Of Tea Leaves and Oliphaunts
Mystical Knight Dragon: Well, I was just kind of sitting here "doing my homework" (consisting of staring blankly at the computer screen with a pen in my mouth) when I just randomly thought of "Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbits." Then I got a vision of Sam in an apron, and some other stuff…and I decided to write another LotR ficcie! c: Like all two other of my LotR ficcies, this one is concentric around the books and not the movies. P I just hope this one won't get me kicked off like my first one did… -.-'
Summary: A different version of Lord of the Rings (following the books, not the movies) subsequent to the chapter titles (a little bit, anyway). Bits will be like chapter summaries almost, but humor galore will surround the entire fic. (Not like I write much else besides humor and complete insanity…besides angst…and horror…and fluff…and songfics…and—never mind.)
Fic Does Not Include Anything From The Hobbit. Well, story-line-wise, anyway. I mean, Lord of the Rings is a branch off The Hobbit, so how could I disclude it? (Because I didn't like it, that's why. XP)
Warnings: OOC, complete insanity. Who knows what sorts of strange things will happen…? (Slight yaoi will probably pop up somewhere, but I can't say that it will any main pairings 'cause I honestly don't think LotR charries should even think about sex…but for humor purposes, strange pairing might pop up…like Pippin and carrots or something like that.)
Total Chapter Expectation: 62
Update Rate: Er…Probably not very fast… I have finals coming up soon, which means I won't have time to really re-read the books to peruse for ideas and stuff…
Oh yeah, and a disclaimer. Umm…don't own. Don't want to own. P
Part I: The Fellowship of the Ring (Book One)
Chapter I: A Long-Expected Party
Bilbo Baggins lived in a little out of the way part of the world in the Backwater Country—excuse me, the Shire— in a little town called Hobbiton. Thus, the people of the land were called hobbits. Short little furry…things…with big, hairy feet. Sort of resemble my grandfather. He lived in a house he fondly called Bag End. It was supposed to be called "Baggins," of course, but while he was signing his name on the mailbox, his hand slipped, so it was reverted to "Bag End."
Bilbo had a little magic ring that he stole from a short little ex-hobbit-type creature, but technically won it during a game of Poker. Or, that's how it should have been one. Unfortunately, Sméagol came around and ate the deck of cards, and they had to play a game of "Riddle-me-this." Bilbo cheated and won…but then again, it was sort of Gollum's fault for actually thinking Bilbo's "What have I got in my pockets?" line was the actual riddle.
Then someone pointed out that almost everyone has at least one name. It was probably Mithrandir, formerly known as Gandalf the Black and Blue. He likes to point out pointless details whilst leaving out the rather important ones…like how he doesn't really make his own fireworks. He buys them from a little stall on the side of the road owned by Tom Bombadil. (A guy with a red face has to have some sort of job, other than fishing idiot hobbits out of trees, right?)
Back to the present time…ish…
It was a bright and beautiful morning…or it could have been dark and rainy, seeing as how it was still dark outside…when Bilbo's head shot off his pillow, in horror. But seeing as how it was still morning and he was exhausted from the night of heavy pope-smiking…I mean, smipe-poking…I mean…oh, you get the point… Anyway, it was morning and Bilbo was groggy, so when he woke up in terror, he couldn't remember why he had woken up in the first place.
After several moments of heavy thinking, Bilbo quite promptly came to the conclusion that:
"I left my boots outside!"
He then ran outside only to realize that he did not, in fact, leave his boots outside as they were quite still on his feet. He then proceeded to think for a few moments longer, but as he forgot to close the door, the cold, six o'clock in the morning air was blowing in on the sleeping shape of Frodo, who was sleeping on the doormat for some unbeknownst reason.
"Ack! Bilbo! Close the stupid door! It's cold outside!"
Bilbo looked down at the previously sleeping form next to hairy feet. "Frodo? What on earth are you doing on the floor?"
Frodo shrugged. "You've never given me a room. You've always said that since I'm your heir, I don't need a room of my own until you're dead and gone and I can finally have this house."
Bilbo blinked. "I said that? Are you sure I wasn't just talking in my sleep?"
"You told me at four o'clock in the afternoon!"
"My question still stands."
Frodo rolled his eyes. "What are you doing up so early, anyway?" he asked, changing the subject.
"I don't quite remember…," Bilbo answered truthfully. "All I remember is waking up with some sort of sense of impending doom…something like that."
"Did you have a dream?" Frodo asked, curious as to what had awakened his cousin. I mean, what could frighten a hobbit who's been chased by goblins? Who's battled with trolls? Who's riddled with Gollum? A magic ring, he stole… Chased by wolves, lost in the forest, escaped in barrels from the elf king's halls! Bilbo! Bilbo Baggins! The bravest little – Blatant copyright stealing…of…from Spok!
"No, I don't think so…," answered Bilbo after a few moments thought, the song previously sung above continuing to play in the background.
"Did it have anything to do with Gandalf?" Frodo asked, remembering how Gandalf had randomly appeared on his doorstep that one evening so long ago with a gaggle of dwarves.
"No, I don't think so…"
"Did it have anything to do with a magic ring being sought out by some ghost-like creature and his nine gothic slaves, all set out for world domination?" Frodo asked, remembering what the fortune teller had told them not too long ago…but neither one really believed her.
"No, I'm pretty sure that's not it…"
"Did it have anything to do with the fact that today is your 111 birthday is today and you're that much closer to death even though you haven't aged since you stole that Ring from that guy, though no one has really mentioned it or thought it strange this whole time?" Frodo asked.
"Uhh… No, but I think it had something to do with a birthday…"
"Is it because it's my birthday today, too, for some really coincidental reason?" Frodo asked.
Bilbo's eyes widened and a thin, blood-curdling shriek escaped from his lips.
Sam, who just happened to be gardening, even this early in the morning, hopped in through the window to see what was wrong just in time to see Bilbo pass out. Sam looked suspiciously from the unconscious Bilbo to the flabbergasted Frodo. "What in all of Shire did you do to him, Mr. Frodo?"
Frodo shrugged. "I just mentioned that today was my birthday and he passed out."
Bilbo, who had reawakened for the moment, passed out again the minute he heard the word "birthday."
"Well, just don't kill him, Mr. Frodo," Sam advised. "Death on one's birthday is bad luck. That's why Shakespeare is such a wonderful writer."
"Who?"
"Oh, it's no one." With that, Sam climbed out of the window and continued on with his gardening.
A moment later, Bilbo woke up again.
"Now, what's so horrifying about my birthday?" Frodo demanded.
Bilbo blanched, but managed to stay upright. "The roads are no longer safe, my boy! You can get your driver's license now! That, and you can off me and legally inherit my house! I don't want to die! I still have to finish my book, which just so conveniently happens to be named The Hobbit, but since I'm stubborn, I'm calling it There and Back Again!"
Frodo blinked. "I'm just going to go make some tea…"
Three hours later, there was a knock on the Baggins's front door. Since Bilbo was off somewhere staring at his Ring and Frodo was in the kitchen drinking unhealthy amounts of tea, Sam took it upon himself to answer the front door. He climbed in through the window for the second time that day and answered the front door only to find Gandalf the Grey on the other side, formerly known as Gandalf the Color-Blind.
Gandalf blinked when he saw Sam. "Weren't you just outside trimming the hedges…?"
Sam nodded. "Which I shouldn't even be doing since today is my day off, being Mr. Baggins's birthday, and all. All two of them."
Gandalf nodded slowly. "So…couldn't you have just opened the door for me from the outside instead of climbing in through the window?"
"Oh, why, yes, sure," Sam said in that way that clearly implied that that was one of the stupidest ideas he had ever heard. With that, he promptly climbed out the window once more.
Gandalf looked at Sam struggling through the window. "Couldn't you have just walked out the front door?" he asked, quite confused. "You were already over here, too…"
Sam stopped struggling and looked at Gandalf as if he had grown three horns on top of his head.
Gandalf promptly checked to make sure that there wasn't a horn on top of his head (one never knows what can happen when you own a pointy, magic staff) before shrugging and entering the house.
Not seeing Bilbo anywhere, he took a deep breath and called out, "BIIIIIILBOOOO! WHERE AAAARE YOOOOOU?"
Bilbo ran in from the other room, his hands covering his ears. "Gandalf! Be quiet! Don't you know that your lungs are twice the size of my eardrums!"
"Bilbo… Your lungs are twice the size of my eardrums!"
"Oh, right then…" He started over. "Gandalf! Be quiet! Don't you know that your lungs are half the size of my eardrums!"
Gandalf sighed. No use speaking logic to an illiterate hobbit. I mean, really, is there a single school mentioned in the entire book? I don't think so.
Moving on.
"Where's Frodo?" Gandalf asked curiously. Usually the boy was the first one to greet him…usually because Frodo would have gone out to do something with Pippin, Merry, and Sam and get in trouble, thus running into Gandalf purely coincidentally.
"I don't know… Last I knew, he was still in the kitchen drinking tea."
Gandalf made his way to the kitchen and saw Frodo twitching on the kitchen floor, sugar frothing from his mouth and tea leaves surrounding him. Although he himself was rather perturbed, Bilbo was far from it and only reprimanded:
"Frodo! How many times must I tell you that even though the tea is uncaffeinated, you should not add enough sugar to make even an oliphaunt pass out!"
"SSSuuuUUUuugggggaaAAaaAAarrrRRRRR gooooOOOOOOoooddddDD…….." Frodo said psychotically, twitching some more.
"Stop drooling on my floor," Bilbo said, still rather nonchalant about the whole situation.
Frodo looked up and saw Gandalf (finally). "Oh, but Gandalf's here!" Frodo then stood up and greeted the wizard with much enthusiasm, completely forgetting that only moments ago he was on an escalading sugar high. From tea. Mmmm….
"Now, Gandalf," started Bilbo, "we must go into the other room and talk about a certain little plan involving a certain magical object and myself."
Frodo raised an eyebrow, suddenly beginning to believe the rumors about his cousin's sexuality not being exactly…straight…and that he was a purple unicorn from Mordor.
Bilbo laughed maniacally as he turned to exit the room.
"Wait a minute…Bilbo?"
Bilbo turned around, but didn't stop snickering—evilly, of course. "Yes?"
"Is that ring polish I see around the edges of your mouth?"
Bilbo's face contorted evilly and his eyes blackened. "Why?" he asked, sounding like the spawn of Satan, formerly known as Britney Spears.
"Bilbo's eating ring polish again," Frodo snickered, sitting down to another cup of tea.
"Again?" Gandalf asked, highly confused.
"It's my birthday! I can do whatever I want!" Bilbo pouted, making the ring polish more prominent.
"Bilbo… Go wash it off, please…" Gandalf squirmed, feeling slightly nauseous. "And can't ring polish, well, kill you!"
"Hasn't yet!" Bilbo chirruped, prancing—yes, prancing—out of the room.
Outside of Bag End, thousands of people suddenly realized what a popular, if not somewhat eccentric, little hobbit Bilbo was, and decided that all of the cool hobbits would be at the party, and told themselves that yes, they wanted to be cool hobbits, too, and the only way to obtain the ultimate cool-ness would be to go to Bilbo's party. Plus, they got presents, too! Who wouldn't want to go? Besides the Sackville-Bagginses, but they don't count because they're pompous jack—umm, mules.
Thus, everyone sent Bilbo R.S.V.P.s telling him that yes, they would go to his party, and tried to sneak a peek at Bilbo and his decorations, laughing as he was buried under mounds and mounds of other R.S.V.P.s. I mean, honestly! A phone call would save a whole lot of paper!
Finally, it was time for the party that was a lot more hyped up that it actually was. But no one noticed that. All the cool hobbits were there. But no one really cared about them, either. Nope, of course not. They were all too anxious about Bilbo's speech that was coming up.
When it was time for his speech, Bilbo promptly forgot how to speak in quotation marks and was only able to speak in italics. Not that they were double quotations to begin with; only single. Hmm, like Bilbo! (Doom, chh!)
Anyway, Bilbo's speech was supposed to go like this: Hey everyone! Thanks for coming! Yup, I'm 111! That's almost physically impossible, but I'm there! IN YOUR FACE! PWNED! Now I'm going to off myself and disappear. But first—we have a very special guest for you tonight! Everyone, put your hands together for Hobbit in the Down! Then he was to put on his Ring, disappear, and confuse everyone by crowd surfing invisibly!
But, the main hobbit of Hobbit in the Down got sick, ruining that plan. That, and a little voice in the back of the authoress's head told her that that was a blatant copyright of System of a Down, and that she couldn't do that without getting sued. That, and Gandalf got a hold of his speech notes about five minutes prior to Bilbo doing his speech, smacked him in the back of the head, and quickly wrote down a new speech using his staff of POWER.
The speech he ended up giving was rather boring and long, so we'll skip to the end of it.
I am going. I am leaving NOW. GOOD-BYE!
Bilbo was not supposed to end in talking in caps lock, but the key on Tolkien's type writer got stuck, and that's how it came out.
So, after his embarrassment of talking in caps had worn off and after apologizing to the two elderly ladies in the front for his shouting, he slipped on his Ring and ran home.
Once he got home, Gandalf caught him (Bilbo) in a very awkward position singing 25 or 6 to 4 at the top of his lungs.
"Oh, hey Gandalf! Whazzup? Took you long enough to get here…"
Gandalf didn't answer. His ears were bleeding.
Bilbo shrugged and continued singing. "Sitting cross-legged on the flooo-ooor! Twenty-five or six to foooo-oooo-oooour! Dun dun dun dun dun, dun dun dun dun dun, dun dun du—"
"Ack! Bilbo! Stop it! Just give that damn Ring to Frodo, who will probably never forgive you afterwards, and get out of here! Just STOP SINGING!"
Bilbo's eyes grew wide in horror.
"What?" Gandalf asked. "Is there something in my teeth?"
Bilbo shook his head.
"Are you going to yell at me for even suggesting to give the Ring to Frodo even though we've already agreed you would multiple times?"
Bilbo shook his head again. "No… It's just that…it's just that…You said the first curse word in this entire fic! And the authoress was doing so well, too! Now we'll have to up the rating!" Bilbo then broke down and cried.
Gandalf rolled his eyes. "Just get out of here…"
"Fine…" Bilbo pouted. "Well, take care of Frodo…and force people to read my book because they won't read it otherwise, anyway."
Gandalf nodded. "Oh, and remember to actually give Frodo the Ring and don't just walk out the door with it…"
"Yes, yes, all right. I have no intentions of keeping it, anyway. Not like I use it for much. I mean, it's completely evil, it makes strange noises at night, I keep stroking it, it's always in my pocket, it makes me invisible, it's my excuse for eating ring polish…and it's gold. How tacky is that?"
"Can you hear yourself Bilbo?" Gandalf gasped, aghast. "The Ring has taken over your mind, your thoughts, your free will, your—"
"Sorry, what? I wasn't listening. Let me take the cotton out of my ears." Bilbo then took the cotton out of his ears and looked expectantly up at Gandalf. "Come again?"
Gandalf sighed. "Never mind. Just put the Ring up on the mantle—"
"Already done."
Gandalf eyed him suspiciously. "Are you sure? You're not lying so that you can keep it?"
"Nope."
Gandalf looked over on the mantle and saw that the Ring was indeed there, in an envelope. "Oh. Well, that takes off a lot of pressure. Now get your little hobbit tooshy out of here."
"My what?"
"Never mind. Just go… Oh, and tell Elrond I said hi!"
"If you keep adding in thoughts after you tell me to go, I'll never get out of here. Yeesh." With that, Bilbo skipped out of his front door, singing, very off-key, and old song.
Frodo passed his cousin as he walked up the road, but pretended not to be related to him. When he entered the house, he promptly forgot that he had ever seen Bilbo and asked Gandalf, "Has Bilbo left yet?"
"Yes," answered Gandalf, highly upset that the authoress only gave him that short little sentence to say.
"Oh. So it wasn't all just a joke?"
"Nope. And he set it up so it looked like you killed him in order to bequeath his fortune, only you will soon find out that he left everything to all of the other family members…except that little envelope on the mantle. That's for you."
"So…all of the people he hates get his entire fortune, and I get a little envelope that will no doubt lead me to impending doom?"
"Yeah, pretty much."
Frodo shrugged. "That's pretty shallow. I hope he left me his tea, though… Man, I sure hope this chapter will hurry up. The authoress's hands are beginning to get tired."
Gandalf held up his hand in a V and gave a wink. "Nine pages and counting!"
The authoress then decided to get her influence out of the story before rabid Tolkien fans ate her, which they more than likely will, and everything went back to as it was.
For the next…umm, long time…Frodo handed out Bilbo's possessions to all of the most hated family members, for some odd reason. Ironic, ne? So, for all that time, people were constantly passing in and out of the house, making Frodo slightly nervous, especially since he hadn't had tea in about three days. He was seeming slightly more sober now from lack of tea, but slightly more twitchy as he was now addicted to it.
Finally, after enough idiot hobbits had raided his house, he put his best friend in charge of the distribution of the items and hid in his newly acquired room with a bag of tea leaves and some sugar.
Then Gandalf appeared and advised Frodo not to put on the Ring—no matter what!—which confused Frodo bunches. Then left. Again.
And thus ends the first chapter of the fic…and The Fellowship of the Ring. Ironic, ne?
Mystical Knight Dragon: I sincerely hope that you enjoyed reading this fic as much as I enjoyed writing it. Not to mention that I got to skip out on doing my homework whilst the writing ensued. But now that I'm done, I have 47 more note cards to fill out by two days' time… -.-' Ah well. My fault for procrastinating.
Chibi Baku-muse: Please leave a pretty review so that she'll know if she should continue with a second chapter of insanity or not! Wai!