Authors' notes: Im so sorry it took me so long to update, this chapter drove me nuts and I kept changing it. The next chapter should be more fun to do.
Disclaimer: I don't own Lord of the rings.
Emma followed Aragorn until they reached the campsite where his eight companions waited. She looked them over briefly before looking back at Aragorn, not knowing what to do or what to expect. His companions were all men; five of them were little people- although one of them was taller than the others and she recognized him as one of the three that saved her. Standing behind them, was the other man who had helped save her, he was tall with red hair and looked to be in his late thirties or early forties; even taller than him was a man (a very attractive man) with long blond hair and finally, sitting on a log, was an old man dressed in gray and wearing a wizard's hat.
They were all dressed somewhat similarly to Aragorn -like they just came from some sort of medieval fair or something. Not only were these grown men in costumes (complete with swords and other weapons) doing their little role-playing thing in the middle of nowhere, but they had apparently walked here too, because they had a pony with them who seemed to be carrying most of their things.
'This just gets better and better,' she thought dryly, shaking her head slightly. 'Just don't question them about it -guys can get really touchy about things like that.' She thought to herself.
It was silent for a moment has they all stared at her, two of the little people in open curiosity – the others suspiciously. Aragorn walked past her, towards the old man and started speaking to him in the same language he had used to comfort her. They spoke, often glancing back at her, while the others continued to stare at her while muttering words to each other. Emma stood there, highly uncomfortable, and made to go to her things to have something to do, when she was yanked back. The good-looking blond guy, who must have super speed or something, was gripping her arm firmly, his eyes narrowed and full of suspicion; Aragorn and Gandalf had stopped talking- they were watching her closely.
"What?" She demanded, "this my stuff, I can go through my own bags if I want to! " She exclaimed, tugging her arm out the blonde's grip. Scowling she turned towards Aragorn: "And why are you two talking about me in a different language for, don't you think that's a little rude? And why are you all looking at me as if I'm a criminal?" She demanded.
There was a short and silent pause as Aragorn, the blonde, and the old man all stared at her as though trying to figure something out, which was really starting to wear on her nerves. Not to mention that the others were alternating between staring at her as well and looking at said men.
It was the old man who spoke first. "Aragorn here has been informing me of what he has learned about you, but I wish to hear from you myself…. answer my questions, and be aware that I, as well as Legolas," he gestured to the man next to her, "will know if what you say is truthful or not! Now, tell me, what is your name?" He asked.
"Emma Dubois-Chretien," she answered quickly.
"And where do you hail from Lady Emma?" He asked with narrowed eyes.
"Ottawa, Ontario… that's in Canada."
He did not see any lies in her eyes, but like Aragorn, he had never heard of a land called Canada - strange, considering he had travelled all across Middle-Earth.
"Tell me of this Canada, I have never heard of it."
"Well it's the second biggest country in the world…. It's over 400 years old…" She continued to reel facts about the country, some of which shocked them, such as the fact that there was approximetly 34 million people; that seemed completely out of this world to them.
"34 million… surely you are mistaken" Aragorn had cried. "'Tis way too high an estmate."
"Actually, considering our size, our population is really low, the county south of us, The united States, is close to our size and has about 10 times more people." Stunned faces greeted her at those words.
Another thing they seemed to find weird too, was the fact that instead of the bloodline deciding who is next to rule, the Canadian population (men and women, poor and rich alike) voted for the prime minister.
"But surely women and peasants can not make those sort of decisions," said the red haired man, then seeing her look of outrage, hastily continued "I simply mean that most women do not concern themselves with politics and peasants, who have no education, could not possibly understand how or who should run a country."
"Well, it's not hard to get informed on the issues. And we have a class system not a caste system, it's the amount of wealth that matters in our society not your bloodline.
Shocked by all that she had said to them, they let the information sink in. Gandalf, closed his eyes and sighed, he had a theory concerning the girl and where she came from, however he wanted to find out a little more about how she was brought her first, before he told everyone his belief. But, before he could open his mouth, Legolas asked the next question.
"Where are your travelling companions Lady Emma?"
"Ummm… I wasn't traveling with anyone." She answered. The men wore incredulous looks, and this time it was the tall redheaded man that spoke up.
"But surely your husband would not let his wife wander the dangerous woods alone -"
"I'm not married!" She interrupted, a look of disgust on her face, which didn't go unnoticed by the fellowship –however they knew now was not the time to question it.
"Well then surely your father would not let his daughter face the wild by herself… these are dangerous times and even if they were not, letting a young girl go off by herself …-"
Emma interrupted him yet again, he was talking about her as if she was a little kid that needed her parents' permission to go out and do what she wanted!
"I was traveling back home to be with them," she gritted out, irritated "I was driving home, but got stuck on the bridge in a traffic jam. Then, next thing I know, the bridge collapsed." She said trying not to let any emotions show.
Silence, for a couple of moments which was interrupted by Gandalf.
"What do you remember after the collapse of the bridge?"
"Nothing. The bridge fell,.. " She nervously pulled some of her hair behind her ears and crossed her arms, "and then I woke up in the middle of the forest, walked practically all day and then …well…you know the rest."
"Child," began the old man, "This might be hard to take in and understand, but considering that you awakened far from your home, after a dreadful accident, you need to consider the idea that you are perhaps... not in your world. None of us have ever heard of the land named Canada nor the other ones you have mentioned. Your accent and words are strange to us as is your clothing and the customs or practices that you have talked about.
Emma said nothing. She had known, not long after her arrival here, that she could not be in Canada or the northern parts of the United States. And those monsters could never have existed anywhere on earth, and the clothing that these people wore was way to medieval – not to mention that they used swords, axes and Blondie had a bow and arrows slung on his back. Maybe she was in a different world, but then, how could she get out?
Gandalf continued, "Have you ever head of Middle-Earth young one?
"Middle-Earth?...nope" she said, making a popping noise at the end of the word. "we just call it planet Earth, there's no middle about it…" she finished lamely.
Another long and awkward silence. Before one of the short men, who appeared to be the youngest, jumped up from where he was sitting, came in front of her, bowed his head slightly before introducing himself:
"Hello Lady Emma," the little man said cheerfully, "I am Peregrin Took –Pippin for short, my companions and I-" he gestured to the tree other little people "are hobbits of the shire" he finished proudly.
Emma smiled at him and held out her hand. He took hold of it, and, before he could kiss it like Aragorn, she shook it. Pippin cocked his head to the side, confused, as she replied:
"Hi Pippin, I'm Emma…. Just Emma I don't want to be called Lady Emma or anything close to it." she said looking at the others as she said this, to let them know it went for everyone.
Some in the fellowship raised an eyebrow at that, surprised, before Pippin decided to introduce the others.
"That's Prince Legolas of Mirkwood, Samwise Gamgee, Meriadroc Bradybuck (my cousin), and Frodo Baggins (another cousin). Over there is Lord Gimli, then Lord Boromir, Gandalf and of course, you already know Aragorn!" He said this all very fast and cheerfully, as if the previous hour-long discussion had not happened, pointing to each person , who at their turn, made a small gesture of acknowledgement.
Emma blinked, taking in the information before turning towards the blonde guy named Leg-something. "Did he say you're a Prince?" she asked.
"Aye, " he said in a soft voice. "Though I too care little for titles."
Emma cocked her head to the side; she had never come this close to royalty before. She didn't know if she was supposed to curtsey or something and instead just said: "Oh, right" blankly, before looking back at Pippin.
"And what did you call yourself a hob-something?" She asked.
"Hobbit," he said hastily, "Hobbit or half-ling" he answered a little offended that she had never heard of a hobbit before, but then again according to the others, hobbits were nearly unheard of in the world of men.
"Sorry" she muttered, embarrassed. She now noticed that he (and three of his friends) had pointed ears, hairy feet and their body was more proportional than that of little people she had seen back home.
"S'alright miss Emma, " he replied, smiling to show that he was not angry.
"Well," said the plumper hobbit ('what was it? Oh, yeah Sam') "Shall I warm up the remaining stew for you to eat miss Emma?" he asked her.
"Err…no that's fine I'm not really hungry right now, thank you anyway" she replied.
"Did you already eat something?" He pressed.
"No…but it's been a long day… I'm really tired, I just want to get ready for bed and go to sleep."
But before she could open her suitcase, Leg-dude had stopped her again and said: "I am sorry, but we need to make sure you don't have any weapons"
"Why?"
"It never hurts to cautious in these dark times," he answered.
"Legolas is right, not checking your belongings, would be foolish of us…it should not concern you unless you have something to hide." Said (what-was-it-again? Bo-something, damn she was bad with their names!) obviously distrustful of her.
"Fine, whatever" she huffed, "just get on with it."
"Very well, before we go through your bags, tell me what is this?" The redhead asked, holding her pepper spray bottle. "Is this what incapacitated the orc?"
"Well..yeah and it's called pepper spray."
"And how exactly did you make this pepper spray?" He asked, he and the others had their eyes fixed on her. 'When are they gonna stop doing that?' She tought exasperatly.
"I didn't make the pepper spray," she said very slowly "my dad bought it for me at a store, anyone in my world can buy it."
Accepting her answer, he then asked the same of her flashlight. She took it from him and flicked it on and off, which made them jump up, and some to even point their weapons at her while shouting things long the lines of witchcraft.
She snorted, and said: "It's a flashlight, they've existed for at least a century and everyone is supposed to have at least one flashlight in their homes, in case of an emergency."
She handed the flaslight to Merry, who spent the next several minutes casting the light in every direction, completely amazed.
While Merry was busy playing with the flashlight, Aragorn stepped toward her suitcase, opened it up and looked inside. He went through the clothes a bit to make sure there wasn't something underneath them, before going through the other compartments. He didn't find anything of interest in them, only a variety of female hygienic such as an assortment of different soaps, lotions foreign things that he had Emma identify and sometimes explain. He then moved onto her duffel bag and found nothing suspicious; but when he opened her school bag, there was the things in there that intersted him.
"What is this?" Aragorn demanded, he was holding her mac laptop.
"It's just my laptop," she said and then had to spend the next few minutes trying to explain how it works and what you could do with it. She told them how it wouldn't have internet connection (not that they really understood) but that she could show them things that were downloaded on it. She opened up a file with some of her pictures on it and showed them a few. She coulnd't help but smile at the looks on their faces.
"'Tis like a portrait, but much more realistic….as if the person and the world around them were frozen, and made small enough to be put in here…truly remarkable!" Said Boromir
Emma couldn't help but chuckle and contined showing the pictures, most of which were of her with her parents. Her father, a french-Canadian of Scottish descent, was a forty-seven year old man with with brown hair, green eyes, and was slowly gaining weight. Her mother, who was half-indian, half-jamaican, was a beautiful woman of forty-six who looked several years younger. Her parents had met in College, gotten married as soon as they had graduated and were still happily married after over 20 years of marriage.
"God I can't wait to get out of this mess and get home," Emma thought miserably to herself.
She turned off the laptop (much to their dissapointment), trying to get rid of her homesickness and just wanting to go to sleep. Aragorn however, made her identify and explain the other objects in her bag, which took another 20 minutes, before he was satisfied and let her go to her things.
She opened up her suitcase and took out pajamas, intent on changing out of her clothes as soon as possible to get some much needed rest, but then stopped, she really didn't want to go into the woods by herself to change. She was still terrified from earlier but didn't want to announce that fact to all of them. Luckily, Aragorn, sensing her distress, came up to her.
"Is something wrong?" he asked.
"I want to change in my p.j's but I'm… kinda scared to go into the woods to change," she answered, the last part of her answer coming out in almost a whisper.
Aragorn smiled kindly at her, and led her into the woods, away from the others. When they reached a good spot, Aragorn turned around without prompting, and Emma quickly changed out of her dirty clothes. When she was done putting on her p.j's, she put some toothpaste on her toothbrush and brushed her teeth before taking a little bit of water to rinse out her mouth. When she was done brushing her teeth she washed her face, using a piece of a shirt she had ripped as a rag since she had not packed one with her. Aragorn, with her permission, turned around as she was applying lotion to her face and then waited patiently for her to finish before leading her back to camp.
When they got back, Emma put her stuff away,with her dirty clothes going in a plastic bag, before she laid out her sleeping bag. The others seemed really uncomfortable, weird seeing as though it was her that was stuck with a bunch of strangers of the opposite sex. Trying to act like nothing was weird about the situation, and like she didn't realize that they were all looking at her, she mumbled goodnight to them and tried to get a good night's sleep- which didn't happen.