"You know, Lego," I began brightly.

My older brother shot me a look from the front of the car that I think was meant to be intimidating.  Well, whatever it was meant to be, it wasn't intimidating, so I just shrugged.  "I am not Legolas," he snapped.

I gave him my cheesiest grin.  "But, Leo, it's only one extra letter."

My best friend, Mysto, was dirivng.  She nodded in agreement.  "And you look *so* like him, Orli!"

Leo simply glared, and resolved to sulk, ignoring the laughter from me, Mysto, and Leo's own best friend Gregory.

The idea that Leo looked exactly Orlando Bloom's portrayal of Legolas, my favorite character from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, had been an item of amusement to everyone by my brother for quite some time.  It didn't help matters much, either, that Leo was in archery club, was pretty tall, even for our family of six-footers (minus me), had an affinity for wearing green and brown, and could speak pretty much every word in Sindarin ever written by J.R.R. Tolkien perfectly, from memory, and had been able to do so since he was twelve.  this was a fact that all of us, possibly excluding Greg, were to some extent envious of.

My favorite part of it was that I had something to tease my brother about that would tick him off, no matter how good a mood he was in, which is a very good weapon to have.  That's just the kind of person I am, anyways.

Speaking of me, my name's Stormy, but everyone's called me Vega since I was fourteen.  The reason for that being very complicated, and involving many involved, complicated Lord of the Rings fanfictions that Mysto and I planned on writing, but never got around to, I'll just move on.  I'm seventeen now, four years yougner than Leo.

When the story I'll get around to telling eventually started, it was summer.  I'd finished high school and Leo, who I really do love, despite adoring to tease him, had promised to take me on a road trip to see Arizona, where our mother grew up.  We went with our respective best friends, Mysto (so called for reasons untold; she transferred to my high school in sophomore year, when she and her family moved from Hawaii to Florida, where we live), and Gregory, who decided on our outset that he was going to grow a beard.

*Try* to grow is more like the truth, since all he had for the week after we set out was peach fuzz, anyways, not that it has any relevance to my story.

Well, I probably shouldn't say *my* story, since it's my brothers, technically speaking, but I'm the narrator, so you'll just have to live with it.




Anyways, we got to Arizona after eight days driving, and stayed in a little town outside of Phoenix called Mesa.  That's where mine and Leo's grandparents on our mother's side live.  Or rather, lived, since our grandfather Thomas died when we were kids.  Now, there was only Grandmother Gwendolyn left.  Everyone called her Gwen, and she was definitely one of the best grandmothers I've ever met.

We got a warm greeting when we arrived, as was expected, and Mysto and I promptly went to raid the kitchen, much to my brother's chagrin.  He stayed in the so-called "parlor" (which was really the living room, anyways) and talked to Gwen.  Greg, being more polite than my friend and I, if only just, and having never met Gwen before, stayed with Leo.




We settled down in Gwen's, and didn't do much but order pay-per-view reruns of the Lord of the Rings movies for a few days.

Er...at least, that's what Mysto and I did.  Greg and Leo helped Gwen with fixing stuff around the house, and then played stupid boy games like tackle football during their free time.

I'm of the opinion that their brains fried after working their first day in that sweltering hear, which could explain why they never came in until dark.

Gwen, meanwhile, was all too happy cooking for the four of us, and I can honestly say I gained ten pounds that first week alone eating nothing but her cooking.