Notes: Thanks for liking my story... please read and review... Sorry it's been a while since I updated, I was on vacation for a few days...

"Might I ask, Pippin, what year is it?"

"1423 by the Shire reckoning." Pippin answered, happy to be able to provide any answers for this strangely familiar stranger. "Though I suppose the year here is not much the same as I know it."

"Quite right," Sayid said, still incredibly baffled by everything that was happening.

"You didn't happen to bring the Palantír with you by any chance?"

"Well, no. The seeing-stone the King kept to see what is passing in his realm. It is rather curious that you should ask such a question… But might I ask you a question?" Pippin enquired.

Charlie nodded. " How is it that you know so much of my story, of the folk of Middle Earth and of the Hobbits? And if this is some future time yet unbeknownst to me, is not the tale of the war against Sauron something discussed in all books of history?"

"In our world, Pippin, your story, the story fellowship of the ring and the two towers and the return of Aragorn, they never happened."

"But then how is my tale known to you?"

Charlie sat at the piano, a boy of fifteen, with a pencil in his mouth, attempting to write the last bit of a song he was working on. His fingers moved across the keys and created a beautiful harmony that would accompany his song perfectly. He smiled and wrote the last of the notes down.

The front door opened. "Charlie-boy," his father called to him after arriving home from a hard day's work at the butcher shop, hands recently washed clean of blood and now carrying a thick book in his hand. He listened to his son play and, though he would rather his son do something that would pay off in the end, he realised that his son was good at what he liked and had given up on trying to get him into a trade.

"Charlie, are you good at anything besides that piano and your bloody music?" Charlie wished his father would just accept the fact that he loved music more than anything else and that it was his calling.

"I'm sorry, dad…" he said, turning away from the piano, moving his legs over the piano bench to face his father, his head down, ashamed. Ever since his mother had died his father had been extra hard on him, pushing him in a thousand directions he did not want to go.

Charlie tried to make his father happy. He wished he could be like Liam, a spitting image of Mr. Pace, good at anything he tried, but he wasn't.

Charlie's dad sat beside him on the chair. Charlie expected to be scolded, but instead a heavy volume was placed in his lap.

"Charlie… I realise that you want to pursue something in music. And you know I don't approve, but I'll make you a deal."

Charlie was suspicious. "What, dad?"

"I want you to prove to me that you can do something besides your bloody music."

"How's that?"

"Read this book. If you finish it in six months, I'll let you go down whatever road you feel, career-wise."

Charlie picked up the bulky tome. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.

"I'll do that," he said and smiled. His father smiled back and gave his son a pat on the shoulder.

Though on the surface Mr. Pace didn't believe Charlie would finish it in half a year, deep down he knew that Charlie would do anything for his music and actually was happy for his son being able to do this.

Charlie opened the book and was immediately engrossed by the story. "Look, dad, there's a whole chapter about pipe-weed," he snickered as he read.

"A book," Charlie replied in answer to Pippin's questions. "A book… but, um first, do you have any idea where Merry and Sam are?" Charlie asked Pippin as he followed him through the dense jungle.

"I lost consciousness before I fell, but I believe that I am the only to have lost grip of Meneldor's back. The others, I believe, landed together, for they were closer to the neck of him and had a better hold."

"So you're like the Tailie?"

"I beg your pardon?" Pippin said.

"Never mind," Charlie said. "But do you know what direction you were heading?"

"I suppose he was leading that a way," Peregrin said, pointing toward the beach," but the Sun has shifted since my landing and now I cannot be certain."

"The beach…" Charlie said, wondering how Sam and Merry were being treated. Hopefully they were being welcomed by the people on the beach, if they were even there at all.

"Pip, are you sure that the Eagle was dead?"

"I quite hope that I was wrong by saying that he was killed," Pippin said sadly, "but it is nearly impossible for such a creature to be brought down without meeting his demise."

It was sad news to Charlie that such a great creature to be killed. He remembered reading about these Eagles as a kid and marvelling at Tolkien's imagery.

"Alright, Pip," Charlie said when they had nearly reached beach, "prepare to be reunited with your pals."

To Pippin's dismay his two friends were not to be found on the beach and Meneldor the Swift was nowhere in sight.

"Not to worry, we'll find your friends," Charlie comforted Pippin when he recognised the distress in Pippin's face.

"I am sorry, Charlie, but I am not quite sure I will accompany you on this trek," Sayid informed him. "This is all a little… strange for me. I hope you understand."

"Right," Charlie replied, angry but understanding that none of this made any sense really and that most people in their right mind would probably turn him down in the same manner.

"What's going on here?" Kate said, approaching Charlie and Pippin as Sayid walked away. "Who's this?" she said, motioning toward Pippin.

"My name is Peregrin Took," he said, "but you may call me Pippin if you desire," he finished, taking her hand and kissing it gently.

"Charlie, what's going on here?"

"No time to explain, really, we're looking for Pippin's friends, would you like to help?"

"Um, sure," Kate said. "And are these friends also, um, little people?" Kate asked, trying her best to be politically correct.

"Hobbits, if you may, miss," Pippin corrected.

"You mean like in The Hobbit?" Kate asked.

"You read The Lord of the Rings?" Charlie enquired.

"No, I read The Hobbit. But I guess that would explain the height and the hairy feet…"

Pippin looked curious, so Charlie explained to him that The Hobbit was the tale of Bilbo Baggins and that a greater number of people had probably read it compared to his own tale because it was a much shorter tale and also much easier to read.

"I would know your story if they made a movie out of it," Kate apologized to Pippin for not knowing the story.

"Well they were making a movie of it," Charlie explained as they searched, "but the filming was in New Zealand and the day that each of the cast members and crew were flying in, there were a number of plane crashes and they were all lost…" Charlie paused. "Bloody ironic if you ask me. And a shame too, cos it would've made a tremendous film and also," Charlie stopped for a second, thinking hard. "Oh yeah, there was this actor, Dominic Monaghan, bloody brilliant… probably in the same sodding mess I'm in…"

His rant ended abruptly when he saw it, a huge, beautiful eagle laying there with a huge hole in its abdomen. Kate and Charlie stood there wide-eyed while Pippin walked to it and placed a hand against the brown-feathered crown of the animal.

Charlie's father had given him the chance to finish the book within six months. At first glance, this seemed like a daunting task, for the script was tiny and there were over a thousand pages to get through with. After starting the novel, however, he had fallen in love with the lore, the world, and the characters, and therefore completed it in two months, to his father's dismay as well as secret pride.

Mr. Pace couldn't help but do something to congratulate his son, to show him that he was really fine once and for all with Charlie's music.

The book was finished by the end of November. Charlie's birthday rolled around in early December. He sat inside, very cold, but happy as he unwrapped the few gifts that his father and friends had afforded to purchase him. He finally arrived at the last package, a large rectangular box, and he had no idea what was inside it.

"From dad," he said as he pulled the strips of brown paper from the package. He saw soon that the box read "fragile" and so he set it gently on its side and opened it up. Within the soft paper packaging of the inside of the box was a beautifully crafted acoustic guitar.

"That's taking a bit from your Christmas present Charlie," his father reminded him. "These things don't come cheap, y'know."

He looked at his father and just beamed, and although he quickly learned to play the guitar as well as he had learned to do so with the piano, he never forgot the reason he had earned the guitar, and that reason was The Lord of the Rings.

"Meneldor, my fine-feathered friend…" Pippin said with tears, continuing to stroke the crown of the great bird's head.

"I am alive, Peregrin Took," the bird answered before Pippin could ask him.

Kate jumped back, not thinking for a moment that this beautiful creature could talk, and even Charlie found himself surprised, for it had been quite a while since he himself had read the books and he had long since forgotten that the Eagles were capable of speaking.

"You're alive, but badly wounded I see," Pippin said, assessing Meneldor's wound.

"It will heal in time," he answered, "for I am both quick to soar and quick to heal."

"Maybe Jack should check this out…" Kate said, noticing that the bullet wound in his side looked quite deadly.

"It is doubtful that the medicine of men may heal me better than I may heal myself," the Eagle replied, "but perhaps in this strange place beyond the sea the world moves in a different manner. I also feel that this place has a strange mystic power, different from that of the elves, but in many ways also the same. But I do not believe that these lands are the Grey Havens."

"They're not," Charlie cleared up. "Sorry…"

"Have you spied upon Merry and Sam of late?" Pippin enquired.

"Yes, they are here," he said, moving one wing off the ground to reveal a pair of rather scratched Hobbits. "They have been unconscious since our landing. But, oh…" At the touch of the sun upon their round faces, the Hobbits began to rise. "It seems they have come to."