Notes: Thanks everyone for actually reading any of this... Please review if you have the time... I'm interested in knowing if you like it or not, and if you don't, please give me some suggestions to improve my writing!

Jack was having difficulty understanding everything that was going on and even more trouble getting how it was happening at all. "Just, don't try to figure it all out, Jack," Charlie insisted, because he knew it would take hours to explain and he didn't understand anything that was going on himself, "and we'll just deal with the problems that need solutions right now."

"What do you mean solutions?"

"Well, I just want to get the Hobbits back home. But right now we really should get Meneldor out of the jungle and to someplace safer. The beach, maybe?" Charlie suggested.

"Okay, fine. Just tell me where it is and I'll go get this bird of yours," Jack headed toward the jungle on his own.

"No, Jack… " Charlie started, frustrated that Jack hadn't really been listening to his speech.

"How big could an Eagle get?" Jack asked while Charlie invited Kate and Sawyer to help move the Eagle along.

"Jack, The Hobbits rode here on him. You'll see."

Claire was interested to meet these new arrivals. She knew at once that these little people were decent and kind-hearted, and related to them at once. Although they appeared quite comfortable here, she could see that they missed home, whatever that might have been for them.

She introduced herself and the baby to the Hobbits and in similar fashion to their introductions to Kate, Merry and Pippin took her hand and gave it a gentle kiss. Sam kept his hands to his side as he introduced himself, giving a slight bow to the girl that stood before him.

"It's a great pleasure to make your acquaintance," Pippin said.

"Right back at you," she replied.

"It's very nice to meet you, Claire. My name's Meriadoc, but you can call me Merry if you like," Merry said, and looked up at her face for the first time. Claire stepped back, a bit astounded by his similarity to Charlie and Merry noticed for the first time this girl's resemblance to the girl that he was destined to marry if he ever got home. Estella.

"You too," she answered, made almost uncomfortable by the likeness of Merry and Charlie. She still wasn't speaking to him, and talking to the Hobbit made her wish that her relationship with Charlie would be mended someday. She felt that this Meriadoc fellow would play some part in that mending, though she knew not why.

The one roundest around the belly was very keen with the baby. "I've two children at home," Sam told her, "and I can't dream up how Rosie and I would feel if we were trapped in an unfamiliar place with Little Frodo and Elanor right now. It must be rather testing for you I'm sure." He obviously missed his wife and children and wanted to go home very much.

"So, is your husband here, in this place with you?" Merry asked.

"Oh, no. I'm not married," and she had a great sense of déjà vu about her. The Hobbits were almost intrigued by this idea that she was not married and had a child. In the Shire, nearly everyone married. The fact that Bilbo never married was quite a rare exception, and perhaps Frodo might have even married if he would have stayed…

"I'm unmarried as well," Merry butted in once again. If he never got home, he still wanted to be married someday, and since he was supposed to marry Estella Bolger, he reasoned that a relationship with Claire Littleton was the logical thing to do.

Kate clicked open the handle on he screen door to and walked inside hoping that he was still at work. She knew the drill; you were supposed to dislike your step-parents at first… but it had been eleven years and she saw no improvement with their relationship.

She hated the way he looked at her. She was sixteen for Christ's sake, and even though she might have been very adult and beautiful for her age, that was no reason for any man to…

"Hey there Kitty-Kate," Wayne said as she came into his view. She simply detested the names he called her sometimes- well, all the time. Sometimes he tried to act like the two were really father and daughter. She couldn't stand the idea.

He sat on a battered old arm-chair, drunk out of his mind with a beer can in his hand, watching some afternoon soap opera because he thought the girls were "just bee-yoo-tee-ful." Kate ignored his calls and began carrying her backpack to her room.

"Did I ever tell you that I'm royalty?" he shouted from his worn out reclining chair. She ignored him and hoped he would just shut his mouth. She had heard his story a thousand times and knew it couldn't be founded on any truth. He sure didn't act like royalty.

"I, Katherine, come from a long, long line of kings! We were powerful and mighty and damn, we controlled the world."

"That's really nice," she said and tried to get past him without making eye contact to get into the kitchen for a glass of juice while she did her homework.

"And, y'know what Kitty?"

"What," she said, not even in the form of a question because she knew exactly what was coming up.

"As long as we don't get killed or nothin', we'll live pretty much darn near forever! Too bad we all got a hist'ry of getting' shot n' stabbed n' burnt to a crisp in our sleep!" Now that sounded like a good idea…

"And since you're my little Kitty-Kate, you're a king too," he said. Kate shivered. She thanked God she didn't have to be related to that drunken moron…

In the jungle, Meneldor was nowhere to be found. The four searched the area around where the great Eagle was rested. All were confused, but Kate seemed more troubled than the rest.

Sawyer was the only to notice. "What's wrong, Freckles?" he asked, concerned by the look on Kate's face that said that someone was not quite right.

"Well," she explained, "this is where the Eagle was." She pointed to the ground and outlined the area. "He wasn't dragged off, because the grass around the area hasn't been pushed down at all, there aren't any broken branches or even foot prints besides the ones that lead back to camp."

"Well, that's good right?" Charlie asked. "Maybe he was able to get up on his own and he's fine now?"

"You sayin' your little Eagle friend abandoned us?" Sawyer asked, not quite believing everything that he had heard. Charlie looked at his feet.

"I don't think he would just get up and leave without telling us first. Maybe he's flown to the beach? But we would've seen him. Maybe… bloody hell. They took him."

"How is that even possible…?" Jack began.

"I told you Jack, there's no use trying to understand everything that's going on. We just need to resolve these things and get the Hobbits back home."

"So you're saying the Others are involved," Jack said, exasperated.

"There's no way we'll ever be able to know..." Kate began.

"There is. Would it be okay if I questioned the guy in the hatch?" Charlie asked.

Sam, Merry, and Pippin continued on with their meal while the castaways eyed them nervously. They were really much more concerned with how much these small people ate then where they came from or why they were here or if they had anything to do with all of the insanity involved with the island.

Sun and Jin came together to the area where all of the food was being stored, soon seeing the Hobbits enjoying their meal there. Confused, Sun asked what was going on and got several very different accounts of the tale from different people, all of whom were not actually there when Charlie and the Hobbits came in from the jungle and had only read the note Charlie had left.

Sun picked up the scrawled note and read it herself, finding her own interpretation of the Charlie's words and began to explain to her husband in Korean who these people were and why. Before long, she was stopped short of her explanation.

Jin muttered many words and syllables that the three could not quite understand, but one of them that he seemed to repeat quite often sounded rather like the word "hobbit."

Charlie barged into the hatch, Ana-Lucia standing guard over the locked vault door and Locke, crushed leg mending well, sitting at the computer waiting for the timer to click down.

"I need to talk to your little prisoner," Charlie told Ana-Lucia.

"I can't just let anyone in there," she replied. "It's not… safe. You'll need someone to make sure he doesn't pull any tricks, and I don't have a gun."

"I do," Jack said, following Charlie into the hatch. He pulled the gun and got it ready in case "Henry Gale" made any sudden moves and would have to be put down.

Charlie hoped it wouldn't have to come to that. He needed answers.

He hadn't yet met this detainee. When the combination was done on the vault door and it came swinging open, he didn't quite know exactly what to expect. He could sense immediately that this man was not a good person, just as Sayid had. The man in the cell seemed almost inhuman.

"You told Locke that the man Jack and Kate saw, with the beard… he's not important, is he?"

The prisoner sat there, not answering Charlie's questions.

Charlie went on. "You said there was a greater leader… him, you said. And you said he was much worse than anyone else…"

"You can't fathom his power," the man replied, a bitter edge on his voice.

"Whose power?" Charlie asked, supposing that he already knew the answer but wanting to hear it aloud because it was really too nonsensical to be the truth.

"The Necromancer, the Black One, the Nameless, the Dark Lord, he who is the embodiment of all evil…" Henry went on.

"Sauron."