Chapter One

This one is a rather fantastic tale about magic and elves and Middle Earth and three girls who had their lives upended out of the blue for no apparent reason. Of course, Middle Earth and elves and magic all only exist in Tolkien's books, so there's no way this tale is true. If that's what you want to believe, go ahead. It's easier to believe that. At the beginning, I certainly wished I could.

Anyway, so my name is Robin and I'm from Texas (no, that's not really important, but I'm proud of it). I'm not going to tell you my last name, because it doesn't really matter. I never really used it after all this happened anyway. So, I was 27 years old and I had just graduated (from a pretty good school) with a PhD in set theoretic topology (you don't actually have to know what that is, but please don't mention topography…they are NOT related, not really anyway). And I was about to embark on the journey of my life with my two best friends in the world, Crystal and Nikki. Nikki and I (and Nikki's six year old son, Andy) were settling into the small apartment in Seoul (South Korea, in case anyone was wondering) that Crystal had found for us all. I was going to be teaching math in English at a really prestigious school in Gangnam, Crystal was about to start a new nursing job at a huge hospital not three blocks from my school, and Nikki was going to be working with a Taekwondo master in the countryside (she was only going to be staying with us for a few weeks before heading out to her dream job). Everything was going to be awesome. Until that morning when we woke up, only God knows where, and…well, here's what happened:

My first thought was that I must have accidentally left the window open, because there was a very cold draft blowing across my bare face. But as I started to wake up, I began to notice some very strange things. First, I was not in my bed. I had to have been lying on some extraordinarily soft blankets on a very hard floor. A hard, lumpy floor with a lumpy pillow. Definitely not my Tempur-pedic pillow. Second, I was wearing strange clothes that were not my pajamas. They were warm and soft and practical. So not what I would have worn to bed. Third, it was the end of summer, so Korea was still really hot. And our air conditioning was not that good.

I opened my eyes to see trees and snow instead of my ceiling. That's when I really knew something was wrong. I sat up and looked around in shock. Where was our apartment? Why was there a forest here? And what time was it? It was so murky that I couldn't tell if it was day or night. Maybe there was no difference in this forest. There was a fire pit that had burned down to embers in the night and still gave off enough warmth that I didn't feel like I was actually freezing to death. But Nikki and Crystal had to be miserable.

Looking down, I saw that I wasn't wrapped in blankets after all, but a super soft and warm sleeping bag with the fire pit to my right. Across from me on the other side of the fire pit, Crystal was sleeping in an identical sleeping bag, using a pack that I had never seen before as a pillow. Her long dark brown hair was covering her face, so her pale skin was at least a little protected from the cold. Another quick glance downward showed that I had been using a pack just like it for my pillow. No wonder it was lumpy. I looked for Nikki and Andy, but they were nowhere to be seen. Hopefully they were still in the apartment. And in Korea. 'Cause there was no way we were in Korea with how cold it was. Even I was uncomfortably cold. And I loved the cold.

We must've been out there for a while, 'cause my ears felt completely frozen. I dug around in my sleeping bag and pack until I found a soft, white hat and sighed at the immediate relief when I slipped it on. That was one thing taken care of. Now I just had to figure out where we were, how we had gotten there, and how to get back to where we were supposed to be. First things first, though. I had to wake up Crystal.

"Psst. Crystal. Wake up."

She groaned and rolled over. Of course that didn't work. Crystal was not a morning person. If it even was morning. I scooted close enough that I could prod her with a nearby stick I found.

"Chanders. Wake up. Something's wrong." (For those of you wondering, I call Crystal 'Chanders' (pronounced Shanders) sometimes. It comes from the day I first met her. I thought her full sounded like Crystal Chandelier. But Chandelier was a little too long, so I shortened it to Chander and then added the 's' to the end for fun.)

There must've been something alarming in my voice, because she nearly jumped out of her sleeping bag.

"Wha-what's going on? Where are we?"

"That's what I wanna know. Last thing I remember was climbing into my bed. And I'm guessing by your reaction that you don't remember getting here, either."

She shook her head. "Man, it's cold."

"Check and see if there's a hat in your pack. It helps."

"My pack?"

"What you've been using as a pillow."

"I don't remember packing this."

"I don't remember ever seeing any of this before. Somehow, we're decked out in camping gear and in the middle of a freezing cold forest with no idea how we got here or where we are."

"Looks like it."

"Any ideas?"

"Maybe someone drugged us, kidnapped us, drug us out here and left us for dead."

"With all this gear?" I emptied my pack onto the ground. In the pile was pretty much anything we could need to survive in the woods on our own. There was even toilet paper. "No one would have packed all this stuff for us if they wanted to hurt us. Look, there's even a crank powered cell phone charger." I found my phone in my sleeping bag and was not surprised when I didn't have signal or Wi-Fi. "Do you have any signal?"

Crystal looked around for her phone and quickly sighed in disappointment. "No. And my battery's almost dead."

"Your battery's always almost dead. We have a charger." I handed the charger to her and she started cranking away.

"Who on earth would have thought to pack all this stuff for us? They thought of everything. There's even a change of clothes here." She dug around in her pack and held up a shirt that would have maybe fit on one of the dolls I had as a child (she's pretty tiny for her height). "It looks like it'll fit, too."

"Forget that." I had just thought of something terrifying. "Who changed us? And what did they do to us while we were out?" Crystal and I shared a horrified look. I didn't feel any different. And what I could see of myself looked normal.

"Surely nothing happened. Right?"

I shrugged. It was better just to think that. "Right. Well. We have these really warm clothes and stuff. So whoever put us out here meant to give us a chance. Let's pack up and see what we can find out here."

The worst part of breaking camp was figuring out how to stuff all the stuff I had dumped on the ground (which I was really regretting by that time) back in the pack that suddenly seemed much to small for all of it. It took at least ten minutes and all the OCD organization skills I could muster to get it all back in. Never again, I swore, would I take anything out of that pack. It was just too much effort to get it back in again.

We rolled up our sleeping bags, tied them onto our packs, and covered the fire pit with snow. Then I remembered why I had never been camping before. Not real camping anyway. I had been momma-camping. You know, with a cabin with electricity, running water, Wi-Fi, and my own room. That kind of camping. But we didn't have anything except what we were carrying on our backs. There was no water to wash or brush our teeth in, and no toilet. And I was not prepared to answer nature's call out in the woods, toilet paper or no toilet paper.

We stood around the remains of our fire pit for a few minutes, both of us staring into space. "So…" I broke the silence. "What direction should we go?"

"Well, it would help if we knew where we are."

"But since we don't?"

"I guess any direction's good. We're bound to run into somebody."

"Sure we are. Because, we totally couldn't be in the middle of some frozen forest, hundreds of miles away from any civilization."

"You have any better ideas?"

"Nope. Lead the way. Hopefully we find them soon, 'cause I'm hungry and I don't remember seeing food in that pack." So, whoever packed for us had forgotten one tiny little thing: food. It's not like food is that important, anyway. Ha ha ha ha. I crack myself up sometimes.

Crystal just shook her head and started off, occasionally glancing down at the compass she had found in her pack. I didn't even look to see what direction we were going. With what little information we had, she was right; any direction was just as good as any other.

As the day (again, I only thought it was daytime) wore on, I was really glad for the warm, fur lined boots I was wearing. They were pretty comfortable to walk in and kept the moisture from the snow out. If I had been wearing my usual flats, I would have been completely miserable. As it was, I was only half miserable. See, I start every day with a shower and at least a little breakfast (my favorite is chicken nuggets and sweet tea from Chick-fil-A and if you've never eaten there, you're missing out). So, with no shower and no breakfast, I was feeling pretty disgusting and hungry. Not to mention, glum from the lack of light. There was enough light that filtered down from the trees and reflected off the snow to see directly in front of us, but we couldn't see very far in any direction. And let me tell you, after walking for hours (I kept checking my phone to see how much time had lapsed since the last time I checked it…usually about ten minutes) in the cold and dark, while dirty and hungry is boring. Really boring. And Crystal was being really quiet. She did that sometimes. She would go off into her own little world, just staring into space. Sometimes she made up stories; sometimes she just let her mind wander. But, I knew better than to try to talk to her when she was like that. She just didn't hold up her end of the conversation very well when she was in that mood.

After a while, we started seeing spider webs everywhere. On the trees, in the underbrush, and even some truly giant ones hung between trees that we had to go around because neither of us wanted to get sticky stuff all over us. At least our compass kept us heading in the same direction every time we had to make a detour. As we kept walking, the spider webs grew thicker and thicker, until they covered nearly everything around us. I was just starting to really worry that we were headed into something bad, when Crystal stopped so suddenly in front of my that ran smack into her.

"What is it?"

"I thought I saw something."

"Where?"

"Over there." She pointed off to her right and I strained my eyes in the direction of her finger. With the light being as dim as it was and the spider webs everywhere, I couldn't see much. But, there was definitely something there. Something huge. And creepy. Did I mention it was creepy? I'm kind of a pansy when it comes to creepy. I don't do creepy. But Crystal? Crystal loves creepy. She walked over to the big shape and gasped.

"What? What is it?"

"It's a giant spider! But I think it's dead."

"You think? That's kind of important."

"It's dead."

"I don't like spiders."

"Then stay over there."

I sighed. Come on, Robin. You have a PhD in mathematics. Most people would rather face a live giant spider than even think about doing that. You can do this. One part of me, at least, is brave. The rest of me, however, is logical. There is a huge different between finding a giant spider, dead or not, where there could be more of them that could kill you and doing some math. Math won't kill you. It'll only drive you insane. But, at least you'll be alive. Sort of. While I stood there arguing with myself, Crystal had wandered out of sight. It was even creepier to be near a dead giant spider surrounded by spider webs by myself than being near a dead giant spider surrounded by spider webs when someone who was pretty much fearless was with me. Please Lord, let there be no more giant spiders around. I prayed and followed after Crystal, staying as far away from the spider (which had to be at least twice my size, and I am not a small girl) as I dared. I was more than a little afraid of getting lost in the gloom.

The good news was that I found Crystal not too far from where the first spider was. The bad news was that there were at least eight more dead spiders lying in random spots around where she was kneeling. Her pack was gone, and I didn't see where she had set it down.

"Crystal? Why are you sitting there with all these spiders around?"

"I found someone. He doesn't have a pulse, but I think I can save him. He can't have been gone too long."

"Really?"

She was busy doing CPR and didn't answer me. At times like that, I wished I knew how to save lives. Even knowing little things, like CPR, would've been more useful than knowing whether or not every normal Moore space was metrizable. That was an open problem in topology for a long time and has pretty much been shunted into a Never Never Land for theoretical math problems and so is considered answered and, in part, un-provable (just in case any of you were wondering…no? I didn't think so).

I walked around to get a better look at Crystal's patient without getting in her space. The spiders were still giving me the creeps and I could have sworn I heard something rustling in the underbrush to my right. I kept looking over my shoulder as I walked, straining and failing to see if anything was there. I just wanted to leave this place and never come back. I hate spiders.

The man Crystal was working on was badly wounded and the curved sword in his right hand was covered in what looked like spider guts (so that's a plus for him). Aside from the injuries, he was really handsome: tall, muscular, with long auburn hair and two braids splayed out around his head. He had an empty quiver and a beautifully carved bow strung on his back, which explained the arrows in the dead spiders. He looked like he had walked out of a LOTR cosplay, complete with the most realistic elf ears I had ever seen. They looked even more real than the elf ears in the movies did. I took another look around at the dead spiders, my mind spinning with the idea that had just popped into my head. This must be a movie set. Except, why would they leave an injured or dead actor just lying in the middle of the set? And where were the lights and cameras and directors and extras and all the things that went into making a movie?

The elf/man gasped as he started breathing again. Crystal had done it! She sat back on the ground, practically covered in his blood and went to work patching up his worst wounds. I sighed in relief. But, my relief was short lived as a curved sword like the one the elf/man had was laid against my throat.

A/N: Hi guys! This is my first time writing a LOTR/Hobbit fanfiction (and also my first time writing in first person) and I'd really appreciate any constructive comments or ideas! I am happy to listen to requests for scenes or things you'd like to see. I'm gonna keep this story PG-13, so no slash or hardcore lemon/smut. But, I really want feedback for my work. So please feel free to comment!