Hey guys, yeah it's been a while, I know. And that little review I got telling me I needed to post something did not piss me off. It kicked me in the ass and I realized that it had, in fact been a month since the last update. Maybe longer. So here you go: and thank you Shino. :)

I was starting to come to when I heard a conversation going on over my head.

There were four voices, all were male but one was higher pitched, one was booming and deep, and the other two were pretty grandfatherly.

"Well, she isn't an elf. That much we can tell from the ears," one of the grandfatherly voices said from my right side, not that far from me.

There was a low grumble from above my head.

"Thorin, tell me again what happened…?" the other older voice said from high up, almost at the ceiling.

A booming, thunderous voice echoed out directly above my head, "I have told you already, I found her laying in the grass, just not but a few strides from the door."

"Hmm."

"Are those scars?" the higher pitched voice threw in.

"Yes, she seems to be riddled with them…look, all up and down her arms." the lower voice gruffed out.

I soon felt a very large hand gently tracing the bumpy surface of my upper arm. I usually didn't mind people touching me, mostly out of trying not to be rude when shying away, but this touch was a little unnerving. I kept getting chills. But that was most likely because of the rain and draft.

Who were these people? And who are all the others?

I could hear a symphony of quiet laughter and the clanking of plates, but above all else I could hear the low murmur of many gossiping voices where I could pick up a few reoccurring words: girl, elf, and some name that began with a "T".

Another chill ran through me and I think I might have twitched too obviously this time because the hypnotic touch had finally ceased and the warmth had abruptly ended. I resisted the urge to shiver at the loss as I came to terms with the inevitable.

There was no point in hiding anymore.

I shot my eyes open, only to come face to face with a dark, short-bearded man who had many loose ringlets of damp hair hanging around his worn face. Intermixed in his hair where streaks of silver, but none of those things are what I noticed first.

It was his eyes; they were a piercing blue.

I could tell that he was older and had seen quite a few obstacles, but his eyes looked as if they belonged to someone much younger and less troubled. He looked very concerned at the moment as his thick brows were gathered up while looking down at me.

Like his tracing of my arm had been, the staring was making me increasingly uncomfortable. I sat up and quickly slid off the table and onto my feet.

I was shocked to find that practically everyone in the room was either a little taller than me, with the exception of a tiny childlike figure who was almost half my size.

Although, this was excluding the very tall man with the silver beard who could tower over just about anyone I imagine.

Then something happened.

It all came crashing down on me at once, the moment I saw that tall man, and I knew within seconds where I was. It was all too clear now.

The book I had been reading had been, of course, one of my all time favorites, The Hobbit. It seems that by some stroke of magic I had somehow ended up in the book. In Middle Earth.

Although, I suppose, 'magic' isn't all that farfetched in Middle Earth.

In my shock I had backed up into a bookshelf and slid down until I was sitting once more, with both my hands bracing my weight at my sides.

Did I have a stroke or was this was some sort of coma dream that my mind had concocted? Was I dead?

"My lady, do you know where you are?" The tall one said.

"I think I have a fairly good idea…" I whispered; my eyes glued to the view of the tiled brick floor that was only interrupted by a few pairs of boots and the nearby legs of the wooden table.

They all gazed at me strangely and traded looks amongst themselves.

The older shorter one stepped a little closer towards me but when I flinched back towards the wall slightly, he stopped.

"Now, lass, none of us are going to hurt you now. You have my word," he said with a little smile.

Balin…

I gave him a little faint smile, not being able to fight it as I thought back to how good of a dwarf he had always been, "I-I'm not…afraid of you…exactly…"

I looked back down and my smile disappeared. There was silence again until the wizard spoke out.

"Ah, well, let me introduce myself and my friends here. I a-"

"Gandalf," I said, "Balin, and Thorin too. With Nori, Ori, Dori, Bofur, Bifur, Bombur, Gloin, Oin, Dwalin, Fili, and Kili in the other room. Yes, I know." By this point I was breathing heavily and was starting to panic a little, as if saying all their names made it even more real.

There was a little insulted "mhph" that came from behind Balin and I calmed my breathing down just enough to crane my neck forward.

As soon as I saw him I only wanted to laugh. I had always envisioned Bilbo in my head as looking very stout and fairly old. But, as I looked at this Bilbo, I realized, he couldn't have looked any different. The same went for Balin, Thorin, Gandalf and probably the rest of the dwarves too. They had all looked so different in my minds eye that now that I had seen them I felt a little silly at just how off base my predictions had been.

The comical inside joke I found myself in calmed me down considerably and I gave Bilbo a tired smile.

"Don't think I have forgot about you, Bilbo."

His eyes widened a fraction and his brows furrowed up in the most amusing expression.

Suddenly there was a sizable sounding crash in the direction of where I had heard the rest of the dwarves eating. The ruckus distracted Balin, Bilbo, and Gandalf enough that they went to go see, immediately, what had happened. I looked on after them as they rushed out the room.

By now the entire house was filled with commotion and part of me really wanted to get up and see it but I was a little weak in the knees and in a slight daze. Although, even in such a state, it didn't take me all long to remember that I hadn't seen Thorin's boots pass my gaze yet.

I sharply turned my head to where I last remember him standing and I found that he had moved only about a foot closer to me, on the side closest to the wall that the bookshelf I was leaning against rested on.

He wasn't looking at me, thankfully, but as soon as I made a move to get up and see what had happened his angry blue gaze fell on me.

"Don't move." he said threateningly.

"I know dwarves aren't trusting but-"

"What would you know of it?" he shot back haughtily

A little yelp that I recognized very well came from around the corner, where all the others had gathered about a minute ago. This immediately willed my legs to move and my head to clear. I moved my arm so that my palm could rest on the shelves behind me and I pushed myself up into the standing position.

I thought I could vaguely hear Thorin growl out another warning for me to stay put but I wasn't going to take orders from him. I didn't care if he was the "King Under The Mountain" he wasn't my king and one of the more prominent things that I remember from the book is that Thorin was a bit of an ass in the beginning of the story anyway.

So, as my little "sister" would always say after she had watched too much inappropriate television, "He could just suck it."

With those "inspiring" words in my mind I lurched forward and stumbled around the corner coming into the candlelight that was situated around a large wooden dinning table, which was laden with food.

Everyone stopped as soon as I came into view and it caused the hoodie clad figure who had seemed to have fallen right in the middle of the dwarves dinner and was perched in the midst of broken and dirtied plates, to turn around and look my way.

"Raven?"

I let out a breath that I hadn't even known I had been holding when I heard her voice. Suddenly I didn't feel so alone.

A rough hand grasped onto my upper arm with a rustle of cold chainmail. Thorin had caught up to me in the few seconds that had passed and was now more suspicious than ever with the new arrival of my friend.

"Don't touch her!" my close friend shouted, already making her way off the table and towards Thorin and, in the process, scattering copious amounts of food and silverware across the tiles.

"It's okay, Gwen. You know how thick-headed Thorin always was." I said trying shaking off Thorins hand while holding my other palm up to her.

She stopped dead in her tracks, as did everyone else.

I probably shouldn't have been so offhand about the situation. This was, in fact, bizarre and terrifying. But, I have always recognized a flaw in me that was puzzling. I treated things that scared me with flippantness and kind of shrugged them off as if they were no big deal. It was a type of coping mechanism, I suppose. It made miscommunications of my feelings frequent, unfortunately.

"Thorin…?" Gwen said with her eyebrow cocked in a, what I always teasingly called the "Spock Brow".

I slowly nodded and gestured to Thorin, who was still holding me.

The revelation was making its way down her features and you could see her working out all the little equations in her head. It was true that the improbability of falling into your book in an Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or The Pagemaster kind of way was not even conceivable but, we were writers so I think it is safe to say we were both notably less "freaked" then anyone else would be.

Still, with that being said, she still wasn't buying it- even if I had.

"You have got to be kidding me," she said with a slight chuckle, "No."

I knew exactly what would convince her. Actually, I knew the two things that would convince her.

Pointing up towards where Gandalf's' calculating face was hovering and down where Bilbo was hiding, which was behind Gandalf's grey robes, I gave her all the evidence she needed.

That was, of course, is what did it. Raising both her hands up to her mouth, she spun around slowly in the direction of the destroyed feast and the bewildered dwarvish company.

"Oh my God, it is you."