrolls. She caught her bare toes on rocks and roots more than once, not sure where the larger rocks were in the darkness.

She lost the pain of her finger in the bruising of several of her toes, as well as her left ankle.

Her breathing was quickening, and she was certain that she was a few paces from the sleeping remaining members of the group when there was a threatening, heady snarl from behind her.

The breath she'd been gathering to scream was pulled out noiselessly into the cool night air as she whirled around, arms waving to gain back her lost balance, curls blinding her, frantically searching through the orange-highlighted air for her assailant.

At first, all she could see was the faint glint of metal, Legolas' sword as he battled the things, the attackers she had yet to see. She noticed in an illogical, suicidal way that the elfin prince was so utterly graceful when maneuvering his sword that she had no doubt he would be a fabulous dancer.

Idiot girl!

It was then the creature whose snarl she had heard before stalked into the yellow-orange light.

It was enormous, as large as she was standing – though considerably less scrawny – with patched russet and grey fur that was orange and black in the firelight. Its eyes were yellowish-red, milky in consistency, and glazed with a fine sheen of liquid. The teeth it bared in another horrible snarl were dripping with silver saliva.

There was a piercing shriek, loud enough to deafen, echoing through the inky blackness, and it took Naomi a moment to realize that no, this was not another horrible creature, but her, garbling words in her panic.

The noise was also considerably softer in sound than she had presumed, more of a whisper than a shriek, but it seemed her mind was echoing the cry.

As quickly as it had begun, the whisper-shrieks subsided, letting the raspy slither-clink of the creature's claws take precedence, as it pawed the ground beneath it.

Its entire body rumbled with another unnatural noise, and then it was darting forward, three feet off the ground, its trembling snout and sharp teeth pointed directly towards her midsection.

Regaining her voice, Naomi turned and dived into Aragorn's bedding, the whoosh of air and scent of matted fur and moldy blood not drowning out the hysterical sound of her screams, now truly deafening.

The man awoke instantly, one hand drawing his sword as the other removed the dagger that had been instantaneously pointed at Naomi's neck. Her screams warbled onward, gaining higher and higher pitch, obviously hurting the animal.

It crashed with an anguished howl into the sparse vegetation, ears no doubt ringing, a hands-breadth from Gimli's bedroll. As the dwarf snorted awake, the animal rose shakily to its feet and growled, ignoring the red-haired figure at its feet in favor of the woman making the noise that was tormenting it so.

Aragorn none-too-gently pushed Naomi off his legs and rose in a smooth motion, never breaking eye-contact with the beast. Running out of air, she finally let her screams fall into silence, as she realized what was so strange about the animal.

It was, she had suddenly realized, a wolf.

And while this was not an uncommon sight in the area they trekked across, wolves – even those in this mountainous desert of Middle Earth – didn't grow to the size of warhorses.

I didn't extend all this hard work to have you mauled by wolves, hissed the voice, and then she was on her feet, grasping the end of a splintered branch (intended, eventually, for firewood) as though it was Andúril returned from its broken state in the halls of Rivendell.

Aragorn quickly disengaged the animal – its milky eyes proved to be a sure indicator of its advanced age – but more were melting out of the darkness. Using memorized knowledge, Naomi discerned that they had stumbled upon the creature's hunting ground, of which they were ridiculously territorial.

As long as the lead male pushed them to mark their territory, they would fight. Desert wolves, however, would abandon a fight once they had lost their lead male, subconsciously marking the battle as useless. They would then return to their den and choose a new lead.

Abandon the fight.

"The lead male!" said Naomi triumphantly. "Aragorn! Kill the lead male and they'll leave us alone!"

"What?" demanded the man as he circled cautiously, now joined by a be-axed Gimli. "Kill the what?"

"The lead male! Desert wolves will abandon a fight once the lead male – most often discernable for the silver markings along his back – is killed." Her voice was rough from screaming, but she still managed to stammer out her point.

Perhaps believing her – or perhaps simply seeing no reason why not to go after the lead – Aragorn immediately sought out this wolf that Naomi had described. He finally found it, agonizing seconds later, peeling from the group Legolas was hastily dispatching to stalk towards them.

As Naomi had described, its back was crisscrossed with silver markings that were actually scars, often four in a parallel. Aragorn calmly elbowed Naomi back, away from the general gathering of wolves, and he and Gimli met the wolf together.

Tightening her grip on her makeshift club of wood, Naomi turned her gaze away from the fight in front of her to behind; assuring that none of the wolves had circled around with the intent of ambushing the larger group of prey.

"Naomi!"

She whirled around, a second too late, as the wolf made it past Aragorn and Gimli in her direction. Wolves often, she knew, targeted the weakest member of the pack of prey they were attacking.

There was nothing she could do but stand there in open-mouthed horror, hand loosely wrapped around her club of wood, as the open mouth of the wolf gaped at her. She screwed up her eyes and prepared herself for the lunging body of fur.

Stupid, silly, useless little girl, hissed the voice, stabbing above her eyelid with a burst of pain, splintering across her forehead, open your eyes.

She did so, if only so she could alleviate the pain, and saw that the wolf had stopped in its approach, paw lifted to take another step. She breathed a sigh of relief, and stumbled backwards, hand to her heart, thanking the Valar with all her soul. It was then she looked beyond the lead and saw Aragorn, body twisted as he pulled up his sword, frozen in the motion.

Gimli was stopped as well, his axe swinging in an angle impossible to maintain for a lengthy amount of time. It was as though the air had stopped itself, a tapestry woven of the scene for future reference.

What had happened?

Stop gawking, instructed the voice malevolently, and get yourself out of the way.

She did so instantaneously, confused, throwing herself to the left and behind the approaching wolf. As she did, the air released itself, and the wolf tumbled into dry air with a squeal, burying its nose in the dirt.

It didn't take much longer for Aragorn and Gimli to finish him, and sensing his death the rest of the pack backed away into the night. Naomi lay in the dust while they did so, trying to process what she had just seen.

Time itself had stopped . . . but why?

Whew.

Well. Interesting tidbit there.

Hmm . . . well, if you review, maybe I'll update faster than the, what, month it took me to put this up?