Happy Hobbits and the Magic Mushrooms


(you'd think I was on the 'shrooms myself the way I wrote this;) To make it more interesting, I put it during the Easterling and Orc occupation of the Shire, after ol Fluffytoes Frodo returns from dumping the Ring in Mordor's giant chemical toilet...another story entirely)

Frodo woke up with a huge headache. Not from too much beer at the Green Dragon, but from taking on a gang of half Orcs and other creatures who's faces only a mother could love, all trying to take over the Shire. They had almost driven them out except they were still trying to find their leader suspiciously named "Sharkey".

The throb-throb of Frodo's head exploded into a BAM!BAM! when the door to Bag End burst open. It was Sam, and he was chipper...too chipper.

"Good MORNING, Mr. Frodo!" he boomed out loud enough for the walls, the teakettle, the furniture, the books, and the hair on Frodo's toes to reverberate. Frodo's response was a groan and the pulling of the covers over his head. Not minding to await a response, Sam started bustling around the kitchen. "I'll fix you right up with a good breakfast, Mr. Frodo." he practically sang. "You'll be your old self in NO time!" ( Bang! Went the pots, pans and utensils...Clatter! Clap!) He then proceeded to whistle a merry tune, cracking eggs over a frying pan to echo Frodo's cracking head. Frodo considered sucking his thumb, and instead used his hands to cover his ears.

"Sam..." he murmured weakly. "Sam, please..."

"Coming right up, Mr. Frodo!" was Sam's chirpy response. Even the birds outside were chirpy, all deciding right then to explode into full chorus with the rising sun. Sam whistled along with them, clattering it seemed every dish in the house. Then, as if it couldn't get any worse, Merry and Pippin bounced through the door, yelling "Hi, Sam! What's for breakfast?"

"YOU'LL all be for breakfast if you don't stop that clattering about!" moaned Frodo as he feebly arose to hobble toward them with bedhead and circles under his eyes so dark he looked like a racoon.

Pippin and Merry feigned shock, backing away. "It's an Orc, Sam! KILL it!!!"

In non-Orc-induced-headache circumstances, Frodo would have lunged and play wrestled with his cousins. But all Hobbitly humor was gone from his now grim features as he stood glaring at them out of bloodshot eyes and wrinkled bedclothes.

"Well, I see ol' Sleepyhead finally got up." Sam smiled as he turned from a pan of frying eggs and mushrooms...and bacon, and toast, and fresh berries, and cake, and a loaf of bread, and freshly churned butter, and milk, and juice and a round of cheese. Merry and Pippen were already seated at the table, getting high off the fumes.
"Sorry Sam, I have a headache." Frodo apologized weakly, plopping down with them to stare with new interest at the food.

"Don't you worry, Mr. Frodo, you took a hard fall last night and no mistake." Sam said, glancing warningly at the other two. He balanced the plates like a seal and set them down expertly at the table. As one, they all dug in.

And then they all looked at each other and laughed uproariously.

"These are the best mushrooms I've ever tasted!" Pippin exclaimed, spearing a coin-like stack of them with a dis-proportionate amount of egg.

"SAM!" yelled and pointed Merry. "You've got horns growing out your head!"

Sam's mouth opened in an "O" of shock. He felt his hair, only to find two bunches of curls that had not settled down. "I have no such thing, Merry!" he said, wondering what the crazy Hobbit was up to. Then he popped a bite of mushrooms into his own mouth, and stared glassy eyed. The platefuls of food had suddenly been splashed with a kaliedescope of color. He knew he was a good cook, but not THAT good!

Frodo's headache seemed to have disappeared and he was smiling dreamily as he finished up the last bit of his breakfast and lit up his pipe. The other three soon followed suit, staring at each other's smoke as it shaped itself into unusually sentient shapes. Pippin blew a smoke ring that turned into a band of dancing fairies around Sam's head across the table. Smiling stupidly, Sam returned a brilliant cloud of Elven ships that bobbed at Pippin's nose temporarily as he giggled like a lunatic.

"I've never seen your smoke rings so full of color, Sam." Pippin observed as a mist came up over the ships and disappeared. "What did you put in this stuff?"

Sam shrugged. "Just Longbottom Leaf, same as always." he said, as a smoke staircase appeared below his chin and unfolded to the table. A ghostly figure of Sauruman came out, glared at him, then disappeared into a basket of apples on the table. The other hobbits stared mesmerized. Merry blew his own smoke ship, and Frodo sent a smoke cannonball to blow it to smithereens. Merry picked up an apple and hurled it at Frodo, which started a food fight amongst all of them.

"The Orcs'll skip over this place right enough." said Sam, winking. "We've already done the destroying for em." With another round of psychadellic mushroom-induced laughter, the merry Hobbits all linked arms and went skipping and whistling through Hobbiton.

"SHADDAPP!" yelled old cranky Ortho Sackville-Baggins out of his window as they passed by. His face looked like an angry bulldog that had sat on a pincushion. They waved to him stupidly and continued skipping.

The hobbits went off the beaten path and skipped through gardens, other Hobbit's houses, and even waded through the Mill Stream, thinking they had seen a rainbow bridge across it. Then they came to a group of half Orcs guarding the gate to the borders of Hobbiton.

"And just where do you lackeys think YER goin?" their leader said in a voice that sounded like a coffee grinder.

The Hobbits laughed hilariously, as only they could see the pink tutus and rhinestone tiaras the ruffians were wearing. "WE'RE going for a walk." Frodo said between giggles. "Aren't you late for a recital?"

"You think yer funny, do ya?" snarled the half Orc, which sent a domino effect of echoing snarls from his cronies. He came forward and brandished an axe at them. The Hobbits just laughed, seeing it as a fairy wand, complete with a star and streamers. His oversized scaly feet filled out his dainty pink toeshoes nicely as he clomped toward them. With a roar, he started to swing at them, but suddenly, a chorus of whistles sounded behind the Hobbits. They turned around to see half the town of Hobbiton skipping toward them, all linking arms. The half Orcs shrieked and scattered, and the four original Hobbits joined them, skipping off into the rising sun over the meadow.