Disclaimer: I own Liz, and Mon owns Mon, and if you recognise it, it's not ours.

Liz didn't even notice the beautiful New Zealand countryside flashing by. She was too caught up in her own thoughts, and was suppressing the urge to giggle with excitement and happiness. Then she thought to herself, 'Hey, why shouldn't I laugh. After all, it's not every day you go on a road trip around Middle Earth!' She and Monica had been planning the trip for four years; since they were in fourth form and she had been packing and repacking her things for months. She started daydreaming about all the things they would do and the places they would see, until ...

"I can't believe we're finally going to Hobbiton!" Monica's voice cut into her thoughts.

"I know!" said Liz, glancing over to the passenger seat of her beat-up Honda Shuttle, where Monica was sitting with a map unfolded over her knees and several Lord of the Rings guidebooks in her hands. "I can't believe it either! I've been dreaming about this since . . . well, forever!"

"We should almost be there," commented Mon, glancing at the map, then peering out the window at the fields full of sheep. "Stop the car! This is it! I can see Bag End!!"

Liz pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the car. The two girls climbed out, grabbed their packs and raced over the fields to the site as fast as they could.

"It's just like it is in the movie!!" Liz shrieked breathlessly. "This is sooo cool! I can't believe it! We're gonna have so much fun! We're gonna see all the places from the movies!"

They arrived at the set and slowed to a halt, staring at the empty doorframe of Bag-End, overgrown with grass and weeds.

"Its so beautiful" sighed Liz.

"Its even better than I imagined," said Mon breathlessly. Slowly they walked up the steps and across through the doorway into the entrance hall. They looked around the empty room with reverent silence, until Mon couldn't take it anymore.

"Liz!!" she shrieked excitedly. "It's the roof-thing Gandalf hits his head on!!!"

"And it's the pegs that the dwarves hang their cloaks on!" Liz exclaimed. "Man, this is awesome!!"

The girls rushed through to the living room. As she glanced out of the window, Monica noticed something that didn't quite look right. She went over to the window to have a closer look.

"Liz, do you see that dead tree in the garden?" she asked, pointing to it.

Liz came over and looked. "Yeah, I see it. What about it?"

"What's that just beside it, just above the ground?" said Mon. "It looks like there's a bush, just floating in mid-air. Look, there's nothing nearby that could hold it up."

"You're right!" agreed Liz. "That's strange. We should go check it out"

They went back to the front door and walked over to the dead tree. There were no bushes in sight.

"That's really strange," said Mon.

"I'll say! I'm gonna have a look around" decided Liz. She walked back towards the window where they had seen the bush. She turned around and jumped.

"Hey Mon, come here!" she exclaimed. "I can see the bush!"

"Where?" said Monica as she walked over. "Its not . . . what the frig?! That's really weird!"

In front of them was the bush, but you could only see a small part of it, almost as if the rest was hidden behind a wall. The girls started moving slowly towards the bush. As they drew closer, more and more of it moved out of sight. They looked at each other, mystified, then kept moving forward, and were brought to a standstill by something solid.

Monica jumped. "But there's nothing there!" She looked around and groaned. "My brain hurts."

Liz bent down. "There's the bush again! This is creeping me out!" She tentatively reached forward . . . but there was nothing there. She waved her hand from side to side and was stopped by something hard.

"This is really strange!" Monica said, by now thoroughly spooked.

"It's like a book I read," said Liz. "These people found a - well, I guess you would call it a window - to another world."

"Cool," said Mon. "Do you think that's what this is?"

"I really have no idea," Liz admitted. "But I've never seen anything like it before.

They stared in silence at the mysterious bush.

"Let's go through it!" said Liz, impulsively. "See where it goes! It would be the adventure of a lifetime."

"But Liz . . ." Mon began.

"Come on, it could be fun!" Liz coaxed. "At any rate, we can always come back through if we find ourselves somewhere dangerous or somewhere we don't like."

"Well . . . okay! Why not? It's worth a try."

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