Reflections; a KOTLC fanficion

Chapter 1

"Tiergan?" Caroline repeated. She could not believe what she was seeing. The telepathy mentor sat hunched over in a chair, looking at them with sparkling interest.

"Sophie? I thought you were in the Lost Cities. What brings you here?"

Thor whispered into Caroline's ear, "Last I checked, Elves don't age past 25 right?"

"Ruckleberries can do this to someone," Caroline tried.

"Somehow I don't think this is the work of rucklberries," Thor replied.

The group cautiously walked towards the porch. They were still quite shaken up after the showdown with Melody about Thalia. Both the twins were gone now, to who knows where, feeding right out of Melodies hand. Now, after being kidnapped, they were stranded in St. Louis with no way home and were now accompanied by a suddenly aged Tiergan.

"Tiergan, I'm not Sophie, I'm her great granddaughter Caroline, remember? We met at the start of the semester," Caroline said, sitting down in an adjacent chair.

As if  he had awaken for the first time, Tiergan's eyes widened. "Caroline, what are you doing  here?"

"We were stranded here, by Melody Ciro, does she ring a bell?" Thor asked.

Now the mentor's eyes were the size of golf balls. "No! not her."

"What happened?" Kyreen asked

"She did this. She did this!" He started yelling. The group didn't know how to get him off this shelf of misery.

"What did she do?" Caroline asked. She started piecing the puzzle together but it would just not make any sense.

"You! Me!" Tiergan started shaking violently. No one knew what to do. All they could do was stare and watch as his body crumbled to the ground. Kyreen knelt on the ground and put her hand to his neck.

"He's alive but just barely. He needs help," she said.

"From where? Its not like we have Elwin on speed dial," Eve noted. 

"Just start knocking on doors," Caroline told everyone. "There are healing centers in the forbidden cities, and  some of these humans are bound to know where they are." 

So the group peeled off to different sides of the street and started knocking on doors, asking if anyone knew where a emergency healing center was. Most of them just gave them confused looks until Caroline pointed to the collapsed Tiergan. Then they would whip out a device and started talking into it like a imparter. After a few minutes, vehicles with blinding lights filled the streets. Caroline assumed they were the emergency healing centers. 

The teens regrouped on the intersection of Tiergan's street. 

"So, what are we going to do now?" Thor asked. "I for one, don't want to go explain our situation to a bunch of humans."

Caroline nodded. "We need to get somewhere sheltered. Do you think anyone would take five teens in for the night?"

The answer was a incessant no. Humans seemed to not be a very hospitable species. Christian came out of a house with a large bruise from a cooking utensil of sorts.   

"So, we walk until we hit a building that is not inhabited by humans," Christian said, rubbing his bruised arm. "Or get food, I'm starving."

"If Ash were here, he would raid us an ATM in a heartbeat, and then we could probably get both," Kyreen sighed. Everyone went silent at the thought of the inventive traitor.

So started the fellowship of the Fosters, in search of shelter  thought Caroline. Every house was identical and they seemed to stretch on for miles. The only differences were the cars, and the occasional appearance of a large turkey, or cone filled with vegetables. "Humans have some interesting traditions," Caroline said, pointing to a dancing turkey projection that was fading in the morning light.

"Is anyone going to talk about the elephant in the room?" Christian asked.

"And what might that elephant be?" Kyreen told him.

Christian shrugged like it was obvious. "Why is Tiergan like this? I mean come on? How can one of the most revered elves in the world become crippled and old?"

"It was almost as if he was human." The words flew from Thor's lips but hit the ground with the weight of a Volkswagen. What if that was what happened? It sounded crazy, but if the elves and humans were so similar, with enough research someone could have created something like Dex's restrictor, only worse. Something that could not only take away abilities, but also skills. The long life didn't make sense though. That was something that had been encoded in their DNA for a millennium.

"The Vacker twins!" Caroline blurted. They were half human. They could have supplied the genetic template for a new set of experiments. They were the council's guinea pigs. But why create something that turns Elves into humans? It just seemed like extra work.

Caroline's gears were turning but everyone else stared at her blankly.

"What's going on?" Kyreen asked

Caroline's mind slowed down enough to utter two words. "We're human."