To The Tavern We Go
By: The OSA
Cold.
Very cold.
Those were the only two thoughts that registered in Lisa's mind as she awoke. She groaned and curled herself into a ball, not bothering to open her eyes. Her attempt to return to the blissful realm of sleep was futile, however, as her groggy brain registered one new fun fact for her;
Wet.
What the buggering heck? She thought, confused. Why was she cold and wet? It didn't make sense. Then again, very little made sense to the girl in the morning. She groaned again and tried to force open her eyes. It didn't work. Every time she tried to open her lead filled eyelids her head began to pound, and she suddenly felt unexplainably sick to her stomach. Frick. This can't be good.
A similar moan from nearby alerted Lisa that she wasn't alone. It sounded as weak as she felt, but it was clearly human. The muffled curses that followed identified it as Kellie. "Someone tell the NHL to stop doing figure eights on my cranium," groaned the same voice, sounding only marginally stronger.
"Only if you get off of me," came a muffled voice that sounded very much like Abbie. The soft scuffling sound told the girl that Kellie had tried to comply, though the moaning didn't sound promising.
Lisa forced herself to sit up, and almost didn't make it as the pounding in her head intensified and nearly overcame her. She wrapped her arms around her knees and cradled her head on her knees, moaning piteously.
"What happened?" Abbie muttered.
"Obviously we fell into the swamp," grunted Rachelle, speaking up for the first time. She sounded just as cold and sick as the rest of them.
"I think I'm going to be sick..." Kellie whined, speaking for all of them.
"Sorry," Rachelle grunted again, extremely disoriented.
"Why is the sky spinning like that?" Abbie's voice sounded softer and farther away then it had when she had been under Kellie.
No one answered. No one wanted to risk speaking and throwing up in the process. Lisa chanced a glance around her, and though she nearly blinded herself in the process, she caught sight of their surroundings. She whimpered, very much confused, and buried her head in her arms instead. Moving suddenly seemed very intimidating.
Snow. They were surronded by snow. A lot of it, as in way more than Jersey had the right to get buried under. Icy wind whipped past the girls, bringing with it unending whirls of snow. That explained the cold and wet part.
Not to mention that they were on an insanely narrow ledge on what appeared to be a mountain side. And Lisa was perched right near the edge. Petrified and unable to make herself move, she whimpered again and sat as still as she could. Which was no longer easy, as the wind cut through her clothes and made her shiver.
"Lisa, what's your probl-" Kellie stopped, gasping as she finally got her eyes to focus and take a look around. "You guys - I don't think we're in Rachelle's swamp anymore."
Lisa managed to stop whimpering long enough to growl, "Thank you, Captain."
Rachelle snorted, "Yeah, right. We've been carried away by masked assassins, bent on the destruction of the OSA. Sure."
"Um, Rache, I think assassins are the last thing we should be worrying about..." The tremor in Abbie's voice told Lisa and Kellie that she too had gotten her eyes working.
"Someone should tell Osama to turn up the heat." Rachelle grumbled sarcastically.
"Rachelle, just open your eyes already." Kellie growled, sounding angrier then she had a moment before, and a good deal more miserable. The resulting look on Rachelle's face as she complied would have made Abbie and Kellie laugh any other time. Now, however, they could only sit, shiver, and try not to be sick. Lisa continued to moan between bouts of shivering.
"Where are we?" Rachelle's voice sounded somewhere between disbelief, confusion, and misery.
No one answered her. No one could, as a new pain added itself to the already growing list of aches and pains the girls were feeling. The sky spun before their eyes and the whole mountain seemed to lurch under them as the new pain assaulted them. Rachelle groaned, wrapping her arms around her knees as she rolled back into the snow. She rolled onto her side, curled in the fetal position. Abbie, still lying in the snow, cried out, covering both ears as if to silence the pain. Lisa gave a sort of half sob, falling onto her back, her arms reaching up to shelter her head. With a curse, Kellie ripped at her shoes, trying to get them off. After fumbling for a moment, the shoes came free, and with a feeble throw, she tossed them away from her. The first landed near the ledge, and the second pushed it over, sending both of them off the mountain. Kellie only clutched at her pain-ridden feet, the shoes forgotten.
Kellie was the first to wake the second time round. Confused, disoriented, and still very cold, but otherwise feeling somewhat better, she sat up slowly. Snow slid off of her, and she wiped it from her eyes and face. All hope she had of her hair not being too badly messed up disappeared as she realized that it was all wet and matted to her head. She cursed. She hadn't brought enough hair gel for the fix up she was going to need to get her spiky hair back to normal.
The cold, wet girl glanced around miserably. They were still on the mountain, and it was still snowing. That much hadn't changed. Now, however, the snow covered the curled up masses that had to be the other members of the OSA. One of them moved, groaned, and sat up, some of the snow falling away in a mini avalanche, revealing some of Rachelle, her lips blue and her teeth chattering.
"Wow, I feel small -er." She managed, glancing at their surroundings. "What the heck was that all about?" Finally focusing on Kellie as her vision stopped spinning.
"How should I know?" Kellie brushed away some more snow and sighed, "What do you think happened? How'd we get here?"
Rachelle shrugged, "Don't remember. My brain is still throbbing. Thinking, at this point, is dangerous."
"Mine too," Kellie complained, trying to rub her temples with her cold-stiffened fingers with little success. "Well, I only remember walking through your marshes...and...a log."
Rachelle blinked. "A log?" Kellie shrugged. "Go figure...I guess I do remember the marshes now...yeah. Very cold..."
"Uh huh. You're a quick one...You do remember the log, right?"
"Um...no..." she frowned, "Oh wait - yes I do. You tipped it!"
"Excuse me? I didn't tip anything. That log was pushed."
"By you jumping on it like you were on a freaking trampoline!"
"Something screwed you memory up all right. We were walking across it when it felt like it got jabbed by something. Then we fell through the ice..."
"Nothing lives in my mud puddles, Kel." Rachelle said, exasperation in her voice. "You knocked us over."
"No, I didn't!"
"Yes, you did!"
"Fine! Whatever! I understand...you hit your head harder then mine, I guess. With the combination of that and your natural blondness, you memory will of course be wrong."
"I decide to take offence to that!"
"More power to you," Kellie said, calming down a bit. "How did we get here? Where is here?"
Rachelle shrugged, "I wouldn't know. I'm blonde, remember?"
Kellie growled, "Pretend you're not for a while! Why are we not in your swamps anymore?'
There was a moan, and another mound of snow shifted and sat up. "Abbie broke through the rotten part of that stick and we fell into the swamp." The mound squeaked as it realized it was still on the edge of the ledge. Lisa began to whimper again, and, with an exasperated sigh, Rachelle reached over and pulled the girl away from the edge. Breathing hard, Lisa starred at the edge as if it were going to jump up and bite her any second.
"This isn't the swamp," she managed to get out as she regained some of what little composer she possessed. She glanced at her friends, only to find them already starring at her in horror. "What is it?" No answer, and Lisa felt her heart pound in her chest and the hair on the back of her neck rise. "What's on me?" She shrieked, hands flailing, "A spider? Where? How big is it? Get it off me!" Kellie shook her head impatiently and pointed at her, eyes wide. "Well, then what is it?!" Lisa yelled.
Rachelle stood up, took a step toward her friend, and grabbed a handful of hair, giving it a sharp tug. Lisa screeched, "Leggo!" She smacked at Rachelle's hand and pushed away from her. After a moment of smoothing her hair out again, she looked up at the other girl, a retort ready. It died in her throat as her eyes widened and her jaw dropped.
"You'll catch flies that way, you know." Rachelle smirked. She started to say something, and stopped. "What?"
"You're short!" Abbie squeaked from behind her. The girl had been wakened by Lisa's insane shrieking.
Rachelle's face fell, crushed. "Excuse me?" She spat. "I'm short? Well, thanks for the analysis, Sherlock. I'll be sure to go cry about that one."
"No, she means shorter!" Kellie cried. "I mean, extremely short. Look at you!" She stood, still starring.
Rachelle fought the urge to roll her eyes. "It's just because we're surrounded by extremely tall mountains and stuff. You don't look too lofty yourself."
"I'm taller then you are!"
"Abbie, you and Lisa have always been taller then me!"
"I mean tall-er!" She stood and went to stand beside her shorter friend. She now towered over the girl, who stood with the snow nearly to her hips. To Abbie, the snow merely came up to her knees, while Rachelle's head was a little above her own hips.
Rachelle's jaw dropped. "That is NOT your hip. I am not starring your hip in the face!
"Well, you are!"
"What's wrong with you guys? You're all stumpy...and you're hair..." Lisa' couldn't stop starring at her short friends.
"What about my hair?" Rachelle asked, her expression daring Lisa to continue.
"It's darker...and curlier." Kellie answered instead.
Rachelle glanced back at her friend, "So is yours."
"My hair is curly?" Kellie asked in a dead-like voice.
"Yup, short and curly. It's all matted to your head, but I can still tell."
"What? No!" Kellie groped for the ends of her hair, and whined as she discovered that it was no longer short and spiky, but chin-length and curly. "No! Oh, great! What the hell is happening here? I don't mind being short...I mean, I've been short all my life, so I'm used to it. But when my hair starts -"
"I thought you liked your hair cropped short." Rachelle interrupted.
"Not curly!"
"Oh, come on." Lisa said, "It looks cute!"
"Cute!" Kellie shrieked. "Cute? That's why I cut it in the first place! I strived to distance myself from that kind of cute!"
"Stop having a brain aneurysm," Rachelle growled. "I would hate to know what you though about my hair. It's normally curly."
"But that's your style! You don't care if it looks a mess..."
Rachelle's eyes narrowed.
"No, I didn't mean that!" Kellie screeched, trying to save herself. "You usually straighten it...its okay. But my style is totally different from yours."
"Okay, we are lost in an unknown territory with mountains the size of Mount Everest, ourselves the height of a fruit bush and those two the height of redwoods and you are still on about the way your hair looks?"
"Wait, who said I'm any taller?" Lisa asked, looking confused. She stood, glancing down at herself. Her eyes widened. "You guys -"
"That's what I was trying to tell you earlier, before you decided to freak out, Lisa. You're ears are all pointy, and even with you sitting down you just looked...taller." Kellie shrugged it off.
"You guys -" Abbie started, glancing down at herself as well.
"My ears are pointy?! Are you serious!?" Lisa reached up to touch her ears with a shriek, which she immediately regretted. Abbie winced, covering her own ears. That hurt. But after a moment, the pain let up and Lisa went back to touching her strangely pointed ears, awe in her eyes.
Abbie tried again, "You guys. Look at your clothes. They aren't what we had on when we went outside this morning."
Kellie examined herself, "What the hell is this?" She tugged at the dress she was wearing. "This is not my hoodie! Where the hell is my hoodie?!"
Lisa starred at her own dress in awe. "Dude. This looks...medieval. I am so wearing this to the Renaissance Faire...And check out the cloak! I've always wanted a cloak!" She nearly squealed with delight, twirling around in a small circle. She stumbled on the hem of the gray cloak and almost toppled over.
Rachelle was starring at her own dress, brow furrowed. "This is really weird. They don't even make dresses like this anymore, do they?"
Kellie glowered, "My dress, and yours, look like something off of Little House on the Prairie or something."
"It's...Hobbit-ish."
"Well, that's fitting. You both are short like Hobbits, you have Hobbit hair, and now you have perfect Hobbit dresses. Enjoy gardening and raising a million and a half Hobbit kids!" Lisa smirked.
Kellie made to kick her, and stopped mid-kick, eyes wide. She almost fell, but Abbie caught her, her own eyes wide. "Oh. My. God." Kellie whispered, "I think I'm having an allergic reaction." Rachelle lifted her own foot out of the snow and examined it. It was exactly the same way.
Both girls' feet had swelled two times their normal sizes, and now sported masses of thick hair that grew and curled on the tops and toes of their feet. Rachelle screamed in shock.
"Ahh!" she cried. "Nasty! That's no allergic reaction! Oh, ew! Look at my feet!"
However, Kellie was starring at her feet as if it was the most wondrous thing she had ever seen. She kept her eyes fixed on the thick fur now surrounding the tops of her extremely thick feet. She didn't even hear Rachelle rant on.
"So now not only am I in competition with Minime, my beautiful feet are...are...are crusty!"
"Rachelle," Kellie whispered, still half in her trance. "Rachelle."
"What? Oh, look at this! And I don't even have a razor either! Help me look for a sharp rock. That should do it..."
"Rache," Kellie repeated, more forcefully this time. Lisa enforced it by pushing the ranting girl over into the snow. Kellie continued on before she could continue fuming, "Our feet."
"Yes. Feet. Hairy." Rachelle muttered, glaring at Lisa. "I know, now your head hair and your feet hair are extremely curly. But don't worry. As soon as we find a sharp rock and a -"
"Rachelle, look at your feet!" Kellie yelled, "What do they look like?"
Rachelle blinked. "Extremely disgusting? Come on, it's grossing me out."
"No! Don't you get it? We are in some strange land, extremely short - or tall, in their cases - and have thick and hairy feet - or pointy ears. What have we been joking about all this time?"
Lisa and Abbie squealed, barely containing themselves. Rachelle glared at them, "You mean that we've been kidnapped by assassins out to destroy the OSA?" She paused, catching Kellie's excited gaze, "You don't mean....we couldn't have...but I'm short....my feet are...no. Impossible."
Kellie burst out laughing, "We found it! We found the portal to Middle Earth!"
Lisa and Abbie cheered in unison, and, no longer able to contain it, jumped up and down, laughing.
"Wait!" Rachelle said, before jumping to conclusions like her exceptionally short - and tall - friends. "Middle Earth? That was just some joke! We didn't find the patrol. We fell into a mud puddle and banged our heads on the log we fell off of. Or maybe we were kidnapped!"
"Yeah, and we had some weird reaction to our kidnapper's cologne!" Abbie muttered, exasperated now. "Rachelle, face it, you're a Hobbit! I'm an Elf!"
As if their aches and pains had melted away, the three friends danced around as best as they could on the ledge. It stopped almost immediately as they realized how cold they were, and how far the drop was.
Rachelle sat down, blinking rapidly. The other girls sat as well, grins on their faces. "Why would someone put the portal to Middle Earth in my back yard?" she asked, half in wonderment, half fearful.
Kellie shook her curly redhead, still smiling, "Why does it matter? We're here now!"
Rachelle slowly shook her head, "Yeah, joy. All happy freaking dandy," she spat. "You're forgetting a couple of small, minute details. Sauron. The Black Riders. Do you even remember what you saw in the movie? Who knows where we are in the scheme of the things! The Black Gate thingamabob could be just around the bend - with those crossbred whatchmacallits. Dang. I wish I got that far in the books...I was only in the middle of the Fellowship."
Kellie shrugged, "I was only in the Hobbit!"
Lisa smirked, "You mean the Black Gate of Mordor, right? And the Uruk Hi? Those are definitely not nearby. Have you taken a look around recently? We're on the mountain. The one the Fellowship climbs in the first movie. What's it called?" She glanced at Abbie.
"Caradhras?" The girl volunteered.
"Yup, that's the one." Lisa nodded. The two Hobbits starred at their friends, shocked. Lisa shrugged, "I read the trilogy after the Fellowship came out. Ditto for the Hobbit."
"Same here." Abbie glanced around. "Now where do you suppose our things went? I had a bag of Doritos in there..."
"I don't see them. Prolly buried under the snow somewhere. We'll find them later." Lisa brushed it off, wrapping her cloak around her and glanced at her friends. "What we need now are names."
Kellie frowned, "What? Why?"
"Well, we can't just wander all over Middle Earth calling ourselves non-Middle Earthian names! Do you remember what your names on were? Those should work as good aliases, don't you think?"
"I'm Rosa, I think. From Pincup." Rachelle offered.
Lisa nodded sagely, "Good, stick with that. Kellie?"
"Amarantha. Also from Pincup."
"Perfect. Abbie?"
"I'm Gwanedhel."
"Oh, that's a pretty one, Abbie!" Lisa grinned, "And I'm Imlossiel."
"And I'm cold." Rachelle grumbled, wrapping herself up in her cloak before she hunkered down next to Kellie. "Now what."
Silence.
"I suppose," Abbie said slowly, "we need to get off this mountain."
"Well, duh. We knew that. How are we going to get past that mountain of snow?"
"Kellie, that isn't a mountain of snow. Only a big drift. Once we could easily carry both of you Hobbit lasses over," Lisa clarified with a smirk.
Kellie stuck her tongue out at her Elven friend and appeared to disappear in the folds of her cloak. Lisa hit her with a snowball, which resulted in a curse from within the cloak and a snowball flying at the Elf. It hit the girl's shoulder, and she pouted for a second before reaching for another snowball. This one missed, hitting Rachelle instead. Abbie snickered at the look on her face as she whipped the snow from her face and sent a snowball soaring. The resulting 'Oof' was neither female nor particularly human, and the jaws of the OSA members dropped all at once.
By: The OSA
Cold.
Very cold.
Those were the only two thoughts that registered in Lisa's mind as she awoke. She groaned and curled herself into a ball, not bothering to open her eyes. Her attempt to return to the blissful realm of sleep was futile, however, as her groggy brain registered one new fun fact for her;
Wet.
What the buggering heck? She thought, confused. Why was she cold and wet? It didn't make sense. Then again, very little made sense to the girl in the morning. She groaned again and tried to force open her eyes. It didn't work. Every time she tried to open her lead filled eyelids her head began to pound, and she suddenly felt unexplainably sick to her stomach. Frick. This can't be good.
A similar moan from nearby alerted Lisa that she wasn't alone. It sounded as weak as she felt, but it was clearly human. The muffled curses that followed identified it as Kellie. "Someone tell the NHL to stop doing figure eights on my cranium," groaned the same voice, sounding only marginally stronger.
"Only if you get off of me," came a muffled voice that sounded very much like Abbie. The soft scuffling sound told the girl that Kellie had tried to comply, though the moaning didn't sound promising.
Lisa forced herself to sit up, and almost didn't make it as the pounding in her head intensified and nearly overcame her. She wrapped her arms around her knees and cradled her head on her knees, moaning piteously.
"What happened?" Abbie muttered.
"Obviously we fell into the swamp," grunted Rachelle, speaking up for the first time. She sounded just as cold and sick as the rest of them.
"I think I'm going to be sick..." Kellie whined, speaking for all of them.
"Sorry," Rachelle grunted again, extremely disoriented.
"Why is the sky spinning like that?" Abbie's voice sounded softer and farther away then it had when she had been under Kellie.
No one answered. No one wanted to risk speaking and throwing up in the process. Lisa chanced a glance around her, and though she nearly blinded herself in the process, she caught sight of their surroundings. She whimpered, very much confused, and buried her head in her arms instead. Moving suddenly seemed very intimidating.
Snow. They were surronded by snow. A lot of it, as in way more than Jersey had the right to get buried under. Icy wind whipped past the girls, bringing with it unending whirls of snow. That explained the cold and wet part.
Not to mention that they were on an insanely narrow ledge on what appeared to be a mountain side. And Lisa was perched right near the edge. Petrified and unable to make herself move, she whimpered again and sat as still as she could. Which was no longer easy, as the wind cut through her clothes and made her shiver.
"Lisa, what's your probl-" Kellie stopped, gasping as she finally got her eyes to focus and take a look around. "You guys - I don't think we're in Rachelle's swamp anymore."
Lisa managed to stop whimpering long enough to growl, "Thank you, Captain."
Rachelle snorted, "Yeah, right. We've been carried away by masked assassins, bent on the destruction of the OSA. Sure."
"Um, Rache, I think assassins are the last thing we should be worrying about..." The tremor in Abbie's voice told Lisa and Kellie that she too had gotten her eyes working.
"Someone should tell Osama to turn up the heat." Rachelle grumbled sarcastically.
"Rachelle, just open your eyes already." Kellie growled, sounding angrier then she had a moment before, and a good deal more miserable. The resulting look on Rachelle's face as she complied would have made Abbie and Kellie laugh any other time. Now, however, they could only sit, shiver, and try not to be sick. Lisa continued to moan between bouts of shivering.
"Where are we?" Rachelle's voice sounded somewhere between disbelief, confusion, and misery.
No one answered her. No one could, as a new pain added itself to the already growing list of aches and pains the girls were feeling. The sky spun before their eyes and the whole mountain seemed to lurch under them as the new pain assaulted them. Rachelle groaned, wrapping her arms around her knees as she rolled back into the snow. She rolled onto her side, curled in the fetal position. Abbie, still lying in the snow, cried out, covering both ears as if to silence the pain. Lisa gave a sort of half sob, falling onto her back, her arms reaching up to shelter her head. With a curse, Kellie ripped at her shoes, trying to get them off. After fumbling for a moment, the shoes came free, and with a feeble throw, she tossed them away from her. The first landed near the ledge, and the second pushed it over, sending both of them off the mountain. Kellie only clutched at her pain-ridden feet, the shoes forgotten.
Kellie was the first to wake the second time round. Confused, disoriented, and still very cold, but otherwise feeling somewhat better, she sat up slowly. Snow slid off of her, and she wiped it from her eyes and face. All hope she had of her hair not being too badly messed up disappeared as she realized that it was all wet and matted to her head. She cursed. She hadn't brought enough hair gel for the fix up she was going to need to get her spiky hair back to normal.
The cold, wet girl glanced around miserably. They were still on the mountain, and it was still snowing. That much hadn't changed. Now, however, the snow covered the curled up masses that had to be the other members of the OSA. One of them moved, groaned, and sat up, some of the snow falling away in a mini avalanche, revealing some of Rachelle, her lips blue and her teeth chattering.
"Wow, I feel small -er." She managed, glancing at their surroundings. "What the heck was that all about?" Finally focusing on Kellie as her vision stopped spinning.
"How should I know?" Kellie brushed away some more snow and sighed, "What do you think happened? How'd we get here?"
Rachelle shrugged, "Don't remember. My brain is still throbbing. Thinking, at this point, is dangerous."
"Mine too," Kellie complained, trying to rub her temples with her cold-stiffened fingers with little success. "Well, I only remember walking through your marshes...and...a log."
Rachelle blinked. "A log?" Kellie shrugged. "Go figure...I guess I do remember the marshes now...yeah. Very cold..."
"Uh huh. You're a quick one...You do remember the log, right?"
"Um...no..." she frowned, "Oh wait - yes I do. You tipped it!"
"Excuse me? I didn't tip anything. That log was pushed."
"By you jumping on it like you were on a freaking trampoline!"
"Something screwed you memory up all right. We were walking across it when it felt like it got jabbed by something. Then we fell through the ice..."
"Nothing lives in my mud puddles, Kel." Rachelle said, exasperation in her voice. "You knocked us over."
"No, I didn't!"
"Yes, you did!"
"Fine! Whatever! I understand...you hit your head harder then mine, I guess. With the combination of that and your natural blondness, you memory will of course be wrong."
"I decide to take offence to that!"
"More power to you," Kellie said, calming down a bit. "How did we get here? Where is here?"
Rachelle shrugged, "I wouldn't know. I'm blonde, remember?"
Kellie growled, "Pretend you're not for a while! Why are we not in your swamps anymore?'
There was a moan, and another mound of snow shifted and sat up. "Abbie broke through the rotten part of that stick and we fell into the swamp." The mound squeaked as it realized it was still on the edge of the ledge. Lisa began to whimper again, and, with an exasperated sigh, Rachelle reached over and pulled the girl away from the edge. Breathing hard, Lisa starred at the edge as if it were going to jump up and bite her any second.
"This isn't the swamp," she managed to get out as she regained some of what little composer she possessed. She glanced at her friends, only to find them already starring at her in horror. "What is it?" No answer, and Lisa felt her heart pound in her chest and the hair on the back of her neck rise. "What's on me?" She shrieked, hands flailing, "A spider? Where? How big is it? Get it off me!" Kellie shook her head impatiently and pointed at her, eyes wide. "Well, then what is it?!" Lisa yelled.
Rachelle stood up, took a step toward her friend, and grabbed a handful of hair, giving it a sharp tug. Lisa screeched, "Leggo!" She smacked at Rachelle's hand and pushed away from her. After a moment of smoothing her hair out again, she looked up at the other girl, a retort ready. It died in her throat as her eyes widened and her jaw dropped.
"You'll catch flies that way, you know." Rachelle smirked. She started to say something, and stopped. "What?"
"You're short!" Abbie squeaked from behind her. The girl had been wakened by Lisa's insane shrieking.
Rachelle's face fell, crushed. "Excuse me?" She spat. "I'm short? Well, thanks for the analysis, Sherlock. I'll be sure to go cry about that one."
"No, she means shorter!" Kellie cried. "I mean, extremely short. Look at you!" She stood, still starring.
Rachelle fought the urge to roll her eyes. "It's just because we're surrounded by extremely tall mountains and stuff. You don't look too lofty yourself."
"I'm taller then you are!"
"Abbie, you and Lisa have always been taller then me!"
"I mean tall-er!" She stood and went to stand beside her shorter friend. She now towered over the girl, who stood with the snow nearly to her hips. To Abbie, the snow merely came up to her knees, while Rachelle's head was a little above her own hips.
Rachelle's jaw dropped. "That is NOT your hip. I am not starring your hip in the face!
"Well, you are!"
"What's wrong with you guys? You're all stumpy...and you're hair..." Lisa' couldn't stop starring at her short friends.
"What about my hair?" Rachelle asked, her expression daring Lisa to continue.
"It's darker...and curlier." Kellie answered instead.
Rachelle glanced back at her friend, "So is yours."
"My hair is curly?" Kellie asked in a dead-like voice.
"Yup, short and curly. It's all matted to your head, but I can still tell."
"What? No!" Kellie groped for the ends of her hair, and whined as she discovered that it was no longer short and spiky, but chin-length and curly. "No! Oh, great! What the hell is happening here? I don't mind being short...I mean, I've been short all my life, so I'm used to it. But when my hair starts -"
"I thought you liked your hair cropped short." Rachelle interrupted.
"Not curly!"
"Oh, come on." Lisa said, "It looks cute!"
"Cute!" Kellie shrieked. "Cute? That's why I cut it in the first place! I strived to distance myself from that kind of cute!"
"Stop having a brain aneurysm," Rachelle growled. "I would hate to know what you though about my hair. It's normally curly."
"But that's your style! You don't care if it looks a mess..."
Rachelle's eyes narrowed.
"No, I didn't mean that!" Kellie screeched, trying to save herself. "You usually straighten it...its okay. But my style is totally different from yours."
"Okay, we are lost in an unknown territory with mountains the size of Mount Everest, ourselves the height of a fruit bush and those two the height of redwoods and you are still on about the way your hair looks?"
"Wait, who said I'm any taller?" Lisa asked, looking confused. She stood, glancing down at herself. Her eyes widened. "You guys -"
"That's what I was trying to tell you earlier, before you decided to freak out, Lisa. You're ears are all pointy, and even with you sitting down you just looked...taller." Kellie shrugged it off.
"You guys -" Abbie started, glancing down at herself as well.
"My ears are pointy?! Are you serious!?" Lisa reached up to touch her ears with a shriek, which she immediately regretted. Abbie winced, covering her own ears. That hurt. But after a moment, the pain let up and Lisa went back to touching her strangely pointed ears, awe in her eyes.
Abbie tried again, "You guys. Look at your clothes. They aren't what we had on when we went outside this morning."
Kellie examined herself, "What the hell is this?" She tugged at the dress she was wearing. "This is not my hoodie! Where the hell is my hoodie?!"
Lisa starred at her own dress in awe. "Dude. This looks...medieval. I am so wearing this to the Renaissance Faire...And check out the cloak! I've always wanted a cloak!" She nearly squealed with delight, twirling around in a small circle. She stumbled on the hem of the gray cloak and almost toppled over.
Rachelle was starring at her own dress, brow furrowed. "This is really weird. They don't even make dresses like this anymore, do they?"
Kellie glowered, "My dress, and yours, look like something off of Little House on the Prairie or something."
"It's...Hobbit-ish."
"Well, that's fitting. You both are short like Hobbits, you have Hobbit hair, and now you have perfect Hobbit dresses. Enjoy gardening and raising a million and a half Hobbit kids!" Lisa smirked.
Kellie made to kick her, and stopped mid-kick, eyes wide. She almost fell, but Abbie caught her, her own eyes wide. "Oh. My. God." Kellie whispered, "I think I'm having an allergic reaction." Rachelle lifted her own foot out of the snow and examined it. It was exactly the same way.
Both girls' feet had swelled two times their normal sizes, and now sported masses of thick hair that grew and curled on the tops and toes of their feet. Rachelle screamed in shock.
"Ahh!" she cried. "Nasty! That's no allergic reaction! Oh, ew! Look at my feet!"
However, Kellie was starring at her feet as if it was the most wondrous thing she had ever seen. She kept her eyes fixed on the thick fur now surrounding the tops of her extremely thick feet. She didn't even hear Rachelle rant on.
"So now not only am I in competition with Minime, my beautiful feet are...are...are crusty!"
"Rachelle," Kellie whispered, still half in her trance. "Rachelle."
"What? Oh, look at this! And I don't even have a razor either! Help me look for a sharp rock. That should do it..."
"Rache," Kellie repeated, more forcefully this time. Lisa enforced it by pushing the ranting girl over into the snow. Kellie continued on before she could continue fuming, "Our feet."
"Yes. Feet. Hairy." Rachelle muttered, glaring at Lisa. "I know, now your head hair and your feet hair are extremely curly. But don't worry. As soon as we find a sharp rock and a -"
"Rachelle, look at your feet!" Kellie yelled, "What do they look like?"
Rachelle blinked. "Extremely disgusting? Come on, it's grossing me out."
"No! Don't you get it? We are in some strange land, extremely short - or tall, in their cases - and have thick and hairy feet - or pointy ears. What have we been joking about all this time?"
Lisa and Abbie squealed, barely containing themselves. Rachelle glared at them, "You mean that we've been kidnapped by assassins out to destroy the OSA?" She paused, catching Kellie's excited gaze, "You don't mean....we couldn't have...but I'm short....my feet are...no. Impossible."
Kellie burst out laughing, "We found it! We found the portal to Middle Earth!"
Lisa and Abbie cheered in unison, and, no longer able to contain it, jumped up and down, laughing.
"Wait!" Rachelle said, before jumping to conclusions like her exceptionally short - and tall - friends. "Middle Earth? That was just some joke! We didn't find the patrol. We fell into a mud puddle and banged our heads on the log we fell off of. Or maybe we were kidnapped!"
"Yeah, and we had some weird reaction to our kidnapper's cologne!" Abbie muttered, exasperated now. "Rachelle, face it, you're a Hobbit! I'm an Elf!"
As if their aches and pains had melted away, the three friends danced around as best as they could on the ledge. It stopped almost immediately as they realized how cold they were, and how far the drop was.
Rachelle sat down, blinking rapidly. The other girls sat as well, grins on their faces. "Why would someone put the portal to Middle Earth in my back yard?" she asked, half in wonderment, half fearful.
Kellie shook her curly redhead, still smiling, "Why does it matter? We're here now!"
Rachelle slowly shook her head, "Yeah, joy. All happy freaking dandy," she spat. "You're forgetting a couple of small, minute details. Sauron. The Black Riders. Do you even remember what you saw in the movie? Who knows where we are in the scheme of the things! The Black Gate thingamabob could be just around the bend - with those crossbred whatchmacallits. Dang. I wish I got that far in the books...I was only in the middle of the Fellowship."
Kellie shrugged, "I was only in the Hobbit!"
Lisa smirked, "You mean the Black Gate of Mordor, right? And the Uruk Hi? Those are definitely not nearby. Have you taken a look around recently? We're on the mountain. The one the Fellowship climbs in the first movie. What's it called?" She glanced at Abbie.
"Caradhras?" The girl volunteered.
"Yup, that's the one." Lisa nodded. The two Hobbits starred at their friends, shocked. Lisa shrugged, "I read the trilogy after the Fellowship came out. Ditto for the Hobbit."
"Same here." Abbie glanced around. "Now where do you suppose our things went? I had a bag of Doritos in there..."
"I don't see them. Prolly buried under the snow somewhere. We'll find them later." Lisa brushed it off, wrapping her cloak around her and glanced at her friends. "What we need now are names."
Kellie frowned, "What? Why?"
"Well, we can't just wander all over Middle Earth calling ourselves non-Middle Earthian names! Do you remember what your names on were? Those should work as good aliases, don't you think?"
"I'm Rosa, I think. From Pincup." Rachelle offered.
Lisa nodded sagely, "Good, stick with that. Kellie?"
"Amarantha. Also from Pincup."
"Perfect. Abbie?"
"I'm Gwanedhel."
"Oh, that's a pretty one, Abbie!" Lisa grinned, "And I'm Imlossiel."
"And I'm cold." Rachelle grumbled, wrapping herself up in her cloak before she hunkered down next to Kellie. "Now what."
Silence.
"I suppose," Abbie said slowly, "we need to get off this mountain."
"Well, duh. We knew that. How are we going to get past that mountain of snow?"
"Kellie, that isn't a mountain of snow. Only a big drift. Once we could easily carry both of you Hobbit lasses over," Lisa clarified with a smirk.
Kellie stuck her tongue out at her Elven friend and appeared to disappear in the folds of her cloak. Lisa hit her with a snowball, which resulted in a curse from within the cloak and a snowball flying at the Elf. It hit the girl's shoulder, and she pouted for a second before reaching for another snowball. This one missed, hitting Rachelle instead. Abbie snickered at the look on her face as she whipped the snow from her face and sent a snowball soaring. The resulting 'Oof' was neither female nor particularly human, and the jaws of the OSA members dropped all at once.