Note: Ainu Laire has pointed out that it's "Middle-earth" and not "Middle Earth". And then I realised that it's been staring me straight in the face, on my LotR book cover, and I just never noticed! Hahaha… boy you do learn something new everyday, don't you? So thanks to Ainu Laire for pointing that out. I'm a little lazy to replace all my chapters right not but maybe one day I'll get down to it!

*&*

"What on earth are you doing, Sméagol?" Kathy asked.

Sméagol did not even bother to tear his eyes away from the screen. "This is nice, very nice…" he said.

"What? Baywatch?" Kathy almost laughed herself to death. BAYWATCH!

"The water looks nice. Plenty of yummy fishes," Sméagol explained. Then he frowned. "But Sméagol don't like the people. Sméagol don't like the red suits."

By then Kathy was laughing so hard her stomach muscles were cramping. "Oww owww…" she moaned between peals of laughter. Sméagol was looking at her strangely, not understanding what was so funny about his remarks. "Wait till Nat hears about this," she gasped. Then she staggered to her kitchen to get herself some water and calm down.

"OOOH!"

Kathy went out to see what it was that had got Sméagol so excited. Turned out that he had found a channel playing Blue Planet, and was mega-excited about the huge amount of fishes. She shook her head. Once a rabid fish eater, always a rabid fish eater.

*&*

Nat was beginning to feel that she was going nuts. It had been twenty-five days! And the portal had not opened. Man, how long was she going to have to live in a cave? And it really really didn't help that she couldn't fit in any of the Dwarves clothes and thus had to wear her stupid shirt and jeans the whole time.

The only good thing that had come out of it was that she had made friends with Lura (somewhat, anyway), and Gimli as well. Gimli was very nice to her, and did his best to make sure that she was comfortable, but there was just nothing he could do about her bad, bad situation.

At least malt beer tasted good.

She was beginning to miss home now. Dwarves were all right, of course (they sure beat Orcs, or the Pit of Doom), but she wanted to be back among normal humans. She was getting a backache bending down speaking to everyone, and she was convinced that she was developing a hunch and that it would be permanent.

Great. She wished that the stupid portal would just open already.

*&*

TWG now seemed to be a permanent fixture right in front of the TV. Patrick sighed. Great. Now he would never get to watch anything. Unless… could he get TWG interested in soccer?

"Hey there, whatsyourname," he said, trying to be as polite as possible. He couldn't call TWG TWG, could he? And he really had no idea what his real name was, even though Kathy used it a few hundred times a day.

TWG looked at him a little warily. "Hello." Then he was back to staring at Good Charlotte's music video.

Patrick slowly picked up the remote and switched to the sports channel. "Now… why don't you try watching this? It's so much better."

*&*

Kathy entered the living room to see Patrick patiently trying to explain the rules of soccer to Sméagol. Sméagol was half-listening, just fascinated by this group of men running around like maniacs kicking a ball. "Men are crazy!" was the final conclusion, and Patrick flung up his hands in defeat.

"Don't push too hard explaining things to him," she said. "Just be glad he's willing to watch the channel that you want."

Patrick nodded in agreement and settled down to watch the game (which means, if you have ever seen guys watching soccer, that he would jump up every now and then and yell stuff). Kathy shook her head. Men. She could never understand why they had to get the fantastically excited about any sports they were watching. Couldn't they just watch the whole thing through in a calm, composed, mature manner?

Men are crazy. Yes, she totally agreed.

*&*

NOTE: Yes this is a very short chapter. Apologies.