Aragorn led the quiet, slightly depressed Fellowship on through the hills, as they stumbled on in the fading light, towards the woods of Lothlórien. The Fellowship stopped for a slight moment, in awe, of the shimmer of the massive forest of Lothlórien.

They had reached their first destination, not yet their final.

But the Doctor, being the ever so suspicious and curious man he is, he pointed at a large gap in the trees. "That doesn't look right. If my knowledge is correct, then that huge hole should not be there. Legolas, do know anything?" The Doctor peered at the Elf, who he himself looked confused. And a little scared, from what he's seem, that hole could have been made by anything.

"No." Legolas whispered, in a faraway voice, "That should not be there." He seemed to wake from his daze, and then turned to the Doctor. "Is it worth investigating?"

The Doctor nodded his head, and seemed to get a bit excited. He loved investigating; he never really understood 'curiosity killed the cat'. Curiosity is what discovers the greatest things, be it radium, or the Arhadron galaxy. Always something to be made out of curiosity.

The man in the bowtie hopped down the hill, and made a quick stroll towards the forest, in the direction of the hole.

"Stay close young hobbits." warned Gimli, "They say a sorceress lives in these woods, an Elf-witch of terrible power. All who look upon her fall upon her spell..." Gimli began to drag off there, with a dramatic pause.

Frodo hesitated for a moment, not believing the voice calling him in his mind. He looked around him, trying to find the whisperer. He had a sudden thought it was this great witch Gimli was going on about.

"...And are never seen again!" Gimli whispered gravely.

The voice in Frodo's head continued to whisper to him. "Your coming to us is as the footsteps of doom. You bring great evil here, Ringbearer."

"Mr. Frodo?" Sam always knew when Frodo was worried.

Meanwhile, the Doctor was having his own troubles with a soft female voice in his head, but as he liked to do when people came to say hello, he had a lovely little chat with her. He thought he was oh-so charming sometimes.

Gimli muttered confidently. "Well here's one dwarf she won't ensnare so easily! I have the eyes of a hawk, and the ears of a fox." the Doctor snorted, before the Fellowship were quietly but unsubtly ambushed by white-blond Elves with bows and arrows.

Every person had at least four bows pointed at them, and most either froze or looked surprised and scared. The Doctor tightened his bow tie, and Pippin adjusted his fez.

"A dwarf breathes so loud we could have shot him in the dark." an Elf, possibly the leader of the others, boasted softly in front of Aragorn.

"Oh, I wouldn't do that. It would be a shot in the dark! Get it?" the Doctor was sometimes terrible at doing jokes. Merry frowned, then nodded and smiled, mostly out of pity for the Doctor's inability to be funny when he tried too hard, and when bows were pointed at his chest. Though the Doctor was never nervous in these situations.

The Captain Elf, as the Doctor decided to dub him, turned to the Doctor, who was still completely surrounded by Elves with slender white bows.

"Do you mind if you put down the bows? I don't think we're going anywhere with ten arrows pointed at us." the Doctor spoke softly, and Captain Elf smiled.

"I have heard of you. But I know nothing about you." Captain Elf must have had some Elves at the meeting, at the Council of Elrond. The Doctor was sure he heard a lot about the blue box and the bumbling mad man whose only love was his strange red cap and silly tight bow tie.

"I'm the Doctor." the Doctor simply whispered, definitely not enough information, but Captain Elf seemed to take it.

"Well, Doctor, I am Haldir of Lórien, and you are not welcome here." the Doctor had ignored that, and slipped through a gap in the Elven bows. He walked thicker into the forest, and the rest of the group, the Elves and the Fellowship.

"I'm never usually welcome anywhere." the Doctor had that cheeky grin when he knew something everyone else didn't. "But that doesn't stop me! In fact, it puts the fun in it."

The group of experienced fighters, and everyday, sensible Hobbits, let their jaws drop to the ground as the Doctor ran around a huge, metal, vessel-like machine, sitting on large metal stilts and Lothlórien forest's pale tall trees.

This ship was what had made the gap in the forest.

The ship itself was black and, with long silver strips along the edge, huge turbines on top of the ship hid just below the trees. It was dark and looming, and didn't fit in the forest, seemed disproportionate.

"Oh, that's very strange." the Doctor whispered at his sonic screwdriver, after waving it at the ship. The Elves seemed surprised, confused, and a little scared that they hadn't noticed this huge vessel in their forest, which they were meant to be patrolling. Even the witch would have noticed it.

"What is that?" Haldir pointed to the sonic screwdriver, and the Doctor only looked up at him.

"If you're wondering why you didn't see this, perception filter." Haldir seemed a little taken aback by the change of subject, but yet again, he had been completely confused by the Doctor.

"A perception filter changes how you see certain things. It can make a thing completely invisible, or just unnoticeable, or change its appearance. It's usually used by things that don't want you to see them, or what they really are." the Doctor explained, simply enough, he didn't go into the fascinating details of how quantum physics comes into play. The poor Elf looked like a lost child.

"What would want us to not see them?" Legolas stepped forward to the vessel, and rubbed his finger along a glass pane, touching the strange framework.

The front of the vessel seemed to split in two, divided in the middle. A brightly lit corridor followed the door, and Legolas cautiously entered the ship.

Sparks flew from random points on the wall, and wires were strewn on the ground and hung limp from the ceiling. This was not a ship in good, working order, but it hadn't crashed at Lothlórien. It just hadn't been serviced recently. Whoever flew this here had long gone, and any passengers with them.

The Doctor hopped into the ship, pointing the sonic screwdriver at doors as they passed down the corridor. Legolas pulled out his bow and placed an arrow tightly in the string. He stalked towards an open door, almost torn out of the wall.

"Legolas, be careful. You never know what could be in here." the Doctor ran the screwdriver around the door. He frowned for a second, and then nodded to himself. "It wasn't forced open. A power surge broke the engines, and when it repaired itself, the control lines were still offline."

Legolas stepped through the doorway, and paused, staring at a strange creature lying in the middle of the floor.

The creature looked quite like a human, but the orange scales and number of different sized horns set it apart from any creature on Middle Earth. Except maybe lizards.

"Veil." the Doctor whispered, "They died out long ago, he must have been the last of them." the Doctor bent down and touched the shoulder of the Veil. "I'm so, so sorry."

"How did they all die?" Legolas had bent down too, and was trying to check its vital signs. But he had no idea where the veins were, where the heart was. Even though he couldn't find the heart, the body was silent. All life had evaporated. "What killed them?"

The Doctor stood up, and turned from the body, towards a board covered in flashing lights, switches, and levers, that the Doctor began to tune up.

"Time." the Doctor said. "Time killed this race, and someday it will kill any race." The Doctor flicked a switch gracefully, and a huge canister shot down from an open hole in the ceiling, and the canister opened. A huge peice of ice was left on the ground as the canister hid back up in the ceiling. A steaming grill opened beneath the block of ice.

The Doctor smiled as the ice began to drip, then the ice became a pool of water at the Doctor and Legolas' feet. A tall, orange creature stepped forward in the steam. More and more canisters fell from the ceiling.

"But not today."

More Elves had been called in, with blankets and food. They had found something spectacular in the forest, but refused to tell everyone until they had been warmed, fed and briefed by the Doctor as to their whereabouts and the creatures that lived there.

"You're on Middle Earth, populated by Elves, Dwarfs, Men, Hobbits, and so much more creatures." the Veil nodded. "But watch out for that one." the Doctor pointed towards Pippin, who was cradling the fez.

"Hey!" Pippin objected, but already the rest of the group began to laugh.

"Watch out for him on pipe weed!" Merry giggled, as Pippin came over to him and boxed him in the arm. "Ow!" Merry rubbed his shoulder, before giving Pippin a dig in the stomach. The boys began to fight, playfully.

The Veil at first took the Doctor's advice, stared at Pippin for a second, then a few at the back laughed at the two Hobbits.

"Righty-oh, I've got to go. The Elves here will look after you." With that, the Doctor pushed the Hobbits out of the clearing, and left the Veil to their new home.

They could never return to their home planet, but they quite liked the forests of Lothlórien. They had long decided they would stay with the Elves, the strange new race with long white hair and pale faces with even paler blue eyes.

Lothlórien would from then on be the land of Elves and Veil.

Haldir led the Fellowship to a onto a hill top, and before them stretched a huge, open vista. The group's jaws dropped, and the few Veil they had brought up, to represtent the one-hundred strong population, were broadly smiling, sharp tongues licking the air.

"This is very alike our home planet." one female Veil sighed, she seemed happy.

A beautiful city nestled in Mallorn trees on top of a large hill, miles out south. It gleamed in the bright sun, greens and golds shimmering along the city. To the east of the city, known as Caras Galadhon, the Woods of Lórien continued to spread down the pale glow of the great river of Anduin. But beyond the river, the land was flat and empty. This continues formlessly until the land rose in a dark and dreary wall. The sunlight that illuminates Lothlórien cannot pass this wall, it will never have the power to lighten the shadows that lay by that land.

Haldir led the Fellowship on to the beautiful city.

The Fellowship stepped onto a wide fleet filled with soft light. The walls gleamed of silver and green, and the gold ceiling lit the ground. In its midst is the trunk of the tall and mighty Malorn tree, now thinning towards the top, with a blossoming staircase spiralling around the bark.

Celeborn stepped forward to greet his guests. His silver-white hair was flowing down his back, and his face looked grave, but peacefully beautiful, ageless. Next to him stood Galadriel, the Lady of the Elves, whose deep golden hair and unsurpassed beauty makes Gimli's claims of the evil Elf-witch hard to believe.

Celeborn looked cold and hard at Aragorn. "Nine are there, yet ten were set out from Rivendell. Tell me, where is Gandalf, for I much desire to speak with him."

The Fellowship fell into an awkward silence, still silently grieving for the wizard. Frodo looked to Galadriel, who stood silently beside Celeborn, and she spoke softly and understandingly.

"He has fallen into the shadow." She then turned to Aragorn. "The quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all." She smiled a little, the glow illuminating her divine face. "Yet hope remains where the company is true."

Galadriel settled on Sam. The Doctor knew this was the part where she went around the group. He hoped she wouldn't do him.

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Go now and rest for you are weary with sorrow and much toil." Galadriel looked at Frodo. "Tonight you will sleep in peace." Galadriel's voice faded, but not in Frodo's head. "Welcome, Frodo of the Shire." she smiled sweetly at Frodo.

"One who has seen the eye."

"Who are you?" Celeborn turned to the Veil who accompanied the Fellowship.

"My name is Altheax." the female Veil stated. "He is Adravox." she beckoned to the other Veil beside her. "He does not speak in the company of strangers." Both were wearing white suits, with high boots and tight collars.

Another Veil stepped forward, and declared, "Androvax saved us. But sent us here? He might have brought us to a new, barren planet, but here? I do not understand his actions." the Veil sighed, tasting the air. "I am sorry, Elves, but I do not trust you or your kind."

Galadriel smiled, but before she could answer, Altheax scolded him. "Don't be so distrusting, Adrax. We have barely known the Elves and already you are dismissing them." Adrax seemed to bridle a little, and gave Galadriel an apologetic look. Altheax seemed to have some authority in the group, she definitely had the attitude.

"It does not matter." Galadriel smiled understandingly. "Life on a whole new world can do that to some people." She gave a side glance to the Doctor, who had been standing silently. What a miracle, a quiet Doctor.

The Fellowship was led up the mighty tree towards their food.

Gimli, Legolas, Merry, Pippin and his fez, Frodo, Sam, the Doctor, and the three Veil were sitting comfortably on soft couches, munching and drinking, in a little pavilion set smugly among the trees, while listening to the slightly depressing yet beautiful Elven voices singing a complex Elven song, which drifted from the tall trees above and around them.

Legolas sighed sadly. "A lament for Gandalf." Altheax looked confused about who this Gandalf person was, but she wasn't stupid enough to ask. This person had been very dear to them and had died, recently. Adrax was about to ask, but she hissed at him before he could upset them again. The little one with the bright blue eyes looked especially sad, and to provoke tears would not be a good start for the Veil. They were meant to be the Ambassadors.

"What do they say about him?" Pippin asked, fiddling with the fez on the table.

Legolas looked down. "I have not the heart to tell you. For me the grief is still too near."

Boromir sat off from the group, on his own. He looked down. "Take some rest. These borders are well protected." Aragorn approached Boromir.

Boromir slowly turns to Aragorn. Faint traces of tears sparkle in the bright moonlight streaming down from the trees. Aragorn knelt down beside him.

"I shall find no rest here." he looked at the group, chatting quietly. "I heard her voice in my head. She spoke of my father, and the fall of Gondor. And she said to me, 'Even now there is hope left' but I cannot see it. It is long since we have had any hope."

Boromir looked desperate. "My father is a noble man, but is rule is failing and our... our people lose faith. He looks to me to make things right, and I would do it, I would see the glory of Gondor restored."

Boromir smiled sadly, and his voice went dreamy; he had gone off somewhere in his mind. "Have you ever seen it, Aragorn? The White Tower of Echtelion, glimmering like a spike of pearl and silver, its banners caught high in the morning breeze." His love for his home was clear in his tone. "Have you ever been called home by the clear ringing of silver trumpets?"

Aragorn nodded. "I have seen the white city. Long ago."

Boromir smiled, sensed Aragorn's love for Minas Tirith, and took it to heart. "One day our paths will lead us there, and the tower guards will take up the call, 'The Lords of Gondor have returned!'"

Aragorn returns Boromir's homely smile, but only betrays his anxious grief when Boromir looks away.