::Gandalf the Skittles::
So, Gollum was leading the hobbits to the Black Gate. The Big Ominous Black Gate. That Was Far Away Down A Big Rocky Hill. That Crumbled Like Apple… Crumble. Gollum skidded around quite artistically. Sam and Frodo merely flailed, falling over more than once.
~*~
The polaroids clicked rapidly as Gimli poked a nearby tree tentatively. Legolas shot him a death glare. 'Do not harm the trees!'
Lara muttered darkly, 'Eco-boy.'
Aragorn smirked, but said, 'Legolass, I mean, Legolas, is right. These trees are dangerous.
Gimli gulped. 'And we have to go in there?'
Aragorn cast a casual look at the dark, ominous, dangerous forest and shrugged. 'Well, yes.'
'It's just trees, you cads. But since no one will follow me…' Lara hitched her pack on her shoulders and disappeared into the trees. A moment later, gunfire shots rang out like thunder.
'Lara!' screamed Gimli in a very girly way. He ran in.
'The trees!' screamed Legolas in a very girly way. He ran in.
'Don't leave me here! Help!' screamed Aragorn in a very girly way. He ran in. The gunfire continued.
Eventually they all managed to find one another in approximately the same place. About half the trees were missing branches or at least a few leaves. It was considerably less dark, which seemed to cheer Aragorn up, though he was mumbling something about nightlights. A few petrified birds flopped around, but nothing else seemed to be hurt.
Except maybe Legolas.
Legolas sobbed hysterically, clutching what looked like a battered leaf to his chest, shoulders heaving magnificently. Lara gaped. Aragorn went over to pat the elf on the shoulder. 'What happened?'
Legolas stuttered, still disorientated. 'Look! A leaf! And it's... dead!' He glared at Gimli, tears glimmering in his eyes. "Gimli! What is the meaning of this?"
Gimli shuffled uncomfortably and wiped what looked like chlorophyll off the head of his axe. "Umm… I was rescuing the lady from the killer plants."
Lara rolled her eyes extravagantly. 'It's a leaf, for crying out loud! Leaves live, leaves die!'
Legolas still mumbled incoherently to himself. 'But this a different leaf! A special leaf! A leaf... A leaf that will never taste the sweet wind or feel the sunlit caresses above the canopy again!'
It would have been rather touching if a stray falling branch hadn't hit him on the head at that precise moment.
Legolas swayed giddily, mumbling about leaves.
Aragorn looked dubiously up at the dense foliage and wondered if that special leaf had ever seen light in the first place. Lara took the leaf out of the elf's hand and tossed it onto the ground, where it joined approximately twenty-one thousand six hundred and eighty-eight million other special, wind-tasted, sun-kissed leaves. Legolas stirred the debris madly on his hands and knees for a bit, but unable to find the leaf, shrugged and stood up.
As suddenly as he had broken down crying, Legolas shot up from his foetal position on the ground so quickly that he hit his head on another branch, this time a low-lying branch. The branch broke. Before the elf could go into hysterics again, Lara pushed him forward. 'You're the one with the brilliant eyes. See something!'
Ears twitching, Legolas edged forward like a overgrown version of Lassie. Aragorn crept up next to him with all the discretion of a drunken elephant, ruining any chance of stealth that Legolas had and whispered - I mean shouted - into the elf's ear, 'LEGOLAS! MAN CENICH?' (Legolas, what do you see?')
Legolas, ears still in radar-mode, shot suspicious glances about until he spotted a bright, and very obvious white light. 'The White Wizard approaches.' Lara wanted to say something witty in reply, but Aragorn forced everyone to freeze. Gimli stayed stuck with one foot in the air because the ranger would not let him put it down.
'We must not let him cast a spell upon us. Quickly!'
'Quickly what?" snapped Lara, attempting to glare at him through the back of her head. 'We can't bloody move!'
Aragorn wiggled his toes, then his fingers. He carefully tested every single one of his joints. Lara could have kicked him. He didn't speak until he had tested his jaw for the eighth time. 'I can.'
'That's because you told us to freeze!'
'I did not!' roared Aragorn, wrinkling his nose to make sure it was still on, 'I would not have told you to do something so foolish as that! He has surely put a spell on us!'
To get Aragorn moving, she kicked him. Hard. Somewhere… that hurts. She casually stepped on a leaf and Legolas yelped. Gimli, being the last in the group, had been secretly moving around anyway.
With a yell, the three swung round to attack in accord. They were suddenly blinded by a bright light from behind the White Wizard. Gimli's axe and Legolas' arrow were deflected. Lara's bullet and the arrow, ironically, embedded themselves in a nearby tree. Aragorn's sword became too hot to hold, and he dropped it, squealing.
A voice boomed. "You are tracking the footsteps of two young hobbits."
"That sounds like Gandalf," commented Gimli.
Legolas smacked him on the head. "Gandalf is dead!"
Lara poked around in her bottomless bag, retrieving her red-tinted sunglasses. She jammed them on. "It's Gandalf," she confirmed.
"Gandalf is dead!"
"Where are the hobbits?" Aragorn shouted above the din.
Gimli gaped, mouth wide open. Lara kicked him. 'Oooh, I wonder who THAT could be.'
Aragorn, ignorant to the fact that Lara had already identified the Shining Attacker as Gandalf shouted, 'Who are you? Show yourself!'
Gandalf, in all his glory, beauty, light, whiteness, gray tintedness, blue-eyed wiseness, majesty, one of the istar, one of the ainur, one of the wizards etc etc stepped out and stopped shining. Aragorn gasped like a chicken being asphyxiated.
'It cannot be! You fell!'
Lara snorted. 'Yeah, when people get thrown off bridges, they tend to do that.' Aragorn ignored her. Gandalf ignored her. Gandalf proceeded to shift into a tone of voice that is generalized by grandfathers everywhere who know they have captured they prey - I mean grandchildren - and proceed to wring all sense of time from them by recalling a story longer than the Nile from 1824.
Gandalf cleared his throat importantly. 'From the lowest dungeon to the highest peak, I fought him,-'
Gimli stupidly butted in, 'Who?' Gandalf shot him a warning glance, 'The balrog of MORGOTH!'
Crickets chirped. Lara looked impatiently at the wizard, who was standing there as if expecting people to throw flowers at him and break down in tears. 'Is that supposed to mean something?'
Gandalf, quelled, shot her a glance, 'You are too young to understand.' He went on. 'Until at last, I threw down my enemy and SMOTE his ruin upon the mountainside. Darkness took me. And I strayed OUT OF thought and time. Stars WHEELED overhead and each day was as LONG as a LIFE age of the earth. But it was NOT the end. I felt life in me... AGAIN! I've been sent back until my task is done.'
Gimli was now hero-worshipping Gandalf while Lara glared impassively at him. 'Aw, icckle Gandy got sent back to finish his homework!'
Gandalf was now under the pretense that Lara was invisible. Aragorn looked scared. 'Gandalf.'
Gandalf looked at him. 'Gandalf. Yes. That was what they used to call me.'
Lara smirked, 'No kidding.'
Gandalf dramatically increased the tone of his voice, 'That was MY name.'
Gimli sobbed, 'GANDALF!'
Lara looked bewildered. So Gandalf's name was Gandalf. They knew that.
Gandalf went on, 'I am Gandalf the White now -'
Lara stuck her head in, 'but you are still Gandalf, was Gandalf, are Gandalf, and most obviously will always be Gandalf.' She paused. "You ever heard that joke? So when you're embarrassed, you're Gandalf the Red; when you're sad, you're Gandalf the Blue; when you're sick, you're Gandalf the Green; when you're being strangled, you're Gandalf the Purple…"
Gandalf the Currently-White snorted. "Gandalf will suffice." He stuck his chin up in the air as an illusion of dignity. "One stage of your journey is over, another begins. War has come to Rohan. We must ride to Edoras with all speed."
He stepped into the pile of leaves.
Legolas' shrilling must have killed the rest of the foliage.
~*~
As Frodo the Magnificent skidded his way down to Magnificently stuck Sam, two Easterlings walked up. Frodo hurridly threw the cloak over them both.
"Hmm, that's a big rock," said Easterling One.
"You're right! Burr, that rock almost looks HUMAN!" said Easterling Two.
"You, er, you, idioc? Idiof? Idiot!, Yes, right, you idiot!" said Easterling One.
"Why? Buh, but, but why?" said Easterling Two.
"Cause, cause, cause rocks can't be humans!" said Easterling One.
Frodo nearly fell asleep.
"Then can humans be rocks?" said Easterling Two.
"But if rocks can't be humans, then, then, burrr, I suppose humans can't be rocks!" said Easterling One.
"Burr, okay then. But I can almost see an arm there." Said Easterly Two.
"Nah, must be your... your... Eye-Que, that's it. It's too low." Said Easterling One.
Frodo heaved a sigh/yawn as the Easterlings walked off. "I do not ask you to come with me, Sam."
"I know, Mr. Frodo." He sighed. What an idiot I was.
They proceeded to head in the most suicidal direction – in plain sight. Until they were tackled and dragged back underneath Frodo's unending cloak.
"No! No! No master! They catch you! They catch you. Don't take it to Him. He wants the precioussss. Always he's looking for it. And the preciousss is wanting to go back to him, but we musn't let him have it."
"Is this a slumber party?" mumbled Sam, face squashed down to the ground.
"No! There is another way. More secret, a dark way."
Sam spat out a mouthful of earth. "Why haven't you spoken of this before?! "
"Because master did not ask! "
"He is up to something," Said Sam instantly.
Frodo looked balefully at Sam. 'He's led us this far, Sam.' Sam sulked. Gollum happily pranced about. Frodo sighed, wishing he had a leash.
Sam's expression suggested that he wished to squash the madly skipping creature into one of his pots.
'Lead the way, Gollum...'
~*~
Gandalf balanced precariously on the saddle-less back of the Fax Machine, which was whimpering slightly under the abuse that was being wrent on his mane. 'Edoras and the GOLDEN hall of Meduseld. There dwells Theoden, King of Rohan.'
Lara looked appraisingly at the structure. 'Looks like a big, thatched barn to me.'
~*~
On the inside, Eowyn clutched her uncle's arm tightly, but not too tightly, because there was a good chance that it would fall of if she did. 'Uncle? Uncle?'
'Ueuuhh?'
'You son is dead, uncle.'
'Ueuhh?'
'Theodred is dead.'
'Ueuhh?
'Your son, my lord, he is dead. My lord? Uncle? Will you not go to him?' Without hope, she whispered, 'will you do nothing?'
'Ueuhh.'
~*~
Outside the enormous thatched barn, Gandalf beckoned to the others. 'Be careful what you say. Do not look for welcome here.'
Lara just sighed.