Chapter One

I blinked and rubbed my eyes. I blinked again. Nope. I was still in the middle of a forest. I forest, may I add, that I had never seen before and for that matter, was no where near a few minutes ago. If it was a few minutes ago.

Maybe I should explain myself. My name is Amaya Osbourne, and I never would have thought that anything interesting would come of my life. Anyway, as I was saying… I'm from the city of York in England. Quite a pleasant city if you live in one of the nicer areas. I, however, had spent the first nineteen years of my life working, either at school, or at one of my jobs I had to pay my university fees. So naturally, it was quite a surprise when I woke up in the middle of a forest when I was previously walking home from work in the middle of a crowded city.

Brushing the dirt off of my jeans, I looked around. Not that it did any good. Everywhere looked the same to me. Trees, trees and more trees. Shrugging, I decided to start walking in a random direction. No use just standing around. I could find out what had happened later.

Maybe I fell over and was knocked unconscious? I thought. Or maybe I'm already home and just dreaming? Although this all feels very real for a dream. Maybe I was kidnapped!

I must have been walking for a few hours before I finally made any sort of progress. It wasn't exactly the edge of the forest, but I'd stumbled across a little stream, and at least that was something. Kneeling down, I splashed some water on my face before taking a drink. I seriously had no idea how I'd managed to get so filthy from the few hours I'd been here. Then again, I never was a very neat person.

After sitting there for a few more minutes, I finally made a decision. It was starting to get dark, and there was no way I was walking around in the dark. So finding a comfy (or as comfy as it got around here it seems) spot on the ground, I lay down and closed my eyes. Not that it did much good. I was in the middle of a creepy place on my own. Definitely not the most relaxing situation in the world.

Eventually I did manage to drift off to sleep. Unfortunately that only lasted a minute before I heard the faint sound of metal. Incredibly faint, sure, but I heard it none the less. Luckily for me, because when I cracked my eyes open, I was being pointed at with an incredibly long, incredibly sharp sword.

"Woah!" I yelled, backing up slowly. "What the hell?" Standing up, I could now see the wielder of the sword. He seemed quite small. Well, he would have if I hadn't have noticed that I seemed to have shrunk. I only came up to his shoulders. Wasn't that great. Looking up, I could see that he seemed to have dropped his sword, something that what a great relief. "Dude!"

"What are you doing here?" he asked. His voice was deep, and seemed to hold a lot of authority.

"Trying to get to sleep." I answered. "Obviously not going so well." I gestured towards his sword.

The man sighed, dropping his sword so it was resting by his leg. "I meant, what are you doing in the middle of a forest?"

This time it was my time to sigh. What did he think I was doing in the middle of a forest? "Having a party. What do you think? I got lost." I bit my lip. "Well, not lost exactly. More to the fact that I have no idea where I am. At all."

"I see." I stared at him for about a minute before I realised he wasn't going to say anymore. Before I could sit back down, he began to speak again. "You will come with me."

"Urm…will I now? Because, honestly, I have no idea who you are." To be honest, I was very tempted at this point to run around yelling stranger danger!

"Would you rather remain lost in the forest?" he raised an eyebrow.

I paused. He raised a very valid argument. Besides, he had a sword, and if he wanted to kill me, he would have already done so, surely? It wasn't like a posed much of a threat at the moment. "Fine. I suppose…" I drifted off. "I'm Amaya, by the way." His expression didn't change. "…just in case, you… you know…wanted to know."

His mouth lifted up a fraction for a moment, but it was so brief I thought I'd imagined it. "Thorin Oakenshield."

-8-

For the next few days I travelled through the forest with Thorin. I had quickly discovered that he was not very talkative at all, and while I wasn't the most talkative person in the world, I found myself talking a lot more than I would have normally, trying to find out more about the man I was travelling with.

I had discovered that he was a dwarf (something that surprised me as I was at least a head shorter), and was travelling to a small place called the Shire, which obviously, I'd never heard of. Other than that, he didn't reveal much. Although I was grateful none the less for the food and water supply that he had. I was pretty sure I would have starved otherwise.

Instead, I decided to ask general questions; places nearby, places faraway, general history of where I was. (I'd quickly come to the conclusion that I must have been in a different world for dwarves to exist) Each night, when I was going to sleep, my thoughts raced around my head trying to take in and remember as much as possible.

As the days went by, I came to the realization that there was a bigger chance that I would be staying here, and strangely, it didn't bother me. Not at that moment anyway. I didn't really have anything going for me at home. Life was pretty miserable. I started to imagine possibly starting a life here.

After the third day of travelling, we finally came to a clearing in the trees. What I saw was one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen. There were hills with little what I assumed were houses judging by the doors and windows in the front, and it was so green. Much greener than anything I had ever seen back home. I could see people walking along small pathways from the distance I was at going about their daily business.

"Is this the Shire?" I asked Thorin.

"Yes. Now, I need to go and sort out some supplies for my journey. I think it would be best if you find our host for this evening. My sources tell me that there should be a mark on his door. Look out for that." He started to walk away.

"Wait! Thorin!" He stopped. "How long are you going to be?" I was anxious. I didn't really want to be alone in an unknown place.

"I shouldn't be long." And then he was gone. I sighed and looked around. Well, this place wasn't too big; it shouldn't take too long to find a door with a strange mark. 'Although the mark could look like anything', I thought.

Deciding it would be best if I found this place before it got dark, I set off down the (quite steep it turns out) hill I was standing on. It turns out that I wasn't that far from any (what I still assumed were) houses. I had to admit, these houses were quite cute. The doorways were perfectly round, and I could hear people's voices coming in through the window. Each had a little garden that was kept to perfection, not a blade of grass out of place. Keeping an eye out for any 'marks' on the doors I carried on. I felt quite out of place here, despite the feeling of peace that hung around the place. Walking on, I passed a small woman walking towards me. However it wasn't the slightly alarmed look she gave me (for what reason I had no idea), or the fact that she sped up slightly. It was her feet that slightly freaked me out. They were huge. Huge, big hairy feet that I had certainly never seen before on anyone. Shrugging, I decided to let it go. It was probably normal around here, and I was really in no place to judge anyone here.

It was a few hours later before I started thinking of giving up. There were far more houses here than I had originally thought. Just as the sun was starting to set, I found myself on top of a rather tall hill. Again. Needless to say, I was pretty tired by now. Looking around, I saw a small bench nearby. Going to sit down on it, I groaned. This day was not good. I was completely alone in a strange place, and I could not, for the life of me, find that damn door!

I turned around, trying to get a sense of where I was. What I saw surprised me. There, behind me this whole time, was a door. And on that door, a mark! Now I honestly had no idea if this was the mark I was looking for, but it was the first one I had seen, so it seemed good enough for me. And it definitely looked out of place on the otherwise perfectly painted green door.

Leaping up, I rushed over to the door, and quickly knocked. Thorin was mad if he thought I was going to be staying out here for the night. Only having to wait for a few seconds or so, the door opened and I came face to face with a small man, much the same as the woman I had seen earlier, although…obviously, this person was more…manly, I guess the word was?

He was wearing a patchy dressing gown, and I was happy to say that I was actually a little taller than him!

"Ur…hello." I stuttered. What was I supposed to say?

"Hello."

"Oh! Urm…this is going to sound really strange, but I have no idea where I am and I'm on my own, and I was pretty sure this was where I was told to go, and he said he was going to be here soon and by now I'm probably rambling…so yeah…"

"Right! Well, in that case, you'd better come in." The man looked a bit bewildered by this point.

"Thanks." I smiled. "I'm Amaya. Amaya Osbourne."

"Bilbo Baggins."

-8-

A/N: All right! First chapter. Next up, the rest of the company!

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