Success is Counted Sweetest

Chapter Three

The Captor

Disclaimer: Do I have to do this every time? Probably not…but it's fun.

"You should've stayed behind!" said Bilbo. He seemed angry at the fact that everyone had insisted on coming along to see what happened to Alaina.

"And leave Alaina to be dragged away? Yeah, right!" fumed Frodo. (Ooh, he DID make an appearance!)

"That's not the point! You could have been hurt! We didn't know who was trying to take Alaina, but they could have been dangerous."

"But they weren't! It was her father!"

"Exactly! You don't know her father, or why he wants to take her back to Earth!"

Sam, Merry, and Pippin watched in an awed silence. They had never seen Bilbo and Frodo at it like this before, a mark of the seriousness of the situation, a point that they were too young understand.

Pippin tried to put in a remark in Frodo's favor, but was shushed by Bilbo. Sam motioned slightly and quietly slipped out the door, followed by Merry and Pippin.

"Why are they so angry at each other all of a sudden?" asked Merry. "I don't think it's really something to be angry about."

Pippin hesitated slightly before answering, "so can avoid talking about something else. The thing they don't want to talk about..." he trailed off.

"The fact that Alaina's gone. Probably...probably for good," Sam finished for him. "She's told us about her parents. They wouldn't want her to have anything to do with Middle-Earth." There was a long silence. Sam realized what Alaina's absence would really mean. Among other things, he would not be able to give her the necklace he had made for her birthday. This was against the usual hobbit tradition, but Alaina had told them all about the traditions of her hometown. Hearing footsteps, he looked up, shaken from his reminiscence.

"What's everyone looking so depressed about?" said a young girl's voice.

"Alaina! You're back!" shouted Pippin as he tackled her, a sort of tradition between them now. Alaina pushed her unruly brown hair out of her eyes as she stared up at the sky.

"Not for long," she said quietly. "Apparently I forgot the lock the door this morning. My dad found his way through and told me that's how knew that this was the reason I was always daydreaming and talking about hobbits, stuff he said didn't make sense. My parents had a suspicion, of course. They told me they couldn't understand how I spent so much time in my bedroom."

"Well, you're here now, so you can just stay here!" suggested Merry. Alaina shook her head sadly.

"They took the key. I happened to have a spare, but they can come here at any time and find me. They don't know that I have another key, but just to make sure I don't come back, we're moving."

"When?" asked Sam.

"Tomorrow."

"What?!" Pippin was infuriated. "They can't do that!"

"Apparently they can." After a brief pause, Sam stepped forward and handed Alaina the necklace.

"Happy birthday…" he said halfheartedly. Alaina studied the necklace. Sam had engraved some sort of rune on a circular piece of metal hanging from a black cord. "It's the elven-rune for self-defense. Bilbo taught it to me. You always said you were going to be tougher than any lad…" Alaina slipped it over her head.

"Thank you…I'm going to wear it until it gets so old it falls off." Sam could tell she was fighting back tears as she said this. Without warning, threw her arms around Sam as she burst into tears. "I promise I'll come back. I don't know when or how, but I'll be back someday," she said softly. Merry and Pippin joined in to make a sort of group hug. No one spoke as Alaina turned and walked off into the cornfield to go home, though not necessarily for the last time. Sam felt a reassurance in her parting words, knowing that Alaina always kept her promises.

A/N: Ok so now I'm going to clear up a few things that should have gone at the beginning but for some reason I didn't want to put them first. I know that modern Earth people going to Middle-Earth is an EXTREMELY common theme, but I had my own reasons for doing so. I could have made Alaina be a hobbit-lass and the rest of the story save the first four chapters could have been almost exactly the same. However, if I did that then I would feel I'd have to write more in Tolkien's style, which frankly, I just can't do. Similar to everyone else out there, I grew up now (that's a no-brainer) and learned how to speak like modern people do, so it would be hard to make Alaina speak like she was from Middle-Earth. Another reason is I'd like to be able to take something that's not very uncommon (i.e. the theme) and make it original, by adding my own (hopefully) original plot. Yeah, that one might not work out so well…but I'm also trying very hard to avoid a Mary-Sue. Really I just want to write a story that people will enjoy. So...enjoy!