Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She can't breathe.

The world is cold and dark. And she feels so small. 

A voice sings to her, melodious and gentle, drifting through her ears as if it were trying to reach her very soul. In her hands is the stupid rock that made her fall. 

It's her fault. She shouldn't have leaned over the edge of the boat when she saw the silver light’s gleam buried in the water’s depth. But there was something about it, so alluring and strange, she didn't realize how close she was and how far down she’d leaned until it was too late. 

She fell in. Swallowed by the sea as it seemed to drag her further down, drawing her nearer to the blasted rock that glowed even brighter, blinding her under the water’s waves. 

How could anything shine so bright? Be so beautiful and divine? And why, in the world, is it here? Hiding in the water’s depth?

She reached out to it, fingers slipping around the edges until it was firmly in her grasp. Bringing it to her chest, it glowed brighter. Within her grasp, she tried swimming back to the top, kicking her legs up, but the water refused her. 

Again, she tries. Again and again. It was as if a weight had been forcing her back, forbading her to return, keeping her locked in. 

Now, her vision is gone, and her head and chest full of water and the cold dark. 

Regrets fill her.

She apologizes to her family. She thinks of her father, who had just buried his own mom a few months back, now outliving his daughter and burying her too. Her older brother, freshly turned father with a son, her nephew, who will not remember his aunt, only knowing she'd been foolish enough to go out on the water and fall in. To the friends who had invited her on this boating trip. How it had been a surprise engagement party for her best friend over a decade. She's sorry. She feels stupid and sorry and despite kicking and pushing her body upward, it doesn't matter. The water keeps her prisoner, like a black hole sucking her further and further in. 

The desperation sinks into despair and then into reluctant acceptance. 

She lets go of herself, and she sinks further down, the glowing stone nestled between her hands. 

.

.

.

.

Oh, child whose fate is now intertwined with Arda. How shall you change the song? 

.

.

.

She wakes on a beach with a mouth full of sand and kelp wrapped around her legs. 

Coughing, she tries to sit up. Everything hurts. Her head feels like it's waterlogged, and her ears are burning. There's a ringing, and she thinks she can hear far too much all at once. 

Rubbing a hand against her temple, she tries to come to. On shaky legs, she stands, glancing around. 

The sun blinds her. She has to squint until her eyes adjust or else they hurt, burning too. There's the sand. The ocean. More sand. Some trees are a small distance away. And more sand. 

Fantastic. 

She searches for her phone, knowing it likely won't work, but as she suspects it is gone, likely somewhere in the ocean. Stumbling a bit, she realizes three very strange things. 

One, she feels smaller. She stares at her hands, and they're tiny. Small, like a child's, covered in damp sand and kelp. 

Two, her clothes are falling off her. They are large, overly so that her shirt was more of a dress that fell to her knees. Her jeans hang around her ankle and seem as though they have expanded in size threefold. 

Three, when she touches her body, looking for injuries and signs of pain, she is met with the horrifying realization that her cheeks are soft and squishy, and her jaw is rounded. But worse and most terrifying of all is that her ears are wrong. 

Her piercings and earrings have stayed intact, two on one and three on the other, but where the curve of her ear is meant to be, it's elongated. Pointed at the top with soft cartilage, which, when she touches it, she feels something that jolts her. It's not hard, not swollen, or bleeding. But pointed they are. 

She falls. A scream escapes her mouth. It's dry and wet at the same time, and she ends up in a coughing fit. Water comes out of her as she heaves. 

Dehydration. It has to be, she reasons with herself. Concussion and discombobulation, she thinks. 

Still, her clothes size doesn't make sense, nor does smallness of her, but there has to be a logical reason. That reason escapes her. Surely this is all a terrible and strange nightmare. Has to be. 

Getting back to her feet, she realizes her shoes are nowhere to be found despite having laced them tightly before heading out on the boat.

Her socks remain, soaked and large, too that she has to yank them halfway up her ankles and flip the hems to keep them up. She wrings out her shirt, and though she tries to put her shorts back on, they fall off, and thus she is forced to go without them. Running her fingers through her hair, she finds it mangled and full of more sand and kelp and whatever else is in the ocean. She ends up slinking it back and pushing it behind her ears as she does a rather ugly and poor-looking braid that sticks out everywhere, but it does its job. 

There is nothing as far as her eyes can see, and her eyes seem to see even more than they used to as well, oddly enough. 

Ocean? Check.

Sand? Check?

Blue skies? Check?

Some green trees? Check.

More sand? Still a check. 

Without much other choice, she begins to walk along the water. Surely there are others nearby, maybe a coastal town or something. 

Chapter Text

What lies before her is nothing she’d ever seen before. 

Bordering the seas, residing in a gulf is a great city built within the landscape. In the mouth gulf of the place there are ships, old-fashioned with sails that remind her of pirate ships almost. Buildings and monuments as high as the clouds, she feels like. Like something out of medieval Europe, she likens it. And even then, she thinks it’s something more in line with a video game like Andor Londo or when the sun shines down on it, Leyndell from Elden Ring. 

It's beautiful and wonderful and wholly impossible. 

What place on Earth looked like this? Just where exactly had she been shipwrecked on? Things are not adding up. 

She hears the sounds of horses galloping on the field. She turns her head in time to spy a group of people on horseback heading her way. 

Quickly, she starts to wave at them, jumping up and down as they near her. 

“Help!” she calls out, hoping that they are they can take her someplace with a phone or perhaps point in the direction where her country’s embassy is. “Over here!” 

Soon enough, the group is before her, encircling her as they caution their horses to stop. She glances up at the riders who have descended. And she realizes something else peculiar. 

Five in total, dressed in clothes that make her wonder when and how she ended up in some sort of medieval reenactment. That or someone’s very elaborate DnD role-playing campaign. She spies that they each carry very intricate and detailed-looking swords and bows. 

One dismounts from their horse and stares at her. They’re very beautiful, with fair, unblemished skin, and long, silver-blond hair that is pulled into an intricate braid. She wonders if this is some sort of Game of Thrones-esque cosplay group. They open their mouth and speak to her in a voice that carries through the air like bells in the wind. It's beautiful, as are the words that come out, though she understands not one bit they are saying. 

That is when she notices, eyeing the person before her with curiosity, that they’re ears are pointed and elongated more than a normal persons. 

An elf? She ponders. Then she comes to the likely conclusion that it is a very good and very realistic prosthetic. It is only when she realizes that the other four riders are also freakishly pretty with elf ears too that she starts to question that something is very not right. 

Subconsciously, her hand reaches up to her own ears, wincing when she touches the points she now has. 

It couldn’t be….could it? 

Surely this is all a crazy dream induced by too many fantastical books and video games. 

The elf says something. Again, she doesn’t understand. 

Slowly, she speaks too, in several languages. English, French, and Spanish. 

The riders all exchange glances. And she starts to have the sinking suspicion that they don’t understand her either. Well shit. 

Gelmir had seen many things in his years. 

He’d come before most around him. He is Calaquendi born, having witnessed the light of the Two Trees in his younger years. 

He’s lived among the Valar and, after, amongst kings and heroes whose names are now linked to legends. He is old even among the elves, with only his lord, Círdan, being above him. 

Which is why he can safely say he has seen many things others have not. Yet, this time, for the first time in all his life, he finds himself with something new and strange. 

The child, an elfling with Noldorin features, stares at him with bewilderment. He, too, shares the same confusion, even though he does not speak on it. 

For it is not the elflings dark hair, pointed ears that are pierced with three tiny silver jewels in each, nor is it her apparent injured status that brings forth such emotions. He does wonder, like the rest of the scouts who are present, where her parents are. 

He could not recall a message in the last hundred years of the birth and welcoming of an elfling. Even a child not of notable birth or parents who reside more in line from Mithlond would surely be discussed amongst their kin. Still, that is not the cause of his confusion. 

When the elfling girl stares up at him, he can not avert his eyes. It is as though he is back there, under the great light of beauty within Valinor. 

Her eyes glow, same as his and the other Calaquendi who have borne the Two Trees’ light, but it is more than that. Something similar yet different, though he can not name it. 

She is too young to have borne witness to the Two Trees. She should not have, nor could she have, with her youth being apparent. Even so, Gelmir can not find a logical reason as to how she has that light in her eyes. 

What plan does the Valar have? Had this elfling been sent by their hand? Did his lord know of it? If so, why had Círdan not told him so? 

It is not the elfling’s fault, however. Whatever the cause and reason, he should not place blame on one so young in their years and likely injured too. Gelmir lowers into a kneeling position to address her with a warm smile. 

“Mae govannen,” he tells the elfling who remains staring at him, and more so his ears with a growing frown. 

She stares with those bright, alight eyes. Then she shakes her head. “M’aee govahnen.” 

It’s close enough, but not quite. Does this child not know Sindarin? He tries again, this time in Quenya, “Suilë,” but the results are worse as the elfling this time does not attempt to repeat it back. Gelmir then greets her in the several common tongues of man that he knows of. Each time she stares at him with a look of no comprehension. 

“Perhaps,” he addresses Dorwen and her fellow scouts, “it is time we discuss with Lord Círdan.” 

“Círdan.” 

Gelmir turns his gaze down at the elfling, knowing he had not misheard her. She’d said his lord’s name with exact pronunciation. Does she perhaps know him? He questions silently. 

“Círdan,” the efling repeats with a slow bob of her head. “Elrond Peredhel. Galadriel. Celeborn. Lórinand. Imadris.”

She speaks full and true. It surprises him. Silvan? Sindarin? She says these names and locations with accuracy, yet can not communicate otherwise. Does she know of the Lady of Lothlorein and her lord husband? Perhaps of Lord Elrond too?

It is indeed perplexing. Though it is what she says next that gives him more pause. 

“Gondolin. Feanor. Fingolfin. Lúthien. Beren. Elladan. Elrohir. Arwen Undomiel. Aragon. Bilbo Baggins. Beleriand. Mirkwood. Thranduil,” she continues, name after name of his kin and places he knows with great certainty she has never been. Among the names are those he knows not. “Frodo. Merry and Pippin. Legolas. Ecthelion. Melian.” She furrows her brows before announcing names he would not imagine an elfling so small to know. “Morgoth. Melkor. Annatar. Sauron. Mairon.” 

The names stun them all. Yes, thinks Gelmir with an affirming nod. It is time to consult Círdan.