Chapter Five
A Painful Comparison
:: :: ::
Emily had been startled after waking up in one of Bag End's guest bedrooms the morning after her arrival in the snow. She vaguely remembered the shower, the phone, the fall, the tea, but that was as far back as her memory of the night went. All she knew when she blinked the sleep out of her eyes was that her head was no longer hurting and her bed was abnormally warm, even for a winter morning.
Winter! Memory of the previous night rushed back to her (though the finer details were hazy) and she looked down at herself to see Frodo's very wrinkled shirt, which she had used as a nightgown. The rest of the clothes he'd given her lay in a heap next to the bedside table.
Emily looked around the room again, taking in the arched, cream-colored ceiling, trimmed with wood, the round window to the left of the bed, the dark wood floor, the small wooden desk with a quill, ink, and paper (though she couldn't image why that would be in a bedroom reserved for visitors), the (also round) brown door to the right. One thought stuck firmly in her brain: I'm in a Hobbit-hole!
::: ::: ::: ::: ::: :::
Frodo knocked just as Emily was finishing making the bed.
"Wait, don't come in!" She hastily grabbed for Frodo's pants and tripped headlong over a chair, falling on top of it and gaining a huge bruise on her right leg. When Frodo burst in on the resulting tangle of furniture, arms and legs, and clothes, he was hard put to keep himself from laughing.
Emily was sitting on (or, rather in) the bedside table chair, her feet hanging over the side, pants halfway on, face incredibly red, and she was very obviously stuck. He reached down to pull her out of the chair and turned it back upright, his face still sporting an unmistakable smirk as she yanked his pants on, blushing furiously.
"You alright?"
"Yeah..." Emily was wincing as she examined her knee, which was now a pale shade of purple. She inhaled sharply and poked at it gingerly. "Oowwww..."
Frodo was still forcing himself not to laugh. "What happened here?"
Emily glared at him. "I fell over a chair and lost my dignity and all feeling in my leg." She tried bending her knee and winced. "And, possibly all forms of motion, too." Frodo couldn't help but notice Emily's faint grin; it had twitched itself onto her face despite herself as she limped towards the chair and sat down to examine her knee again.
"So you're not alright."
"No, I'm fine." Emily got off the chair and leaned against the wall with one hand, the other still prodding her knee. Frodo distinctly heard her mumble another "ouch" under her breath as she hobbled out into the hall, clearly in pain but refusing to ask for help. She was being shy again.
"At least put something on it for the swelling, Emily."
"Okay, okay..."
Emily went to the door and disappeared outside. She returned with a small snowball pressed over her knee. Frodo was smirking again. "Good." He sat across from her at the kitchen table and watched her fidget with the snow. He noticed she was deliberately avoiding his eyes.
She was rather pretty, he thought. She had shoulder-length reddish-brown hair, dark brown eyes (when he was able to see them), and a rather turned-up nose with freckles, and she looked very young.
"Well," he said, "Sam and Rosie should be getting up soon and he'll want to do breakfast today. Why don't you tell me about yourself?"
Emily looked surprised. "Doesn't Sam make breakfast every day?"
Frodo laughed. "Well, he would, but every so often he has me cook, as a joke...I've never been much good with food, really."
Emily was staring at him. Oh, great, he's humoring me... "Really? I always thought...the book said you were a good cook..."
"Tell me about this book, then. I'm curious about it, from what you said last night. And you seem to take it to heart, do you not?"
"I do! But...I've only read it, like...once...and now... I mean...I don't know how true it actually is..."
"Well, we'll see...what is it about?"
Emily hesitated for only a second. Frodo was pulling her into a conversation she could immerse herself in any day and would never tire of. "Umm...well, you, I guess."
"What, you mean the Red Book of--"
"No! It mentions it, though."
Frodo was beginning to look at Emily as though he found her slightly mad. She did not notice, and continued, "I don't know how to explain it, exactly. It's called 'Lord of the Rings', and-- what?"
Frodo had just stood up, and was staring directly at her. "Lord of the-- wait a moment--" He walked briskly out of the kitchen, leaving Emily sitting at the table, bewildered. He returned a minute later with a large, red cloth-bound book with a silver star centered on its front cover, and laid it in front of her. Emily knew that book. It was the Red Book of Westmarch; Frodo's biography, his graphic retelling of the War of the Ring and beyond; the book she had always wished was in actual existence but had never been published.
Frodo sat back down and pushed the book towards her. "Do you know what this is?"
"Yes!" Emily reached for it, wanting to open it, to see if it was true. "I mean--it's the Red Book, right?"
"It is. How did you--does this story tell of it?"
"Yeah, it...can I read it?"
Frodo looked at her.
"Please?" Emily had already placed her hand on the cover, and Frodo had to say yes.
The moment the word left Frodo's lips, Emily pulled the book towards her and opened to the first page with shaking hands, silently praying that she would see what she was expecting to see. Her heart leapt when she saw the title, written in the center of the parchment in black ink:
The Downfall
of the
Lord of the Rings
and the
Return of the King
"Yes! I knew it! This is it!" Emily tore her eyes away from the title page and looked at Frodo, speaking very fast.
"Didn't you write this?"
"Yes...but I still don't understand...what is this book that mentions the War?"
So Emily launched into as accurate an explanation as she could of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, and the stories that went with them, pausing constantly to ask Frodo if something was true or had really happened the way it had been written, or if a character actually resembled their paper counter-self, and what everything had felt like. Frodo, on the other hand, though at first reluctant to retell such tales to a stranger, soon gave Emily his account of the War, and his own part in it. Emily had nearly lost her shyness, and was on the point of asking if Ithilien was as beautiful as it had been made out to be when her question was punctuated by the entrance of Sam.
"Good morning, Mister Frodo! Did you sle--oh...who's this?"
Emily, again shy, returned her attention to her neglected knee.
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
I'm back! Firstly, my apologies to all for my long absence, I haven't been able to think about anything other than my kids I take care of at camp, among other distractions(i.e., self-teaching myself guitar and doing a very slow job on my summer reading--Julius Caesar isn't the most interesting play in the world...::sigh::)....but its all over now and I can start updating again! I know you've all been waiting for this, and it's here now!
I also put up the first chapter of my Artemis Fowl/Harry Potter fic a while ago, but that fic is unfortunately temporarily dead until I figure out what to do with it next :-( I'd appreciate if you read the first chapter and tell me what you think of it, and if you even think a twist like that is worth continuing. I've also been writing a one-chapter version of LOTR from the point of view of the Ring itself, but I'm being deliberately slow with everything, not just , so that might be a while, but it is coming.
HelmsDeep2234--do I get my cookies now?? ::grin::