Chapter Text
"Madam?”
The sun was shining into her eyes, much brighter than she was used to.
A soft breeze was tangling her hair that was partly crusted with blood, her heart was still hammering from the run, and her head still spinning from the long and deep fall. She should have really studied the terrain a little better, that drop had come out of nowhere!
“Madam, can you hear me? Are you hurt?”
Slowly the voices registered in her mind, and she tried to blink her eyes to focus her vision.
In front of her was a group of people,men, mostly, causing automatic alarm within her;
‘Alone with a group of men, not good!’
She tried to rise, shifting her weight and resting on her elbows, subtly looking around to check the perimeter, watching for easy routes of escape, but no such luck.
She was surrounded by wilderness, empty plains of a pale yellow grass, that clearly had not seen rain for quite a time, there were almost no trees, only some dead brushes, and the occasional hill dotted with moss and leeches. To one side rose a huge mountain range, the tops disappearing in heavy clouds.
Now, she would never claim to be an expert in Geography, but this was not Kansas anymore!
(Or Oregon, if you wanted to go into specifics.)
The forest where the LARP convention had mostly taken place was just gone.
Was she dead?
Had the fall killed her?
She could be, but the throbbing pain in her head belied that assumption, plus, she doubted that in whatever After-Life her mind would make up she would be surrounded by this many male strangers, with not a single woman or any kind of civilization in view.
Realizing that she would be unable to flee to whatever safety they might be behind the horizon, (for the men would surely be able keep up with her weak constitution, and easily spot her, too, if she ran over the empty planes,) she turned back to whoever had spoken to her.
A man in his forties with a short, gruffy beard and dark, shoulder-long hair was looking at her with worried, but at the same time assessing grey eyes.
He was kind of handsome, in that rugged way.
He was also wearing armor that was way too realistic. No-one in the community would ever be able to afford something beautiful like this:
Honest-to-God ranger- armor, with leathers and steel and buckles and all that jazz.
Were the place less alien, and the stranger's armor less, well, realistic, she would have assumed to still be somewhere on the convention-site.
Because everyone was still dressed like it was the middle ages, so that checked out.
She mindlessly fiddled to re-attach her fake beard that must have come undone during all the running-from-orc-NPCs that she had done before… whatever this was.
Someone exclaimed in outrage, just when she spotted an indicator to what was happening at last.
Because great, sure, why the fuck not?!
Just there behind tall-dark-and-handsome, who was still trying to speak with her, was grey-bearded, hat-wearing, mother-fucking Gandalf! Gandalf!
Wonderful!
Hallucination was back on the table of possible scenarios, fun times, she must have hit her head harder than she had feared.
Thoughtlessly, she tried to feel if the wound on the back of her head was still bleeding, and her hand came away wet with blood.
“Aww, crap!” she whispered, before she passed out.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
As she re-awoke, she was still in this strange medieval afterlife-hallucination-thing, however, she must have been moved.
They were now in a small glade with mostly dead or dying trees, a fire was crackling merrily in front of her, and she had been wrapped in a scratchy blanket.
The strangers, no wait, the fucking FELLOWSHIP, were still surrounding her, or rather, they were surrounding the fire, but when she tried to ask if they could maybe back off a little, only a croak emerged. She was absolutely parched.
Within seconds, a small person appeared to her left, offering a wooden cup that was filled with what looked like water.
Now, she could have been mistrustful, but, well, she probably was either dead already, or close to it and in a coma with fandom-hallucinations on top, plus, she could not disappoint those puppy-eyes, so she just decided to believe that these people were real for now, the water was not poisoned, and that she was not hallucinating
“Thanks”, she said weakly when she had finished the water, and the small person with the curly golden hair smiled shyly back at her, taking the cup and disappearing just as quitely as he'd come.
Oh, right, hobbits. Sam, possibly? The sun had disappeared by now, so she could not tell for sure.
Biggest-of-the-BAMFs Gandalf was right in front of her, and apparently deciding that she was lucid enough for interrogation, he straightened, and the man next to him, who could be no other than Aragon-fucking-king-of-Gondor, started to speak:
“Are you feeling better, my lady?”
Wow, the voice was just like she remembered, sending excited shivers down her spine.
She nodded, her head throbbing at the motion, but she tried to not let it show.
“I think so”, she added, gaze switching between Aragorn and Gandalf.
Gandalf then spoke, his voice soft despite the probably centuries of inhaling pipe smoke.
“Good to hear, good to hear!
Then maybe an introduction would be appropriate, no? “
His eyes were twinkling kindly, but behind that they were steel, she knew that.
“Sure, I'm Alice.”
She figured it was better to say as little as possible for the time being, at least until she had a chance to catch Gandalf alone and ask him what the fuck she was supposed to do here.
And never before had she found her name to be so fitting, even though this was quite a different kind of Wonderland.