Merrie and Sioux in Middle-Earth

Chapter 4

Disclaimer: This story is not written by JRR Tolkien and will make no one any profits. It's all in fun. Merrie and Sioux are original (insofar as satiric literary abominations are original), but I'm not overly attached to them.

… … Back To The Story … …

Sioux really needed to stay in her own room and quit making so much noise. Why was she talking? It couldn't possibly be important enough to gte up for. Not after that last dream.

Ow. Her side ached.

"Merrie, get up! Get up right now or I'll tell your agent that you don't want to take that part in the Silmarillion."

Merrie's eyes popped open as Sioux's weight settled onto her bed. "You'll never guess the dream I had last night! It was—" She trailed off as she turned to look at Sioux. The next words were quickly forgotten. That was not Sioux. For one thing, the body was male. It was wearing robes. It- he- had dark hair, gray eyes, gorgeous bone structure, a silver circlet and…. Oh God. Pointed ears.

"Sioux?" Her voice shook a little as her sanity wobbled indecisively over its decision to remain.

Her friend appeared from behind Mr. Pointy-Eared-Not-Sioux. Although on reflection of last night's dream, perhaps it was Lord Pointy-Eared-Not-Sioux.

Lord Pointy was speaking. Merrie blinked at him, hoping she looked semi-intelligent and not understanding a single syllable.

"Parlez vous francais? Hablais espanol?" Merrie tried.

"No good," Sioux said affably, stepping away from Lord Pointy and dropping onto a stool nearby. "They keep trying languages on me but none of them have discovered English yet. He may want to check on your bandages." Bandages?

"You're too chipper." Merrie scrunched her nose to illustrate her distaste for this fact. "What happened? Why do I have bandages? Do they have caffeine?" she asked the last question with a dawning sense of hope. All was not lost if there was still caffeine…

"No, but the food's good."

Merrie wondered if this is what heartbreak felt like. No caffeine? Life was a barren desert.

Lord Spock was now watching them both with a bemused academic look that Sioux found rather unsettling. It was the same look her biology teacher had given her the first semester she took it.

He spoke again and it did not take Merrie long to recognize the maddening near-misses of the twin mctasties' speech.

"What the bloody freaking hell language is that?" She turned her head to look at Sioux a little desperately.

Sioux looked similarly disturbed. "No idea, but they keep using it at me. It's maddening."

Lord Spock sighed and resorted to speaking the first, prettier language, though now the words were slower and punctuated with hand gestures.

For the first time, Merrie's eyes went beyond him to take in the room she was in. It was light, airy, full of impossibly intricate stone and woodwork. Everything looked delicate and art-nuveau in a renaissance way. She also noticed the two armed pointy-ears near the door and a couple more peaceful looking ones not far away.

"Right. Okay," Merrie focused back on Lord Pointy, who bore a passing resemblance to the twin hotties. But she wasn't going to think about that. "Bandages?"

"Yep, I'm guessing," Sioux affirmed. "Told you so. And intros." She laughed, and it was one that suggested quietly that maybe Sioux's sanity wasn't quite sure it wanted to stay here much longer. "You're going to love this."

"No, I'm really not." Sioux ignored the interruption.

"Merrie McPherson, meet Master Elrond Peredhil aka Halfelven, of Rivendell."

"You've been dying to do that," Merrie observed.

"All morning." Sioux looked close to giggling in a hysterical fashion.

"Pleased to meet you, Lord—erm, Master Elrond."

Elrond smiled kindly and said something that Merrie took to mean "Back at you, strange female."

The other elves who had followed him in produced more bandages, helping him as he set about unwrapping Merrie's ribs.

Merrie found herself unwilling to look at the impossibly hot fantastical creature who was currently playing with her midsection. Instead she looked at Sioux, who was trying unsuccessfully to stifle her giggles at the looks the elves were giving to Merrie's purple designer bra.

Merrie glared at the chortling redhead before closing her eyes. She had done her share of nearly-nude shoots, she could handle this. So what that the person prodding her was not the usual make-up artist but an unearthly male hunk of immortal hotness who was old enough to make Sean Connery look like a teenager?

"This is wonky on so many levels," she murmured.

"Oh, just wait," Sioux laughed. "Be glad you weren't up and around for the whole getting here thing. I got to play Me Tarzan You Jane with Lord Hotness's twin Hotness Jrs. One of them is brilliant at charades." She paused. "Do they have charades here?"

Merrie frowned, pondering the idea of ethereal immortal beings of legendary wisdom, who sang and had epic adventures playing party games. Then again, they had wine.

"Probably. But they're really ancient and dignified," she concluded.

"Everything they do is dignified," Sioux lamented. "It's seriously frightening. Just wait until you're up and moving here. They're graceful and radiant and I've started dreaming one of them will just drop something. Just once."

There didn't seem to be anything to say to that. Merrie opted to change the subject.

"How long have we been here?" It seemed to her that Sioux was far too unnerved to have been here only a few hours.

"A day and a half. Twin one- I think Elrohir- put you under some elf whammy Kel'no'rim."

"Please don't say things like that!" Merrie's face went pale, earning a concerned look from Elrond and the helpers. "It might make T'ilk appear."

"Don't be daffy, Mer. He isn't Candyman."

"Sioux, we're in Rivendell. Elrond Halfelven is checking out my bra and a hole in my side from a goblin-"

Elrond raised a brow, glancing between them and obviously wondering whether they should be separated for their own good. Merrie and Sioux both smiled their Charity Events Sweetness Smiles.

"Orc," Sioux corrected.

"Whatever. We got here by petting a picture. Do you really think mentioning anything from equally improbably fiction is worth the risk?"

"When you put it like that… No."

….

"I wonder what they're discussing?" Erestor remarked from the doorway.

Elrond shrugged and looked at the woman before him. "Your wound is healing," he told her, perfectly aware it was useless. Her eyes, the color of a summer sky, were serious as she regarded him.

"H-hannon le?" Her voice was soft, hesitant as she stumbled over the words. He sat back, startled.

"You are welcome," he said automatically. He studied her closely. "You two are a riddle I know not how to read. You speak phrases of Sindarin," he looked at her flame-haired companion, "yet you do not know the language, nor even the speech of men."

"I am not so certain they do not." Erestor strode toward the group, ignoring the wary gazes of the strangers. "Have you not noticed their reactions to Westron? They become frustrated, confused. Perhaps they speak a form of that language, far enough removed that it is only vaguely comprehensible to them."

"Their speech patterns are not of that language," Silinde countered. The blond elf looked at his fellow councilor. "Only a few of their words are familiar and they may be so only because of an unfamiliar accent."

Elrond sighed, holding up a hand to forestall further argument. Merrie and Sioux were staring at them in uncomprehending wonder. It reminded Elrond of elflings first seeing snow. Elflings who had wandered alone and unarmed through the mountains and somehow held off a group of orcs.

"Where do they come from?" he asked his advisors. "I sense none of the enemy's touch in this and yet-"

"They are not humans as we know them," Erestor finished his lord's thoughts. Elrond nodded.

Glorfindel chose this time to speak from his self-appointed post beside the door. "The twins have told me that Sioux-" the human in question turned her green eyes to regard him warily- "does not know how to hold a sword, can barely manage a bow. Even their clothes are unlike anything I have seen. The materials alone have never been beheld in Arda and I do not remember such even in Valinor."

Elrond's mind flitted to the purple cloth covering Merrie's torso, which was certainly of no hue nor fabric ever seen in Arda. He shook his head. There was no ending to the questions this pair raised, and answers, it seemed, would be some time coming. "Erestor, Silinde, see if they can be taught Sindarin, Westron, some language at least that we may all communicate in."

For a moment he thought his advisors would protest this, but they did not. He waited until they both nodded their assent.

"We shall endeavor," Erestor said at last.