Yet Another Dumb Teenager Falls Into Tortall

by an anonymous geek

A/N: this is based on a true story. *giggles* Okay, so maybe it isn't, but let's pretend it is.

Disclaimer- I don't own nothin'

Prologue

This is the story of the strangest thing that has ever happened to me. It's not your everyday story, so it may be hard to believe me, but it's the truth. Even I was skeptical when it happened to me, and it was right there in front of me. It all happened when I was 17 and very naïve. I must go back to that day when it all happened, many years ago . . .

~ * ~

I ran down the street. I hadn't seen may friend, Sarah, for a long time, so I was heading toward her house to spend the whole day and night with her. I was running, and pretty fast, but I still noticed the shining object in the woods next to me. After I walked over to it, I looked at it closely.

It was a silver amulet, and I knelt down to pick it up. As I did this, I felt a jolt of pain run through me like I never felt before, and everything around me went black.

~ * ~

I awoke outside, in the snow, with a blurry figure above me. After I rubbed my eyes and looked at the person above me, I noticed the figure to be a girl, around my age, with light brown hair and hazel eyes. She was very tall, I noticed, and had major muscles.

"Who are you and where are you from?" asked the girl as she offered me her hand to help me up.

I took the hand and stood up. I felt a small weight on my shoulders and realized I still had my backpack on. I rubbed my head, trying to clear the thousands of questions running through it at that moment. "My name is Lauren Titus, and I'm from Fort Lee, New Jersey."

"New Jersey. I have never heard of that place. You must be a foreigner. How did you get here?"

"I don't know, but could you tell me who you are?"

"My name is Keladry of Mindelan."

That hit me like lightning. I was so shocked. I had read the "Protector of the Small" books when I was small, and had always imitated Kel and tried to be like her. And this girl was claiming to be her. I was sure that either she was mad or she was lying. Or I was mad. "You're not serious, are you?"

She looked shocked, but then covered the look with the blank one that I guessed to be her "Yamani face". "Why would I joke about it?"

I shook my head to clear my thoughts. I was now finding this whole thing rather funny. "And I guess we're in Tortall, aren't we?" I asked sarcastically.

Kel didn't seem to catch my sarcasm, so she answered truthfully. "Yes."

"Well, isn't this just going to be dandy?" Kel gave me another strange stare and I laughed. "So I guess at this point you're a squire, right?"

"Yes."

"And we're right outside the palace, correct?"

Again she simply said, "Yes."

"Well, aren't you gunna introduce me to Neal and the gang? They are here for Midwinter, right?" I asked, once again sarcastically. I was sure that this was all a joke.

She looked at me even more strangely.

"How do you know about Neal? I thought you were a foreigner. Wait . . . you're a seer, aren't you?"

"You might say that. It's getting pretty cold out here, how about we go into this little palace of yours and warm up by a fire, eh?"

"Alright." Then she led me inside the palace.

~ * ~

After we had talked for a while, and I had told Kel all about Earth (she did not believe a word of what I was saying, just as I didn't believe a word that she was saying), we decided to get something to eat. We both realized how hungry we were once we walked into the mess hall, so we both put a lot of food on our trays and headed over to where Kel's friends sat.

I was staring at everything around me. It was exactly how I had imagined it. Only better. More real. As Kel and I walked over to the squires' part of the mess hall, my jaw dropped. I recognized Neal as soon as I saw him. He turned to us and smiled at Kel, then turned to me with a confused look on his face.

"Kel, who's this?" he asked.

I realized then that I must look really strange to them. I was wearing jeans and a green Old Navy shirt. Yes, I must have looked very weird.

"This is Lauren Titus. She's a foreigner from New Jersey."

I smiled. This was all really humorous. Just then, a tall man who looked as if he were my age, walked over. He had blond hair that looked almost white, and he had ice blue eyes. He was very handsome, I had to admit, but I knew who he was, so I wasn't fooled by his good looks. "Oh, look, here comes Joren the Jerk," I said in a fake whisper. I wanted to see if it would tick him off. It did. I took pleasure in the angry look on his handsome face.

"So, I see you've brainwashed her, Mindelan."

Kel, who was still shocked at my knowing about Joren, said, "She's a seer, or like one anyway. This has nothing to do with me. Obviously, she knows all about you."

Then I chimed in, with a cocky smile on my face, "Of course I do."

He scowled at me, then Kel, then walked away.

I started laughing. "He really is annoying, isn't he?"

Kel and her friends smiled.

"Joren the Jerk? I like it. It suits him real well. And it has a nice ring to it," said Neal.

I think it was then that they accepted me.

~ * ~

I walked out of the mess hall alone and heard a sneering voice behind me. "Who are you anyway? Another wench like Kel?"

I almost giggled, but I held it back and kept a serious look on my face. "Ohhh, what a beautiful name for me. You always come up with the sweetest things to say, Joren darling," I said in a voice dripping with sarcasm.

It had the intended effect. He scowled.

"Scowls really don't become you, Joren. I would have thought from all those hours spent looking in the mirror, you would have noticed that already."

Deeper scowl. Then he grabbed me and tried to throw me against the stone wall. But I was fast. Instead of hitting the wall, I threw my legs up in front of me, they hit the wall hard, and then I flipped over. I now stood across from Joren, ready to fight him.

Thankfully, when I had been going through that whole I-want-to-be-a-lady-knight phase, my parents had let me take lessons, and I was now an excellent swordsman, archer, and wrestler. I was great at hand to hand combat. He aimed a punch at my head, and I quickly ducked. I threw my leg up to kick him in the stomach, but he grabbed it and twisted. I fell to the ground. I got up quickly and punched him in the stomach.

He put his arms around his stomach, trying to ease the pain, and I took this moment of confusion to punch his face. I knew he was going to have a pretty bad black eye later. Then he pushed me to the ground. We kept punching each other till we were both covered with bruises. Then I pinned him. This must have shocked him dreadfully. I decided that this was not the time to gloat, or else he would really rip off my head later, when I was out of strength because of this fight.

I offered him my hand. I knew he was going to pull me down, but I was fairly strong. As he tried to pull me down, I held my ground. Then he decided it wasn't worth it and he stood up.

I looked around us and noticed that we had attracted a large crowd. Neal stood in the front, with a shocked look on his face. "You beat Joren?"

I shrugged. I didn't like praise or anything, so I just decided to be humble, even though I was feeling pretty good about it. "I must admit that Joren is really good." This seemed to calm him down a little bit. But only a little and it did not make much difference. He was steaming with rage. He walked away, and I let him. I didn't want to make him any angrier with me, because I was really starting to feel the pain in my body now.

~ * ~

Later that day, after word was out about me, I was summoned by the king. I was awestruck by King Jonathon, because I had read so much about him, too. I told him who I was and how I had come here. I did mention that I knew almost everything about the future of Tortall. He was very interested in this, but he was soon called away by greater needs. One good thing came of it though: I was given a good room in the palace.

After I walked out of the meeting, I went to my room. I changed out of my jeans and t-shirt, and into some simple breeches and a white shirt. I was quite fond of the Tortallan clothes. Then I walked outside, with my backpack that I had brought with me from Earth, and I sat on a bench.

I pulled my portable CD player out of my backpack, put my Third Eye Blind CD in, closed my eyes, and listened. The music made me think of home. I missed my family, primarily because I was almost positive I would never see them again. Before I could get any more homesick, I opened my eyes.

In front of me stood Joren. I was really scared because I thought that he might kill me right then and there. He must have noticed my fear, because he put a smirk on his face. "Not so cocky now, are you? Now that you don't have too much strength left."

This ticked my off. I wanted to rip his head off, and I attempted to. I think this actually surprised him. The only girl he was used to fighting with was Kel, and she was way calmer than I was. We fought, much like before, but this time he pinned me. I was out of strength and couldn't move. He held out his hand to help me up, and I took it without trying to pull him down so I could beat the heck out of him. I was much too tired. I sat down on the bench and pulled the headphones over my head. I noticed that Joren still stood there.

"What is it now?" I asked, really getting annoyed.

"What is that thing?" He said this with a tone that suggested that it was some torture device, not a CD player.

"It's a CD player."

He gave me a strange look.

"It plays music."

Another strange look.

"Look, do you want to listen?" I didn't wait for him to answer. I got up and shoved the headphones on his head. I smirked. This was going to funny. I was going to get a kick out of this. Once I had turned on the CD player, I waited for his reaction. He jumped as the music started. I giggled. Of course he hadn't heard anything like this before. He was used to ballroom music and sweet and slow ballads sung by people with amazing voices. Quite boring. The volume was turned up really high and I could hear "I want somthin' else" coming from it.

He seemed to like the music, surprisingly. At the end of the song, he took the headphones off and handed them to me.

"How does that work?" he asked me.

I tried to figure out how to explain this to a person who had never seen a CD player before in his life. "Well, someone sings a song, and a machine commits it to memory, then converts it onto these discs so that this machine can play the music," I said, taking the CD out and showing it to him.

"Is this some sort of magic?"

"No. In my world we don't have the same sort of magic as you do."

He gave me another one of his strange looks and walked away. I shrugged and put the CD back in the CD player and turned it on again and started listening to it.

~ * ~

A/N: Okay, I know this is a little weird, but I kinda like the whole idea of Joren listening to CDs. hehe. Tell me if you like it and if you want me to continue it.