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"Dad, Mom... I'll be fine. You guys don't have to worry about me, just go have fun at the party." Reinette looked between her parents, who were standing on the threshold to their front door, smiling at their only daughter. Somewhere in the back of her head, Reinette knew she was dreaming. But she couldn't bear the thought, aching to spend some more time with her parents.
She'd had this dream too many times.
She watched their backs turn, their smiles seeming to reflect toward her from all angles, everywhere in the room at once and yet nowhere at all. And they disappeared through the door. She turned, feeling as if she were walking in slow motion, and made her way up the stairs to her bedroom. Her record player was spinning, bumping over the last rivet in the record and bouncing back one more rivet, pops and cracks echoing throughout the house.
Her fingers picked up the needle, and placed it in the middle of the record, a beautiful twangy guitar wailing out. The song soon ended, moving onto one more quiet, more naked. She watched out the window as her parents drove off, the lyrics pushing into her soul and tearing her heart out. She whispered the lyrics along with the beautiful voices that seemed to echo throughout her house.
'It's not your eyes, it's not what you say. It's not your laughter that gives you away. You're just lonely. You've been lonely, too long...
You've held your head up, you've fought the fight. You bear the scars. You've done your time. Listen to me. You've been lonely, too long...
Let me in the wall you've built around, and we can light a match and burn them down. And let me hold your hand and dance 'round and 'round the flames. In front of us, Dust to dust...'
She pulled away from the window, almost floating down the stairs to the front door. And she could hear a voice around her. It was her father; he was laughing. She shouted out to him, throwing open the front door and running out into the night. Collapsing in the yard, she could feel the air whipping against her face. "Dad! Mom! Come back!" She shouted, her voice being pulled from her throat and tossed to the wind before she could even hear herself. But a voice, booming, deafening, seemed to fill her ears. It was her fathers, and she could hear the smile in his words.
"Don't worry, Reinette. You're not alone. You'll never be alone, not ever again. You're not alone now... So wake up... Wake up!"
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She could feel the difference between the ground and the apparent bed she was laying on right away. Her eyes opened slowly, taking in her surroundings. The last thing she remembered was being with Dúlinnor out in the woods, so where was she now? She sat up slowly, gazing around herself. A conclusion was drawn that she was in a flat of some sort, probably one of the small buildings in the trees she had briefly noticed before.
Sitting up more, she glanced to her side to see another bed nearby, Dúlinnor resting in it. "Dúlinnor?" she asked tenatively, careful not to surprise him with her sudden words.
When she knew that he was awake and listening, she began to speak again. "I'm sorry about earlier. How long was I out for?" After his answer, she nodded and looked in front of her, pulling her legs in to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. Resting her head on her knees, she closed her eyes again, letting out a sigh.
So this was it then? Her reality was that she was currently in Lothlórien, some place that she knew plenty of people would kill to find out was real. She was in Middle Earth, not her normal "Earth". A place that wasn't supposed to be real, was real. She would have laughed, but she kept quiet.
"You know," she said again after a moment, "there are plenty of people where I'm from that would die if they knew where I was..." She frowned after a moment. "But I guess they wouldn't really die to be in my position."
A sigh escaped her lips and she turned to face him, her expression relatively unreadable. "I guess I'll start over, then..." She paused, before speaking once more. "My name is Reinette. Reinette Elise Oswald. I'm 22..." She glanced over at Dúlinnor, and smiled. "I bet you anything you're well over a thousand years older than me."
She laughed slightly, before it seemed to catch in her throat. There was a long pause, before she spoke again. "Um... Both of my parents are deceased. I lost them both together." She had to stop talking for a long moment, biting back the pain before she could speak again.
"...And, please keep an open mind when I say this next part, but... I'm not from Middle Earth."