“You look awfully pretty today, Toronto.”
Toronto blushed at that comment. She was wearing her school uniform as usual, but this time she did not attempt to hide out of sight like she used to. She was halfway buttoning her blouse when Legolas came from behind, slipped his hands into her bra and squeezed her breasts. Toronto gasped and, at the same time, let out a moan.
“No, Legolas, don’t. We’re gonna be late for school,” she blushed harder when his touch over her became rather more intimate.
“Your school starts at an hour later,” Legolas whispered to her ear, enticing her. He was right; he has been remembering the time routine of her classes. He kissed her bare neck and licked her earlobe.
When her blouse fell off her body and onto the marble floor, Toronto made no attempt to pick it up.
Toronto and Legolas walked to her school as usual. Although they have been doing this for the past 5 months, they still received amazed stares from passers-by. They have already gotten used to stares by then, especially Legolas. 5 months seemed like a day to them now. Their relationship has developed to a stage where mortals and immortals used to think that it would never happen. It may seem quite fast, but as they say, love is blind.
After walking for quite a while, they have reached Toronto’s school. All they have to do now is cross the road to enter the school. Toronto looked at Legolas and asked, “Ready to cross the road, Legolas?”
“I did not follow you to your educational building for 5 moons without collecting the courage to cross this busy lane,” the usual princely, arrogant Legolas returned. Toronto smiled and shook her head weakly. Old habits sure die hard.
She took his hand, looked left and right, and made a dash for it as soon as the traffic was quite clear. In her mind, all she could think of was spending another school day being chased by LOTR fanatics, receiving unpleasant looks from her Accounting and Economics teacher as well as the LOTR-crazed girls in her school, going out somewhere with her friends Sylvia and Carrie to fascinate her Elf Prince and spending the rest of the evening with him, sharing sweet moments together. She didn’t see a speeding lorry coming towards them, driven by a drunk driver. She didn’t feel the aura of the lorry coming closer and closer to them. She could only feel Legolas’ hand in hers…
All of a sudden, she couldn’t feel his hand anymore. Her hand felt so empty, so lost. She turned around to see where has her Elf Prince gone to, only to find shards of poster paper fluttering around the air and falling slowly onto the road. A lot of cars stopped and the drivers came out to see what was going on. The poster paper were all torn to shreds and when Toronto took one floating paper shred to see, she saw Legolas’ magnificent green eye staring back at her. She fell onto her knees, her eyes blank in disbelief. Many people came to her and asked her what was the matter but she was too lost to speak. In fact, their voices slowly became more and more blur until she could only hear the pressuring silence around her.
As she shifted her gaze to the ground, she saw the emerald gold-rimmed Fellowship clasp. With quivering hands, she picked up the clasp and stroked it. It felt so real, as real as Legolas’ hand in hers. Tears flowed out of her eyes as the memories between her and Legolas swam through her mind. She couldn’t believe it had to end this way. She couldn’t believe that he had disappeared so suddenly, as sudden as the day he appeared in her room on that fateful day 5 months ago. Everything was so real, so real to the touch. She could still feel his hand in hers, his kiss on her lips, his touch on her body, his soul as they both became one.
Toronto finally broke down and wailed.
The phone rang. Toronto made no attempt to pick it up. She lay on her bed with the clasp held tight in her hand. She fingered the clasp and started crying again.
After the accident, she found herself lying on the hospital bed. The doctors said that she was wailing uncontrollably in the middle of the road and the people nearby had to call the ambulance to sedate her and take her away. They asked what had happened just now because she was crying like she was in pain, yet they found no bones unattached. The driver of the lorry apologized to her and told them that he thought he knocked down a man with long blonde hair and said maybe that was her boyfriend or some sort. The doctors dismissed his statement as they said that when they got to the scene, they saw no one that resembled the driver’s description.
“But I told you, it was a blonde man! When I hit him, there was this blinding flash and the next thing I know, my windscreen was covered with torn paper!” the driver insisted.
“Your alcohol level seemed very high when we checked you. You should be pressed charges. You almost hit a girl,” one of the doctors said indignantly. “We found no blonde man on the road, and no one saw a man being hit, only this young lady. I am going to report you for drunk-driving. Now go outside before you intimidate the girl again!”
Toronto took it all in without a single word. The doctors tried to question her again as softly as possible about what happened just now at the accident scene, but all she replied was a few Elvish words that the doctors couldn’t understand (obviously!), “Mornie u tu lie, mornie alan tie (Darkness has risen, darkness has fallen).” And later that night, she took off her hospital robes and slipped back into her school clothes before blending in with the visitor and leaving the hospital. When she reached home, she saw that her poster was still blank, but it was also, like in the accident scene, torn into pieces.
Since then, she stopped going to school. The last time she went to school, no one remembered a thing about Legolas or him coming to school. No one asked her about Legolas’ whereabouts. Even Carrie and Sylvia had forgotten about the Elf Prince. When she tried to remind them, they looked at her as if she had gone sick in the head or something. It was as if none of Legolas’ appearance in school had ever happened and that only Toronto remembered anything.
She knew he was real. She knew it wasn’t a dream. She was sure that Legolas really came to her room and entered her life. She could still feel his touch on him. She could still feel the love and the passion when they spent the night together drowning into the sea of love-making. She couldn’t believe that he could actually disappear from her life as well as from everyone else’s memories. She felt that the world she was living now wasn’t real at all. She refused to have anymore human contact. She has cut herself from the rest of the world. She seemed as if she had lost any language communication with people. When she came across her friends when she went out to do a little grocery, and they asked her about her condition, she found herself conversing with them in brief Elvish talk. Eventually, she stopped going out and stopped talking to anyone at all.
The phone rang again. She got up from her bed and pulled the plug. Now she’ll never have to hear anything else again except her own heart beating for Legolas to hear, if he’s listening. She was hoping he would, and she never stopped hoping. She continued stroking the clasp and talking to it in Elvish. More tears fell out of her dark-brown eyes as she went on with her Elvish talk. She cried often ever since she built a wall between her and the rest of the world. She even started to grow more plants inside and outside her apartment to make her home more like a forest. She tended to them like they were her prized treasures, hoping that she would make it more like Legolas’ home if he ever comes back.
It was a full moon’s night tonight. Toronto still lay on her bed wallowing in self-pity. She didn’t turn on the lights, not even when she knew that the sun was going down. She remained stationary on her bed, still fingering the leaf-shaped clasp tenderly. She didn’t want to have anything to do with the world anymore. In fact, she had a sudden decision to end her life there and then. She knew that, in her heart, Legolas was never going to return. Her poster was completely torn and if that really was the gateway from Middle Earth, he won’t be able to find it anymore.
Toronto was ready with the towel. She tied it up onto her fan and was about to put her head through the loop of the towel when she suddenly saw the Fellowship clasp clasped on her shirt shining brightly. She got off the chair she was standing on and took off the clasp. Something extraordinary happened. Lovely bright balls of light circled around her. She could’ve sworn those light looked like butterflies engulfed in bright yellow light. They continued circling around her until she felt a little change in her. With only the bright ‘butterflies’ as her only source of light, she went to her mirror and saw the extraordinary change. Even she herself was surprised.
There, at the mirror, was a girl in her 20’s—about 24 or 25, give or take—with long flowing silver-blonde hair. Her eyes were a sparkling colour of aquamarine and her skin was so fair, she found it hard to believe that she used to be under the sun for the past 18 years. She was much taller and slimmer, and her breasts much fuller and her skin much smoother. She realized that her blemishes were all gone and she could see so much clearer. It seemed that her eyesight had improved even more. Furthermore, her ears had become quite pointed.
Her room suddenly became bright. The wall where her poster used to be was shining really bright, as if revealing a doorway. Inside that bright light, she could hear Legolas’ voice calling her, “Althea…”
She knew that he was calling her by her new name. She knew that she had become someone that only exists in other people’s imaginations. Eventually, everyone will forget about her existence in this world, including her friends, probably including her parents, just like how they’ve easily forgotten Legolas. She clutched the clasp and held it tight in her palm. She was ready.
Slowly, she stepped into the light…
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