Author's note: The names have been changed to protect the innocent. *giggles* Ok, I just HAD to say that. My bad. Anyways, been writing like crazy lately, working on about four stories at once. That cuz I've been watching the movie, and I finally finished reading Fellowship of the Ring. And da-hamn, did that take a long time to do. I just hit the part where ya get ta meet Treebeard in The Two Towers. Woulda read farther but I almost fell asleep holding the book, so I put it down. Eep! Can't wait till September 15th! That's the day I get to move into my dorm room. Yays! First year at college, talk about scary as hell. *stops rambling and dances to the music, namely Candy by Mandy Moore* Yes, I have interesting tastes in music. At least it wasn't the Macarena (which I downloaded from KaZaA)! Shutting up now...
Disclaimer: I don't own stuff, I do own stuff, if you can't figure out which is which, then you're in trouble. I don't own Lord of the Rings, I don't own any of the LotR characters, I don't own the movie on dvd or video yet, I don't own all my pop culture references, and I don't own any brand name I use. I do own the soundtracks to Clerks and Mallrats, I own Kimberly and Vanessa (don't really think I want 'em that much though), I own a really cool red t-shirt that has Talk Show Material on it, I own my ideas, my thoughts, my fears, my insanity, and my psycho-babble. And I will soon own, or at least stay in, a dorm room, hopefully in Hamilton Hall, but maybe not. Gonna own a few textbooks soon, too. Yay! *can't wait to read her Psychology 105 and History 101 textbooks* I know I'm weird, duh.
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Kimberly stares up at the front of the group, where Ness and Legolas are still sharing stories. She frowns. Frodo looks over at her, watching her as she walks. She strode with purpose, her face forward, as if she always had a set destination in mind. But she also walked with grace. He still thought it was amazing that she could walk so quickly with those blocks of wood strapped to her feet. He decides then to ask her about them.
"What kind of shoes are those, exactly? And how can you possibly walk so fast in them?" He smiles as she looks over at him.
Her frown goes away when she turns to him. "They're called platform shoes, because it makes it almost like you're on a platform. And I've been wearing them for so long, that I can stay balanced, even when running." She smiles back at him, glad that somebody is paying attention to her.
They smile at each other, and then start telling stories to pass the time.
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Frodo was just getting to the part of the story where Bard slays the dragon Smaug with an arrow, when Kimberly started wincing slightly with every step. Step. Wince. Step. Wince. Frodo stops his story when he notices that Kimberly is wincing. "Kimberly, why are you in pain? Are my stories that bad?" Frodo asks, concerned for the girl from another world.
"No, your stories are amazing," she says, even though she's already read The Hobbit. "It's just that my shoes are starting to hurt my feet. Nothing too serious." She smiles, to show him it doesn't hurt too much.
They start walking again, and Kimberly keeps wincing. Soon, she's making a slight noise with each step. After a few more minutes, she mumbles under her breath after each step "I hate these shoes."
"Kimberly, if they hurt so much, why not just take them off?" Frodo inquires.
"But I need shoes," she says, before looking down at Frodo's bare hobbit feet. "Or maybe I don't. Hold up a sec while I get rid of these pain-makers." She bends over quickly, and deftly takes the shoes off. She looks at them, wondering what she could possibly do with them. She spots Merry, and hands them over to him. "Here, you need the height a lot more than I do." Merry accepts the shoes, but Pippin runs by quickly and snatches them out of Merry's hands. He puts them on even quicker. He stands up after several attempts, and takes only two steps before falling flat on his face. Kimberly laughs, joined by all the others, save Pippin, who is quickly taking the shoes back off again. Kimberly shakes her head, "Men."
"Um, Pip, you can keep them," Merry mutters to Pippin before laughing again. Kimberly walks over to Pippin, and takes the shoes, "It's okay Pip, most people I know can't balance on them, either. I'm just lucky, I guess." She smiles at him, and walks back over to Frodo. She takes the strap of the left shoe, and whirls it around before slinging it far into the forest. She's about to toss the right one when Frodo tugs at her sleeve.
"You might want to keep that. It could be useful as a weapon." Kimberly nods, and slings the strap over her shoulder instead.
"It was fun to throw, though." She grins wickedly. Frodo giggles, and the fellowship plus two moves on.
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It's almost nightfall when they set up camp. The fire burns brightly as the fellowship finish up supper. Kimberly is looking down at her feet, face saddened because they were so battered and bruised. She touches at one of the small blisters, and winces with pain. Kimberly looks over at Vanessa, who at the moment, is completely enthralled by whatever it is Legolas is saying. She sighs. Frodo notices her discomfort, and moves over to where she is sitting.
"Are you okay Kimberly," Frodo asks her after he sits down next to her.
"My feet don't exactly like me at the moment." She winces again. She notices the look of confusion on the hobbit's face, and explains. "My feet aren't really used to this much walking, in bad shoes or barefoot. Very unpleasent." She leans back against the tree. She sighs, then looks over at Frodo. "You sure are taking this well for a guy who gets two girls from some other planet or dimension or whatever dumped on your quest. Bad enough about the ring, but now us? I don't think I'd act half as kind as you." She hopes that he gets the message she is sending. The words between the lines were supposed to read clearly "Thank you".
Frodo, being always a quick one to catch on, answers, "You're welcome, Kimberly." He pauses, then continues. "It's not really that bad. Having you here has been fun."
Kimberly blushes, then notices that he said "You" and not "You two" or "You guys". She blushes all over again, and gets up, trying to find a distraction. She spots Merry and Pippin looking as if they were about to do some trick or something. Kimberly grasps the opportunity. She fakes a sigh of annoyance. "What are those two up to this time?" she wonders aloud. She gets up, and shakes her head when Frodo moves to get up with her. "Don't worry, I think I can handle them." She walks over, and holds in her sigh of relief until she is out of sight. She lets it out, and walks past where Vanessa and Legolas are sitting, still discussing yet more stories. 'I guess when a guy's 3,000 years old, he racks up a lot of stories,' she thinks, and continues onward, where the two hobbits are now giggling.
She sneaks up to them quietly, and leans over, saying "What do you think you're doing?" in a very teacher-like voice. They both jump, and hide their hands behind their backs. "Nothing," they reply, sounding innocent. A pebble drops out of Pippin's hand, and the three stare at it as it falls. "Nothing, eh?"
"We were just going to throws pebble at Gimli's feet while he's practicing with his axe to scare him, nothing else Ms. Kimberly," Merry says, afraid that Kimberly would do something bad.
Instead, she started gathering pebbles herself. "Cool. Can I join?" she says, a wicked grin growing on her face, the scene with Frodo almost forgotten. Pippin and Merry grin wickedly as well. "Sure!"
Kimberly looks over at where the dwarf is practicing with his axe. She looks up and spots a tree. "There," she points at the tree above Gimli, "Hit the leaves. They'll fall all over him, and he won't even realize why." She giggles, and starts to take aim at a large bunch of leaves right about Gimli's head. Merry and Pippin share a look that basically says "She's good." Then they take aim. Kimberly throws. The leaves fall on Gimli, and he looks up at the tree, not finding anything that could've made the leaves fall. Pippin and Merry throw their pebbles too. More leaves, more confusion on Gimli's behalf. Stifled giggles. Pippin the throws a pebble that hits a tree limb. It makes a small noise, and Gimli looks up at the branch, then starts searching for the culprit. Kimberly whispers "Run." And they do, giggling like mad idiots.
Kimberly runs over to Vanessa, tripping a few times because she is laughing so hard. "Hey, Leggy, could you excuse us for a sec? I just hafta tell Ness something," she gets out, before she starts laughing again. Legolas nods, and Kimberly and Vanessa scoot over. Legolas stares after them. "Leggy?" he mutters. Kimberly whispers into Vanessa's ear what her and the hobbits did. They both burst out laughing when Kimberly finishes. And to make it even more laughable, Gimli comes to the fire then, looking very angry, glaring at the two hobbits, who were sitting off to the side, still giggling.
The two girls look over at where Aragorn is sitting, holding his head as if he had a great headache. "Ok, I'm definitely starting to feel sorry for him," Kimberly says, "Pippin and Merry, and now me. Tsk tsk." Kimberly shakes her head in pity, and Vanessa laughs. Kimberly yawns, and Vanessa follows suit, seeing as yawns are always contagious.
Kimberly walks over to Aragorn, and taps him on the shoulder. He looks up at her, "What?"
"Well, I was just wondering. Where do we sleep tonight?" She asks, hoping that there'll be an inn or something like that near here.
"On the ground," he tells her. She gulps, then nods. She walks over to Vanessa, and tells her what she was told.
"On the ground? Ok, umm, it'll be like camping, roughing it." Vanessa grimaces. Kimberly nods. "Yeah, just like camping. Hopefully." They went over and grabbed a blanket each, and found a not so hard peice of ground. "Like camping," Kimberly mutters under her breath.
Vanessa gets settled quickly, asleep within ten minutes. But Kimberly has a bit of trouble. She tosses and turns, then tosses some more. Finally, she takes the blanket off and puts it under her head as a pillow. It's almost an hour before she falls asleep.
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Kimberly wakes shortly after the sun rises. She rises herself, and groans. Her everything hurts from her night of bad sleep. She notices that everybody else is already awake and sitting by the fire, eating breakfast. She groans again, and walks over to them. "Bad night Kimmy?" Vanessa asks, sitting next to Legolas, eating something that looked like hard rice cakes. Kimberly picks a leaf out of her extremely messed up hair, and says to Vanessa "I look that bad?" Vanessa nods, and Kimberly rushes over to where her purse is. She grabs her brush and starts pulling at the many tangles in her hair.
A few minutes later, she walks back over to the fire. Her hair is brushed, if not better looking. The ends stick out, and if foofs up at places. "Of all the times to be without a curling iron," she grumbles, staring at her bad hair day in the little mirror attached to the brush.
She accepts the hard patty of food-stuffs from Sam, and sits down next to Vanessa. Frodo scoots closer to Kimberly, and Vanessa winks at her, giggling. Kimberly glares back. She bites into her food patty thing, and finds that it's as hard as a rock. "What the hell is this stuff?" Kimberly yells out. "I nearly broke a tooth on it! It's as hard as a rock!"
"It's cram, and it's the only food we have," Sam tells her. She sticks out her tongue in disgust, and went to work gnawing on the hard piece of cram.
Ten minutes later, Kimberly had still yet to make a noticeable dent in the piece of cram. She throws it down onto the ground. "I give up. That is not real food. I'm gonna find me a fruit tree or something." She gets up and walks away. Frodo gets up and follows her.
"Ooh, apple tree," Kimberly says to herself about a minute later. She walks over to it, and jumps to reach the lowest apple. She grazes the bottom of it, but can't quite grab it. Frodo watches her jump again, and steps out when she lands. "Need some help?" he asks her.
Kimberly jumps, but not after the apple. "Frodo, I didn't know you were here. Actually, why are you here?" She asks. Frodo looks sheepish, and looks down. "Well, I didn't want you to get hurt or lost."
Kimberly smiles, no longer suspicious. "That's sweet. Yeah, I could use some help." He steps over to where she is, and she lifts him up onto her shoulders. "How many apples should I get?" Frodo asks down to Kimberly. "About twelve or so should be enough. At least one for everybody." He picks the apples, and hands the down to Kimberly, one by one. Kimberly puts them in the bottom of her shirt, which she had made into a pouch. When Frodo had picked about fourteen apples, Kimberly helps him down, holding her shirt-pouch with one hand. She hands him an apple as they set off back to camp, and takes one for herself. "Real food," she mutters, biting into the apple joyfully.
They walk into the clearing where they had set up camp the night before, Kimberly announcing that they had apples. The others dug in joyfully, forgetting about their half-finished cram cakes.
"Looks like our apples saved breakfast," Kimberly comments. "You're the one that found the tree, I only helped with getting them down," Frodo tells her. Kimberly blushes, something which seemed to be becoming a trend when she was around Frodo. She takes a big bite of apple so that she doesn't have to answer.
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A few hours later, the fellowship plus two blonds were yet again walking through the forest. "Sure is a lotta forest around here," Kimberly whispers to Vanessa, who is now traveling in the back of the group with her and Frodo. Legolas is back there as well. "All the better to hide hot blond wood elves," Vanessa replies, glancing over at Legolas with a very interesting look in her eyes. Kimberly nods. "True, true."
Vanessa then changes the subject. In a more whispered tone than before, Vanessa asks Kimberly "So, what's up with you and your hobbit-shadow?"
Kimberly glares at Vanessa. "Don't insult him. He's just being, umm, sweet. Nothing more," Kimberly emphasizes the word 'nothing'. She glances over to Frodo, making sure that he hadn't heard what she said. He hadn't, either that, or he was the best actor Kimberly had ever seen.
Vanessa continued the conversation line by saying "He's really got a crush on you. I can see it. And it's sweet, too." Vanessa grins, and Kimberly glares back. "He does not," Kimberly says, not in the mood for an argument over whether the hobbit had a crush on her. Although he did follow her around an awful lot. No, no crush. Vanessa grins even wider. "You got a crush on him, too," she whisper-yelled. "Do not!" Kimberly whisper-yells back. "Just because he's cute, and sweet, and caring, and has the most adorable little smile...." Kimberly trails off. "Do not," she resorts to.
Vanessa grins, all-knowingly, "The first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem."
Kimberly gives in to her friends' scrutiny. "Ok, fine, so maybe I have a little crush, doesn't mean anything. It's not like it could go anywhere. We are going back home sooner or later." Kimberly frowns, and walks away from Vanessa.
"Is something wrong with Kimberly?" Legolas asks, coming up behind Vanessa. "Not much, just a little denial, is all," Vanessa answers, smiling.
"It's about her feelings for the little brown-haired hobbit, isn't it?" he asks, surprising Vanessa with his observations. "You can tell," she says, almost slack-jawed, she was so surprised. She had thought she was the only one who could see Kimberly's and Frodo's obvious feelings for each other. "I thought guys never noticed those sort of things."
"I'm an elf. I notice a lot of things that most people miss." He grins at her, and she grins right back.
"I can't believe she weaseled a confession out of me," Kimberly muttered under her breath. She started walking faster. "I mean, it's not like it's such a big deal, I get a lot of crushes." she says, still complaining to herself. 'But none that ever like you back,' her brain reminds her. "Damn, I was hoping to not think that." She shakes her head quickly, trying to get rid of whatever that voice was. Common sense, her heart, whatever it was, she hopes it'll go away.
"Were you talking to someone Kimberly?" Frodo says, coming up behind her, almost a repeat of Vanessa and Legolas. Kimberly sighs. "No, I was just talking to myself," she says, and looks away quickly. She wasn't going to think about the newly discovered crush, it would go away in a few days anyway. If she did think about it, she'd start getting all tongue-tied around the little hobbit, and then everyone would know. She shook her head again, ridding it of pretty much all thought.