She Was So Normal

Shopping

Author's Note: I told you all I wasn't done just yet. I know it took me a decade to get back in the saddle, but here I am. Now, I understand Tolkien was kind of writing British mythology, but since this is fan fiction, I feel totally free to bend reality at will. Last thing – to anyone reading this, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Like I said, it's been a while. P.S. – I still don't own Lord of the Rings.

Renee checked her phone. She had loads of time before she was supposed to meet Danielle. She looked at her shoulder length dark hair and toyed again with the idea of putting some highlights in. Or maybe dying her under layer orange. She hadn't done anything with it in so long and she was getting a little bored with it, but she did like how it started curling when it got a little longer. Maybe she'd just thin it out so it could curl how she liked. Or maybe she'd cut it short again. Bah, she'd figure that out later.

With a last look in the mirror she checked her make up then went into her bedroom.

"Now what to wear?" she mumbled to herself. After a few changes she finally settled on an outfit and gave a twirl in her mirror. She checked her phone again – still plenty of time before she had to get to the coffee shop. As she was putting away all the clothes she decided not to wear that day, a certain book on her very large bookshelf kept catching her attention. At first she didn't think much of it, but then it started to bother her. Was it out of place? She put down the shirt she was folding and went over to the shelf.

No, it was in the right place. It wasn't too far out or pushed too far in. It was perfectly on the edge of the trim like all her other books. She pulled it off the shelf. "Ah, Lord of the Rings! It's been entirely too long since I've read it," she thought to herself. "Maybe I should read it again. It has been a solid five or six years after all. Yes, perhaps it's time."

She set it down on her bed, checked her phone again and decided it was time to leave. She grabbed her jacket and purse and swept out of her room, but then stopped, turned around and grabbed "Lord of the Rings".

"Just in case she's running late," Renee mumbled to herself.

Traffic was light, which wasn't horribly shocking given it was a Saturday, so she made it to the coffee shop in good time. She ordered herself a hot caramel apple cider and settled down in one of the arm chairs. She set her phone on her lap so she could see if Danielle texted her and then opened her large paperback copy of "Lord of the Rings".

It seemed that nearly the instant her eyes read the opening words that she was seeing everything play out before her. It had been years since she had been immersed in a book. High school in fact. How long ago had that been? Six years? She was several pages in when she got a text.

Running late. Should b there in 10.

To which she replied: No prob. Got a book. Take ur time.

Renee immediately turned her attention back to her book, occasionally sipping her cider as she read. She had almost forgotten how good a writer Tolkien was.

To be fair though, she had read more than her fair share of books since the last time she had read anything by Tolkien. College was like that. She had read more books in four years of college than she would have believed possible in high school. But that's what happens when you decide to major in cross cultural education and minor in history. It hadn't been her first career choice, but that is because she did not have one. She had no idea what she wanted to do after high school except not work her dead end job anymore, so she went to college and decided to study things she was interested in – history, culture, and language. Early on her advisor said something about teaching English as a second language and the opportunities it provided, so she decided if nothing else, she could fall back on a career that seemed promising as English was becoming the official trade language. Everyone else she knew seemed to be gravitating towards nursing, computer something, or business something, so she decided to take the road less traveled. It was reasonably well calculated move that paid off at least marginally well. During college she hadn't accrued crippling student loan debt, as her parents had been able to help and she had been able to commute to college and live with a favorite aunt and uncle. After college, she moved back to her hometown and got a few private tutoring jobs as an independent contractor through some local school and business connections, but not enough to pay the rent, so she took a job at an interior design studio. She always figured she was ahead of the game as she was actually using her degree, even if it didn't pay the rent and wasn't exactly her life's passion.

In fact, the only thing that was keeping her life from being ideal, or at least as much as one could reasonably expect it to be at twenty-four was the fact she was still single. She hadn't dated in high school, and college only saw a couple of dates here and there, and post college life had been absolutely dateless. Some of her friends had accused her of being overly particular and told her she should just go on a date for kicks. She didn't want to just date though for something to do. If she was going to bother dating someone, it was going to be someone she thought was marriage material. Not that she had any plans of marrying the first guy she dated, but she didn't see much of a point in just having a fling. The idea of marriage had always had a romantic appeal to her. She liked the thought of settling down to one man forever and always and going home to him every night. That's how her grandparents had done it, that's how her parents had done it, and that was how she wanted to do it. Her grandparents were still like a couple of newlyweds. She wanted that. Though her increasingly barren social calendar suggested she might want to settle for Euchre night with friends and a blind date or two.

At the moment though, what she wanted most was to be sitting in Hobbiton on the bench outside Bag End reading a book. Not that her life was so bad, in fact all things considered, she was extremely pleased with where she was and how things were going. Not that she didn't like Danielle, or that she hated shopping, but somehow sitting around reading in Middle-earth sounded heavenly just then. As it stood she was starting to slide behind schedule with her Christmas shopping.

This year she was determined to get her Christmas shopping early. It was already the first week of October and she was only a third of the way through her list. Her objective was to be mostly done by Thanksgiving. Of course there were a few things that she was waiting for Black Friday and Cyber Monday to pick up, but overall, the stuff she was looking to get didn't get huge Christmas sales.

She finished chapter one, placed the book mark back in, and closed it. She sighed and checked the time on her phone.

"Good grief, Danielle! What's taking you so long?" she muttered to herself.

She had just grabbed her caramel apple cider off the table when she got a text. She set her drink down, grabbed her phone and saw a text from Danielle: Running waaaay late. Wasn't getting coffee anyway. Where u wanna meet?

To which Renee replied: Parking lot near fro-yo place by lake. With that, she picked up her cider and book and headed to her car.

Renee made all the green lights and so made it to Starlight Lake in record time. She suspected Danielle would be a while yet, so she sat in her car sipping her cider and pondering what stores she wanted to go to. After a few minutes she finished her drink and headed outside. She had parked in the free parking lot near the frozen yogurt place that afforded a very lovely view of the famous Starlight Lake.

The Starlight Lake was an object of local curiosity and legend. The Native Americans that had occupied the area claimed it was a place of great mystical properties. The explorers thought it was perhaps the Fountain of Youth that Ponce de Leon had sought, though that theory quickly proved false. The native tribe present at the time of its European discovery had claimed it was a sacred place and a place of mystical energy. Regardless, it was considered something of a scientific curiosity early on by the explorers and so they let it be in hopes perhaps someday someone could figure out why the lake seemed to show stars and mountain tops seemingly engulfed with plumes of white flame if one stood in a certain place.

Modern man, who had long just written it off as a curiosity of clear water and refraction, was forced to leave it alone thanks to some obscure law that had been made shortly after the "white men" settled in the region. The native tribe agreed to move on to a reservation only if a very strict provision was made that NOTHING and NO ONE EVER was to disturb anything within three yards of the lake and that if the tribe, for any reason, though if they needed to perform any sort of sacred ceremony near it, they could. No arguments, no questions. Everyone thought it an odd request, but agreed and so there it was. In later years however, the native tribe renegotiated the deal to allow people to enjoy it for things like swimming and non-motorized boating, but absolutely nothing with a motor and no fishing.

Consequently, Starlight Lake had been left undisturbed, but had seen numerous things built around it – cornfields, parks, and downtown shopping. Renee figured Danielle would probably be another half an hour, so she decided to take advantage of the unusually warm fall weather and sit on a bench near the shore. She picked one that was in direct view of the entry to the parking lot and also happened to be closest to a small and gentle incline leading the last two feet to the Lake itself. For several minutes she alternated between checking her phone and looking up at the parking lot until at last she saw Danielle pulling in.

As Renee stood up to gather her things and go meet her friend, a little kid ran past her squealing in mischievous delight. Startled, she stepped back a pace and momentarily lost her balance on the uneven ground. Before she could regain it, the frantic mom of the runaway tot went flying past her with a stroller, which served to knock Renee even more off balance and sent her stumbling backwards towards the lake. The last thing she remembered was a falling sensation and a fleeting thought of, "Oh crap!"

When Renee came to all she saw was sky. Well, really what she saw was sky colored blur and a dark blur. After a moment however the world came back into focus and started to attempt standing up. When she got upright she suddenly wished she was lying down again.

All around her was grass with rocks strewn in it with a forest off in the distance. Directly beside her however was some sort of worn rock pillar. "What the heck happened to the town? And where did this pillar come from?" she said to the air. She reached up and started probing her head for any cuts or bumps. She found a nice goose egg on the back of her head, but that was all. She sloshed out the shallow water she had landed in and trudged up a bigger than she remembered incline. "Where am I? Here's the lake, but this looks absolutely nothing like Smithsville." She turned around and surveyed the entire landscape. "Definitely not Smithsville." She noticed her purse was gone and vaguely remembered it flying from her hand as the stroller wielding mom knocked into her. "Terrific. I'm in the middle of nowhere with no phone, no cash, and absolutely no way of figuring out where on earth I am. And it looks like there isn't another soul around for miles. I wonder if it's morning or afternoon? I suppose I should just head for those trees in any event. At least they'll provide some shelter. Though what in the world I'll do beyond that is beyond me. And where did those mountains come from?!"

She was not five paces from the lake when she heard a voice call out to her.

"AI! YOU! What are you doing by Kheled-zaram?!" She looked around and saw coming towards her a short stocky figure with a very impressive beard, wearing what looked like some kind of armor, and carrying an axe. Next to him was an even shorter figure that looked almost like a child that was barefooted and curly haired wearing something like a waist coat and capris and trailing him was another similar looking figure though a bit stockier. She was horribly confused and kept blinking and rubbing her eyes. "Answer me, lassie! What are you doing here?"

"Look sir, if I had a clue what I was doing here, I'd answer. All I know is, I was sitting on a bench that seems to have disappeared and got knocked into a lake by a crazy three year old and his crazier mom and when I woke up, I was here. Two minutes ago there was a town, shops, and no mountains. Now it's all rocks and grass and looks absolutely NOTHING like where I was two minutes ago. And I have a bump on my head."

"Lass, I can assure you there is no town here and never has been. The closest there ever was in the mountain back there and that has long since fallen to ruin. Now what are you doing here?!"

"Mister, I'm telling you, I don't know where here is. I thought I was in Smithsville next to Starlight Lake, but the only thing that remotely resembles where I was is this weird lake."

"Weird?!" The bearded one seemed to take offense.

"Now Gimli, I'm sure she didn't mean anything by it. She clearly isn't from around here. Maybe we should take her back to the others and let them try to figure this out," said the first shorter one.

Renee was a bit surprised at the mature sounding voice issuing from what she had assumed to be a child. But now that he was a bit closer she could see he looked more like a very short thirty something. "I'm sorry," Renee said addressing the curly haired one, "I don't mean to be rude or anything, but how old are you? I mean, you're not a dwarf or anything like that." Normally she wouldn't be so rude as to ask such a question, but this was rapidly turning into an extremely weird day and she wasn't entirely worried about being polite or politically correct at the moment half so much as figuring out what in the world was going on.

"A dwarf?! I should think not! I'm a dwarf, for your information, and you are impertinent!" the bearded one exclaimed.

"I'm so sorry," Renee apologized. "I just have no idea what's going on and I hit my head and I was just trying to get some shopping done, and oh dear –" She suddenly blacked out again and collapsed at Gimli's feet.

When she awoke again, it was dark. She became aware she was surrounded by numerous people and nobody was talking.

"Hey, where am I?! Who are you all? What's going on?" she demanded.

"No dín!" a tall figure hissed at her.

"What?" she asked, feeling a mixture of fear, anger, and annoyance.

"No dín Yrch!" the figure hissed again.

"I don't understand what you're saying," she answered, feeling increasingly fearful.

The figure quickly approached her and in the dark she barely made out the fact the figure was blonde with very sparkly blue eyes before a large warm hand was placed on her mouth, something was muttered in an extremely quiet and urgent voice and she blacked out again.