A Little Light Reading
By firechild
Rated PG/K+
Disclaimer: They are not mine.
Warning: …. I don't think there is one this time.
A/N: So this is for Kaylee—I hope it's acceptable.
Rubbish. Sheer rubbish.
He stared down at the exam booklet in his hands, his eyes dry and his vision blurring from trying to read the abysmal penmanship and even less inspiring work of students who really should be putting more effort into an education for which they were paying. Of course, he was getting paid, and he couldn't be bothered to care overmuch at the moment himself.
This particular scion of Great Britain's future had thought so much of the assignment that he'd actually left an entire page in his booklet blank. Well, the professor never had been able to resist a blank piece of paper. Before he knew it, he was jotting something, just a sentence, a trifling bit of nonsense that held his attention for about two seconds before he was back to staring out the window of the little lecture hall, bored but duty-bound to stay until the task was done.
He was still staring some minutes later when a voice startled him. He jumped, his hand jerking and knocking over the ceramic mug that held his writing instruments, and then looked back over his shoulder to find the new guest lecturer from the sciences department standing behind him and reading over his shoulder. The silly young man in the ridiculous suit was asking him about what he'd written, as if he knew. He shook his head and waved off the questions, explaining that he was just bored and would sometimes blurt out bits of whimsy just to break up the monotony. The young scientist seemed to understand that perfectly, apologizing and jumping to help clean up the mess of the shattered pen cup. The professor assured him that it was no fuss, as the mug had been a gift from a former colleague with whom he had shared a mutual distaste, and that it was quite the more attractive in its current state than it had been beforehand. The guest, whose name the professor could not recall, smiled understandingly but finished clearing up all the same. He had just started to say something about a pen cup saving his life when both men heard an odd beeping sound; the scientist pulled something ivory and brass from his pocket and, wonder of wonders, the tip of the object suddenly glowed a bright, entrancing green. Before the professor could inquire about the object, though, the scientist popped to his feet and turned, as if jerked up by a string, his posture loose and bouncy as he excused himself and followed the green light from the room, turning to the left. Moments later, the professor heard the young man exclaim, and then an even more curious thing happened—Lovelia and Lothario Girdle-Sacks, the wholly-disagreeable mother and son who had recently joined the college's board of trustees and had promptly appointed themselves campus monitors (and right nuisances—the professor rather suspected that the timing of their appearance, and the disappearance of the dean's collection of Viking and Gothic armor, were somewhat less than happenstance) went running past the door, headed to the right, with the scientist now hot on their heels, shouting for them to put away their urges for war and leave peacefully. The young man's voice faded with his footfalls, and the professor found himself shaking his head, wondering if he'd simply got so hopelessly bored that he'd fallen asleep and dreamt the past few minutes.
And then he looked down at the test booklet, at the sentence he'd jotted, and over at the remains of the mauve-and-umber mug, and suspected that he'd just been on the very fringe of something fantastical. He wasn't at all sure that he liked the idea of being on the fringe, but he'd seen enough of the world, and of actual warring, to know that being sheltered could be a real blessing. Still, he'd have liked to have known what was really happening and why.
Scarcely two minutes had passed, and the professor was just turning back to his grading, when he heard an odd series of wheezing noises, and then the young scientist came jogging back into the lecture hall, sporting tattered clothing… and a scab above one eyebrow, a scab that the professor could have sworn was not there just a few minutes before. He shook himself from that thought when the guest lecturer held out a parcel wrapped in entirely impractical fabric. Once the professor was certain that this was meant for him, he accepted it gingerly and unwrapped it… and sucked in a breath.
Laying in his hands were two items: a receptacle, perhaps twice the size of a whiskey glass, that was the most bright, clean whitish-silver color he'd ever seen, cool and strong and surprisingly light in his hand; and a simple, pleasingly aged book with blank pages and a leather cover in rich red. The young scientist insisted that one could never really do without a good pencil cup, and that adventures were meant to be shared; when the professor asked why, the guest shrugged and said that he owed the professor a pencil cup and that that book was a gift because it was the scientist's birthday and, at his age, he'd found that he'd much rather give gifts than to bother with receiving them.
When the professor asked, the guest lecturer went on to explain that Lovelia and Lothario had, indeed, been stealing old Earth armor because some of it contained traces of an alloy that could be melted down into an object, such as a brooch or ring, that would provide the power that their ship needed in order to take off and land. That didn't make sense, but the professor found himself nodding anyway. The scientist bid him goodbye and scampered out of the lecture hall, leaving the professor to stare again out the window. That was how he managed to witness the scientist conversing with the gardener and handing him some sort of small wooden box before leaving. Apparently, that was to be the end of the madness.
As the professor made his way home that night, though, he couldn't help but wonder about his bits of fancy and the questions that had started the whole bizarre episode…
Just what on Earth was a Hobbit, and what sort of a hole would it like?