Sorry about my sparatic uploading. I haven't been near a computer in a little bit and can't really save anything on the computer I'm on without deleting it so I have to type this chapter and then upload it. Once again thank you for the reviews! I can't believe how many I've gotten, and 12 reviews for 6 chapters is really good for me, so thank you!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter 7:  The Map He Drew

Okay, okay, so maliciously stealing orginal papers from Tolkien's box of Wonders from Oxford University was not the best idea in the whole world and in fact could constitute stealing but please! I'm a reporter. If reporters were a race we'd be the most hated tyhings on the planet, say for lawyers who would probably rank of the pyramid of hatred at the same level as the Politicians and Peter Jackson if he continues to piss of the Tolkien fanatics. Well, it;s kind of a chain actually. See with the Peter Jackson movies, people don't see the need in reading the books and then they consider the movies as a primary source of information. Then naturally they think Legolas really was as hot as he was in the movies and Arwen was really a foxy slut and Frodo just kept rolling his eyes up in head. To quote Edith and every other 'Tolkien Purist' I've ever met or spoken to, "There's a whole other world when you open the covers the books. It's vivid and well written, and it's like stepping out of your skin for brief moments in time."

I never get caught up in books. I think the last book I read was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Not a terrible novel mind you. I enjoyed Snape and didn't think he was a truely terrible character for the novel for the first time since I started reading them. I laughed at the thought. Who knows? Maybe the next weirdo to walk in my office will claim they found Hogwarts.

I was standing in front of my kitchen table, a cup of black coffee in my hand and looking at the giant map I had found. The lines had bothered me so I had taken a few sheets of tracing paper and traced over the lines, looking at what I had drawn. They seemed, just as Edith had said, like puzzle pieces, as if Tolkien had been manufacturing himself some homemade merchandise. Somehow this didn't strike me as odd. Any man who can spend twelve years of their life writing about people as tall as my knee trying to toss a ring into a volcano certainly needed something else to do with their time. Like that American broad, Martha Stewart. Something could be said about both she and Tolkien. Both needed and still need a better hobby.

I know what Edith would say to that. She won't even ask me for proof. Instead she'll ramble on about what a 'genious' he was and how absolutely brilliant he wrote. I think I want to miss that one. Just considering once Edith gets started she just never stops. She's the type of person who pauses and then just picks up where she left off.

I took the tracing paper off the map and looked at it carefully, and then grabbed my scissors and cut the pieces out. I set the pieces on the table and looked at the carefully, sliding into a seat. I set my coffee next to me, the aroma twirling into the sky with the steam that still rose from it's blackened surface. I love the smell of coffee. I love the taste of it. I slid the pieces around, trying to find the edges like a puzzle. My mother was in my head again. She had once said that when I was two years old I would sit at the table and finish, quite litterally 200 piece puzzles. I wasn't sure if it was ever true.

My fingers were moving faster then my mind. Somewhere in my mind I knew what I was doing, and for some weird reason I was doing it. I put the piece of Rivendell into places. Each piece I had cut sloppily, but they were fitting together perfectly as if I had actually profeshionally cut them. I was working faster then I ever had before, as if under a spell and I was thinking and multi tasking. My head was moving faster. My father was reading to me and my sister. He was in the hallway. I was on my side, watching his shadow. His shadow was always there, looking over me, even if it was faint. He was talking about Smog. He was reading about the missing scale. He was had spoken about it so many times during the day. My sister and I were excited. Porscha and I had both made cookies in celebration. They were shaped like arrows.

My mind snapped back into reality as my fingers stopped. There was a sudden moment of recognition at what I'd done. The shape in the pieces....it was familiar. I looked over the edges, and then....

My mind came back. I knew what I was looking at. I ran into my living room and grabbed the handles on the doors under the coffee table. I pulled out my mass of papers that I had simply thrown in there one day when I was too lazy to clean up and didn't want to see them again. I was digging through them. Come on, I thought, I know I have one...I know I do...I know. I grabbed it. The road map of England and yanked it to the kitchen and ran back, sliding in my socks and falling flat on my face on the hardwood kitchen floor.

Ow...I thought. That one hurt. I think I passed out for a minute because I finally flickered my eyes open and my head felt like it was going to burst. I clambored to my feet, rubbing my nose and readjusted my jaw. It clicked and sent a wave of pain through my already aching head. I grabbed my coffe and took a drink. Nothing like a little bit of caffeine to take my mind off the rolls of pain radiating throughout it. I unfolded the map and took the tissue paper pieces, fitting them on one by one.

I finished, and looked.

There it was the entire map of England made out of pieces of Middle Earth.

And then I looked again.  The dot I had drawn for Rivendell was right there, over London, and if I had zoomed in, I would have found that right under it was Kengsington Gardens.