Finally another chapter! This one is short, but hopefully I'll have another one up within a few weeks.

Thanks to my reviewers: fairyflame, ninja-of-twilight, emolistic, potterfreak3, dementia of a different kind, yay!, and QueenieMeanie!

Disclaimer: All characters that you recognize belong to Tolkien. If they belonged to me, then I would be the published author instead of writing here.

So it had officially been three months since I had woken up in a damp pile of leaves, and even I was impressed with my resilience. Except for a minor freak-out the morning I had woken up in a strange bed, I had adjusted quite well to what I supposed was my new life.

Well, I guess it was a little more than a minor freak-out. To make a long, long, LONG story short, I had woken up just a tiny bit disoriented. Understandable, right? I guess it stopped being understandable when I'd been screaming for so long that Amras, who had shown up after I'd thrown something at my maid, decided to go find King Thranduil himself to calm me down. Of course they pulled him out of a very important meeting and he was none too pleased when he arrived in my room to find me still a complete mess. Thankfully, he's a very understanding king and I passed out from hysteria shortly after he got there. When I woke up the second time, I guess I was used to the idea of being in a different world. Either that or I was just really exhausted.

Anyway, after that debacle, I was pretty calm for a while. At least I was calm enough to not have another freak-out session when I got to the library, which was floor-to-ceiling chaos. There must have been over 300,000 volumes! And none of them were in any kind of order. Or English! I guess it hadn't registered that the elves were just being nice and speaking to me in my own language. So of course when I saw the funny little words strung together and couldn't make any sense out of them, I had to go back to find King Thranduil again. Like I said, he's very understanding. Most of his councilors really do hate me by now though.

Finally I found him and he assigned me an Elvish tutor. But by the end my second day in Mirkwood, I did feel like things were a little hopeless for me. I was really grateful for Amras (and of course the king, but he wasn't really there too often). He kind of took me under his wing those first few days. I met his wife Ireth and his baby boy Orophin, who happens to be the most adorable child in the existence of Mirkwood, I'm sure.

Ireth and I were fast on our way to becoming good friends by this point, mainly because she's helped me find suitable clothing. It really wasn't that easy when you're roughly a foot shorter than the shortest elf you can find. Luckily, I'm not big-chested, so I've had no problems with gowns that are way too tight (because every elf I've seen is as slender as a model, but not one that's all cracked out or anything).

Anyway, with learning a new language, caring for a bouncing baby boy off and on, and eating dinner with a king twice weekly, my first three months had gone by too fast for me to notice that I was still in what I assumed was a different world. For some odd reason that I couldn't explain, I knew I'd see this Mithrandir after about a year or so, and I was fairly content to remain in my newfound position as court librarian until then. Although I had only officially been court librarian for one day because I had just finished my lessons in Elvish, which went quite well thanks mostly to my tutor but also a little to my gift for languages (in our world, I know French, Spanish, Latin, German, and Mandarin Chinese!).

I had been extremely nervous on my first day (less like starting-a-new-job nervous and more like there-is-a-baby-and-I-might-be-the-father nervous), but I had managed to sort a few books. It seemed that Thranduil's library literally hadn't been touched since his wife had died. Some of the books were in a semblance of order, but most of them were stacked on shelves or tables in random piles. I knew as soon as I entered that it would take me ages to complete the sorting, ages before anyone could glean any knowledge from the books.

I was almost angry with Thranduil, but the way he mentioned that no one had been in there since his wife's death made me think that she had been in charge, so I couldn't fault him for not wanting to correct the disorder (but whoever she was, nice and beautiful elf or not, she was not OCD like me).

So after the first day, when I had begun making a list (in Elvish, no less) of what I was considering sorting the books into, I felt a bit out of my league. For one thing I would surely be dead before finishing the project. I pointed this out to Thranduil when I ate dinner with him that evening, only to receive very odd looks from some of his councilors who had been invited to join us. When I questioned them about it, they all insisted that I was immortal.

I laughed. A lot.

And then I resolved that the second question I would ask Mithrandir (after how I managed to end up in what I thought was a different world) would be if I was immortal. I think the elves were just drinking too much wine that night, but if I could live long enough to finish sorting out the library and maybe be able to loan out books, I certainly wouldn't be upset. Of course, I didn't know how Thranduil would feel about me crashing in Mirkwood for the rest of time, so I didn't press the issue. Just because he seemed willing to treat me like a daughter didn't mean I was one. And I'd heard about his son.

Oh, the things I'd heard about his son. The first thing was of course that he was off on some quest (which I later learned was to save the world—if Sauron won, I certainly didn't want to be immortal). Everyone seemed to want to tell me about him: Amras regaled me with stories of the prince's grace and fierceness in battle; my tutor told me that he loved books and would probably be happy to join me if he ever returned. King Thranduil told stories of his childhood and of how stubborn he was, but I knew that he was missed dearly even if they never seemed to get along.

But Ireth's stories were the most telling, and the most interesting. She told me of the prince's love for women, women of all shapes and sizes, and many times there was more than one. She had once held the prince's eye for a night at a ball, but she said she would never forget his charm and his handsomeness. Apparently though, his charm was completely false, as he hadn't spoken to her after she refused to accompany him to his room.

When Ireth and I were able to wander through the palace (which really only happened like once a month), she sometimes pointed out the prince's former lovers. There were quite a few, and they all seemed to be the tallest and the blondest ladies in the kingdom, which was saying something since every elf there was tall and blonde. They were also the snootiest, and from what Ireth had told me, there were many more of them in Rivendell and Lothlorien, the other homes of the elves. Apparently the prince was quite popular, and quite the womanizer. Ireth didn't think much of him, even if she acknowledged that he was smart and a wonderful warrior.

I didn't think I would like the prince much either.

But like I said, somehow I knew I wouldn't have to worry about a chance encounter with him for a good long while (at least to me—a year to elves was apparently like a few weeks). And even when he returned, I was sure he wouldn't pay any attention to me. Being short, with reddish-brown hair and hazel eyes, I was nothing like his beautiful ladies. The only way he would see me is if he came to help in the library as my tutor insisted he would, and then I would put him at the opposite end. After all, I wasn't court librarian for nothing!

Really, it wasn't the most exciting time in my life, and I was lucky that I adjusted so quickly to being in a different place. The only real negative part of my life in Mirkwood was the underlying desperation that all elves seemed to feel as a result of the impending war and the desire to leave Mirkwood (and Middle Earth). It seeped into my life fairly rapidly, and I couldn't find a way to stop looking over my shoulder for Death or the Valar or whoever came to claim you here. I just felt like my peaceful library existence would be torn apart at any moment, and I hadn't even had a chance to put together one shelf! But other than that odd sixth sense feeling, and the lack of sunlight, I liked Mirkwood probably more than I had liked Atlanta.

Thanks for reading! Review if you wish!