Trees
Chapter Eight - Trees
Aragorn appeared in the middle of what seemed to be a park of some sort. There were trees and wooded areas surrounding him, but he stood in an open grassy area. People of all ages were going about their business, paying no attention to him. Children played games and chased each other under the watchful eyes of their parents. Others walked the grounds with dogs at the end of some form of restraint. Still others sat at tables or on benches, talking or just enjoying the spring atmosphere. Glancing around him, Aragorn saw no sign of Lauren. He knew she had to be near, but she was nowhere to be seen at the moment. He summoned Legolas, wishing to have someone to help him figure out what was going on.
Legolas looked around them as soon as he appeared, taking in their surroundings. "Where are we, and where is Lauren?"
"I do not know the answers to either of those questions," Aragorn responded, turning around to look behind them for Lauren.
The sounds of barking turned their attention to a large, brown shape bounding in their direction. They had time to do no more than take a step backwards before the dog was right in front of them. It brushed its head up against Legolas, and leaned into his body. The dog was heavy, and Legolas braced himself as he looked down at the dog in confusion. A woman came running up to them and grabbed the leather strap that trailed behind the dog.
"I am so sorry," she apologized to Legolas. "He got away from me. Just pulled the leash out of my hand. I don't know what got into him." She looked down at the dog. "Bad dog. No treat for you tonight."
"It is well," Legolas said. "There was no harm done. He startled us, but he did not mean to cause any trouble."
"He's too friendly for his own good sometimes," the woman said. "Again, I'm sorry for his behavior. We will leave you alone now." She walked away, tugging at the leash. The dog looked back at Aragorn and Legolas, but turned and followed his master.
Aragorn chuckled as he watched the woman leave. "Even in dreams, animals recognize elves, though the woman did not seem to notice anything unusual about us."
Legolas was about to reply when he spotted a familiar figure. He turned to look, and instantly grabbed for his bow and an arrow. The weapons had not been there moments before, but appeared at his thought.
Aragorn spun around to follow Legolas' gaze, wondering what could have alarmed him in this peaceful setting. His eyes found Lauren running toward them. She did not seem to be giving any attention to her surroundings, and her eyes were not on them, so she was not running to meet them. There was no danger that he could see, though, no reason for her to be running. "Peace, Legolas," Aragorn said, holding out a hand in a gesture meant to calm the elf.
"Lauren is running, Aragorn, she may be in danger." Legolas was tense as he scanned the wooded area behind Lauren for a sign of any enemies.
"Nay," Aragorn remarked. "She is not being pursued. There is no fear on her face. I know not why she is running, but she is in no danger." At his words, Legolas lowered his bow and loosened his grip on the arrow, though the weapons did not disappear.
As she approached them, Aragorn stepped into her path. She was several paces away when she noticed him. Stopping abruptly in mid-stride, she nearly stumbled before catching her balance. "Hi," she said, sounding out of breath. She leaned over and rested her hands on her knees for a moment.
"Are you well?" Legolas asked her, scanning her quickly for any signs that she was in trouble.
"I'm fine," she said as she regained her breath. "I guess I lost track of time." She straightened up and looked at them as she reached up to remove two small objects from her ears. "I wasn't expecting you to show up just yet. Have you been here long?" She gave Legolas a curious look. "What's with the weaponry?"
Legolas finally realized that she was in no danger and there was no need for his bow and arrow, and they disappeared from his hands. Lauren gave him a strange look, but turned her attention to Aragorn as he began to speak.
"We have only been here for a few moments," Aragorn reassured her. "What are those?" he asked curiously, pointing to the small devices she held in her hand.
"See for yourself," she said with a grin, walking closer to him and offering him one of the objects.
He took it warily and slowly lifted it to his ear. When it was close enough, he heard a loud steady beat coming from the object. Having been around her for several days now, he easily recognized it as what she thought of as music. Smiling wryly, he handed it back to her. "I should have guessed. But where is the music coming from?"
She reached down and unclipped a small device from the waistband of her jogging pants. "It's called an iPod. It stores a large amount of music for playback and sends it through the ear pieces so I can listen to my music without bothering anyone else with it."
"So, hearing elvish music has not convinced you to put your music aside?" Aragorn asked with a smile.
"Not quite," she said. She looked over to Legolas. "Don't get me wrong, your music is great, but it really doesn't have much of a beat. I need something to keep me going, keep me on pace when I run."
"Why were you running?" Legolas asked. Though he had made his bow and arrow disappear, he was ready to call them back if they were needed.
"It's a great way to clear my head," Lauren said. "And besides, I normally go running a few times a week. It's great exercise, and it gets me outside in good weather. I have an indoor track that I run on in bad weather, but that isn't nearly as interesting." She shrugged as she tucked the iPod and ear pieces back into their pouch.
"You run simply for exercise?" Aragorn asked. "Why would you wish to do that?" A puzzled expression was on his face, and he glanced aside at Legolas to see the same look on his face.
Lauren chuckled. "Our lifestyles have changed greatly since your time. We no longer walk or ride horses everywhere. We have other means of transportation to get from one place to another. So we have become a people who, in general, do not get enough exercise to stay healthy. Running and hiking are my favorite ways of keeping in shape."
"You said it was a good way to 'clear your head'," Legolas said, changing the subject. "Why did you feel that to be necessary?"
Lauren took a deep breath and looked around. She gestured them over to a clear spot in the grass. After they had all seated themselves, she looked steadily at first one then the other. "I suppose Aragorn has told you about how he found me a few days ago? The night that you first appeared, in fact?"
Legolas nodded. Aragorn had told them all of Lauren's near despair about her situation. It had them all worried.
She nodded. "I thought as much." She took a deep breath and tried to figure out how to say what she wanted to say. "Well, I've had nothing but time to think about things. I've managed to come to a few conclusions, and have actually found peace with all of this. While I have no desire to die, I don't fear death. I know where I'm going upon my death, and it is a wonderful place. It's actually far better than the hectic, chaotic world I live in, so death may not be such a bad thing. My only regret would be the pain my death would cause my family and friends. But I have decided that it is not in my power to affect the outcome of this. If it is my time to die, I will accept that. If not, then I will enjoy my time here as much as possible until I wake. My fate is in God's hands, where it has always been. I just needed to remember that fact."
Aragorn was a little troubled by her words. It sounded to him like she was giving up. "Are you saying that you will not fight for your life?"
"What?" Her forehead wrinkled in confusion. That wasn't quite what she meant. She decided to try to clarify her thoughts a bit better. "No, that's not what I'm saying at all. If I am given a choice, if I have any say in the matter whatsoever, I will fight to live with all the strength I have in me. But I realize that it may not be up to me. And for now, until I am given a choice in the matter, I have found peace. I am an optimistic person by nature, most of the time anyway, though my life has not always been easy. This accident knocked me for a bit of a loop, and I'm doing what I can to make the best of a bad situation. You have greatly helped me with that. If you had never shown up, I think I would surely have gone insane with only my own thoughts to keep me company. But I'm beginning to realize that my accident may be part of a grander scheme of things that I can't see yet. I think we were meant to meet, if that makes any sense at all."
There was a surety in her statement that they could not argue with. Legolas recognized the tone of voice as one that Aragorn had when he had a feeling that something was true but could not explain it. He wondered to himself if the talent of foresight had not been completely lost to Aragorn's descendants.
A red disc came flying toward them suddenly, and Legolas reflexively reached up and grabbed it out of the air before it could hit Aragorn in the head. Once he had it in his hands, he stared at it in confusion. It was made of some flexible material he had never seen before.
"Nice catch," Lauren said approvingly.
"What is this?" Legolas asked, studying the object.
"It's a Frisbee," Lauren said. "And I think those kids want it back." She held out her hand and Legolas gave her the Frisbee. With an experienced flick of her wrist, she sent it sailing back to its owners.
Aragorn and Legolas watched as it soared back over to the group of kids that it had come from.
Legolas watched as the children threw the object back and forth to each other. "I have never seen people from your world here," he commented. "Why are they here now?"
"This is the park I usually go running in, and it would feel far too strange and eerie without everyone around." Lauren shrugged casually.
"Eerie?" Aragorn questioned.
"Yes," Lauren answered. "It's safer to go running when there are people around. I know some people like to go running when they have the place to themselves, but I feel safer with others around me. Even though I know this is a dream world and there is no danger, it just makes me feel better to have people nearby when I run."
"What kind of dangers might you face if you go running when there are no others nearby?" Aragorn asked.
Lauren didn't want to worry them, so she kept her answer kind of vague. "Well, I haven't heard of any problems in this particular park, but you never know what kind of psycho might be lurking around the next bend in the path." She tried to direct their attention to something else. "I have a friend who loves horror movies, and I've watched several of them with her. The entire purpose of these stories is to scare and horrify people. Because I've seen these movies, I have images in my head of villains beyond anything you could imagine. Since this whole world is made up from my imagination, I didn’t want to take the chance on having Jason, Freddy or Leatherface jumping out of the bushes at me. So imaging these people was really a way to keep my imagination from conjuring my worst nightmares."
Aragorn and Legolas were a little worried by what she didn't say. With her earlier comments, they knew there must be real dangers lurking in her world for a woman running on her own. But she obviously did not want to discuss that, so they let the subject drop for now.
"The people seem real enough," Aragorn said. "You once told me that you did not want to imagine people in this world because they did not interact with you as real people would."
"Well, I only said that carrying on a conversation with them was rather boring because they didn't say anything that I wouldn't have expected them to say. I don't typically interact that much with people in the park. I just wanted them around for my own peace of mind."
"We spoke briefly with a woman whose dog escaped her," Legolas put in. "We did not have any expectations as to how she should behave, so how did she seem so real?"
"You may not have had any expectations about her behavior, but I did," Lauren pointed out. "I assume she apologized to you and scolded the dog?"
"Yes," Aragorn said slowly. He wondered how she knew what had happened, when she was nowhere to be seen when the event happened.
"That happened to me a few weeks before the accident. It actually isn't that uncommon for a dog to take an interest in people nearby. The owners generally try to keep their dogs away from others. You never know who might have a fear of or an allergy to dogs, or who might just not like being accosted by a strange dog."
"The dog ran straight to Legolas and ignored me," Aragorn said. "We assumed it was because Legolas is an elf and has an affinity with animals that humans do not have."
"Your expectations were probably what caused the dog to act like it did," Lauren said. "I'm hardly the only one who can control this world." They simply nodded, accepting her explanation that this world and all events in it were shaped by the thoughts of all three of them.
Sensing that the conversation had reached its end, Lauren grinned at them both. "And now, we should start discussing our plans for the evening. I have so many things that I want to show you!"
Her excitement was obvious, and Legolas hated to say what he knew he must. He looked at Aragorn, then back to Lauren. "We do not have the entire night to spend here, but only a few hours."
"What? Why?" Lauren asked, glancing back and forth between them..
Legolas gave Aragorn another sidelong glance before explaining. "When we are here, our minds do not get much rest. Our bodies may be sleeping, but our minds are not. Because of this, the longer we spend here, the longer we must go without a full night's sleep. Aragorn has gone several nights now without getting the sleep he needs. It is beginning to affect his waking hours, and we are becoming concerned."
Lauren frowned at Aragorn, then reached over and lightly slapped his arm.
Aragorn returned her frown. "Why did you do that?" Her actions had him confused.
"You never told me that being here was affecting you like that." Lauren huffed in irritation and waved her arms as she spoke to emphasize her point. "The last thing I want is for our time together to hurt you. Sleep deprivation can have all kinds of nasty side effects. You need to be paying better attention to your health. I swear, men just think they're indestructible. Think about this. If you fail to take care of yourself and get sick, you won't be any help to anyone at all. And I can't allow you to jeopardize your health and safety. You have a whole kingdom relying on you, not just yourself. Why didn't you tell me about this?" She crossed her arms and glared at Aragorn with an eyebrow raised in extreme annoyance.
Aragorn just stared at her in amazement. He had only briefly glimpsed her temper in the few days that he had known her. This was a reaction he hadn't quite expected. Hearing an odd sound, he glanced over to find Legolas struggling to hold in his laughter. "What do you find so funny?" he asked, rather irritated.
Legolas let go and gave into his laughter. "You two," he said. "Look at her. Does she not remind you of someone?"
Aragorn looked back at her and saw what Legolas meant. Her expression was one that he had seen too many times on Elrond's face when he had dragged himself home in less than perfect shape after a misadventure. He couldn't help the small smile that crept onto his lips. "Yes, mellon-nín, she does."
Lauren looked between the two of them suspiciously and tapped her fingers against her arm. "Who do I remind you of?"
Legolas answered her question with a smile on his lips. "You are truly a child of Elrond. You do not know the many times we have heard a similar lecture or seen that same expression upon his face. He always took it very personally whenever either of us came to his doors injured in one way or another."
Her lips quirked into a lop-sided smile. "Fine. Though you may not have meant it that way, I think I'll take that as a compliment. Now, if this is such a problem, why are you even here?"
Aragorn gazed at her seriously. "Because I saw what happened the last time I disappeared without an explanation. I wanted to tell you why we could not be here for the full night."
She nodded, accepting that. "OK, you've explained. I understand the situation. Now, shouldn't you be leaving, or do I have to kick you out of here?" She still had her arms crossed and was gazing hard at him, seemingly ready to do whatever she could to protect him from himself.
"Could you do that?" Legolas asked in curiosity, tilting his head to the side as he watched her watch Aragorn.
She gave him an inscrutable look. "It's my world. Why couldn't I do that?" She shrugged slightly.
"It matters not whether you can or cannot," Aragorn said. "Arwen, Legolas and I agreed that Legolas and I would visit with you for a short while, and then at a specified time, Legolas will make sure that I am ready to leave, and Arwen will awaken me. She has a special tea prepared that will enable me to sleep without dreams."
"Good," Lauren said. She looked back to Legolas. "Just for future reference, if it looks like Aragorn is beginning to feel the affects of not getting enough sleep, use the tea. Now that I know what's going on, I won't be concerned if you don't show up. His health, and yours, are more important than keeping me occupied."
Aragorn gave Legolas an incredulous look. "Did she just give you permission to drug me against my will?"
Legolas laughed. "I believe she did. Not that I have ever needed permission in the past."
Shaking his head, Aragorn gave in. In this, he was greatly outnumbered. Arwen, Gimli, and Legolas were all insisting that he get more rest, and now Lauren had sided with them. He had no hope of fighting such overwhelming strength of character. "Very well. I will attempt to better watch out for my health. But for now, we still have time for a visit. What did you have in mind for our time tonight?"
She rolled her eyes. "I had plans to show you both some of the forests and national parks in my time. While there is little unspoiled land left, we do have places where the land and animals are protected. There are some very beautiful places that I have had the good fortune to visit a time or two."
Legolas' eyes lit up at the thought of getting to explore new forests, and Lauren knew she had chosen correctly.
"Well, we probably only have time to visit one of them tonight," Lauren said. "We should start with the Redwood forest, I think. The trees there are the most impressive." She looked at Legolas. "This might even be something you have never seen before. This type of tree doesn’t grow everywhere. They're known as the tallest and oldest living things on earth."
Lauren laughed at the anticipation in Legolas' face. He wouldn't rush her, but she could see how anxious he was to see the trees that she was describing. She decided to stop teasing him and stood up, brushing the grass and leaves from her jeans. They followed her lead. "First things first," Lauren said and changed from her tank top, jogging pants and tennis shoes to jeans, hiking boots and a short sleeved shirt. As she closed her eyes and concentrated, the city park disappeared, and a forest of towering trees took shape around them.
Legolas and Aragorn gazed upward as the new forest formed, their mouths falling open in wonder. Lauren followed their gaze and looked up, and up, and up to the canopy of leaves far above their heads. No matter how many times she saw this, it was always an impressive sight, an awe inspiring sight, actually. Some of these trees grew as tall as a thirty-five story building, and their trunks could grow as wide as 22 feet. Aragorn had asked her last night if the sight of the galaxies made her feel small. But oddly enough, these trees could make her feel much smaller than looking at images of entire galaxies. She supposed that was because a galaxy seemed a more distant thing, while she was able to put her hand on the trees and stare up the length of the trunk. Standing next to these trees made her feel like an ant in comparison. She had seen taller buildings, but seeing a tree that large was always enough to take her breath away. Of course that could also be because she couldn't take her eyes off the tops of the trees and looking upwards like that for extended periods of time made her feel dizzy. She forced her eyes away from the trees and looked back at Legolas and Aragorn. Aragorn was still gazing upward in amazement, but Legolas was slowly turning in a circle, trying to take in everything at once. He smiled as he saw some chipmunks playing among the grass and bushes a short distance away.
Legolas walked over and placed a hand against one of the trees. "These trees are old," he said softly. "Very old."
Lauren nodded. "Some of the trees may be as old as two thousand years. Most of the trees live for a few centuries, but some of them are much older. It takes four hundred years for the trees to mature." She laughed. "Until I met you, I thought these trees were the oldest living things I would ever encounter."
Legolas barely heard her jest, so taken was he with the trees and the forest around them.
"Would you care to try climbing one of them?" Aragorn asked with a twinkle in his eyes. The bare trunks of the trees loomed above them, and the lowest branches were over halfway up the height of the tree. There were few handholds, and the trunks were too large to reach around with their arms. Climbing one of these trees would be very difficult.
"I think it would be difficult for even an elf to climb these trees," Legolas said in agreement with Aragorn's thoughts.
"It has been done before, though," Lauren said, catching their attention.
They both looked at her with expressions of amazement.
"How?" Aragorn asked. It did not seem possible to him.
Lauren explained. "Well, the smaller trees have been climbed, anyway. I don't know if anyone has any idea how to climb some of the largest trees. But you take a leather strap and wrap it around the trunk of the tree to provide leverage, and wear a pair of shoes with spikes. You have to move the leather strap upwards, dig your shoes into the side of the tree and repeat until you're as high as you want to be."
"Put spikes into the tree?" Legolas asked, aghast.
"It doesn't damage the tree," Lauren said. "And that's about the only way you're going to get up there."
"I will choose to stay on the ground, then," Legolas said, not believing the suggestion that she had just made. He had to remind himself that Lauren was a human, not an elf, and until meeting him, had never seen an elf. Humans, even in his time, typically saw trees as something to be used to build houses and such things, not as living entities that could be hurt.
Lauren's eyes shone as a thought occurred to her. "What am I saying? This is a dream, isn't it? We can do anything we like." With that, she disappeared.
Legolas and Aragorn looked around to see where she had gone.
"Up here!" Her voice faintly drifted down to them.
They looked up and saw her among the lowest branches of a tree, seated securely on a thick branch. "Think it and it will happen," she called down to them.
With a thought, Legolas found himself several branches above Lauren's head. He looked down and saw Aragorn still on the ground. Aragorn had never felt as secure as Legolas or any other elf in the branches of a tree, but he had spent far more time among the trees than most humans. "Come, Aragorn, this is a chance you do not want to miss." He called down to encourage Aragorn to join them.
Aragorn appeared moments later and found a sturdy branch to sit on. "This is higher than the other trees I have climbed my friend. I would not wish to fall from this one."
"That would probably be a bad thing," Lauren agreed. "I don't know if you guys can actually get hurt here, but I don't want to chance it. Remember that grandfather paradox I told you about? I'd really hate for anything to happen to you, Aragorn. You could wipe out my entire family in a split second."
"But if you are descended from Eldarion, having something happen to Aragorn would not destroy your family line," Legolas put in, seeing a flaw in her reasoning.
"And what if I am descended from another child that does not yet exist?" Lauren pointed out. "I have absolutely no way of knowing the exact trace of my genealogy. I can't let anything happen to Aragorn here. I can't risk it."
"It is so nice to hear your genuine concern for my safety," Aragorn said wryly. Lauren's only concern seemed to stem from her desire not to change history and possibly destroy her family. He could see why she would be concerned with that, but he was feeling rather as if that was all she cared about.
"Sorry," Lauren said, hearing the sarcasm in his voice. "I didn't mean that how it sounded. I really don't want anything to happen to either of you, simply because I have come to care about you both. Is that better?"
Aragorn rolled his eyes and Legolas hid a smirk as Aragorn replied in a long-suffering tone of voice. "Yes, Lauren. That will do. Now, how much experience do you have with tree climbing?
"I haven't climbed a tree since I was a child, but I used to love playing in the trees. I was lucky enough, or skilled enough, never to have fallen from one. I've never been up this high, but I often wondered what it would be like to climb one of these. It's a good thing I'm not afraid of heights." She stood up and grabbed a branch about chest level and began climbing higher.
That seemed to be all the encouragement Legolas needed, and he was soon out of sight of the two humans, climbing with greater speed and agility than the others possessed. Aragorn laughed. "We may not see him again until this night is over. I do believe you have sufficiently distracted him to the point that he will not be overly concerned about the time."
Lauren glared at Aragorn as she reached the branch that he had chosen to sit on. "But you'll watch the time, won't you? Or do I need to choose an appropriate time and kick you out?"
"No," Aragorn said with a sigh. "You do not need to take matters into your hands. I will take responsibility for my own health, thank you. We have another half-hour before we reach the time that was set for us."
Lauren chose a branch beside Aragorn's to sit on. She leaned back against the trunk of the tree and let one leg dangle in the open air. "So, I take it from your earlier comment that you've fallen from a few trees in your time?"
"I grew up as a child among elves," Aragorn commented. "I was ever trying to do all the things they could do. But humans do not have the agility of elves in the trees."
"Yeah, I kind of saw that," she said, glancing up to where Legolas had disappeared.
"As a result of attempting to keep up with my brothers or other elves, I ventured where humans were not meant to go. I found out the hard way that branches thick enough to hold the weight of an elf may not hold the weight of a human."
"Ouch," she said, thinking of the pain that probably resulted from some of those falls.
"Yes," Aragorn agreed. "I broke several bones in falls, and received a number of bruises."
"I was lucky, then," she said. "Though I followed my older brother around for most of my childhood and acquired my share of bumps and bruises, I managed not to break anything. I've never had a broken bone in my life."
"Are you sure she is related to you, Aragorn?" a voice came from the branches above their heads.
They looked up to see Legolas climbing back down toward them. "It seems unlikely to me that a relative of yours could reach adulthood with no broken bones."
Lauren laughed. "If recklessness is a family trait, my brothers more than make up for me. They are both daredevils. I seemed to be the only one of us with any common sense at all when we were younger. So when Jeff was heading higher into the tree than he should, or crossing a makeshift bridge that could never have held his weight, I was the one staying behind and telling him that he was going to get himself killed. And when he inevitably got hurt, I had to drag him home to our parents."
"So your brothers are the adventurous ones?" Aragorn asked.
"Now, I never said I wasn't adventurous, just that I was smarter at knowing our limits. Don't forget, for me to be able to warn him or drag him home, I had to be right there beside him to start with. And I'll admit that not all of our little adventures were his idea. It's just that his ideas tended to be more likely to lead to injuries."
"It sounds like he takes after his grandfather, then," Legolas said lightly. "I cannot even count the number of times that I had to drag Aragorn back to his father, or even my own, whichever happened to be closer."
"And I dragged you back injured just as many times," Aragorn said. "Do not try to convince her that I was the only one getting hurt. Ada threatened to tie us both up and keep us from leaving Imladris, not just me."
"He only included me in his threat because he knew that if I left, you would do whatever it took to follow me. And we both know what kind of trouble follows you."
Aragorn protested loudly, then heard a peal of laughter and turned to look at Lauren quizzically.
"You two are worse than Jeff and me!" she exclaimed. "Listening to you, no one would guess your true ages."
Aragorn glared at her for a moment, then gave in and gave a sheepish grin. "Did you and your brother often have arguments like this one?"
She grinned at him. "Well, Jeff tried to pin some of the worst misadventures on me, but no one believed him. They really were all his fault." The wicked grin on her face belied her statement.
Aragorn raised an eyebrow at her. "Why do I find that I do not believe that?"
"I wouldn't have the slightest idea why you would doubt me," Lauren said with an innocent look on her face. After a moment of withstanding Aragorn's disbelieving look, she gave in. "OK, fine. Not all of them were his fault. There was one time that I can remember. I was about five, so he would have been eight. We were out exploring the hills behind our house, and I found this hole in the ground. It really didn’t seem like much, but I wanted to check it out. It was large enough to crawl into, and so I did. It turned out that the hole opened up a bit in the back. It wasn't a real cave, but it was enough like one to spark my imagination."
Legolas looked askance at her. "You willingly crawled into a hole that wasn't even large enough to be a cave?"
"Yeah," she said. "Our father had taken us cave exploring a few times, and I thought I was this great adventurer at the time. I imagined that I had found a cave used by pirates to store hidden treasure." She grinned at their amused looks. "I did say I was five, didn't I? I had a great imagination at that age. I didn't have the faintest idea that it could have been dangerous. Children at that age don't really have much of a self-protective instinct. They don't imagine that anything really bad could happen to them."
"What happened?" Aragorn asked. He had the feeling that there was more to this story than she had told them so far.
"Well, Jeff didn't really see where I had gone. He has always been very protective of me, and I think I panicked him when I suddenly disappeared. He started running around looking for me, and I guess the ground wasn’t all that stable."
Aragorn's eyes widened and Legolas shuddered as they saw where this story was headed. "It collapsed?" Aragorn asked.
"Yeah, it started falling down on my head. I headed back out of the hole, but didn't quite reach the end before I found myself pinned. It was a very good thing that Jeff was there. I had managed to get part of my arms out, and he saw me. It didn't take him long at all to dig me out, since the dirt was loose. All he really had to do was pull me out. But if he hadn't been there, I probably would have suffocated. He saved my life that day. And our parents never found out. Jeff covered for me and made up some excuse for how I got so dirty. He was even more protective of me after that."
"I thought you claimed to have more common sense than your brothers," Aragorn said in disbelief. Her story certainly did not show much common sense.
"Most of the time. I couldn't be expected to know everything, could I? But I never crawled into another hole without someone first telling me that it was safe. I can learn from my mistakes, you see."
"But you went back underground?" Legolas asked in surprise. He would have thought that such an experience would have convinced her never to go underground again.
"Sure, I love exploring caves. There are some really amazing sights in them. Do you not like caves?" She saw something in his expression that suggested he was horrified with her story.
"While I will admit that there can be places of exceeding beauty in caves, I do not enjoy venturing beneath the earth," Legolas said carefully.
"Oh, then I suppose I should cross Carlsbad Caverns off of our list of places to visit?" There was a look of some disappointment on her face.
"If those are caves, then yes, I would appreciate that," Legolas responded.
"OK, fine, no caves. Though I have seen some really beautiful ones." Legolas just gave her a guarded look and she shrugged. "Just checking." She tried to find something else to talk about. Legolas obviously had issues with caves. She glanced up to the tops of the trees and remembered that he had just come back from there. "So, what is the view like from the treetops?" she asked.
"I cannot find the words to do it justice," Legolas said thankfully, going along with the change in subject. "Would you like to see for yourself?"
Lauren raised her eyebrows. "Do you think a human is capable of climbing to the very top?"
"This is a dream, is it not?" Legolas asked. "There should be nothing you are not capable of doing."
Lauren looked at Aragorn with a twinkle in her eyes. "Shall we?"
Aragorn exchanged a glance with Legolas. "Very well. It will be your responsibility to make sure that she does not fall."
"And who will watch out for you?" Legolas asked, grinning.
Aragorn frowned. "It may have been a few years since I have climbed a tree, mellon-nín, but I have hardly forgotten what you and the others have taught me. I am perfectly capable of climbing any tree that Lauren can."
Legolas laughed, deciding not to remind him of the many times he had been all that kept Aragorn from falling from a tree. "Very well," he agreed. "I will lead the way and show Lauren where it is safe to step. You can follow in her footsteps, and watch out for her from below."
Aragorn nodded. Standing up, they let Legolas lead the way to the upper branches of the trees. It was slow going at first, but Lauren got quicker as she gained confidence in her climbing abilities. Before the end of the half-hour was up, they stood upon the highest branches that would hold a human's weight. Legolas changed things with a thought so that the uppermost branches were suddenly thick enough to hold a human and took them higher so they could look out over the tops of the trees.
"Wow," Lauren breathed out softly. She gazed across the top of the canopy of leaves. The view from here was spectacular. A bald eagle soared above them, even above the tops of the tallest trees. She could never have imagined the view stretched out in front of her. The scene before them had to have come from Legolas' mind. Aragorn was quiet as he stood beside her, simply taking in the view. It seemed that they were on the top of the world. Legolas had been right, Lauren thought. There were no words to describe the beauty before them.
They were silent for a long moment before Legolas turned away from the view to face them. "I am sorry I must say this, but I believe our time is over for tonight. We must leave, Aragorn."
Aragorn sighed. "I hate to leave, but it appears that we must." He looked around one last time and then turned back to the others. "Before we leave, let us return to the ground. I do not know if anything could happen to harm Lauren in this world, either, but I do not wish to test it."
Lauren nodded. "Fine, see you on the ground." With a last wistful gaze at the scenery around them, she disappeared. Aragorn and Legolas followed, and they all found themselves standing at the base of the tree they had just climbed.
"What do you intend to do after we leave?" Aragorn asked.
"I'll probably hike the trails around here for awhile," Lauren said. "There are some beautiful, peaceful trails around here. After that, I'll find something else to do. Don't worry about me. You just go back and get some sleep. You need to take care of yourself, now, OK?"
Aragorn sighed and gave her a long-suffering look. Why was it that all those around him insisted on mothering him, even those nearly a century younger than him? A brief thought flickered in his mind. Was this what Legolas had felt like when he had taken care of the elf after an injury?
Lauren hid a smile at the expression on Aragorn's face. He seemed to hate people fussing over him.
"I'll see you both tomorrow night," she said. "We can pick up where we left off and see a few more natural wonders of my world."
The look in Legolas' eye made it clear that he did not want to wait until the next night, but without Aragorn, he could not stay in Lauren's dream world, so he had no choice.
"Until tomorrow then," Legolas said.
Aragorn nodded toward her, and then they both disappeared as Arwen woke Aragorn up.
Lauren looked around her to get her bearings, then set off for a trail that she remembered from her last trip out here, several years before.
Aragorn appeared in the middle of what seemed to be a park of some sort. There were trees and wooded areas surrounding him, but he stood in an open grassy area. People of all ages were going about their business, paying no attention to him. Children played games and chased each other under the watchful eyes of their parents. Others walked the grounds with dogs at the end of some form of restraint. Still others sat at tables or on benches, talking or just enjoying the spring atmosphere. Glancing around him, Aragorn saw no sign of Lauren. He knew she had to be near, but she was nowhere to be seen at the moment. He summoned Legolas, wishing to have someone to help him figure out what was going on.
Legolas looked around them as soon as he appeared, taking in their surroundings. "Where are we, and where is Lauren?"
"I do not know the answers to either of those questions," Aragorn responded, turning around to look behind them for Lauren.
The sounds of barking turned their attention to a large, brown shape bounding in their direction. They had time to do no more than take a step backwards before the dog was right in front of them. It brushed its head up against Legolas, and leaned into his body. The dog was heavy, and Legolas braced himself as he looked down at the dog in confusion. A woman came running up to them and grabbed the leather strap that trailed behind the dog.
"I am so sorry," she apologized to Legolas. "He got away from me. Just pulled the leash out of my hand. I don't know what got into him." She looked down at the dog. "Bad dog. No treat for you tonight."
"It is well," Legolas said. "There was no harm done. He startled us, but he did not mean to cause any trouble."
"He's too friendly for his own good sometimes," the woman said. "Again, I'm sorry for his behavior. We will leave you alone now." She walked away, tugging at the leash. The dog looked back at Aragorn and Legolas, but turned and followed his master.
Aragorn chuckled as he watched the woman leave. "Even in dreams, animals recognize elves, though the woman did not seem to notice anything unusual about us."
Legolas was about to reply when he spotted a familiar figure. He turned to look, and instantly grabbed for his bow and an arrow. The weapons had not been there moments before, but appeared at his thought.
Aragorn spun around to follow Legolas' gaze, wondering what could have alarmed him in this peaceful setting. His eyes found Lauren running toward them. She did not seem to be giving any attention to her surroundings, and her eyes were not on them, so she was not running to meet them. There was no danger that he could see, though, no reason for her to be running. "Peace, Legolas," Aragorn said, holding out a hand in a gesture meant to calm the elf.
"Lauren is running, Aragorn, she may be in danger." Legolas was tense as he scanned the wooded area behind Lauren for a sign of any enemies.
"Nay," Aragorn remarked. "She is not being pursued. There is no fear on her face. I know not why she is running, but she is in no danger." At his words, Legolas lowered his bow and loosened his grip on the arrow, though the weapons did not disappear.
As she approached them, Aragorn stepped into her path. She was several paces away when she noticed him. Stopping abruptly in mid-stride, she nearly stumbled before catching her balance. "Hi," she said, sounding out of breath. She leaned over and rested her hands on her knees for a moment.
"Are you well?" Legolas asked her, scanning her quickly for any signs that she was in trouble.
"I'm fine," she said as she regained her breath. "I guess I lost track of time." She straightened up and looked at them as she reached up to remove two small objects from her ears. "I wasn't expecting you to show up just yet. Have you been here long?" She gave Legolas a curious look. "What's with the weaponry?"
Legolas finally realized that she was in no danger and there was no need for his bow and arrow, and they disappeared from his hands. Lauren gave him a strange look, but turned her attention to Aragorn as he began to speak.
"We have only been here for a few moments," Aragorn reassured her. "What are those?" he asked curiously, pointing to the small devices she held in her hand.
"See for yourself," she said with a grin, walking closer to him and offering him one of the objects.
He took it warily and slowly lifted it to his ear. When it was close enough, he heard a loud steady beat coming from the object. Having been around her for several days now, he easily recognized it as what she thought of as music. Smiling wryly, he handed it back to her. "I should have guessed. But where is the music coming from?"
She reached down and unclipped a small device from the waistband of her jogging pants. "It's called an iPod. It stores a large amount of music for playback and sends it through the ear pieces so I can listen to my music without bothering anyone else with it."
"So, hearing elvish music has not convinced you to put your music aside?" Aragorn asked with a smile.
"Not quite," she said. She looked over to Legolas. "Don't get me wrong, your music is great, but it really doesn't have much of a beat. I need something to keep me going, keep me on pace when I run."
"Why were you running?" Legolas asked. Though he had made his bow and arrow disappear, he was ready to call them back if they were needed.
"It's a great way to clear my head," Lauren said. "And besides, I normally go running a few times a week. It's great exercise, and it gets me outside in good weather. I have an indoor track that I run on in bad weather, but that isn't nearly as interesting." She shrugged as she tucked the iPod and ear pieces back into their pouch.
"You run simply for exercise?" Aragorn asked. "Why would you wish to do that?" A puzzled expression was on his face, and he glanced aside at Legolas to see the same look on his face.
Lauren chuckled. "Our lifestyles have changed greatly since your time. We no longer walk or ride horses everywhere. We have other means of transportation to get from one place to another. So we have become a people who, in general, do not get enough exercise to stay healthy. Running and hiking are my favorite ways of keeping in shape."
"You said it was a good way to 'clear your head'," Legolas said, changing the subject. "Why did you feel that to be necessary?"
Lauren took a deep breath and looked around. She gestured them over to a clear spot in the grass. After they had all seated themselves, she looked steadily at first one then the other. "I suppose Aragorn has told you about how he found me a few days ago? The night that you first appeared, in fact?"
Legolas nodded. Aragorn had told them all of Lauren's near despair about her situation. It had them all worried.
She nodded. "I thought as much." She took a deep breath and tried to figure out how to say what she wanted to say. "Well, I've had nothing but time to think about things. I've managed to come to a few conclusions, and have actually found peace with all of this. While I have no desire to die, I don't fear death. I know where I'm going upon my death, and it is a wonderful place. It's actually far better than the hectic, chaotic world I live in, so death may not be such a bad thing. My only regret would be the pain my death would cause my family and friends. But I have decided that it is not in my power to affect the outcome of this. If it is my time to die, I will accept that. If not, then I will enjoy my time here as much as possible until I wake. My fate is in God's hands, where it has always been. I just needed to remember that fact."
Aragorn was a little troubled by her words. It sounded to him like she was giving up. "Are you saying that you will not fight for your life?"
"What?" Her forehead wrinkled in confusion. That wasn't quite what she meant. She decided to try to clarify her thoughts a bit better. "No, that's not what I'm saying at all. If I am given a choice, if I have any say in the matter whatsoever, I will fight to live with all the strength I have in me. But I realize that it may not be up to me. And for now, until I am given a choice in the matter, I have found peace. I am an optimistic person by nature, most of the time anyway, though my life has not always been easy. This accident knocked me for a bit of a loop, and I'm doing what I can to make the best of a bad situation. You have greatly helped me with that. If you had never shown up, I think I would surely have gone insane with only my own thoughts to keep me company. But I'm beginning to realize that my accident may be part of a grander scheme of things that I can't see yet. I think we were meant to meet, if that makes any sense at all."
There was a surety in her statement that they could not argue with. Legolas recognized the tone of voice as one that Aragorn had when he had a feeling that something was true but could not explain it. He wondered to himself if the talent of foresight had not been completely lost to Aragorn's descendants.
A red disc came flying toward them suddenly, and Legolas reflexively reached up and grabbed it out of the air before it could hit Aragorn in the head. Once he had it in his hands, he stared at it in confusion. It was made of some flexible material he had never seen before.
"Nice catch," Lauren said approvingly.
"What is this?" Legolas asked, studying the object.
"It's a Frisbee," Lauren said. "And I think those kids want it back." She held out her hand and Legolas gave her the Frisbee. With an experienced flick of her wrist, she sent it sailing back to its owners.
Aragorn and Legolas watched as it soared back over to the group of kids that it had come from.
Legolas watched as the children threw the object back and forth to each other. "I have never seen people from your world here," he commented. "Why are they here now?"
"This is the park I usually go running in, and it would feel far too strange and eerie without everyone around." Lauren shrugged casually.
"Eerie?" Aragorn questioned.
"Yes," Lauren answered. "It's safer to go running when there are people around. I know some people like to go running when they have the place to themselves, but I feel safer with others around me. Even though I know this is a dream world and there is no danger, it just makes me feel better to have people nearby when I run."
"What kind of dangers might you face if you go running when there are no others nearby?" Aragorn asked.
Lauren didn't want to worry them, so she kept her answer kind of vague. "Well, I haven't heard of any problems in this particular park, but you never know what kind of psycho might be lurking around the next bend in the path." She tried to direct their attention to something else. "I have a friend who loves horror movies, and I've watched several of them with her. The entire purpose of these stories is to scare and horrify people. Because I've seen these movies, I have images in my head of villains beyond anything you could imagine. Since this whole world is made up from my imagination, I didn’t want to take the chance on having Jason, Freddy or Leatherface jumping out of the bushes at me. So imaging these people was really a way to keep my imagination from conjuring my worst nightmares."
Aragorn and Legolas were a little worried by what she didn't say. With her earlier comments, they knew there must be real dangers lurking in her world for a woman running on her own. But she obviously did not want to discuss that, so they let the subject drop for now.
"The people seem real enough," Aragorn said. "You once told me that you did not want to imagine people in this world because they did not interact with you as real people would."
"Well, I only said that carrying on a conversation with them was rather boring because they didn't say anything that I wouldn't have expected them to say. I don't typically interact that much with people in the park. I just wanted them around for my own peace of mind."
"We spoke briefly with a woman whose dog escaped her," Legolas put in. "We did not have any expectations as to how she should behave, so how did she seem so real?"
"You may not have had any expectations about her behavior, but I did," Lauren pointed out. "I assume she apologized to you and scolded the dog?"
"Yes," Aragorn said slowly. He wondered how she knew what had happened, when she was nowhere to be seen when the event happened.
"That happened to me a few weeks before the accident. It actually isn't that uncommon for a dog to take an interest in people nearby. The owners generally try to keep their dogs away from others. You never know who might have a fear of or an allergy to dogs, or who might just not like being accosted by a strange dog."
"The dog ran straight to Legolas and ignored me," Aragorn said. "We assumed it was because Legolas is an elf and has an affinity with animals that humans do not have."
"Your expectations were probably what caused the dog to act like it did," Lauren said. "I'm hardly the only one who can control this world." They simply nodded, accepting her explanation that this world and all events in it were shaped by the thoughts of all three of them.
Sensing that the conversation had reached its end, Lauren grinned at them both. "And now, we should start discussing our plans for the evening. I have so many things that I want to show you!"
Her excitement was obvious, and Legolas hated to say what he knew he must. He looked at Aragorn, then back to Lauren. "We do not have the entire night to spend here, but only a few hours."
"What? Why?" Lauren asked, glancing back and forth between them..
Legolas gave Aragorn another sidelong glance before explaining. "When we are here, our minds do not get much rest. Our bodies may be sleeping, but our minds are not. Because of this, the longer we spend here, the longer we must go without a full night's sleep. Aragorn has gone several nights now without getting the sleep he needs. It is beginning to affect his waking hours, and we are becoming concerned."
Lauren frowned at Aragorn, then reached over and lightly slapped his arm.
Aragorn returned her frown. "Why did you do that?" Her actions had him confused.
"You never told me that being here was affecting you like that." Lauren huffed in irritation and waved her arms as she spoke to emphasize her point. "The last thing I want is for our time together to hurt you. Sleep deprivation can have all kinds of nasty side effects. You need to be paying better attention to your health. I swear, men just think they're indestructible. Think about this. If you fail to take care of yourself and get sick, you won't be any help to anyone at all. And I can't allow you to jeopardize your health and safety. You have a whole kingdom relying on you, not just yourself. Why didn't you tell me about this?" She crossed her arms and glared at Aragorn with an eyebrow raised in extreme annoyance.
Aragorn just stared at her in amazement. He had only briefly glimpsed her temper in the few days that he had known her. This was a reaction he hadn't quite expected. Hearing an odd sound, he glanced over to find Legolas struggling to hold in his laughter. "What do you find so funny?" he asked, rather irritated.
Legolas let go and gave into his laughter. "You two," he said. "Look at her. Does she not remind you of someone?"
Aragorn looked back at her and saw what Legolas meant. Her expression was one that he had seen too many times on Elrond's face when he had dragged himself home in less than perfect shape after a misadventure. He couldn't help the small smile that crept onto his lips. "Yes, mellon-nín, she does."
Lauren looked between the two of them suspiciously and tapped her fingers against her arm. "Who do I remind you of?"
Legolas answered her question with a smile on his lips. "You are truly a child of Elrond. You do not know the many times we have heard a similar lecture or seen that same expression upon his face. He always took it very personally whenever either of us came to his doors injured in one way or another."
Her lips quirked into a lop-sided smile. "Fine. Though you may not have meant it that way, I think I'll take that as a compliment. Now, if this is such a problem, why are you even here?"
Aragorn gazed at her seriously. "Because I saw what happened the last time I disappeared without an explanation. I wanted to tell you why we could not be here for the full night."
She nodded, accepting that. "OK, you've explained. I understand the situation. Now, shouldn't you be leaving, or do I have to kick you out of here?" She still had her arms crossed and was gazing hard at him, seemingly ready to do whatever she could to protect him from himself.
"Could you do that?" Legolas asked in curiosity, tilting his head to the side as he watched her watch Aragorn.
She gave him an inscrutable look. "It's my world. Why couldn't I do that?" She shrugged slightly.
"It matters not whether you can or cannot," Aragorn said. "Arwen, Legolas and I agreed that Legolas and I would visit with you for a short while, and then at a specified time, Legolas will make sure that I am ready to leave, and Arwen will awaken me. She has a special tea prepared that will enable me to sleep without dreams."
"Good," Lauren said. She looked back to Legolas. "Just for future reference, if it looks like Aragorn is beginning to feel the affects of not getting enough sleep, use the tea. Now that I know what's going on, I won't be concerned if you don't show up. His health, and yours, are more important than keeping me occupied."
Aragorn gave Legolas an incredulous look. "Did she just give you permission to drug me against my will?"
Legolas laughed. "I believe she did. Not that I have ever needed permission in the past."
Shaking his head, Aragorn gave in. In this, he was greatly outnumbered. Arwen, Gimli, and Legolas were all insisting that he get more rest, and now Lauren had sided with them. He had no hope of fighting such overwhelming strength of character. "Very well. I will attempt to better watch out for my health. But for now, we still have time for a visit. What did you have in mind for our time tonight?"
She rolled her eyes. "I had plans to show you both some of the forests and national parks in my time. While there is little unspoiled land left, we do have places where the land and animals are protected. There are some very beautiful places that I have had the good fortune to visit a time or two."
Legolas' eyes lit up at the thought of getting to explore new forests, and Lauren knew she had chosen correctly.
"Well, we probably only have time to visit one of them tonight," Lauren said. "We should start with the Redwood forest, I think. The trees there are the most impressive." She looked at Legolas. "This might even be something you have never seen before. This type of tree doesn’t grow everywhere. They're known as the tallest and oldest living things on earth."
Lauren laughed at the anticipation in Legolas' face. He wouldn't rush her, but she could see how anxious he was to see the trees that she was describing. She decided to stop teasing him and stood up, brushing the grass and leaves from her jeans. They followed her lead. "First things first," Lauren said and changed from her tank top, jogging pants and tennis shoes to jeans, hiking boots and a short sleeved shirt. As she closed her eyes and concentrated, the city park disappeared, and a forest of towering trees took shape around them.
Legolas and Aragorn gazed upward as the new forest formed, their mouths falling open in wonder. Lauren followed their gaze and looked up, and up, and up to the canopy of leaves far above their heads. No matter how many times she saw this, it was always an impressive sight, an awe inspiring sight, actually. Some of these trees grew as tall as a thirty-five story building, and their trunks could grow as wide as 22 feet. Aragorn had asked her last night if the sight of the galaxies made her feel small. But oddly enough, these trees could make her feel much smaller than looking at images of entire galaxies. She supposed that was because a galaxy seemed a more distant thing, while she was able to put her hand on the trees and stare up the length of the trunk. Standing next to these trees made her feel like an ant in comparison. She had seen taller buildings, but seeing a tree that large was always enough to take her breath away. Of course that could also be because she couldn't take her eyes off the tops of the trees and looking upwards like that for extended periods of time made her feel dizzy. She forced her eyes away from the trees and looked back at Legolas and Aragorn. Aragorn was still gazing upward in amazement, but Legolas was slowly turning in a circle, trying to take in everything at once. He smiled as he saw some chipmunks playing among the grass and bushes a short distance away.
Legolas walked over and placed a hand against one of the trees. "These trees are old," he said softly. "Very old."
Lauren nodded. "Some of the trees may be as old as two thousand years. Most of the trees live for a few centuries, but some of them are much older. It takes four hundred years for the trees to mature." She laughed. "Until I met you, I thought these trees were the oldest living things I would ever encounter."
Legolas barely heard her jest, so taken was he with the trees and the forest around them.
"Would you care to try climbing one of them?" Aragorn asked with a twinkle in his eyes. The bare trunks of the trees loomed above them, and the lowest branches were over halfway up the height of the tree. There were few handholds, and the trunks were too large to reach around with their arms. Climbing one of these trees would be very difficult.
"I think it would be difficult for even an elf to climb these trees," Legolas said in agreement with Aragorn's thoughts.
"It has been done before, though," Lauren said, catching their attention.
They both looked at her with expressions of amazement.
"How?" Aragorn asked. It did not seem possible to him.
Lauren explained. "Well, the smaller trees have been climbed, anyway. I don't know if anyone has any idea how to climb some of the largest trees. But you take a leather strap and wrap it around the trunk of the tree to provide leverage, and wear a pair of shoes with spikes. You have to move the leather strap upwards, dig your shoes into the side of the tree and repeat until you're as high as you want to be."
"Put spikes into the tree?" Legolas asked, aghast.
"It doesn't damage the tree," Lauren said. "And that's about the only way you're going to get up there."
"I will choose to stay on the ground, then," Legolas said, not believing the suggestion that she had just made. He had to remind himself that Lauren was a human, not an elf, and until meeting him, had never seen an elf. Humans, even in his time, typically saw trees as something to be used to build houses and such things, not as living entities that could be hurt.
Lauren's eyes shone as a thought occurred to her. "What am I saying? This is a dream, isn't it? We can do anything we like." With that, she disappeared.
Legolas and Aragorn looked around to see where she had gone.
"Up here!" Her voice faintly drifted down to them.
They looked up and saw her among the lowest branches of a tree, seated securely on a thick branch. "Think it and it will happen," she called down to them.
With a thought, Legolas found himself several branches above Lauren's head. He looked down and saw Aragorn still on the ground. Aragorn had never felt as secure as Legolas or any other elf in the branches of a tree, but he had spent far more time among the trees than most humans. "Come, Aragorn, this is a chance you do not want to miss." He called down to encourage Aragorn to join them.
Aragorn appeared moments later and found a sturdy branch to sit on. "This is higher than the other trees I have climbed my friend. I would not wish to fall from this one."
"That would probably be a bad thing," Lauren agreed. "I don't know if you guys can actually get hurt here, but I don't want to chance it. Remember that grandfather paradox I told you about? I'd really hate for anything to happen to you, Aragorn. You could wipe out my entire family in a split second."
"But if you are descended from Eldarion, having something happen to Aragorn would not destroy your family line," Legolas put in, seeing a flaw in her reasoning.
"And what if I am descended from another child that does not yet exist?" Lauren pointed out. "I have absolutely no way of knowing the exact trace of my genealogy. I can't let anything happen to Aragorn here. I can't risk it."
"It is so nice to hear your genuine concern for my safety," Aragorn said wryly. Lauren's only concern seemed to stem from her desire not to change history and possibly destroy her family. He could see why she would be concerned with that, but he was feeling rather as if that was all she cared about.
"Sorry," Lauren said, hearing the sarcasm in his voice. "I didn't mean that how it sounded. I really don't want anything to happen to either of you, simply because I have come to care about you both. Is that better?"
Aragorn rolled his eyes and Legolas hid a smirk as Aragorn replied in a long-suffering tone of voice. "Yes, Lauren. That will do. Now, how much experience do you have with tree climbing?
"I haven't climbed a tree since I was a child, but I used to love playing in the trees. I was lucky enough, or skilled enough, never to have fallen from one. I've never been up this high, but I often wondered what it would be like to climb one of these. It's a good thing I'm not afraid of heights." She stood up and grabbed a branch about chest level and began climbing higher.
That seemed to be all the encouragement Legolas needed, and he was soon out of sight of the two humans, climbing with greater speed and agility than the others possessed. Aragorn laughed. "We may not see him again until this night is over. I do believe you have sufficiently distracted him to the point that he will not be overly concerned about the time."
Lauren glared at Aragorn as she reached the branch that he had chosen to sit on. "But you'll watch the time, won't you? Or do I need to choose an appropriate time and kick you out?"
"No," Aragorn said with a sigh. "You do not need to take matters into your hands. I will take responsibility for my own health, thank you. We have another half-hour before we reach the time that was set for us."
Lauren chose a branch beside Aragorn's to sit on. She leaned back against the trunk of the tree and let one leg dangle in the open air. "So, I take it from your earlier comment that you've fallen from a few trees in your time?"
"I grew up as a child among elves," Aragorn commented. "I was ever trying to do all the things they could do. But humans do not have the agility of elves in the trees."
"Yeah, I kind of saw that," she said, glancing up to where Legolas had disappeared.
"As a result of attempting to keep up with my brothers or other elves, I ventured where humans were not meant to go. I found out the hard way that branches thick enough to hold the weight of an elf may not hold the weight of a human."
"Ouch," she said, thinking of the pain that probably resulted from some of those falls.
"Yes," Aragorn agreed. "I broke several bones in falls, and received a number of bruises."
"I was lucky, then," she said. "Though I followed my older brother around for most of my childhood and acquired my share of bumps and bruises, I managed not to break anything. I've never had a broken bone in my life."
"Are you sure she is related to you, Aragorn?" a voice came from the branches above their heads.
They looked up to see Legolas climbing back down toward them. "It seems unlikely to me that a relative of yours could reach adulthood with no broken bones."
Lauren laughed. "If recklessness is a family trait, my brothers more than make up for me. They are both daredevils. I seemed to be the only one of us with any common sense at all when we were younger. So when Jeff was heading higher into the tree than he should, or crossing a makeshift bridge that could never have held his weight, I was the one staying behind and telling him that he was going to get himself killed. And when he inevitably got hurt, I had to drag him home to our parents."
"So your brothers are the adventurous ones?" Aragorn asked.
"Now, I never said I wasn't adventurous, just that I was smarter at knowing our limits. Don't forget, for me to be able to warn him or drag him home, I had to be right there beside him to start with. And I'll admit that not all of our little adventures were his idea. It's just that his ideas tended to be more likely to lead to injuries."
"It sounds like he takes after his grandfather, then," Legolas said lightly. "I cannot even count the number of times that I had to drag Aragorn back to his father, or even my own, whichever happened to be closer."
"And I dragged you back injured just as many times," Aragorn said. "Do not try to convince her that I was the only one getting hurt. Ada threatened to tie us both up and keep us from leaving Imladris, not just me."
"He only included me in his threat because he knew that if I left, you would do whatever it took to follow me. And we both know what kind of trouble follows you."
Aragorn protested loudly, then heard a peal of laughter and turned to look at Lauren quizzically.
"You two are worse than Jeff and me!" she exclaimed. "Listening to you, no one would guess your true ages."
Aragorn glared at her for a moment, then gave in and gave a sheepish grin. "Did you and your brother often have arguments like this one?"
She grinned at him. "Well, Jeff tried to pin some of the worst misadventures on me, but no one believed him. They really were all his fault." The wicked grin on her face belied her statement.
Aragorn raised an eyebrow at her. "Why do I find that I do not believe that?"
"I wouldn't have the slightest idea why you would doubt me," Lauren said with an innocent look on her face. After a moment of withstanding Aragorn's disbelieving look, she gave in. "OK, fine. Not all of them were his fault. There was one time that I can remember. I was about five, so he would have been eight. We were out exploring the hills behind our house, and I found this hole in the ground. It really didn’t seem like much, but I wanted to check it out. It was large enough to crawl into, and so I did. It turned out that the hole opened up a bit in the back. It wasn't a real cave, but it was enough like one to spark my imagination."
Legolas looked askance at her. "You willingly crawled into a hole that wasn't even large enough to be a cave?"
"Yeah," she said. "Our father had taken us cave exploring a few times, and I thought I was this great adventurer at the time. I imagined that I had found a cave used by pirates to store hidden treasure." She grinned at their amused looks. "I did say I was five, didn't I? I had a great imagination at that age. I didn't have the faintest idea that it could have been dangerous. Children at that age don't really have much of a self-protective instinct. They don't imagine that anything really bad could happen to them."
"What happened?" Aragorn asked. He had the feeling that there was more to this story than she had told them so far.
"Well, Jeff didn't really see where I had gone. He has always been very protective of me, and I think I panicked him when I suddenly disappeared. He started running around looking for me, and I guess the ground wasn’t all that stable."
Aragorn's eyes widened and Legolas shuddered as they saw where this story was headed. "It collapsed?" Aragorn asked.
"Yeah, it started falling down on my head. I headed back out of the hole, but didn't quite reach the end before I found myself pinned. It was a very good thing that Jeff was there. I had managed to get part of my arms out, and he saw me. It didn't take him long at all to dig me out, since the dirt was loose. All he really had to do was pull me out. But if he hadn't been there, I probably would have suffocated. He saved my life that day. And our parents never found out. Jeff covered for me and made up some excuse for how I got so dirty. He was even more protective of me after that."
"I thought you claimed to have more common sense than your brothers," Aragorn said in disbelief. Her story certainly did not show much common sense.
"Most of the time. I couldn't be expected to know everything, could I? But I never crawled into another hole without someone first telling me that it was safe. I can learn from my mistakes, you see."
"But you went back underground?" Legolas asked in surprise. He would have thought that such an experience would have convinced her never to go underground again.
"Sure, I love exploring caves. There are some really amazing sights in them. Do you not like caves?" She saw something in his expression that suggested he was horrified with her story.
"While I will admit that there can be places of exceeding beauty in caves, I do not enjoy venturing beneath the earth," Legolas said carefully.
"Oh, then I suppose I should cross Carlsbad Caverns off of our list of places to visit?" There was a look of some disappointment on her face.
"If those are caves, then yes, I would appreciate that," Legolas responded.
"OK, fine, no caves. Though I have seen some really beautiful ones." Legolas just gave her a guarded look and she shrugged. "Just checking." She tried to find something else to talk about. Legolas obviously had issues with caves. She glanced up to the tops of the trees and remembered that he had just come back from there. "So, what is the view like from the treetops?" she asked.
"I cannot find the words to do it justice," Legolas said thankfully, going along with the change in subject. "Would you like to see for yourself?"
Lauren raised her eyebrows. "Do you think a human is capable of climbing to the very top?"
"This is a dream, is it not?" Legolas asked. "There should be nothing you are not capable of doing."
Lauren looked at Aragorn with a twinkle in her eyes. "Shall we?"
Aragorn exchanged a glance with Legolas. "Very well. It will be your responsibility to make sure that she does not fall."
"And who will watch out for you?" Legolas asked, grinning.
Aragorn frowned. "It may have been a few years since I have climbed a tree, mellon-nín, but I have hardly forgotten what you and the others have taught me. I am perfectly capable of climbing any tree that Lauren can."
Legolas laughed, deciding not to remind him of the many times he had been all that kept Aragorn from falling from a tree. "Very well," he agreed. "I will lead the way and show Lauren where it is safe to step. You can follow in her footsteps, and watch out for her from below."
Aragorn nodded. Standing up, they let Legolas lead the way to the upper branches of the trees. It was slow going at first, but Lauren got quicker as she gained confidence in her climbing abilities. Before the end of the half-hour was up, they stood upon the highest branches that would hold a human's weight. Legolas changed things with a thought so that the uppermost branches were suddenly thick enough to hold a human and took them higher so they could look out over the tops of the trees.
"Wow," Lauren breathed out softly. She gazed across the top of the canopy of leaves. The view from here was spectacular. A bald eagle soared above them, even above the tops of the tallest trees. She could never have imagined the view stretched out in front of her. The scene before them had to have come from Legolas' mind. Aragorn was quiet as he stood beside her, simply taking in the view. It seemed that they were on the top of the world. Legolas had been right, Lauren thought. There were no words to describe the beauty before them.
They were silent for a long moment before Legolas turned away from the view to face them. "I am sorry I must say this, but I believe our time is over for tonight. We must leave, Aragorn."
Aragorn sighed. "I hate to leave, but it appears that we must." He looked around one last time and then turned back to the others. "Before we leave, let us return to the ground. I do not know if anything could happen to harm Lauren in this world, either, but I do not wish to test it."
Lauren nodded. "Fine, see you on the ground." With a last wistful gaze at the scenery around them, she disappeared. Aragorn and Legolas followed, and they all found themselves standing at the base of the tree they had just climbed.
"What do you intend to do after we leave?" Aragorn asked.
"I'll probably hike the trails around here for awhile," Lauren said. "There are some beautiful, peaceful trails around here. After that, I'll find something else to do. Don't worry about me. You just go back and get some sleep. You need to take care of yourself, now, OK?"
Aragorn sighed and gave her a long-suffering look. Why was it that all those around him insisted on mothering him, even those nearly a century younger than him? A brief thought flickered in his mind. Was this what Legolas had felt like when he had taken care of the elf after an injury?
Lauren hid a smile at the expression on Aragorn's face. He seemed to hate people fussing over him.
"I'll see you both tomorrow night," she said. "We can pick up where we left off and see a few more natural wonders of my world."
The look in Legolas' eye made it clear that he did not want to wait until the next night, but without Aragorn, he could not stay in Lauren's dream world, so he had no choice.
"Until tomorrow then," Legolas said.
Aragorn nodded toward her, and then they both disappeared as Arwen woke Aragorn up.
Lauren looked around her to get her bearings, then set off for a trail that she remembered from her last trip out here, several years before.
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