So, um, I hope this is any good. It was mostly inspired (with very minor ideas borrowed from) The Inconvenient and Unexpected Tales of Alexandria Millicent Fournier, by kiliyousosilly, previously agent-of-fear.
Chapter 1:
My name is Freya Macintosh. You may never have heard of me, but I guarantee you that you've at least dreamed about what happened to me. But trust me, it's not much of a dreamboat. This is how it started:
I leaned against the wall of my building, in which I had been living since I graduated from college. My flatmate, Lily, sat on the couch, sighing.
"Freya?" she asked.
"Mm?" I replied, not opening my eyes or lifting my head.
"Do you ever think that graduate students, like us, should've found more things to do with their lives?"
I opened my eyes. "Well, yeah, Lily. But the fact remains, we didn't." Even in that tiny piece of my speech, you could hear the Scottish accent.
The other twenty-four year old spun her head around, standing up. "You can't be serious!" Unlike me, everything she did or said just about screamed American.
"But I am!" I spat, my temper going from zero to ten in two seconds. "Listen, Lily. It's not my fault that the economy sucks and that we're stuck here, with a suck-ish, boring team-teaching job, but we are!" I opened my mouth to say more, but Lily put out her hand to stop me.
"Listen to me. I get that your life sucked before. But you're living with me, now. We can help each other, Frey!"
I rolled my eyes. "As if we've never had this conversation," I muttered, before adding, "I'm late, Lily."
Lily flared angrily. "Fine. Go to your stupid horse thing, then."
I went upstairs and got dressed in my horse stuff. I only put on the riding breeches and leather riding boots before simply putting a warm flannel shirt over my top half. Then I yanked on my hide jacket and grabbed my backpack.
Before I left, I glanced in the mirror that hung over my bedroom wall. In it I saw a brown-haired, blue-eyed girl, with a dusting of freckles over her nose and a full, pink mouth. I grinned at myself, not realising then that the tiny glance in that mirror would be my last in that room, ever.
Looking about my room, I only spotted a few things that I really liked – my Kindle, my MacBook Pro, and my iPod. I had no remainders of my childhood in that room, not one single stuffed animal or painting. The only things I liked about the room were the colour (dark blue), and those three objects that I soon realised I didn't like or need that much at all.
I turned and scurried down the stairs.
I sat in my car and gazed up at the window of my flat to see Lily waving at me. I waved back, my hands tucked into Mitchell-from-Being-Human style gloves.
I didn't see Lily for a long time after that.
As I drove down the road, I noticed that my car was having...difficulties. By the time I reached far enough away that I couldn't walk back, it died. I got out and kicked it before sitting on the roof. I was so tired. For awhile, the only thing that had kept me going was my BBC shows – they reminded me of home. But I had stopped watching Being Human when Mitchell died, Sherlock was in a standstill, and Doctor Who – I had watched every episode ever aired, and the next season still hadn't come out.
Then what kept me going was Lily, until she got her boyfriend. Then it was finishing college, then Lily again, but now Lily had another boyfriend. The future seemed bleak and boring and unworthy of living for.
I sighed and braided my hair for no apparent reason, waiting for something of which I was unsure. Several times, I asked myself, What are you waiting for? Call Triple A, or whatever it is. But my brain always replied, Not yet. We're waiting.
And so I sat. I checked inside my backpack, and found, to my utter surprise, some extra clothes, – a lot like I was wearing – a sewing kit, a pocket knife, and (to my complete astonishment) The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings: One Volume and even The Silmarillion. I also found several tens of pounds of British money – and only a few American dollars, which stunned me, because I had not had much other than a little American money for the past several years.
Troubled, I zipped up the back and swung it back onto my back.
I heard the blare of a horn and spun – too late. The world was gone in a flash of white, and then black. I heard screaming and yelling, felt a flare of pain, and then it all melted away.
I sat up to hear birds twittering in the trees. For there were clearly trees around me, and sun was shining between the leaves. There was a little path cutting between the trunks, and a little wooden cart was clattering along it to the right of me. I made to stand up and felt woozy.
"Patience, little one," said a deep voice that I recognised. I spun around in the grass.
"Gandalf!" I gasped. For clearly, standing in front of me, was Gandalf the Grey. From JRR Tolkien's excellent books, which happened to be in my backpack at that very second.
He gazed down at me, holding his staff in front of him. Those bright blue eyes shown out over his bushy grey beard and past his long, equally grey hair. That hat, oh, I knew that hat. And those robes. But his eyes shone with something akin to anticipation, worry, and even fear. "I do not know you, my dear," he said worriedly.
"Oh, I know," I babbled. "I mean, I've never met you, obviously, but I know you, and I know who you are, and – "
"My dear young Dwarf, how can you know me?"
I blanched. "I am not a Dwarf," I said shakily. "I was human – I mean, I was of the race of Men."
"You really had better tell me what's going on," Gandalf said.
So I related what had happened to me. Literally, everything came pouring out, although I tried to make Earth sound normal-ish, and tried to make Gandalf less confused. I ended up growling, "And now I'm here, in Middle-Earth, a place that's completely fictional where I come from, and I have the bloody books of everything that happens in my knapsack!"
"Everything that happens?" asked Gandalf, leaning forward suddenly.
"Y-yes. Well, not everything, but – I know from about now to when..." I clammed up. "I can't tell you, can I?"
"No."
"Well, I know both into the past of this world and the future. One of the books concerns the past of Middle-Earth, and the other set of three the future – but see here, who are you going to see?"
"Whatever do you mean, my dear Freya?" Seeing as I had told him my name.
"I mean," I said exasperatedly, "Are you going to see a hobbit named Bilbo, or a hobbit named Frodo?"
"Bilbo Baggins," replied Gandalf.
"So, yeah, I have one book on the past, one book on the rather immediate future, and three books on about sixty years from now."
"All right," said Gandalf after a minute. "I believe you may be able to stand up."
I did so.
"I am going to scare you and shock you in a moment," warned Gandalf.
I was immediately on edge. "What do you mean?" I asked warily.
"I mean, Lady Freya, that I am going to tell you something – about you, I might add – that will shock you and scare you."
"Okay, shoot."
He looked at me funny. "Shoot what?"
"Oh...sorry. Never mind, talk."
Gandalf shrugged, then leaned forward, sympathy and worry in his kind eyes. "My dear girl, you are almost undoubtedly dead in your previous world."
I blinked, stunned, and suddenly found myself sitting on the ground with my tailbone aching. I felt my eyes well up with tears and then ferociously blinked them away. "No," I hissed. "No, no, I never liked my life there much, I kept wishing I could go somewhere else, how come this is saddening?" And yet I found myself sitting, staring sightlessly ahead, mourning the life I could've had and everything that I hadn't realized I'd been anticipating by had.
Suddenly I sat up and slapped myself in the face before crawling over to my knapsack. I half expected to hear myself mutter the word "precious," I was being so creepily Gollum-esque.
Oh. Not yet. Sorry.
But anyway, I searched through my own backpack and found that the pocketknife had grown into a hunting knife/dagger as long as my forearm. I strapped it into my boot, and then took a look at the rest of the contents of the backpack. The money had changed from pounds and dollars to gold, silver, copper, and brass coins. Everything else had remained more or less the same.
Then I took a good look at what I was wearing. I had on my breeches and boots and flannel shirt and jacket from home, but they had shrunk.
And so had I.
I went back to staring. A few seconds later, I felt a loud, painful whack on the side of my head and looked up, shocked, to see that Gandalf had hit me with his staff.
"You, Freya, have spent several minutes relaying to me how miserable you life had been, how you have accomplished almost everything you wished to, besides perhaps making up with your mother. You told me that you disliked this 'Earth' that you have told me about and that you wished to come somewhere else so many times. Well, your wish has come true," he said, his voice booming. "Do not despair. Despite homesickness, you will learn to love it here. I promise. I am sure that you will like life better here in Middle-Earth as a Dwarf woman as opposed to a Human, as you call them, on your 'Earth'."
I smiled up at him. "You're right, Gandalf. Of course, I was being silly. I had forgotten how much I disliked Earth in the heat and surprise of the moment."
He smiled kindly down at my, holding his staff in front of him with both hands. "There, that's much better," he said. "Now come, Freya. Would you like to take part in an adventure?"
"Yes, of course!" I said, knowing exactly which one was coming.
"Well, come then. I have a group of dwarves and a hobbit to introduce you to."
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