This all came out of a common dislike of screaming to each other over both phone static and a
lawnmower. And it grew.... Anyhow, no, we don't own the LotR people. That is to say, anything you
recognize is not ours. But anything you don't, is.

CHAPTER ONE: Find A Way
The moon was full and white above the emerald leaves of Mirkwood. Endless beauty
surrounded her, yet she was running, sobbing, swerving wildly through the dark and mysterious
boles. She was as quick as the silver wind, but he was faster, and he stepped neatly out into the
path before her.
"Soft! Why do you run from me? I have done you no wrong. I will do you no wrong."
"You're gonna go away. I'm going home so I don't have to deal with it," she whispered
through quiet tears. He wondered why lips crowned with such pearls of sadness seemed so much
softer and more fair.
"I have to go. I can't watch you leave." Struggling to free her shoulders from his
beautiful long-fingered hands, she pleaded, "Let go of me. You're breaking my heart. Elves die of
broken hearts. Let me go! Please...just let go..."
"I will never leave you. How can I?" he cried desperately, her plea cutting into his
heart like no knife could. "I will not go! Wait!"
She pulled away from him, certain he mocked her. She began to walk away... toward what
had been home.
"Wait! I say it once more; hear me: I will not leave. I will stay! Will you not stay as
well?"
"Why?" she asked bitterly. "Why should I hold you here? What can I possibly mean to you?"
"Everything!" he shouted. "Everything, and so much more. I love you!"
"You lie! You're making fun of me!" she screamed.
"I love you! Listen to me! If you will not stay with me, then I will journey through the
worlds after you! I will follow you! I will find a way!"
Yet she believed him not, and slipped away through the mist. Weeping the longing tears of
love, he ran after her.

"Andrea! Breakfast!" Sivi called from downstairs. Andrea sat up in bed and blinked. What
a dream. Knowing she must hurry, or she would be late for her college biology class, she hopped
onto the carpet and threw on a pair of jeans and an old T-shirt. Mr. Beech had said they would
be dissecting starfish that day. Nothing like the smell of formaldehyde to help wake one up in
class. She could not shake the memory of her dream away; it clung to her like a little lost child,
and she could still hear his vow:
"I will follow you! I will find a way!" She unknowingly clutched her hand over the small
drawstring bag that hung from the cord around her neck.
Loverly, she thought facetiously. Find me in all the stench and filth of New York, and
we'll have a romantic dinner together.
"Andrea?" Sivi called.
"I'm coming," Andrea hollered, jerking a brush through her short, straight,
copper-colored hair and practically flew down the stairs.
She slid - a very fun, if dangerous, practice when one is in sock feet on a linoleum
floor-over to the table and flopped into her chair. Even though her hair was combed and her
clothes neat, Sivi could tell that Andrea was slightly upset. It was normally Sivi that had the
horrific nightmares, but this morning, it was Sivi who was concerned.
"Bad dream?" she asked in a cautious tone.
"Not exactly," Andrea replied evasively.
"What was it about?" Sivi pressed. With a sigh, Andrea replied tiredly,
"The Pretty One."
"What, you mean Legolas?" Sivi said. "How can you have a bad dream about him?"
"It's hard… to explain."
Sivi nodded and let the matter go. Andrea had trouble explaining herself sometimes, and
Sivi knew better than to frustrate her friend.
"If you say so," she shrugged. "We've got to get to class. So you'd better hurry and
eat."

Legolas awoke under a beautiful birch tree on a wide grassy space. The setting seemed
strangely unfamiliar. He was not paying any attention to his surroundings at that moment,
however. He was more than a little upset over a dream he had had the night before, and a
light-hearted elf-prince is not easily made to be upset. He could still remember the ugly night
when Andrea had run from him, had left him to search in vain for her for so many lonely years.
Why couldn't he forget her? Why must he have that dream, over and over, every night? For that
matter, why couldn't he find her? Where could she have hidden from him? Where had he not
searched?
At last, Legolas looked up and around, and he frowned. Only Legolas could glare so and
make himself look wonderful doing it. His surroundings were strange to him. He listened to the
trees and did not know them. There was such a sense of pain and humiliation in the voices of
these new trees that the sensitive elf winced. His long, gently curving ears caught sounds that
he had never heard before. There was an irritating off-key sort of... he could only describe it
as a purring hum. The place smelled fouler than an orc's den.
"Where am I?" he asked the air. His voice was light and lovely, yet still becomingly
masculine.
"Uh, you'd be in Central Park, Twinkletoes," replied a rough, snidely disrespectful tone
from behind the tree he was leaning against. Legolas stood, not liking the squat, filthy man his
falcon-sharp eyes were showing him. He wondered what the newcomer might mean by "Twinkletoes."
"But, ah, judgin' fr'm the threads an' yer 'aircut, I'd figure you're lucky y'ain't in Atlantic
City w'a baby doll."
"I beg your pardon?" Legolas said evenly, determined to be courteous, even if this...
tramp... was being ever so brazen.
"Yeh, an' I'll bet you'll be a-beggin' fer more'n 'at, once ya run outta tha' there...
wull, whatever yer on."
"Sir, I understand you not, and I like not your tone of voice. Speak to me straight forth
and honestly. What is this place, and how came I to be here?"
"Dude, yer askin' th' wrong guy on that'n. All I know is, this 'ere's Central Park, right
smack'n th' middle o' New York City. You cuhn fin' yer own way fr'm there."
"Thank you, sir," Legolas said gravely, beginning to be more than annoyed, especially
when the vagabond burst out laughing and fell over. Deciding he could obviously get no more help
from the man, Legolas strode purposefully off in the opposite direction. This new place baffled
him; neither sight, nor sound, nor smell, nor taste - for the venomous scent in the air was so
heavy that he could feel it on his tongue - seemed at all like anything he knew. He didn't even
know how he had come to be there; it was a far cry from his soft bed in his father Thranduil's
palace in Eryn Lasgalen.
Suddenly, a harsh noise reached him. It sounded like... it hurt Legolas' heart to
remember what it sounded like. It was the sound that had come from the Horn of Gondor in the
moment in which it had been cloven. Terrible memories assailed the prince in an anguished
tempest: Amon Hen.

A white Elven blade clashed with a bloodstained orc-knife, rolled smoothly and expertly
around and through the long, pale fingers of its handler, found its mark in tough, blistered
orc-hide, and flew obediently back into its gilded scabbard. Time was counted in the heartbeat of
a warrior: strong, steady, rhythmic, and pulsing. Fingertips drew an Elvish arrow from a
gem-encrusted quiver, put it deftly to the string, and the Bow of Galadriel bent. The arrow flew.
The orc fell.
Draw the bow; loose the string; move to the right; duck; turn; meet orc-steel with
elf-steel - the dance went on, a grotesque, never-ending waltz of life and death, fear and
hopeless courage, blood and battle.
Then had sung the Horn, and Legolas had turned.
"The Horn of Gondor!" cried he.
"Boromir," gasped Aragorn in a voice sick and sickening, a voice without hope. And
Legolas had watched Estel, Hope now hopeless, fly feverishly to aid his brother of Gondor. Then
the dance continued without the Ranger, and Legolas resumed the desperate fight.
Fly, arrow! Fall, orc of Orthanc! Flee this place, creature of Saruman, lest you flee
this earth ere the sun flees the sky.
Monster after monster strove with the valiant, nimble elf and lived never after to tell
the tale of it. The axe of Gimli son of Gloin brought down its share of the creatures meantime.
As it were on the slopes of Orodruin, victory was indeed at hand, yet ever the corruption of the
One ripped away the triumphs of the pure, for even as the last orc fell defeated upon the stones
of the High Seat of Amon Hen, the Horn of Boromir first son of Denethor sounded again.
"Gimli, after me! Ai Elbereth!"
"Erebor will avenge Moria! I follow, Legolas! Let us aid Gondor!"
The swift feet of the elf soon outdistanced the steady but heavy tread of the stocky
dwarf. The trees and foliage shouted in his ears: "Hurry! Fly!" His feet found their own way as
with agile leaps and soundswift strides he lunged headlong down the ridge.
The full, rich aria of Boromir's horn filled the forest, and then breath and blood left
Legolas as the note twisted into a horrible, garish blaring of noise, as it were a cry of torment.
The Horn of Gondor was split, and now Legolas' ears took in the hoarse, croaking shouts of orcs,
the cruel clamour of metal converging, and the desperate cries of Peregrin and Meriadoc.
Too late, too late, you have lost, you have failed... With a despairing sound of agony,
the elf plunged through the brush into a wide clearing strewn with the bodies of the hideous foes
of the Fellowship. There was no sign of the Hobbits, but Aragorn's body was bent over the
death-pale form of Boromir. Legolas, believing them both to be dead, choked on his sorrow.
Aragorn glanced up at his friend, and Legolas thanked Aman.
The eyes of Elessar Estel turned full upon Legolas, profound wells of forlorn passion.
Then knew Legolas son of Thranduil that Boromir son of Denethor was fallen. Gandalf was gone.
Boromir was gone. The Hobbits: Merry, Pippin, Sam, and Frodo, all were lost to the three
remaining of the Company.
In that instant, as they stared into the eternal depths of sorrow, loss, and futility,
all the weight of a world doomed to die fell upon the shoulders of a king of Men, a lord of
Dwarves, and a prince of Elves. Legolas remembered the words of fair Galadriel:
"The Quest stands upon the edge of a knife; stray but a little and it will fail... to the
ruin of all."
The Fellowship had strayed but that little, fallen upon that upturned blade, and been
torn asunder. What hope was there in all Ea? The Fellowship had failed.

Another such grating horn brought Legolas back to his present. Now, of course, he knew
that the Fellowship had not failed, though that did not bring bold Boromir back. With a shake of
his golden hair to dispel the ugly past, Legolas pushed his way though a couple of oaks.. and out
of everything that comprised any semblance of what had once been his reality.
Buildings taller than bright Ecthalion lined a road of what seemed to be hardened,
crusted lava, like the wrath of Orodruin once cooled. On the road - in fact, all along it, were
machines as ugly as those bred in the bowels of Isengard. There were people within the things;
the astounded elf could only assume that they must be some sort of carriages or chariots, though
what pulled them he could not see.
Two young human women sat talking on a metal bench by the road. Legolas decided to ask
them for assistance, reasoning that anyone could be more polite than the derisive tramp in the
park. He strode up swiftly and silently behind them, as is the wont of Elves, then started as he
realized that both were wearing pants, and that their clothes were made of strange fabrics...
just as Andrea's had been the day that the soldiers of Thranduil had first brought her in to see
their prince. He started to speak, then jumped nearly out of his wits when one of the girls
cocked her head - just so. He knew that gesture. Oh, how many time had he seem it, dreamed of it!
It couldn't be, and yet... yet, it had to be. It was her. She was just as he remembered her,
except that this time... he knew what to say.


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