Disclaimer: I don't own any of Tolkien's works, nor the Time Quartet, that is Madeline L'Engle's. And the song is called Harvest of Culloden and I don't own it either, I am not sure who wrote it but it is sung by Deanta.

The Teacher

At the time, however, I did not know what trouble that Lord Gilmir would cause me. I felt relieved that those with whom I had shared everything would now accept me and believed that I meant them no harm. I rose and walked away from the fires for a moment, feeling the need for some solitude. Looking up at the sky once more I realised that my favourite light in the night sky was missing. I had noticed it earlier but now I knew what it was. Venus shone not in the western sky. I turned once more and looked to where the child who observed the world with his bright blue eyes was held in his father's strong protective arms. I smiled once more with the knowledge that here in this child was the salvation of this world.

Suddenly, I felt melancholy sweep through me. I missed my home, my friend, my family, and my studies. It had been a month and a half yet nothing had really sunk in. What I had told Tuor about being twelve thousand years away from my life time was only what I had deduced based on Tolkien's works. I hadn't really thought about what that would mean. Now in this small copes of trees south of the now ruined city of Gondolin I wondered how all of this came to be.

Why was I here? My first thought was that I yet stood on that cliff about Trout Lake and that this was some elaborate hallucinations. It seemed so real, I couldn't accept that this was the out come of some chemical imbalance in my brain mixed with too many hours of reading Tolkienesque literature as a young teen. This was more vivid and detailed that anything I could ever have imagined.

The only conclusion I could come to was that this was indeed the past of my own world. I remembered reading the Time Quartet by Madeline L'Engel. In those four books the principle of the teseract was discussed. I later did some research on them. A teseract, I mused on it for some time. The theories were so fantastic, I loved dreaming about the possibilities that they presented but I had never really believed that those possibilities were real. I was a girl who believed in what I could see and what I could help, these obscure theories of science were not with in my realm of understanding. However, now I was forced to believe that bother the works of Tolkien and the theories of teseract were fact. A teseract gate or something like it, I was still having trouble grasping it. So, my life had just gotten a lot more complicated.

I sighed, sinking to the grass tears running in rivulets down my face. A song came to my lips. I hadn't sung since I came to Beleriand. For some reason I couldn't find it in myself to sing. Now the music just poured out of me.

Cold the wind on the moors blow
Warm the enemy's fire glows
Black the harvest of Culloden
Pain and fear and death grow

'Twas love of our prince drove us on to Drumossie
But in scarcely the time that it takes me to tell
The flower of our country lay scorched by an army
As ruthless and red as the embers of hell

Cold the wind on the moors blow
Warm the enemy's fire glows
Black the harvest of Culloden
Pain and fear and death grow

Red Campbell and fox did the work of the English
MacDonald in anger did no work at all
With musket and cannon 'gainst honor and courage
The invader's men stood while our clansmen did fall

Cold the wind on the moors blow
Warm the enemy's fire glows
Black the harvest of Culloden
Pain and fear and death grow

Now mothers and children are left to their weeping
With only the memory of father and son
Turned out of their homes to make shelter for strangers
The blackest of hours on this land has begun

Cold the wind on the moors blow
Warm the enemy's fire glows
Black the harvest of Culloden
Pain and fear and death grow

(Sung in English)

I let the last note of the heart wrenching song fade away, and I felt someone's gaze on my back. I spun around, only to find Laiqualassё standing with his back against one of the trees watching me. His gray eyes burnt into me with a glowing intensity.

"What is it you sing of with such pain and grief?" He looked at me with a questioning face. I didn't want to tell him not really. There was enough grief in this world with out adding one that was from the future and would not be a worry for quite some time. In the end, however, I could not keep from answering his question. It is quite disconcerting to be under the gaze of one of the Calaquendi. As Sam said in the Lord of the Rings, there are elves and there are elves. They are all elvish enough but they are quite above my likes and dislikes. I understood this now for the fёa of the elf lord that stood before me burnt with the intensity of the sun compared to my own.

"It is a song of a battle," I answered in little more then a whisper, "a battle that took place two and a half centuries before my birth. It was called the Battle of Culloden Fields. There my ancestors fought those who had long occupied their country. They lost, and many died. After the battle those who lived in Scotland the country of my forbearers had to leave, they were made to leave their homes and cross the ocean to the Americas those that remained were little more then slaves." I looked off into the distance; I remembered the clan markers at Culloden. I pondered again how many of my brave ancestors lay beneath that field.

Laiqualassё listened intently as I spoke of a battle that chained Scotland to the British Empire forever. "It pains me to hear of a triumph of Darkness," he said bowing his high noble he had. I realized that he had interpreted the story I told on the basis of what he knew.

"No," I whispered. "They were no evil in the way one can be evil here, they were not bound to a Dark Lord. It is land, wealth, power and religious belief that drive the people in my world to war. It seems that we can not live and let live. It is better in my life time but war is still there, war as you would no recognize it, war with weapons that can kill millions in minutes." Names flew through my mind, Hiroshima, Nagasaki.

"World peace is a dream that my world has the ability to realize. Yet, still there are people who crave power and other still who can not accept that not all people share their beliefs." I shivered as the scenes I had seen on the television set in the student services office in my high school flashed through my mind. I could see it again in my minds eye, those monstrous planes colliding with the towers in plumes of fire and smoke.

Laiqualassё looked troubled, "Lord Tuor has told me you are a child of the future. You gave him hope with your words." I realized then that this Noldo lord was troubled by the fact that in twelve-thousand years this world would still be racked by war.

"This is the time of the Noldor, Laiqualassё, my people are yet children." I looked up at him. Some weeks earlier I had learnt how to call some one Lord, and I had tried on him but he had told me that he had a name that needed no embellishment. "You know a there will come a time when the elder children will leave these western shores and turn guardianship of this Middle-Earth to men. I can't help believing in some ways that my race betrays that trust. Yet, for all the pain and suffering to come, there will also be great beauty. Some knowledge will be lost but much will be learnt. Arda of the Eldar will be remembered as a fairy tale. Men will no believe that the Eldar exist as you are. The Valar will be known under many different names as will Eru Illuvatar. You are lucky, for you have never seen where religion can drive a people. The passion that can come from believing your own beliefs are the only possible truth. No army in my world goes into battle with out believing that Eru is on their side."

A very distant look came over Laiqualasse, as though he was remembering something particularly pain full in his past. "I was at the kin slaying of Aqualonde." The words came out in little more then a whisper. I knew that for the Noldor the kin slayings were something very difficult to speak of. "I was there... I fought to protect the Teleri, my Lord's mother's people from those who followed the son's of Feanor. I understand what it is you speak of, the fury that differing beliefs can lead to.

"I see how this troubles you, Eruanna. You are well named, Eru's gift, a gift to your people you must be to have such strong feelings about all that is wrong in your world." I felt like a child in his presence, small and insignificant.

"There is little I could do, I am still quite young in the eyes of my people and seeing that my family is a normal family with no real connections to those in power, I did not have access to the right path ways. However, I was studying so that one day I could be in a position where I could help. It was all I wished to be, a voice of peace for those with no voices. It was a dream, one that did not have much likelihood of coming about."

"I believe that you underestimate yourself, little one, for there is a quiet strength in you." He regard me calmly, "Can you wield a dagger child?" he asked.

I looked at him skeptically; strength did not dictate power in my world. "Nay, I can not," I replied.

In a fluid motion he unsheathed a dagger and spun it so that he held the unsheathed blade in his hand. He extended his arm offering me the hilt. "Take it, I will teach you its use." He smiled at me as I tentatively to the hilt. "One can not live in this world without being able to protect oneself."

"Why would you teach me?" I asked. "Lord Tuor said that I was not a threat, you have no need to guard me, for I am no threat to others."

"Have you not thought, Eruanna that someone might want to protect you from harm? To teach you, you have great potential of mind. I was a scholar myself before I left Tirion and was exiled. I would like this opportunity to teach one of the future. Share the knowledge that I have accumulated." He looked at me, curiously as though I was some new puzzle to work out. "All I see with my eyes is a young mortal, yet my mind senses something different in you. Most mortals feel finite. It is like my minds eye sees their life span before me, a line cut off. But you seem stretched; I can not feel an end of the line."

"I don't say I understand what you speak of yet I have been confirmed in my belief that some things are not meant to be understood, only accepted." I looked down at the knife in my hand. The blade was about a foot in length made of bright metal, graceful tengwar runes graced the blade. The hand length hilt was worked with a tree in silver filigree, the symbol of his house. "Will I have a lesson this night, my Lord Teacher?"

"You shall, my student," he replied unsheathing a second dagger like the first.