Other Worlds Than These

[Aikanáro]

The ground was shaking. Unsteady beneath her feet, as if the darkening of the sky had caused the earth itself to shudder. Rivailen of Dunland stood clutching the reins of her horse, who balked at the thought of travelling any further across the plains of Anórien. Perhaps he had more sense than she, thought Rivailen, and for a moment she stood transfixed, not knowing whether to turn back or press on.

It had been one of those bright afternoons, and she had gone out from the village inn where she was staying in search of new plants that she might have dried and brought home. All of a sudden, as before a summer storm, the light had faded. This was no storm, however, Rivailen knew it just as well as her horse did. Yet something compelled her forward.

Tugging her worn brown cloak tightly around her, she left her horse behind and continued on foot, head down against the wind. The plains stretched out ahead, and all about was a silence too total to seem natural.

Ahead of her then there was an immense flash of light. Immediately Rivailen stopped, and thrusting her hands deep into her pockets, raised her eyes to the horizon. A great pulsing circle there was in the distance, ringed by what seemed to her to be blue lightning. It crackled and danced. Within the circle itself was another light, though this one was shrouded, misted, so that one could not see what lay beyond.

A tendril of the blue lightning arced out, striking the ground at some distance from her. Rivailen took a single step forward, her eyes still fixed on the apparition before her. It is a dream, she told herself. A dream that I shall wake from. Ai, that I should dream such things while I travel, like an unsettled child.

Again she felt the ground tremble beneath her. Again she looked to the sky, and knew in her heart that it was no dream, that she was witnessing something - she knew not what - that was quite out of the ordinary.

Rivailen smiled.

Across the plain, the light from the circle intensified. A small, green, winged lizard came tumbling out from its very centre. It fell to the ground heavily, and then picked itself up, spread its wings and flew high into the sky. Gasping, all Rivailen could do was point up at it, as if she had witnessed a miracle.

[Earniel]

Beryn stood motionless, staring down into the water around her feet. The water was surprisingly cool and Beryn's toes started to tingle a little. It didn't matter much, catching trout was a game of patience and one she had often played and won. Two sizable fishes already lay on the banks of the little brook. If she caught a few more she might be able to trade them for a bed in the village inn tonight so she could spare her coins for rainy days.

She looked up at the sky with a frown. Fishing was going well but she needed sunlight to continue and the light was fading. Odd, it had been a perfectly bright sunny afternoon when she had hid her gear under the nearby shrubs to start fishing. This wasn't going to be one of those flash storms, was it? Beryn thought those only occurred in the mountains.

The water of the brook became agitated just for a moment and even Beryn's frozen toes could feel the ground move beneath her. With a grumble she waded out of the water and climbed onto the bank, grabbing her mantle to dry off her feet and legs. She could fish in sunshine and in rain if need be, but tremors scared away fish immediately and made them skittish for the rest of the day. She'd catch no more today.

A flash of light caught her eye when she was pulling on her boots. Looking up in the sky, Beryn gasped when she saw a circle of lightning. What a strange thing! No one had told her Gondor has such freak weather. She should have brought a tent.

Crouching behind the bushed that lined the tiny brook, she looked over the plains when lightning for the circle struck the ground. At that moment she noticed someone standing on the open plains. Why wasn't she taking cover?

And if all that wasn't strange enough, a small dragonlike creature appeared out of nowhere. The woman on the plains stayed put and didn't run, instead she simply raised her arm as if guiding the creature up.

Beryn suddenly felt uneasy and ducked away deeper behind the bushes, her heart pounding. A sorceress! It had to be. And one powerful enough to summon a giant circle of light and a dragon in the middle of the day. Since when did Gondor have sorcerors!? Beryn had been told Gondoreans had special and wonderous skills compared to other folk, especially the royal family, but this was unlike anything she had ever heard. Clearly she'd have to have some word with the travellers who had told her about Gondor when she got back. It was rather rude of them not to have warned her about the rampant sorcery.

[feawen]

Snowy whiteness blinded the world with white, a lone brown shape took form slowly among the bare tree, the brown slowly took the form of a deer, young, lost with a limp in its hind leg, easy picking, a fine kull to fed the cold bodys of the Nolow.
Snow settled on eyelashs, causing a pair of green eyes to blink. slowly from a postion on the cold, snow covered floor a fur coated arm raised, gray gloves pulled silently on bow and string. The deers ears twitched, its tail flicked, the bow string remained still. The deer settled back down, the body slowly raised it self, muscles screaming with sudden use after so long being still. The string pulled, arrow ready. A pause, and released, poorly times with the snap of a twig, the deer started, the arrow missed its clear target, enbedding into the deers hind as it run for the cover of the tree line.
"ah, plaki!" The body stand and ran after the deer, a slight twist of the lips at the memory of a harsh word from mother from previous use of such a word. Legs jumped over logs, past snow loaded trees, skin lined boots soft on the hard frozen ground.

[Varnafindë]

She was lost.

Not in the frightening 'oh-dear-I-don't-know-what-to-do' sense of lost, just in an exciting 'I-don't-know-where-I-am-but-I-know-where-I'll-move-and-then-I'll-get-somewhere' sense of it.

She had left the main road through Anorien, the one that would eventually take her to Minas Tirith, where she was to visit her cousin, Queen Arwen, and her old friend from his childhood in Rivendell, King Aragorn. (He was a cousin of sorts as well, but she hadn't worked out the 'so many times removed' part yet.) She wanted to investigate the countryside. She had been riding across Rohan for a few days, and now she wanted to see more of Anorien than just the main road.

She had been told that there would be a village just about here, and she wanted to spend the night in the village inn, before going on to Minas Tirith in the morning - or the next morning, if the area was interesting enough for staying an extra day. But as she had just realised that she didn't know exactly where 'here' was, she didn't know how to find the village either. Unless she could find someone to ask, she would probably have to go back south until she found the main road again.

Barufiniel was used to travelling on her own. In the area around Rivendell she would go for long walks, sometimes lasting several days, unless on such days when Elladan or Elrohir would tell her that there had been sightings of Orcs. Then it was safer to go with company or to stay at home. But Orcs were less of a problem these days - there was a King again, and the change was noticable. And with her trusted horse Aranis, she wasn't worried about travelling to Gondor on her own. She wasn't even really worried about being lost.

She had just given up looking any more for the village and turned her horse around, when she noticed the ground shaking. This was more case for worry - the horse clearly showed it. She calmed her, jumped off her and just walked beside her, letting her go really slowly. The light was fading as well. Would there be a storm?

Suddenly there was a flash of light, but not like normal lightning. Barufiniel stopped and looked towards where the flash had come from. There was a large circle of light far off - there seemed to be flashes like lightning around it. Blue lightning. She had never seen anything like it - not even at that other place ...

She realised that she wasn't the only one watching it. Far ahead of her another woman was standing, staring at the pulsing circle. Barufiniel started walking again, towards the other woman. She would ask her about directions - and she might discuss the strange phenomenon with her.

And then there was something even stranger. Out of the circle something was flying - no, not flying, falling rather. But as it hit the ground, it spread its wings and flew. It looked like a small green dragon. Barufiniel picked up speed, hoping to see the dragon more closely. Where had it come from? That circle of light - could it be a new portal?

[Aikanáro]

It was a dragon. That was her first thought. A dragon had flown out of that circle of light and was now heading eastwards at speed. A rather small dragon, to be sure, but that hardly diminished Rivailen's sense of wonder. Or her disbelief. A dragon? The only person she'd known to talk of dragons was old Fredri, when he'd been in the tavern long enough. Dragons and faery-folk and hoards of golden treasure.

If she had just seen a dragon, Rivailen resolved not to talk about it. Nobody listened to old Fredri, and she'd rather retain a little more credibility. Even if this - whatever this was - was just as real as anything else. After all, Gondor was a strange place, and unfamiliar. Perhaps this was how storms were, in this part of the world. Lightning wasn't exactly unusual, and perhaps there was some reasonable explanation for the bright light. She could ask about it in the village; she might be met with amused reassurances.

Rivailen looked away from the skyline, still feeling somewhat uneasy, and at the same time exhilarated, that feeling that comes with the novel and unexpected. It was then that she heard the soft sound of distant footsteps behind her. There was someone there, someone else to see this, and it sounded as if they were in a hurry. She turned slightly, so as to spot the figure heading towards her while remaining aware of the happenings in the sky.

There she was. It was a woman, young, leading a horse braver than Rivailen's own had been. She raised a hand in greeting as the other approached.

[feawen]

The deer jumped over a falled log and rounded a corner, the hunter followed, bow in hand, gaining ground. The Nolow would eat well tonight. The deer was slowing, this was the hunters chance. The hunter jumped onto a snow covered rock, bow raised for a clear shot. The ground rumbled under foot, causing the rock to shake. Bight light flashed in the hunters eyes, blinded and now off balance the hunter lost their footing, fell forward and followed by a flurry of snow, landed with a none too graceful fall, face forward into the grass.

[Varnafindë]

Barufiniel was happy to see that the other woman accknowledged her. She felt less of an intruder that way. She walked up to her and returned her greeting.

"I'm happy to meet people here when I've lost my way," she said. "I am Barufiniel, daughter of Rameldir, and I'm on my way to Minas Tirith. I wanted to spend the night in a village in this area - but I'm afraid I cannot find it. Could you perhaps help me?"

[Aikanáro]

As the woman approached her, Rivailen couldn't help but stare. There was something about her, something strange. She must have something to do with today's unusual events, thought Rivailen at first, but she wasn't sure that was quite it.

No, it's not! The realization came to her suddenly. This woman - Barufiniel, as she said, was one of the Elf-folk. She had heard them described before, and it had been said that a person would know an Elf when they saw one, a peculiar sort of logic which Rivailen had never quite been happy with. She saw it now for truth.

And for what? She's an Elf, is that reason to forget courtesy and stand there gawking?

After a moment's silence, Rivailen smiled at Barufiniel. 'Aye, I know that village,' she told her. 'I'm staying there myself this night. We might ride there together. I am Rivailen, daughter of Halidarn,' she told her, 'and by my reckoning we are both far from home.' She drew her cloak a little more tightly around her. 'This is the first I have seen of Gondor,' she said then, keeping her voice steady. 'In kindness, would you tell me what is that yonder?' Rivailen pointed back at the still-glowing circle.

[Midge]

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[Curufin]

Fearghan realized something was strange the moment he awakened. He didn't even have to open his eyes - the light shining on them was natural light, not the artificial light of the ship conveying him to Gonebeyond.

Had they crash-landed planetside sometime while he had been sleeping? Had they already reached their destination? That, at least, was impossible. They still had a vector jump before they reached Gonebeyond, and he always hurled when they did that.

Opening his eyes at last, he found himself in a place he had never seen before. No cities were in sight, nothing looked the least bit familiar. If anything, it looked something like his childhood home, a place that he would never see again. Could never see again.

He stood, brushing the dust from his clothes.

Well, at least there was no sign of Fleet, and there was no disturbance in the Weave. So no danger right now. Good.

He stretched, and began to sing to himself, a soothing song that calmed his nerves, as well as any human who might hear it.

[Aikanáro]

It was not the portal itself that caught Tanwendë's attention. This was the third that she had seen, the second in Gondor, and she was beginning to think upon them as something new and yet unsurprising. One had to adapt, such was Tanwendë's philosophy, and if there were now great shining circles in the land, so be it.

No, what Tanwendë noticed was the man there, the man who sang. There was a look about him, something that even Tanwendë who had walked among many peoples could note. He was not, she determined at once, a man of Gondor. Nor did he look like a traveller of the sort that tended to pass through these plains. She herself had come from her cottage in North Ithilien, latest in a series of staying-places she had built, and she had passed many on the roads. She knew the air of a traveller, and he did not have it.

Neither was his song alike to any she had heard before, and given that all music in the end could be traced back, this too puzzled her. Tanwendë decided to approach him. She rode up from ahead, so as not to startle him, and dismounted at some distance from the man and the portal. She was clad in the worn garments of a traveller, but her hair was coiled ornately atop her head, and she had the light of the Eldar in her eyes.

'Hail!' she called to him, waiting for an appropriate pause in his singing. 'It is a fine voice you have. I am a collector of sorts, and it would please me to know from you the name of your song.'

[Earniel]

Beryn drummed her fingers on the grassy ground. She was making less and less sense of what she was seeing. Right now another woman had arrived with her horse and had approached the first woman on the plains.

She wasn't entirely sure what both women were, but the horse was definitely an Elvish breed. Beryn knew that much. This was further evidenced by the horse's gear which reminded her rather of the sort that the Elves of Greenwood used. So that would probably mean the second woman was an Elf, or at the very least an Elf-friend.

But then Greenwood Elves were not the only Elves left in the world, just the only ones that Beryn had seen and with whom the Beornings sometimes traded so they would have to serve as standard for all Elves. Elves could be haughty and aloof, but while they weren't always pleasant, they were decent folk through and through. So what was this Elf doing with a sorceress?

Now the first woman was pointing up at the lit circle, but not in a 'look-what-I-did'-way, but rather a 'what-the-hell-is-that?'. Beryn made a face, had she been too hasty in her assessment? Perhaps this woman wasn't such a powerful sorceress in the first place. After all, if one could summon a dragon out of the sky, surely no one would settle for one that puny...

Whatever the first woman was, sorceress, or no. The Elf might know what was going on. They lived forever, it was said, so if you ever saw something strange, the best one could do was ask an Elf, and make do with what hazy answer you got. Elves didn't always come to the point right away if they could help it. In this case hazy answers were better than none at all.

Beryn quickly wrapped her catch up in leaves and stuffed them under the bushes with her gear, she could always come back for it here. Picking up her walking staff, she rose from the bushes, and strolled down to the two women on the plains.

"Good day to you both," Beryn said as she approached them. "Please forgive my intrusion, if intruding I am. I am Beryn from the Langflood valley. I am a stranger in these parts and we do not quite have something like that at home. Do either of you have any idea what it is and what exactly it does? And whether it is wise to remain standing here so closely?"

[Curufin]

Fearghan looked up when he heard the sound of hooves. It had been a long time since he'd heard it, back on his homeworld, before the Fleet had come down upon them. They'd had horses then, and even though years had passed, it was a sound and a smell he'd never forget.

He looked up at her, a slight look of annoyance on his face. He couldn't locate her in the Weave. She had a thread, of course, every living creature did, but it was entirely different than anything he had experienced. A different sort of music, a different type of song. This was getting stranger by the moment.

"Oh, would it please ye, then?" he asked, his voice sporting an almost Gaelic lilt. "I'm not quite sure it would please me. At least not until you tell me who you are and where this is?"

[Aikanáro]

'If it should please you,' Tanwendë echoed, tilting her head slightly and looking back at him, 'then I see no harm in it.' She smiled the sort of smile one might give when indulging a child. 'It is not the most prudent of ideas, to go walking out in a land that you know not even the name of.'

He was annoyed at her for approaching him, that much she could tell, but she would let it pass.

'I am called Tanwendë,' she told him simply. 'We stand now on the plains of Anórien.' He had not walked here in a day, she thought to herself. Where had he come from, that he knew not where he was?

'It would please me now,' she said to him, her voice still lilting and light, 'to hear your own name, and from which direction you have come, to be so lost.'

~-~-~

Rivailen shook her head. 'If it wanted to do us harm, it would do so no matter where we stood,' she told Beryn. 'You're not intruding. As it happens I was asking that same question. I too am a stranger here. My name is Rivailen, daughter of Halidarn, and this is Barufiniel daughter of Rameldir, who perhaps knows more than we do of this.' She looked back to the Elf, hoping she would have knowledge to share.

[Curufin]

"My name is Fearghan, and my mother's people hold the Windy Steppe weave," he said, introducing himself in proper Nurail fashion. All Nurail would know him as a Weaver, of course, although he doubted that this woman - whatever she was - would.

He looked at her with annoyance for a moment, before his shoulders fell a bit. There was no point being obstinate - she had all the knowledge, and he had none.

"I've come from the ship Freyja, bound for Gonebeyond space. I don't think that's where I am."

He hadn't recognized the place name she told him, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. There were many places in Gonebeyond.

[Aikanáro]

Tanwendë nodded. 'You have come then from the river,' she said. 'That is not so far from here, although it may be far indeed from your destination. I have not heard of such a place.'

Gone beyond? Beyond what, she wondered. It was a strange name. There were steppe lands to the East, but that was a great distance even for one who was sailing, and he did not have the look of a man from any of the Easterling peoples she had encountered on her travels.

'Do you wish to return to your ship?' she asked him then, encouragingly. 'I can show you the way to the river, and likely it will still be there. I suggest though that you turn back and head for home, as the land you seek is not to be found along this path.'

[Midge]

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[Curufin]

"No, not the river," he said, fighting annoyance. "And not that kind of ship."

Was it possible that he had crashed on a planet that not only didn't have space travel, but didn't even know about space travel?

Great. Just great.

With a forceful gesture, he pointed up.

"A ship in space. Among the stars."

He was getting more and more annoyed at this woman. She was either giving him a hell of a time, or she was ignorant. And neither pleased him. He was used to getting what he wanted, and had little patience when he wasn't. But he wasn't sure that he could touch her Weave...it had a different sort of timbre to it, a key in which he had never played. It was true that he had mainly used his talents among other Nurail - it was dangerous to broadcast oneself as a Weaver in other circles. Nurail gave a grudging - if fearful - respect. Others were likely to hand one over to Black Andrej for an 'inquisition' in which death would be the most pleasant part. But still, the music of this place, the tones that infused it, were different. And he was not sure at all that they would bend to his will.

[Aikanáro]

Tanwendë curbed her first instinct, which was laughter. Whatever distorted tales this man had been told, he believed them. She would have to be diplomatic, no matter what it was that he said. Stranger things than this had she been told, in the far reaches of the world.

'Fearghan,' she said, calling him by name to calm him, and taking a step closer, 'I know not what you have heard, but that is a way that you cannot sail.' Likely as not, even Tanwendë herself could not make that particular journey, not now. 'No mortal has taken such a journey since before the world was changed, and that happened in years beyond your reckoning. There is only one mariner who sails among the stars, and you are not he.'

She paused, considering it carefully, and then told him: 'Even if by some miracle you did as you wish to, and sailed the Straight Road, it would only mean your death. Those lands are not alike to ours here, and no mortal man can dwell there long. If the spirit of exploration is within you, that is well. There must be many places you have yet to see. Turn your mind away from that which is impossible.'

The advice was unasked for, but Tanwendë who had spent much time in the company of the Secondborn felt that she had to give it, lest this man throw his life away in the pursuit of something he barely understood.

[Varnafindë]

Barufiniel nodded in greeting to the newcomer she had just been introduced to.

"I have been to Gondor before, but only a couple of times," she said, "but I can tell you this much: This is not a normal feature of Gondor. I have never seen anything like it, either in Gondor or anywhere else. I haven't even heard about it - and if such a phenomenon had been observed earlier, I'm sure I would have.
I just wonder - that dragon didn't fly here, he only flew after he had come through. He came through by falling - as if by accident, not by his own choice. So I wonder where he came from. I wonder whether that circle - I know it sounds far-fetched, but I really do wonder - whether the circle could be a door to a different world?"