Standard disclaimer applies.

Thank you for your kind reviews! I am happy that no Sue warning bells are going off yet. Also, let me apologize in advance for this chapter being a bit choppy.

For all those who are reading Orc Queen, I am half done with the next chapter. On that note, I hate Legolas; he's giving me anxiety attacks. Personal thought: If such a crazy thing existed as getting thrown into Middle Earth, I bet it would be just my luck to meet Legolas and have him be a total let down.

Anyway,
Enjoy!

Stuck!

Where is Bear Grylls When You Need Him?

or

The Long Tale of the Things I Dared Eat!

"Fucking trees," Connie cursed struggling for the fifth time to climb up one Leviathan tree that, in her opinion, had just enough girth to support her weight, and she was no light flower by any means. Not that she was fat, but she was tall and rather, erm, sturdy...farm girl or avid softball player sturdy, and that meant she wasn't taking chances with smaller branches, because falling to her death didn't seem very appealing. That would be for tomorrow, if she survived tonight, and only if rabid squirrels or carnivorous deer were after her. Both seemed unlikely, but anything was possible.

The sun was setting and a hazy darkness settled over the forest. Incidentally, it made hoisting her body up a tree a whole lot harder; she could barely make out what she touched in the twilight. Her monkey of a brother would have already been up to the highest most branches if he'd been here, but she wasn't her brother. As such her arms burned with scratches, her knees were bruised and pounding, and her ass really hurt from falling down not once but three times from prior, unsuccessful climbing attempts. Hell, she might have broken her tail bone, but really who was complaining?

Why couldn't any tree in this God forsaken forest have any lower branches she could start with? But nooo...that was asking for too much. They all had to be about a few inches taller than her, and she'd never been great with pull ups, but she could jump pretty high when the time called for it.

She was out of shape, but even when she'd been in peak condition climbing a tree had always been a sucky experience. She didn't have the upper body strength. Sure, she was a strong girl. She could pick up heavy objects, hit pretty hard, but that was different. If there was any proof that humans didn't evolve from monkeys but a separate species entirely it would be her. Of course, she knew better, but that didn't assure her tree climbing prowess.

Finally letting herself fall down on the uneven ground, Connie placed her arms akimbo on her waist. Straining to see in the tinted blue darkness, she looked around her for something to stand on – a fallen log, a dead carcass…Silly thoughts aside, Connie knew she'd be safer up in a tree sleeping than on the ground. Bears could be around or other sorts of rabid animals having a fondness for tasty man-flesh.

Squirrels though would have free game, and though she had never been a huge fan of tree rats she'd rather take them on than any other animal. They were greedy, hoarding little buggers, but that was despite the point. The point beginning that she desperately needed Bear Grylls, but where was he when you needed him? Not around that's where! And though he might not have been around in a physical sense, Connie felt his advice in her heart.

"Connie," Bear's light, English accent tickled her ear. "You must get into the trees. It's not safe on the ground. Remember my lessons to you."

"I know!" Connie said coughing up some mucus acquired during her heavy exertations. Gross. "But I don't have your strength to get up this tree."

"Adventurers never give up, Connie, use the forest. Everything around you is a tool. Think back to Season Two, Episode Five."

Bear was right. She couldn't give up, and she absolutely was not going to sleep out in the open completely defenseless. A tree provided minimal protection, but she'd make due. There was nothing around her to help her get up in the tree, and she was too heavy for plant made rope. Besides, she didn't even know how to really make a rope out of ferns and vines, and she didn't have the time either. It would have been just one big, hot mess.

Huffing, feeling sweat roll down her arms and face, Connie glared at the tree in front of her and decided to give it one more go. After a prolonged period of pain, muffled and unusual noises one only hears during heightened passions of coupling, and a few well placed curses Connie finally managed to haul herself up.

And was most likely going to vomit.

Lying folded over a thick tree branch wasn't the ideal position for her ribs or stomach, but she was too damned tired to move. The air was sticky with the smell of detritus and sap and the forest was eerily calm. There were only a few sounds echoing in the undergrowth. It was warmer than she would have liked, but huzzah, she'd gotten up into the dumb tree! She was freaking amazing. Bear would have been proud.

Before her head began to swim, Connie hauled herself to lie on the branch precariously. There was no way she was going to get comfortable tonight. For one, it was a little too warm, the branch a little too hard, and she had open wounds that were sure to leave scars. Scars Connie could take or leave, but her arms were bleeding. Not profusely bleeding, but the underside, fleshy part of them was covered in fine shin of blood. So help her God if bears or crazy forest tigers came and gobbled her up in the middle of the night there would be hell to pay. HELL! She would haunt their hairy butts and not let them hibernate through the winter, and if they were cats she would pull on their tails mercilessly. That would show them, but bears, tigers, or not her injuries stung like the dickens.

"Shit." Connie breathed, and with that settled in for the long haul.

And at that time, she really had no idea how long her haul would actually be.

Good thing was that the bears hadn't gotten her. Yet. Bad thing was she was slowly sipping into insanity and losing fat reserves at a rate she was pretty sure was unhealthy.

When she first started this little adventure, Connie assumed that she would eventually run into a town or some sort of sentient being within three days max. When she had awoken that second day in extreme pain, she had somehow managed, in a feat of acrobatic amazing-ness that would have stunned the best at Cirque du Soleil, to roll herself off her branch and land in a painful lump of flesh on the forest floor. She might have passed out, she might not have, but all Connie knew was that some time had passed before she had been able to pull herself off the ground.

She hadn't been able to walk far that day, pain aside, but she found a dead fish that had died only recently. Or she talked herself into believing it had died only recently. It didn't smell half as bad as it should have anyway, and she had been far too hungry to complain even if she did hate fish. Hell, she didn't even light a fire and cook it – not that she had the materials or the patience to do so, but simply ripped its scales off with a jagged rock and forced herself to pick out as much meat as she dared. She had even swallowed the eyeballs - she remembered a man doing the same thing when lost at sea for a few months in a documentary. But whereas he did it for the water stored in the eyes, she did it for the food part.

To her delight, the fish hadn't tasted too bad, but she had been really hungry, weak, and in pain. At that time, she hadn't eaten since the afternoon two days before so she was long past due for her next meal. She'd also hit her head pretty hard and the sharp pain hadn't really faded.

Anyway, despite the crap morning, the fish had been a lucky find, and the good news was she hadn't gotten sick because of it. Winning!

Going to the bathroom though became more of a challenge with every passing day…especially as her hand started to smell, for obvious reasons that Connie didn't want to think about. For being in a forest with very large trees, there was a limited supply of decently sized leaves. There was also a scarcity of soap, and there was only so much bathing could do when there was no soap involved. Not winning.

That night she refused to sleep in a tree; although Bear Grylls had appeared in her dreams to chastise her, Connie was in no mind to try her luck ever again. Bear stopped speaking to her after that.

The next day rolled around in the same fashion: the day beginning too early, her body hurting even more, but there had been no feats of acrobatics. (Because of this she lost her fake job with Cirque du Soleil. She wasn't very sad about it - it did put a damper on her dream of marrying a trapeze artist though.)

Traveling along the river was proving more taxing that she thought as well. Did God, in all His grand magnificence, have to make so many damn gorges and ravines in one place? She was so plant infested Connie was sure she was turning into a mobile thicket. Her life flashed before her eyes.

First, she would begin to attract all kinds of beasts, turn into some crazy hippie-forest friend who thought they were able to communicate with animals, and live life as a tree until some hapless person came to cut her down for wood but end up getting way more than they bargained for. This fate didn't settle well in her stomach.

That third day of travel, she managed to find some mushrooms. She didn't eat them, but did end up eating a few worms. Connie was a bit disgusted with herself, but as it was necessary she sang herself a little jingle to make herself feel better about the whole experience…

"Nobody likes me, everybody hates me,
Guess I'll go eat worms,
Long, thin, skinny ones: short, fat, juicy ones,
Itsy, bitsy, fuzzy worms.

Down goes the first one, down goes the second one,
Oh how they wiggle and squirm.
Up comes the first one, up comes the second one…"

…and promptly threw up.

She'd do better next time.

The forth day, loneliness began to settle in. She tried to fish with no luck and was again tempted to eat some mushrooms. She resisted.

The fifth day, she spotted a deer! Also tried her luck with fishing again and somewhat managed to catch a fish by blocking it into a small lagoon like her uncle taught her when he pretended, for a time of exactly one month, to be some sort of forest-river man. Her uncle didn't have great technique, but he had at least shown her the basics. Why in the world had she been signled out? To this day Connie had no idea, but her guess was that it was because she was the last person to leave room once he began talking about his newest hobby. And God bless her soul, she just couldn't say no to him.

Anyway, Bear would have been proud of her achievement. Too bad they weren't speaking to each other.

The sixth day of her estrangement from humanity, Connie finally sobbed, and when she was finally able to stop, gathering her peace from the silence, some type of bird ended up shitting on her head. It brought on another round of tears, and when again she stopped Connie ate some worms hoping they were the bird's dinner. Damn air rats!

The seventh day, hope again rose within her. She had had a long conversation with God the previous night and they had both come to the conclusion that good things happened to people who waited. The crying also had made her feel a bit better.

That night she managed to find a dead deer, but despite her hunger Connie was too scared to eat it. Why couldn't she have been born a lion? Instead, she tried to eating a beetle. The beetle won, but that adventure lead her to a bush of wild black berries. She ate them all.

On the eight day, Connie found herself out of the forest facing grasslands with gentle, swollen hills as far as she could see. The green, tall grass of the landscape danced back and forth with the pressure of the sweeping wind, and Connie welcomed the fragrant breeze. That day she managed to capture three fish in a shallow pool of rocky water, and tried her luck with building a fire. It didn't work, though her sticks got pretty warm. Almost winning!

And so another week passed in the same manner, and Connie slowly felt herself losing hope of ever coming across a freaking settlement or human or something that could talk! Hell, she'd take Gollum! He would talk to himself, she would talk to herself, and they would fit together like two crazy peas in a pod. But no, she was stuck in some weird place alone, and Connie found herself talking to herself aloud more than what was normal. She was turning into the female equivalent of Gollum. Another month or so with her new diet and she'd even be super model skinny! Perfect couple. Gag.

Stumbling into a small land depression, Connie landed flat on her face and for the first time didn't feel like getting up. What bride of Gollum would want to?

"A little over two weeks…That's how long I've been alone." Her voice carried lightly on the wind and dissipated into it quickly. She felt a familiar pressure clog her throat.

She missed everyone. She missed her family, wanted her mom to come hold her tight, to rub her back and whisper that everything was okay. She missed her horrible, no good bed, showers, real tooth brushes, cold pizza, and trashy T.V. She missed all these things and people, but this emptiness probably wouldn't have been so bad if she didn't have to bear it all alone.

More than anything, she wanted human contact. The silence was pressing. Solitude had never been a problem for her, but that was before she somehow ended up here. And there was always that ringing fear: she was alone. What if she was the only sentient being, human, in this place? Her life would evolve into nothing more than eating fish, trying to start fires, and long walks for the sole purpose of finding other people who might not even be around.

A dry harsh, sob racked her body, and Connie squeezed her eyes shut. This really, really sucked; the out of control emotions, the whole being lost and alone thing, but she couldn't give up. She couldn't. Not yet. There was still hope. There ways always hope!

"Besides," Connie sniffed sitting up off the ground, unaware that she was speaking. "What kind of dumb-ass place doesn't have people?"

This place apparently. It wasn't a cheerful thought.

A/N: For those waiting for some hot elf loving (or at least interaction), please be patient. It will come, but let's think about this. If you were sucked into Middle Earth and dumped somewhere in its unpopulated bowels more likely than not you'd run into no one for a long time. In fact, most of us would probably die pretty quickly. No offense to anyone. I mean I have some pretty awesome camping skills, but I really don't think I would be able to survive for more than a week without something terrible happening to me.

Besides, Middle Earth isn't very populated, and where dear Connie was dumped is home to pretty much no one. No worries though! Everything will turn out fine in the end. There are a few different futures I'm considering for her, but as they say "All roads eventually lead to Rivendell". Okay, well all roads lead to Rome, but whatever.