Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of what Tolkien created.

THE CAVE OF WORLDS
Chapter Four - Nimîr 'nInzilolôrêth (Elves of Lothlórien)

It wasn't until they had ridden out of the dense forest and onto a vast, hilly plain with mountains glowering in the distance that Ladrengil spoke to Jessica any more than to say, "Eat this," or "Let us rest here." And, to compound Jessica's annoyance and irritation that the ride had given her, being wrapped in something from head to foot to protect the horse, he refused to answer any questions about why his parents wanted to be rid of her. Instead, he led the horse and looked only at the trail they were following.

"Stop twitching in the seat so," Ladrengil said, halting the horse to start the noon meal on the fourth day of their journey. "You annoy the horse."

"But my legs hurt," Jessica whined, grateful for even this small conversation. They did hurt though. Having never sat on a horse for longer than five minutes in her life, her thighs were unused to being stretched like this. They complained loudly to Jessica, and made her unable even to limp afterwards. Ladrengil had been forced to lift Jessica off the horse and carry her to her various privy needs, which both parties found embarrassing. Today, Jessica's one good leg was able to move enough to help her slide ungracefully to the ground. She greeted Ladrengil's helping hands with a scowl, so when Ladrengil finally began to talk, the mood immediately lightened.

"The trees have ears in that forest," he began. He was in the midst of making a small fire to cook on, and the smoke was blowing into Jessica's face, making her cough. "But now, I can speak my mind freely."

Jessica scooted to the side, out of the smoke. "Well?"

"My mother looked into your soul, and when she saw the burn on your hand, she told me she had seen its meaning in your eyes. She said that you are some sort of outcast, abandoned to rid the people of your curse. She said that the mark on your hand means 'criminal'. What truth do you find in that, if any?"

Jessica's cheeks flushed and she balled her fists. In her subconscious mind, this surely was the worst of her demons. Her mother was a Muslim from Palestine, and she was living in a small, western town with predominately white Christians. With the recent attacks September Eleventh still smoldering, it was rumored that Jessica's mother had been under a police investigation. Jessica's little brothers got beat up at school. People ran after Jessica in the hallways calling her a "towel-head" and other, unmentionable names. That was all her tormenters needed, Jessica thought, another excuse to make fun. Never mind that that she was overweight, pimply, and seeing a shrink.

"It's not my fault," Jessica said finally. "And it's not just me. It's my mom and my brothers. We're different, and they hate us."

"And the hidden door, how did you find it?"

Jessica wiped her nose on her sleeve. "It just appeared in front of me. It does that sometimes when I get bored. My doctor said that it was some sort of problem in my head, and he was trying to find a medicine for it."

"What is on the other side?" Ladrengil poured a thin batter onto the pan in the fire.

"A cave in the middle of a desert island, with tons of junk in the sand all around it. That's where I found this," Jessica brought out the jewel on the chain, but it didn't want to go out. It slipped back under Jessica's nightgown as though an invisible hand moved it. The harder Jessica tried to get a grasp on the chain of the necklace, the more it refused to be held, and Jessica gave up. Ladrengil, who was watching the struggle, vanished in a cloud of smoke as he burned their lunch.

"That's no ordinary jewel," he said at last, just having scraped what ash he could from the pan. "I have no great study in jewels such as that, but it appears to be a Nimruzimra for some foul purpose. That stone shines as though it is made to echo newly spilt blood, and many of the Nimîr who were exiled from Amatthani, unlike my parents, had foul deaths that clung to them. That jewel may be the result of one such vengeance, and the grudge against your family may have put it into your hands. Did the healer tell you to go through the door?"

Jessica nodded.

"Then our mystery may be figured, though we cannot make judgments yet, for I could not read the writing on the jewel. There is a lady of the Nimîr who dwells in Inzilolôrêth, an exile from Amatthani of great wisdom, one from the king's house. We will ask her."

Just as Jessica thought the prairie would have no end, a dark line on the horizon began to form. Ladrengil started humming and bursting into song at odd moments when all conversation had dwindled away. Whenever she asked him the meaning of the song he was singing, he'd begin rambling about the beauty of Inzilolôrêth; how the golden leaves grew on silver branches, and the forest shimmered with song.

Finally they entered, and she saw that he had meant every word. The trees did glister like silver, and the leaves shown like gold, but no words could express the euphoria it inspired in Jessica, no song could do justice to the spiritual light that blossomed inside her. It left her feeling as though she was in heaven's glory itself.

"How do you say, 'Inzilolôrêth' in your language?" Jessica asked, after gawking upwards so long that her neck ached.

"'Lothlórien', though some still call it, 'Lindórinand'."

"Lothlórien," she tried it on her tongue. It seemed familiar. She tasted the word again. "Lothlórien." Recognition dawned on her. This was a place in The Lord of the Rings! That would make Ladrengil an Elf. She had read those books for a book report last year, impressing her English teacher. She had been saying "Lothlórien" incorrectly the entire time. She had been figuring that she was in one of the many Dungeons and Dragons RPGs that she liked to play. A sudden fear darkened the celestial beauty of the forest around her. If you really are in your subconscious, why is it pronounced differently in your head? Why are you in a world that you called "the result of Tolkien's racists ideologies"? Why did Ladrengil call himself a Nimîr instead of an Elf? You'd never heard that name for Elves, a naughty, disturbing thought whispered in her mind. What if you really are in a savage medieval land with no family, no proper health care for your leg, and a horrible curse on your skin?

Distant voices interrupted the doubt and fear rising in Jessica. "Ai Ladrengil! O man treventhig?"

"Si!" he laughed, waving. "Nethwen, my family and friends greet us!" He pointed into the forest where three figures ran to them. "See the man with bright gold hair? He is Ariston, one of the fair-kind, my mother's brother's son. The two who trail behind him are Belthon and Silivegil, true folk of this wood and brothers of my wife, Tevril. We must have taken too long in returning; they came to find us."

Ariston arrived first, breathing slightly from the sprint, his cheeks flushed. "Se i roch odhron gîn?" he asked, patting the horse Ladrengil had borrowed from his father.

"I roch odhron nîn." Ladrengil nodded.

Belthon came next, laughing and panting. "Ui-deliog, Ariston! Ú-delianthen!" he said and clapped Ariston's shoulder. Then he spied Jessica sitting on the horse, staring at him. "A Ladrengil, man i iell?" He reached forward in a natural, affectionate gesture to pat Jessica's cheek. He stopped suddenly, staring at his hand.

"Baw!" Ladrengil shouted too late. Belthon collapsed onto the ground before Silivegil's arriving feet.

Ariston and Silivegil turned to Ladrengil, confused. "Man carnen am Belthon?" Silivegil said at last.

"Avo vatho i iell! Rhach um bo i flâd dîn, telin an ndambith Galadriel," Ladrengil gestured toward the depths of the forest, almost ranting. The others turned their faces to Jessica.

"Ladrengil, what's going on?" Her voice squeaked, betraying her panic. Ariston and Silivegil were beginning to look very dangerous, and now she saw that they were carrying weapons. Silivegil's hands were straying close to a very big silver hilt by his side.

Ladrengil placed himself between the horse and the angry Elves. "Gwestanthen de meriad!" he whispered, suddenly appearing very fierce. "Gwestanthen de thoged am mbâr dîn! Avo eitho 'waedh nîn!"

"Istog pi ydynchig i thrach hen ammen?" Ariston demanded.

"Ú-thrach annin," he replied, waving his arms.

Ariston relaxed, but Silivegil persisted. "Man carnen am Belthon?"

Ladrengil's face fell. "Ú-iston. Ach!" he held up his hand. "Ach iston i vronnen."

"Ni ú-velt," Belthon said from the ground. "Ú-'wannon!"

"What's going on?" Jessica wailed. "What is everyone saying?"

"Please be quiet, Nethwen," Ladrengil said.

"Nethwen? Eneth edhellen! Te iell elvellon?" Ariston wondered.

"Wait," said Belthon. "I speak Adûna. Nethwen, how did you receive that name?"

"Ladrengil gave it to me. He couldn't say my name."

Ariston shook his head. "Farn! No speaks I Adûna. Allows me… Man i phith an gened n'ûr dîn?"

Ladrengil translated, "He wants to look into your mind."

"He wants to look into your mind," Ariston repeated.

"Like your mom did?"

"As my mother did."

"Will it make everything better?"

"Your eyes cannot lie to us," Belthon called from the ground.

"Okay, then do it." Jessica took a deep breath and tried to clear her mind of all thoughts, but all thoughts started to race through her head, unable to slow or be stored away. When she looked into Ariston's eyes, blazing holes were seared through her mind, and memory rushed through her even faster, as though gates had been opened. Her head began to ache, and her lungs refused to work, though this wasn't near so painful as Ladrengil's mother, who had fires in her eyes even when she wasn't cutting through Jessica's head.

Just as the thought that she was going to suffocate passed through her mind, Ariston released her.

"Te ú-um," he said definitively. "Ach i thrach ú-beliatha ammen. Gin aphadatham."

Jessica began, "Wha..."

"He says that you are not evil. He offers help."

"Forgives us?" Ariston added hopefully.

Sergeant Stevenson had seen this a few too many times in his career. Inconsolable parents, an empty bed, and a fresh blanket of Rocky Mountain snow on the ground with a dark cloud hovering in the North. A search party poked in the snow banks outside. CSIs poked around the missing girl's bedroom. Bored deputies poked around the kitchen.

"Ma'am, let's go over this again," he said, heaving himself onto a chair. "What was it that your daughter said last night?"

The mother blotted her red, swollen eyes and clutched her husband's hand. "I found her sitting on the floor by her desk. She told me that she had opened the door in her daymares and found a desert island on the other side. I was going to call the psychiatrist, Dr. Shirman, this morning."

Stevenson nodded, making certain that he had taken note of the doctor's phone number. "And when did you last see her?"

"I heard her go into her bedroom after brushing her teeth."

"Okay, and when did you last see her?"

"When I told her to go to bed, when she had her daymare."

"Do you have any idea where she would run away to?"

Mr. Albright lifted his head for the first time. "My sister's house, she lives across town."

"We already called her, and she hadn't seen Jessica," Mrs. Albright added.

"She doesn't have any friends to go to?"

Mrs. Albright took charge of the questioning again. "Jessica is teased a lot in school. She doesn't have any friends that she visits, or that she tells us about."

Her husband nodded. "She pretended to be sick a few weeks ago."

Stevenson looked at the family portrait on the wall. Good God, he thought, that girl is almost obese. He pointed to the portrait on the wall. "Is that recent? The picture is good quality, so we could use it for the posters."

Mrs. Albright leapt up, as though she was glad to be able to do something that could help. "That picture is three years old." She opened a cabinet by the TV and pulled out a messy box of photographs, some in their packages, some not, and started leafing through them. After a few minutes she found the 2001-2002 school pictures, and cut off the largest photo of the wallet-sized copies.

That poor kid, he thought. The fourteen-year-old Jessica Albright glaring at him appeared a little thinner than the eleven-year-old Jessica Albright, but her face looked like a pepperoni and cheese pizza, and her smile resembled a grimace.

"Thanks a bunch, Mrs. Albright. I'll have one of the deputies bring this down to the station right away."

A nervous CSI pulled on his jacket and whispered, "I need to talk to you a second."

They squeezed into the little hallway by the door. Stevenson squinted at the nametag on the CSI's shirt. "Uh, what is it, Mr. Browning?"

Browning lifted up the article of evidence that Stevenson hadn't noticed in his hand. An almost comically squished winter coat was sealed in the bag. "I think we're dealing with a kidnapping."

Adûnaic translation:

Nimruzimra – Elfstone

Sindarin translations:

Ai Ladrengil! O man treventhig? – Hail Ladrengil! Where have you been traveling?
Si! – Here!
Se i roch odhron gîn? – This is your father's horse?
I roch odhron nîn. – The horse of my father.
Ui-deliog, Ariston! Ú-delianthen! – Ever a game, Ariston! I wasn't playing!
A Ladrengil, man i iell? – And Ladrengil, who is the child?
Baw! – Don't!
Man carnen am Belthon? – What happened to Belthon?
Avo vatho i iell! Rhach um bo i flâd dîn, telin an ndambith Galadriel. – Don't touch the child! A curse is upon her skin; I come for answers from Galadriel.
Gwestanthen de meriad! Gwestanthen de thoged am mbâr dîn! Avo eitho 'waedh nîn! – I promised to protect her! I promised to bring her to her home! Don't insult my oath!
Istog pi ydynchig i thrach hen ammen? – Do you know if you brought this curse upon us all?
Ú-thrach annin. – There is no curse on me.
Man carnen am Belthon? – What happened to Belthon?
Ú-iston. Ach! Ach iston i vronnen. – I don't know. But! But I know that I survived.
Ni ú-velt. Ú-'wannon! – I am weak. I'm not dying!
Nethwen? Eneth edhellen! E iell elvellon? – Nethwen? An Elven name! Is she the daughter of an Elf-friend?
Farn! …Man i phith an gened n'ûr dîn? – Enough! …How do I say 'to look into her heart?'
Te ú-um. Ach i thrach ú-beliatha ammen. Gin aphadatham. – She isn't evil. But the curse will not spread to us. We will follow you.

The reviewer's guide:

Did you understand what was happening?
Are your Mary Sue alarm bells ringing? If so, why?
What did you think of the characterization of the Elves?
Enough Sindarin already?
What do you think of the our-world plot?
Did the reactions of Ariston, Belthon, and Silivegil seem realistic to you?
Does it leave you wanting to read on?
What grammar or spelling mistakes did you see?
What bothered you in this chapter while reading it?
What did you like about it?