A/N: I'd like to start off with an apology. xD Obviously.

I owe you an explanation. If you can believe it, I've spent the past few months absolutely RACKING my brain and fighting the FIERCEST battle of writers block I've ever had to deal with xD The next chapter has been an open tab on my laptop forEVER!

To make it up to you, I'll let you in on a little secret. I'm doing a time skip to the White Council. I've been so stressed about making sure the chapter's perfect, though, since it will be an integral scene to the story, that I just can't seem to find the right words. But I want to let you all know that I'm still in this, and I'm going to do all that I can to get the White Council out to you guys right away.

If you're still with me, here's a small little flashback...

We are nearing the end of the first arc, after all. :)

Enjoy!

Prologue

Once upon a time there was a bored little girl. The world around her wasn't interesting. She dreamed that she could fly.

When she was eight, her dad sat her down and showed her a movie. It was a long movie- eight hours, he said, and for some reason he wanted her to ration it. He said it was a movie he loved and she would love it to. And so he turned it on and showed her the first half hour, and she loved it. She loved the color and the characters and how the weird brown-haired boy smiled like a puppy, and the two red heads stole the wizard's fireworks, and how those fireworks were made of magic (more magic than regular fireworks were). And when it was over she wanted more, and her dad said it would have to wait for tomorrow. Only 30 minutes a day.

And for the next two weeks, life became even more boring- who cared about spelling words or adding numbers when a small little ring could destroy a world? During recess she grabbed her friends and took them an an adventure, painting the expansive playground into a new world- the trees were where the Elves lived, the wooden train was where people slept and also the horses they rode to get away. Their hands where their swords.

And daytime became a running hourglass until she could watch again.

But then it ended. For two weeks, her life was lived in Middle Earth. And so suddenly, it was over, and she had no more; just as abruptly as when she started. Her dad got up from the couch to cook dinner, somehow not feeling a thing about the closing of a story, and found that he needed an egg and told her to go ask the neighbors. And she walked slowly, looking around at the walls of her house and then the grass in her yard like it was all new and unfamiliar. And because she was eight, she couldn't describe the feelings pulling her heart as she crossed the street. All she knew was that when she looked at the trees, they felt weird.