Bright grey light shone down in the clearing, making the heads of the (maybe) men appear backed by some off-white halo. Mary, still slightly put out by Helen's tone, hesitated in answering. She bit her lip, pulled the full pink flesh into her mouth and chewed on it cutely. Helen's annoyance grew at how perfect she looked while doing it.
"Well?" Helen demanded, biting into the awkward silence.
Mary let go of her lip, eyebrows lowering over her eyes as she frowned, mouth opening and closing as she tried to find the right thing to say.
The (maybe) men hadn't budged an inch and watched her blankly and Helen found their unmoving dead-eyed stare really creepy.
They all seemed to be brunette save for the one who resembled a blonde glow in the dark sticker who stood beside Mary, towering over her small frame. Helen chanced a look towards him only to find his blue-grey eyes were boring a hole into her head the size of Venus. She tried not to visibly flinch at the intensity of his gaze and ended up choking on her own saliva. He watched her struggle and cough around the trapped spit without so much as a blink. She snapped her head to stare at Mary trying to disguise her coughing as she did.
The difference in height between her sitting and the too-tall (maybe) men standing was almost Everest in proportion and made her feel claustrophobic and three inches tall at the same time. She longed to stand to even out the indifferences but her chest was still tight, her side really hurt and honestly she just didn't think she could hold her own weight yet. So instead she kept her eyes steadily on Mary. Being the shortest of the circle and clearly still just dumb Mary she was less intimidating and Helen didn't have to bend her neck backwards just to look her in the eye.
"Mary," she began angrily, after her coughing fit had subsided. "If you don't answer me right fucki-"
"Do you always have to swear?" Mary snapped, exasperated, hands rising to rest on her hips.
Helen blinked thrice at her and almost burst into laughter. Mary was nit-picking her on her swearing? Now? Of all times? When they were the only two kids from their school in the middle of a random forest surrounded by a bunch of model-esque guys who just so happen to wearing armor? This is all happening of course, after they had (most likely) been drugged and kidnapped? Helen wanted to shake Mary for a few hours, just to see if anything came rattling out of her seemingly hollow head.
"What. The. Fuck. Is. Going. On?" she growled, gesturing about her with her sticky with sweat and vomit residue hands, pointing to the circle of men who still hadn't moved. "How did we get here? Did Louis put you up to this? Who the hell are these guys? Are they paid actors? What the hell was that thing chasing me through the woods and will someone please tell m- oh- Mary oh my God-"
With a gasp her sentence stopped abruptly. The air still felt strange being pulled so quickly through her still recovering lungs and she choked at the end. Her eyes were riveted to a spot just beyond Mary's legs. Through the gap between pale flesh she could see the prone, unmoving body of one of the things that had chased her.
Sticking up through the back of its head was an arrow.
Her mind emptied of everything important and all she could think was of course, that's what the twanging sound had been. Of course. Of course. But the irrational side of her brain registered death and her proximity to it and shoved her body into a physical reaction to the sight.
With strength she didn't think she possessed she stood up like a bullet, shooting into a standing position. Though perhaps, too quickly because not a second later, and like a repeat of earlier, she promptly bent at the waist and threw up.
Again.
It was violent and long and her whole body shook with the force of it. Helen was actually surprised none of it managed to shoot through her nostrils.
Luckily, this time she managed to avoid her own body. Unfortunately, (which was a word she was coming to believe had been solely created to provide description when talking about her life) it seems that she was just destined to continuously put her foot in it that day.
Someone shouted "Ai!" and there was a small kerfuffle beyond her line of sight. A small warm hand came to rest on her back, rubbing in slow, soothing circles and another reached over to gather her hair into a loose ponytail as she hacked and heaved until her stomach was empty and she was swaying on her feet.
"They're dead." She managed to moan, lifting a shaking hand to wipe across her wet mouth. The smell of acidic bile was strong and she almost threw up again from the stench of it all.
What a mess, she thought, helplessly.
Helen realized, then, that she really, really wanted her mum.
She hadn't wanted her mum so badly since year eleven when Ian Turner had rejected her in the chip shop at the end of Castle Lane and she'd run home crying from the sheer embarrassment of it all. The same overwhelming feelings of shame (from throwing up on what she now knew, without even looking, had probably been one of the weird (maybe) men's shoes) and loneliness rose up and tears stung the corners of her eyes, mingling with the erosion from the acid that wafted from the steaming pile of vomit on the floor below her.
They're dead, she kept thinking. And each time she reiterated the statement a new stab of fear clutched at her gut. They're dead. They're dead. They're dead.
They killed them.
The hand at her back kept up the soothing motion and rather than feel comforted Helen let out a strangled half-sob and lurched forward, vagabonds traipsing through her own waste until she was clear of the wet earth. She turned quickly, pointing an accusing finger at Mary whose hand still hovered in the air where she had been petting Helen's back.
"Mary." She stuttered, hand shaking as she pointed. The agonized way in which she said the name made it resemble a plea. She sounded very young and very small and her shame at her vulnerability mounted.
"Mary they're dead." It no longer mattered that Mary was an annoying little sprite of annoyingness and it no longer mattered that Helen would rather scoop her eyeballs out with a melon baller than be anywhere alone with her. All that mattered was that surrounded in the forest and a slew of dead bodies Mary was the only thing that was familiar. Agitated murmurs sounded behind her but she ignored them, giving Mary her full attention.
The blonde girl was watching her with an expression of pity and Helen, wanted to smack the look off of her beautiful face.
"Helen, it's alright." Mary tried, raising her hands, palms up as if she were surrendering. "I'll explain but you have to calm down."
If anything, Helen's panic doubled at her schoolmates' words.
"Mary we just witnessed a murder. Oh god. Oh God." Helen's voice pitched higher and higher with every word she uttered until the resulting sound was strained and stringy with panic. "Mary we have to call the police."
Mary daintily side-stepped the puddle of puke and slowly made her way towards Helen who was gulping in large lungful's of air as though all the oxygen in all of the world was about to run out. Mary glanced behind Helen's head, lips tight at the sight of the men watching her school friend lose all bodily control in her panic. It's not her fault, she wanted to say in defense of the girl, she's in shock. But she knew they wouldn't understand her and she didn't have the proficiency in their language to relay the message in Sindarin so she gave a quick shake of her blonde head, perfect ponytail whipping to and fro against her back.
Helen hardly noticed her approach, so far was she into her panic attack that she didn't register Mary's presence at all until the girl's pale, slim hands were covering her shoulders.
"Helen. Breathe. It's ok. It's ok."
God how she hated this, Helen thought. If she wasn't about to puke out her stomach she'd have glared at Mary and told her to do one. Instead her hands clenched into fists as she tried to stave off the onset of panic.
"Where's your phone? We have to call the police. They're murderers." Helen gasped, new fear creeping into her already crumpled expression. "We're accomplices! Mary. If we tell them what happened- that we were at school and then we were here maybe they'll let us go if we testify against-" here her voice dropped to a whisper. "Them."
The 'them' in question surrounded the girls five to one and though they looked passive, Mary noted quite observantly the tightness to their mouths and the sharpness of their gazes. They wouldn't tolerate this for much longer. They barely tolerated it now.
Helen was babbling, incoherent words melding together until it was a string of nonsense that rose higher and higher in volume, intermingled here and there with gasps and high-pitched squeaks. Mary's hands tightened on her shoulders imperceptibly as one of the men made as if to walk towards them. His thick, blonde hair was loose around his handsome face and he watched them blankly, even as his long legs twitched in their direction. Stripes of cloth and two lengths of rope hung limply in his hands.
We're running out of time, Mary thought, biting her lip.
Mary soothed her hands up and down Helen's shoulders, murmuring softly to counteract Helen's rising voice. Eventually, though, Helen's panic won over and she, looking behind Mary, gave a sudden squeak at the slight movement of one of the (maybe) men who watched them. The squeak turned into a low, throaty moan that stuck and broke and then stuck again as if sliding through gallons of saliva. That, too, then evolved into a scream. She shoved Mary away with surprising force, stepping backwards on unsteady feet.
"Helen!" Mary called, recovering from being shoved and once again holding her hands up and she walked slowly forward, following the screaming girl step for step. She needn't had bothered, however, because Helen had only taken three steps before she backed into something hard. Mary watched as one of the other men positioned himself behind Helen. His dark hair was pulled from his face into twin braids that ran down the length of his back and his handsome features were blank, save for the tightness of his full lips. One hand rose up slip over Helen's mouth to silence her and the other arm wrapping around Helen's waist to restrain her movements.
Helen had no idea what had just happened.
One moment she's screaming and near to passing out from shock and the next someone's gloved hand is over her mouth and her arms are pinned to her sides because someone's long arm is practically wrapped around her whole body. Her mouth had been open in a scream and it stayed open now from the force of his hand on her face. Her tongue pressed against his gloves and she tried not to gag. They smelt and tasted of weathered leather.
Instead of struggling she went limp against the person, body uncomfortably settled against the sharp metal of his armor. He was saying something above her head and Helen felt a strange calm settle over her. Her panic ebbing away slowly. It made way for other, more rational thoughts to enter her mind and she breathed a sigh of relief onto his glove.
To compensate for their difference in height, he pulled her roughly back and slightly upwards against him so that she was almost dangling, head barely skimming the top of his chest. His low, calm voice kept up a steady stream of soft foreign words directly into her ear. He must have bent his head because she could feel his cool breath fanning against the top of her lobe. It was oddly intimate and impossible to ignore his voice so she listened, eyes almost drooping in complacency, forgotten tears slowly drying.
Through half-lidded eyes Helen watched with mild, lessening suspicion as Mary stopped her approach looked at the brunette with pity in her brilliant eyes. Some of the other (maybe) men had gathered behind Mary, all showing varying degrees of no emotion. The blonde one with the blue-grey eyes stepped forward suddenly and leaned down to whisper something into Mary's ear.
Helen's body, so limp in her captor's arms that his hold had become slowly become loose around her waist due to her obedience, flew into a sudden rage at the sight of the conspirators.
Mary turned her head slightly to whisper something back to the blonde (maybe) man and gesture towards Helen's captive body. They looked like old friends. Two shades of blonde hair mingling as they whispered about Helen and probably planned her to shoot an arrow into the back of her skull.
Helen snapped out of the strange calmness that had lulled her into a false sense of security. Her whole body gave a single twitch before she lashed out, pushing against the iron hold around her, legs swinging to and fro in her rage. She was sure she looked absolutely wild, head shaking and arms straining and a growl in her throat and betrayal in her eyes. His arm tightened around her middle and his voice increased in volume as he tried to soothe her but the pressure and sound only prompted her to fight harder.
As a last ditch effort for freedom she bit down sharply on the (maybe) man's hand. She must have caught him off guard because his words cut off and a yelp shot through his chest against her back. He tore his hand away from her sharp teeth with a sound of annoyance before speaking rapidly again. His tone was strained and Helen knew, even without understanding, that he was cursing in whatever strange language he spoke.
Though he had released her mouth, her sneak attack had the opposite effect on the arm around her waist. It tightened to near choking, squeezing her to hard that her side burned in response. If it wasn't for her sheer determination to bitch Mary out, he might have succeeded in keeping her quiet by squeezing all the air out of her lungs.
"You're with them?!" She yelled, hurt pitching her voice low. She was practically growling.
Mary started at the venom in Helen's voice, taking, as she had earlier, an instinctive step back at the ferocity of the girl before her. Her eyes, already doe-like in shape widened in fear and her hands shook as she lowered them from their surrendering stance in front of her.
The blonde (maybe) man straightened in one fluid motion before slowly making towards Helen's dangling body, lengths of rope and cloth swinging in his hand. She barely spared him a disinterested glance, she was too busy hurling accusations at Mary to worry about her own safety, so great was her sense of betrayal.
"You're disgusting!" she shouted, new tears of anger and frustration wetting her eyes. She tried to kick at the guy holding her but her shin caught the armor on his legs and she hissed at the pain.
Heart pounding in her chest and isolation closing in around her. Everything seemed less real with Mary standing by the bad guys and Helen left all alone. It was almost like a bad movie except Helen could still smell the bitter stench of death in the murky air and could still, around the various bodies of the (maybe) men, see the lifeless corpses of those things.
"I knew you were rotten the moment I saw you in year one! How could you? You make me sick!"
Even from as far as she was being restrained, Helen could still make out the tale-tell signs of tears beginning to form in Mary's bright blue eyes. She took a grim satisfaction at having affected the murderous little bitch so much that she had cried.
The blonde man suddenly stepped into her line of vision and she was forced to take some notice him. Helen, suddenly realizing that she was running out of time to vocalize just how lowly she thought of Mary-Elizabeth, suddenly kicked up the ante.
"You're a spineless little snake, Mary! I swear to God I'm gonna make sure you that you-"
But she never got to finish her oath to Mary and describe to her what she hoped would happen to her in prison because the (maybe) man stopped before her, bending slightly at the waist so that their eyes were the same level. Without pausing he reached behind her neck with his free hand and tipped her head forward. The feel of his fingers (ungloved and cool) startled her so much that she choked on her own words.
For a second Helen though he was going to slice her neck and be done with it. God knows she'd been enough trouble already. They'd killed those things so easily, she reasoned, it would be no notch on their conscience to get rid of one pesky A-Levels student in comparison.
But he didn't slice her neck. Instead he brought his other hand up and fastened a strip of cloth around her head and wedged it into her mouth, effectively gagging her. Helen's eyes, which had been glued to the ground, shot up as he released her head. With no words to chew him out with she instead put all of her hate for Mary and the (maybe) men murderers into one show-stopping glare.
Helen was pretty proud of her glaring abilities. They were renown around the school for being top-grade conveyors of annoyance. Her glares had cleared rooms. They'd scattered year eleven's and year eight's alike. They were singular weapons of destruction. One time she'd glared so hard she had to be sent home because she'd gotten a migraine. That was how good her glares were.
So she glared at the (maybe) man and kept glaring until he looked up from trying to reposition her gag to lock eyes with her. She found that up close, the blue of his eyes almost overwhelmed the grey to create a strange storming effect. Under any other circumstances she would have swooned at the sight of his almond-shaped eyes. Grey eyes were a rare enough commodity that the sight alone of them would make her knees go a little jellified but the pair staring back at her impassively almost glowed.
Like the (maybe) men and their weird light-filled bodies (who Helen was beginning to think were possibly aliens), this one's eyes seemed to shine a little. As if backlit by some ethereal light. It was startling, to say the least. And, coupled with the fact that mister tall blonde and handsome was probably seven foot of water on a hot day, also very attractive. But none of this stopped Helen from levelling him with one of her most poisonous glares. Murderers don't get appreciative looks and compliments, after all.
She fully expected him to flinch.
That was the normal reaction she got to her glares and those were only your run of the mill get-out-of-my-way-its-Tuesday glares. This glare was a you're-going-to-kill-me-and-I'm-going-to-hate-you-all-the-way-to-my-grave, glare.
Instead, however, the (maybe) man did something incredibly peculiar.
One of his eyebrows, thick and a dark blonde to counteract his sun-like hair, rose as if he were asking 'really?'.
His eyes, even as his arms moved to grab at her hands that were pinned to the side by the silent giant behind her, lost a part of their emotionless impassivity. Instead, strangely enough and entirely perplexing in nature, they brightened with what she could only assume was amusement.
He didn't look away, even as he tugged at her hands to bring them to rest in front of her, winding the thick string around her wrists to secure them.
Her glare waned until she watched him with the utmost confusion as his amusement seemed to grow until the corner of one of his eyes almost crinkled.
He was laughing at her.
Laughing. At her.
This honest to God medieval wannabe murderer was laughing at her glare.
Not only could she still feel the sharp sting in her heart from Mary's betrayal, the knot of despair in her stomach at her new isolation and anger at having been restrained against her will as if she were the one who had killed a man-thing but now a new emotion crept up on her: embarrassment.
She didn't know why she was embarrassed. This was, after all, a murderer and why should she care what a murderer thought about her? But it still stung and the new emotion only added to the turmoil she felt and a few of her tears (which had gathered and held, threatening to fall) freed themselves from the restraints of her eyes. They trickled down her cheeks pathetically to absorb into the cloth of her gag which, she found with new annoyance, was already biting into the skin of the corners of her mouth.
The subtle barely-there amusement from the (maybe)man abruptly left and he gave her another weirdly emotionless look as he shook her hands and tugged at the rope around her wrists, checking to see if they were secure. She watched him the entire time, managing after a moment to dredge up a weak glare. There was no answering amusement in his steady gaze and after a moment he stood up straight so quickly that her vision swam trying to follow the movement.
How the hell had he moved so fast?
He turned away from her, still blocking her view of Mary and barked out something in that strange language too quickly for Helen to even be able to discern words. Though it sounded like one long note of a song to her the reaction to his speaking was instantaneous. The (maybe) man that had an arm wrapped around her suddenly let go and she slid down his body until her feet reconnected fully with the floor. He allowed her to sag against him for a moment before he side-stepped around her and, before she could even take a breath, attached a line of string to her bound wrists and tugged on it a few times to make sure that it was secure.
All around her (maybe) men had burst into motion, all moving at the same inhuman pace as the blonde man who had gagged her. She spied a few of them by the dead bodies (she counted nine in total) and quickly turned away from the sight of them tugging arrows out of the thing's heads and legs and arms and backs. Her stomach clenched uncomfortably, the knot flopping over in nervousness.
She turned to look at was looking at nothing in particular as one of the men crouched beside her, and spoke softly into her ear. He was pointing to the right, nodding his head in that direction and eventually, as if she finally understood what he was saying, Mary walked over to the edge of the clearing and waited by a tree.
Helen felt a jolt as the (maybe) man that had tied the length of rope to her bound wrists straightened and turned away, pulling on the end of the rope. The feeling of being cattle reared its head again and she dug her heels into the ground tugging at her hands. He didn't even bother to turn around, only kept walking, savagely tugging at the string until Helen had no choice but to walk or fall.
They walked towards Mary who had been joined by five of the other (maybe) men including the blonde one who seemed to the be the leader.
Where were the other, four? Helen thought, counting her cattle-wrangler as the sixth of ten that were supposed to be there. The blonde man gave a whistle and they started walking into the line of trees, away from the bodies of the dead and back into the forest. Two of the men, both brunette and as emotionless as the others walked first, then Mary then another two brunettes and then the blonde. Helen's leader tugged at her string as he followed the others, not bothering to look to see if Helen was alright as he walked after his murderous friends.
Helen stumbled after him and, at the last moment, stretched her head backwards to look for the other (maybe) men. They were still by the bodies of the dead things. Two of them were carrying a body between them, swinging it to and fro before finally releasing it onto a pile of the other carcasses.
Helen was confused until she saw that one of them knocking two stones together above a stick with cloth wrapped onto the end. The primitive torch caught fire almost immediately and the orange flames were strangely startling grey light that covered the clearing.
Just as she was tugged past the tree line she watched the guy throw the torch onto the pile of bodies. They must have poured petrol onto the bodies, she thought, stunned, as the carcasses went up in flames, because they caught fire so quickly. One of the men caught eyes with her as she made it around the tree, his light grey orbs perfectly reflecting the violent orange-red of the flames.
Helen felt like throwing up all over again.
.
They made her walk for hours.
Her Vagabonds, inappropriate for school and inappropriate, it seemed, for casual treks through random forests, clinched at her feet painfully. Her feet had swelled from sweat and confinement and her socks rubbed uncomfortable against the inflamed flesh. She could already feel a mammoth blister forming on the heel of her right foot.
No one had spoken to her during the day, even as the light waned and darkness began to trickle down to them and it became harder and harder for Helen to see where she was being dragged. Not even the (maybe) man who was tugging her along behind him even bothered to speak to her. She heard them speaking to each other, however. In low, musical tones that sounded less like fully formed sentences and more like intricate songs without words. Her only comfort was the fact that Mary hadn't said a word either.
Helen could occasionally spy her. Her blonde her seemed to capture the dying daylight and throw it back into Helen's annoyed face and she could often see her form peeking from between the line of glowing bodies that separated them.
The blonde man had moved from in front of her to behind and though Helen knew that he was there (because she occasionally looked behind her to glare at him, only of course, to receive blank stares in response) she couldn't ever hear him. It's why she kept looking behind her so often -well, that and the fact that she was determined to let it be known that she was not happy- to make sure that he was still there.
He was always there, of course. Following steadily and calmly. As though he walked through forests every day of his life.
She often watched his feet connect to the floor silently and it made her theory about the (maybe) men being aliens become less and less of an errant, desperate thought and more of a reality. It was on one of these long hard looks at his feet before the daylight vanished completely that she noticed a strange, wet sheen against his weird brown boots. It wasn't the same as the black blood that she saw on his armor that had dried and become crusty in some places from the air. In fact, it almost resembled the dried vomit on her legs.
It took her a few hours to realize it was exactly like the dried vomit on her legs. She remembered the yelp and the kerfuffle that had followed her less than perfect entrance into the group and bit her lip nervously at the thought that she had puked on her captors' shoes. Surely that was like, a week of torture, right? You don't just puke on your kidnappers' shoes and expect to get away with it.
That was when she stopped struggling so much with her bonds. Never usually one to give in, Helen found herself making it easier on herself and her designated walking leader by following him dutifully. She'd already screwed up majorly by puking on the head-honcho's shoes. The last thing she wanted to do was add another week's worth of lashings because she refused to play along.
After her miraculous turn around (which included the silencing of her many grunts and tries to scream behind her gag) she looked back at the blonde boss, only to see his impassive expression replaced by one of what seemed to almost be contemplative confusion. He wasn't looking at her at all, instead his eyes were on the forest floor as he expertly maneuvered around sticks and stones and anything there to trip him up. Helen watched him for a while before a sharp tug at her wrists had her quickly turning her gaze back around. She managed to successfully duck under a branch without falling on her bottom and she didn't look back at him again.
Voices, low and gentle like a singing breeze sounded and instead of being tugged straight, her herder took a hard right, pulling her rope so she followed. She managed to follow without falling (although not without indulging in one last annoyed grunt) although couldn't avoid scraping her side against a tree. Pain like never before shot up her side and she gasped behind her gag, sucking in a short breath of dry air that tickled her throat. Holy shit that had hurt. In fact, it was the same side that had hurt her since the beast had fallen on top of her. She focused on the pain, noting the way her skin had cooled on that side as though it were wet. Why would it be wet?
Regardless, now that she had acknowledged the pain it grew and grew until it was almost unbearable. She continued to walk behind her cattle herder but her steps became uncoordinated and she found herself stumbling painfully every few minutes. How had she not noticed before how terrible her side felt? If she had been shot, she knew without a doubt that it wouldn't burn as much as it did now.
A whistle, short and piercing sounded and Helen looked up with bleary eyes to notice that they had entered into another clearing. Night had fully descended now and the woods were dark. So dark, in fact, that the only thing visible was the soft, almost imperceptible glowing of each body of the (maybe) men. The one herding her tugged her to the side, pulling until they stood before what looked to be like a large felled log. He pointed at the wood and jerked his head from her to it. She knew a command when she saw one.
"Haf." He said, speaking to her for the first time. To the side of them one of the men was starting a fire by knocking two stones together and the sound captured her attention. Flint, her pain-filled mind supplied. "Haf!" he said again, drawing her attention back to his.
She had no idea what haf meant but she assumed it meant something like sit-your-annoying-arse-down so she complied, weary enough to only manage a sneer before plucking down on the seat. Her feet sung praises of joy at having been allowed a small respite and she kicked off her shoes in response, hot, swollen feet throbbing in the cold night air. It wasn't until she'd stopped walking that she allowed the tiredness to creep over her body.
She sat awkwardly, bound hands hunched in front of her, body bent to the side stiffly so that she wouldn't irritate whatever had gone wrong with the side of her abdomen. Perhaps it was only a really bad bruise she hoped, but that same strange feeling of wetness, slick down her side to the top of her skirt reminded her that the truth was probably a little more nefarious.
Around her the men worked without even sparing her a glance. A fire was lit and nurtured into a large pit.
Helen looked about her blearily as the fire cast an orange glow over her kidnappers. She noticed that the four who had been absent at the start of their walk had come back. Their armor was clean and she assumed that after they had burned the bodies of their victims that they had cleaned themselves of any evidence. Helen was so focused on ignoring the burning pain at her side that she didn't even notice Mary had come to sit quietly beside her.
"I'm sorry." She murmured, staring straight ahead guiltily.
Heat wafted over towards the two girls and Helen was thankful for the warmth that lowered the goosebumps on her bare legs. She grunted in response, trying to ignore how closely Mary had chosen to sit next to her. She couldn't shift away for fear of upsetting her side so she bore the proximity with a gagged snarl.
"I know you don't believe me but they aren't- well they are-" Mary cut off with a groan of frustration. Helen noticed out of the corner of her eye that Mary's ponytail had barely moved an inch out of place. A stab of embarrassment had her wondering what her own hair looked like.
Probably a rats' nest.
"Have…" Mary turned towards her now, blue eyes twinkling in the firelight, blonde hair shining with a red light from the flames. "Have you ever read- No- I mean- This isn't-"
Helen turned to her sharply, hissing behind her gag at how her side was jostled. New pain, red hot and angry, forced her back straight and she glared at Mary, breathing suddenly labored.
"Shut up." Is what she had been trying to saw but because of the gag and the fact that her mouth was as dry as sand all that came out was: "uff oop."
"You're not a prisoner. It's just- I think- well Helen you know what you can be like."
"What I can be like?" she tried to ask incredulously. "You're working with murderers!"
But of course, it came out as "Wha uh a ee wii? Wo wowin wi urerror!" Which made it a little less accusatory and a little more hilarious, much to the annoyance of Helen.
She was so insulted! How could Mary be blaming her for her own kidnapping? The whole thing was bonkers.
Mary sighed, catching the jist. "I'm not- you're wrong about everything, Helen. If you would just-"
Someone cleared their throat and Helen's head whipped round so fast that it clicked painfully and pain radiated across her face from the force of it.
The blonde man from before was kneeling in front of them, head cocked to the side, watching with that same blank stare. The fire behind him forced his face into shadow but his eyes gleamed out of the darkness and set Helen on edge once again.
She tittered behind her gag, leaning away despite the crippling pangs of pain in her side. He held something strange in his hands, it looked like a water bottle but was covered in leather and secured at the top with a cork and string.
He placed the weird water bottle on his legs and reached forward with deft, easy fingers to undo her gag. The thought of punishment from puking on his shoes was still fresh in her mind but, despite the fact that she was sure he was probably going to beat her black and blue before he sold her into a life of servitude as a maid or whatever, she still opened her mouth to scream.
Except it didn't come out as a scream at all.
The sound she made, mouth wide and dry, was a series of broken pathetic breaths. Tears pricked at her eyes from her failed attempt to call for help and again, even in the shadows of the night she could catch the gleam of amusement in the blonde's eyes. Her mouth, still open, closed slowly and she daren't look towards Mary for fear of seeing smugness in her pretty face.
The blonde man kept his gaze steady, his hands fiddling with the clasp of the hot water bottle until he uncorked it. He brought it slowly to her lips, as though afraid she may bite him as she had bitten the other. She didn't. But only because Mary quietly whispered: "It's water. I had some. Don't worry." Next to her when she hesitated. And only after that because her throat was so dry she was scared she'd choke on air.
She allowed his right, bare hand to cup her jaw, tipping her head backwards so that he could slide the cork into her mouth and tip the hot water bottle upwards. She glared at him, even as the first drop of water wet the inside of her chaffed mouth and she let out a content moan.
His eyebrow, as earlier, quirked up, the amusement doubling as she greedily dribbled the water into her mouth. Their gazes didn't break until she gave into need and blinked. When she opened her eyes again he was tugging the cork from her mouth, eyebrow lowered and a quirk to his mouth instead. The water was so glorious along her throat that she forgot about the pain in her side and licked at her lips, trying to gleam from the dry cracks any water that may have been left behind.
"His name is Glorfindel." Mary said suddenly.
Helen, who had forgotten she was even there, turned to her slowly. What kind of dumb name was Glorfindel? It sounded like something out of Terry Pratchett novel and she hated those.
"G-Glor what?" Helen asked, testing her voice as the water soothed the inside of her esophagus. Her voice was raspy but intelligible and she ignored the still kneeling blonde man as he re-corked the strange water bottle and resumed his quiet watching of the two girls.
Helen found it ridiculously creepy.
"Glor-findel." Mary corrected a small, hopeful smile on her face at the prospect of Helen speaking to her again.
"Tell him to fuck off." Helen replied crudely, throwing a snide look over her shoulder at the end of her sentence. Glorfindel, as usual, watched her impassively and barely reacted to her look. Helen's eye twitched with annoyance.
"It doesn't work like that. I can't understand everything." Mary breathed, reaching out a small, pale hand towards Helen's ones. Helen jerked at the almost-contact, practically hissing through her teeth. She pulled her hands away sharply, leveling an icy look at Mary. The blonde girls smile fell slightly, confusion sparking in her eye and then determination.
"Helen I'm not- I'm not with them." She said quickly.
Helen, conscious of Glorfindel still kneeling beside them, rolled her eyes.
"It's true! I promise you, please. I promise. I woke up in the forest and I was walking and then they turned up and I caught a glimpse of their ears and I realized that-"
Helen frowned. "Their ears?" What the hell did their ears have to do with anything?
Helen opened her mouth to ask if the other girl had gone insane but Mary was still talking as if she hadn't even heard Helen's initial inquiry question.
"That- well I had my suspicions and at first I thought they were just cosplaying-" What the hell is a cosplay, Helen thought, hopelessly lost. "And then an orc came barreling into the fray and it all went tits up and- what?" Mary blinked, as though she'd only just heard Helen's question. "W-haven't you- Helen haven't you seen them yet?"
Helen didn't know what to say. She didn't give a shit about some murderers' ears but still thought to the blonde man whose hair was so thick it didn't even occur to her that he had ears. It seemed preposterous to even think about it but Mary was half looking at her like she'd just stumbled upon a buried treasure and half staring at her with incredulous bewilderment.
"You didn't look?" Mary breathed, desperate. "You didn't see?"
Helen wanted to smack her schoolmate.
"It doesn't matter." She ground out. "It doesn't matter what's wrong with their ears. What matters is that they killed those men-"
"They weren't men." Mary interrupted, eyes shining in the firelight. "They were orcs. I knew it the moment I saw them. I just knew i-"
"What the fuck is an orc?" Helen demanded, confusion whirling around her mind. Ears? Orcs? Cosplay? What the fuck was going on?
Mary's look of determination turned into one of the utmost pity. As though Helen were a baby and just didn't get that you weren't supposed to cut other people's hair or you weren't supposed to steal toys or throw tantrums in supermarkets.
"Helen I-" Mary broke off, looking to the side. The (maybe) man from before was standing beside Glorfindel. In his hands he held two bowls of something steaming. As he leaned down a curtain of midnight black hair fell off down of his shoulder and hung in waves in front of half of his face. His hair seemed to absorb all of the light of the fire and it glowed from within, a glistening oil black. Helen watched it fall like water, gently flittering to and fro in the soft breeze of the forest.
"Helen," Mary whispered as he bent to hand Glorfindel the bowls of spicy smelling hot liquid, "Look."
Helen, as if transfixed, looked away from his glistening, liquid onyx hair, to the side of his head. The tip of a large, pointed, pale ear poked through his lovely hair, sat shadowed against the orange glow from the camp fire. It stuck out slightly away from his head, the point curving gracefully upwards.
Her hands, still bound, dropped limply to her lap in shock. Because his ears were very, very not normal.
My God, she thought, are they really aliens?
She slumped to the side, face twitching as she aggravated her wound.
"See?" Mary asked, excitedly beside her, practically bouncing in her seat as though this would fix everything. "Don't you see?"
"See what?" Helen croaked, throat suddenly dry.
Glorfindel was watching her intently, hands stilled on their journey to take the bowls from the brunette man. Helen looked away from the ear that had captured her attention, looking down to him.
Maybe he was an alien, she thought dazedly. He didn't really look… human.
Oh, humanoid, of course. He had two eyes and a nose and full pink lips but his cheek bones were so high and his eyes were shining, piercing jewels in the shadow his face. Even though he looked like a man he also looked like…well, more.
"Isn't obvious? With Glorfindel and the other elves?" Helen found she had no more shock to give as Mary brought up some more malarkey about elves of all things. Instead of replying she gave a nervous titter, suddenly wishing Mary would just stop talking.
"We're in Lord of the Rings, of course."
Suddenly, Helen very much wished she had let those orc-men things eat her alive.
Author's Notes:
I know the 'ears' trope is overdone, but I think it was pretty much essential for this story as it is for many others. This chapter took me about a day to write but a week to edit! It just wouldn't go right. Even now I'm not completely happy with it but it's as good as I can get it for now. I know it's very meaty description wise and I hope that you don't get bored reading it. I tried to cut as much as I could, but there's not much dialogue you can do when your main character is gagged and can't understand anything aha
You'll also notice that I've switched the rating to M because of the language. Hope that doesn't dissuade anyone from reading.
Thank you so much for reading and reviewing and fav'ing and following. It's lovely and so rewarding to know people like your work.
Let me know what you think about this chapter. Thanks again for reading and giving (Im)perfection a chance.
Good tidings for the week,
Aobh x (: