Disclaimer: Obviously I don't own LotR. I own Sybil and Walter.
It has been a few months since I uploaded anything, but to make it up this is longer than my usual work and it's a different genre. It was supposed to be humoristic, but the end is somewhat sad, old habits die hard I suppose. I've never actually read a 'girl falls into ME' story, but I've featured in one (it never came online, thank God!) and the summaries all look so much alike it can not possibly be good.
Lifework
Her eyes seemed larger than life as she scrutinized the short, bearded man.
"Am I dead?"
The little woman continued to peer intently at Gimli's face through her large round spectacles. Glaring at anyone else present would have required looking up and she wasn't about to be looked down upon!
"I better not be! I've heard the stories! Just prancing around sweeping young girls off their feet." She had come uncomfortably close, her wrinkles appearing like wide cracks in desert ground, their noses nearly touching. Gimli twitched his nose comically, shaking his beard in the process and pulled away. The woman bent even further forwards.
"Oh, I bet I am! Just my luck to end up here too! The doctor said I had another year! Charlatans all of them! Well, they won't get Anything more out of me!" The grey woman waved her cane around menacingly before putting it down again so as not to lose her balance.
Then as an afterthought, "And you!" She waving her cane vaguely to where a bewildered Aragorn and Legolas stood gawking. They jumped at the sudden attention "Have your mothers never told you it is rude to stare?" Her eyes never leaving Gimli's.
"And get me some tea!" After a second of total awkward silence, both men scrambled to do as she bid.
Momentarily the woman looked over towards them and huffed is satisfaction. She then turned back at her initial victim and now looked him over in an appraising manner rather than a threatening one.
"Bet you're not the one they all fawn over, are you?" Gimli blinked and sputtered something incomprehensible that was undoubtedly meant to defend himself, but the woman had already turned away.
A short while later the woman was seated on one side of the fire muttering incessantly about being dead and how the men's cloaks were too rough and the tea not hot enough. Well, she was cold as she hadn't taken her coat with her when she left the house, never expecting to end up halfway up a mountainside.
After Aragorn heard her mutter something that sounded like "bus must have hit me" he decided it was time to get out of their stupor and clear a few things up.
"Madam, with all due respect," best to be polite the woman seemed not to be trifled with, "I do not think you are dead."
For a moment the old lady was startled, having forgotten there were three men sitting just across the primitive camping site.
"What!" Already it was obvious the future king's words weren't having the desired effect, "You mean to say I'm in a coma!" Aragorn raised his eyebrows. He turned to look at his companions whose expression mirrored his own.
"I've read about that too! I don't want to be a vegetable on a tube." Aragorn blinked. Legolas blinked. Gimli blinked. Seeing his companions were just as much, if not more, useless in this situation than he was, Aragorn cursed himself for ever assuming the position of leader.
"Madam," he tried again, "I do not think you are dead or in a coma." He tried very hard to sound calming and convincing. "In fact, you look completely fine." She didn't sound fine, but he didn't dare say that. She sounded disturbingly…disturbing.
"Of course I am fine! Here I am! I don't suppose you know when people here are dead or actual people. It was in this book I once read. What was it again? Oh, I don't remember, something about two brothers and a great battle in the afterlife and then they died and went to the second afterlife. Is that how it is? Why aren't there more people here? Don't you notice these kinds of things? What about my clothes?" She gestured to her frilly green with orange blouse. "You can't say they are normal for this backwater world." They weren't and they doubted they were normal in any universe, but it was not what bothered either of the three companions at that particular moment in time.
She tried to push herself off the ground, undoubtedly the petit woman would looked more impressive standing than she ever could sitting, but she faltered and sank back down. She groaned.
"Ha! I'm not even fine! They haven't even bothered to patch up my knees! And I don't suppose you are gentleman enough to help up an old women."
Aragorn felt he had taken enough reasonability by talking to her, Gimli stayed as far away from her as possible, having seen things in her eyes he would rather not see again, and thus the duty fell upon the unfortunate Legolas. The elf hesitantly walked around the fire to help her stand but was waved off with the woman's cane, while she screeched something about her knees, no use and harassment by the hands of pretty boys. Quickly he retreated back to the men's side of the fire. Aragorn sighed, another ally who'd refuse to fight at the next battle.
Frantically he tried to remember if Elrond had ever educated him on how to deal with mentally unstable people. The only thing he came up with was the case of a man from Bree who didn't dare to sleep because he believed miniscule winged creature to live just behind his eyelids. After deducing the man's aliment was from lack of sleep Elrond had proceeded to knock him on the head several times. When the men had woken up, all that troubled him was a headache, which treatment his foster father had also charged.
Aragorn shook his head, the situation was hardly comparable, though the treatment might be just as effective. Whatever he did, it had to stop the endless flow of words!
"Madam," Briefly he wondered what her name was, "Perhaps we might discuss this tomorrow. It is late and I believe we could all do with some rest." That should work, old women went to bed early, right?
She seemed to consider this and Aragorn mentally cheered himself on.
"And tomorrow? Then what? Aren't you supposed to hunt down monsters? How can I do that with these knees? And how am I supposed to defend myself? Shall I just knock them on the head with my cane and fall over in the process? Hmm?"
Aragorn almost groaned in frustration but caught himself at the last moment. He really didn't see what the problem was, she didn't seem to have a hard time brandishing the menacing stick when they were making tea, incorrectly.
"We are trying to track down our friends, Hobbits, they were kidnapped by Orcs." This had to earn him some respect from the woman, no? "But we can discuss this further tomorrow morning."
"And how do I know you won't just leave me here? You don't seem to have an awfully great sense of responsibility, letting your friends get kidnapped and all. For all I know you might murder me in my sleep!"
"Sybil! Sybil!" Sybil woke to an insistent shaking of her shoulder and a shrill voice calling her name.
"Goodness woman, I thought you'd died!"
"Oh, sorry Walter. I must have fallen asleep trying to think of an appropriate ending. I just can't think of anything." She complained.
Walter squeezed her shoulder gentle, he knew how much this project meant to her. "You'll think of something, like always. Now why don't we have some tea, looking at the screen all the time can't do your eyes any good."
"They were having tea too you know."
"Better than mine?" Walter asked teasingly.
"Of course not Walter. In my 76 years I've never met anyone who can match you in the making of tea." She gently nudged her husband, keeping her balance thanks to his hand on her shoulder.
"Go sit down, spare your knees." He pointed towards the living room just before entering the kitchen.
"What are you writing this time anyway?" The bald man asked a few minutes later, while Sybil sat in a plush blue chair by the coffee table.
"Just my lifework, old man! I've told you plenty of times. Its' the very reason we got a computer." She said impatiently while Walter walked into the room, trying hard to balance two cups of tea, each with a biscuit on the side. Sybil relieved him of one of his burdens.
"I just want girls to learn to be strong and independent and not just to fall for the first pretty boy that comes along."
"After all, you learned early on that protruding ears and a balding head can be overlooked."
"oh you silly man!" Sybil exclaimed, slapping the man softly on the shoulder and risking spilling tea over the rim of her cup in the process. Walter grinned. Everything was silent for a few minutes except for the grandfather clock that ran at least an hour late, hidden away in a shadowy corner.
"Sybil?"
"Hmm?" She nibble on her biscuit.
"Do you think you can write a happy ending just this one?" He didn't look at her when he asked this.
"Oh, I don't know Walter, happy endings are so cliché."
A blinding light suddenly enveloped the old woman and gradually she disappeared into nothingness, just like she had come, not even having enough time to finish her comment on tracking down hobbits with her blasted knees. The three hunters were left staring at the now empty spot on the other side on the fire where a broken teacup lay, its contents seeping into the earth.
***oOo***
"Good to have you back Sybil! We thought we'd lost you there for a moment!"
The old woman was lying down and looked up into the shining eyes of a young balding paramedic with protruding ears.
"Walter?" she asked, "Weren't you dead?"
"Good to have you back Sybil." He muttered, slightly confused and almost sad this time.
"Good to have you back."
***oOo***
Silence reigned over the empty plane. The wind rushed through the grass and shrubs, playing hide and seek in the mountains' crevasses. Aragorn blinked. Legolas blinked. Gimli blinked. Then almost scared to disturbed the sudden peace, a few disbelieving words were uttered.
"Vegetable on a tube?"
The end.
I suppose there are sevrals ways to interpret this. Go with whatever your comfortable with. Hope it wasn't too bad. The book Sybil mentioned was The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren.