Wow! You made it to the second chapter after all that useless fluff! As a reward, I present you with... more fluff. And some interaction with the actual Hobbit universe.

I have no idea what people make of the prologue still but I'm patient - in the meantime, I'll slowly ease out some more useless fluff. Enjoy!


It was dark. That was the first thing I knew. The bookshop was gone and it was dark, everywhere. Even though my phone had said, not ten minutes ago, that it was barely two o'clock. But now the stars were out. Huh. Far away, there were dots of flickering orange light... just over the dimly lit, grassy hills that were definitely not there before. And me? I was standing on a dirt track, outside some quaint and equally dark garden with a small, round door carved into the side of the hill; a shining blue mark engraved under the door knob.

So, basically, no sign of civilization in sight.

And then I came to the slow realisation that, no, actually, I wasn't standing. I'd probably fallen over the first instant everything disappeared. And swallowed my gum. But it all had felt so numb, all over. There was nothing, nothing there. It didn't... it just didn't make sense. I didn't remember falling asleep, or any span of time between the bookshop and there and then. There was no hazy quality to it, in fact, it all felt terribly crystal clear.

The spring night breeze, the gravel beneath my jeans, the sickly sweet smell of flowers. It was all very real and, yes, pinching still hurt.

I slowly rose to my feet, stumbling as I went; my stomach turning unpleasantly. I could finally feel the sting in my arms and the grazes on my knees. It was a cool night. No one around. There really was nothing for it but to knock at that door.

I stepped through the gate and rapped shortly on the dark green wood. The sound made my ears pop and, suddenly, they filled with the noise of chatter and laughter; of ponies baying softly somewhere close and crickets chirping in a nearby hedge. And still they rang with the aftermath of those suction-like sounds. The cheer inside stopped abruptly and the door opened a few seconds after.

"And... you are?" Came the begrudging, expectant question from the shortest man I'd ever seen... and the grumpiest. He must have been an entire foot shorter than me. And I just gaped uselessly.

"Is it Thorin, laddie?" Someone else asked, with a distinct brogue. Yet another short man appeared in the doorway, this one with a thick white beard and a considerably cheerier expression.

"Oh my good god." Was the first thing out of my mouth, as I braced myself unsteadily on the arching wall. "Tiny Scotsmen. Am I in Scotland?"

"Scotland? No, I'm sorry, you must have the wrong home, just like everyone else." The first raised his voice pointedly at the others that must be inside (though the chatter resumed when the bearded one disappeared with a nod, so his words had seemingly gone unheeded).

"Then where the bloody hell am I?" I hissed. The weird shorty could worry about his house par

ty gone wrong after I knew what the hell was going on. He blinked at me, eyes focusing through his agitation and seemed to see me properly for the first time. Probably witnessing all seething five foot two inches of short pink hair and piercings; the ripped jeans, pink cardigan and exceedingly heavy necklaces. I almost felt sorry for him.

"Ba-bag end," He stuttered.

"Never heard of it. Babagund where?"

"Bag end of the Shire. Look, I don't know who or what you are, Miss, but I've already got my hands full of dwarves making a mess of my dining room. So could you please-"

"Now, now, Bilbo, what's got you so upset? Ah... this must be the woman Balin just mentioned. Strange. I didn't anticipate you." Yet another man appeared - though much older, ragged looking and of seemingly normal height - hunkering down to stare shrewdly at me. I let go of my perch on the wall in surprise.

"Well, neither did I," I replied tightly for lack of other conversation. "Wait, did he- did he just say dwarves?"

"Oh yes, they're hosting a very merry reunion in there, we're just waiting on another of their kind."

"And... who are you?"

"I am Gandalf the Grey and this is Bilbo Baggins." The old man smiled, eyes crinkling at the edges.

No.

"That's- no- that's stupid," I bit out. What a piss poor prank. 'Bilbo' looked mildly affronted. "I'm bloody serious, for fu-"

"And so am I. Do not presume that I have lied," Gandalf said stiffly, his voice growing with a deep timbre. "I told you the truth and now you shall tell me. Who are you?"

I opened my mouth to argue, shut it, and then opened it again. "Elliot. Elliot Jackdaw."

"And where, Miss Jackdaw, do you hail from?" Gandalf continued, stepping out of the door and drawing up to his full height. I backed off a little, I will admit.

"England. Earth. Look, you really can't be who you say you are," I argued, ignoring the eyebrows which rose steadily higher… like my voice. "I have no idea how I got here, I certainly never passed out or started hallucinating - I think I'd remember if there was LSD in my tea. So there's no way I'm in a fictional place, with fictional people in a fictional world."

"What would have you believe this is all fictitious?" The questions just kept coming; the supposed Gandalf was not losing steam at all. Though I'm pretty sure I heard Bilbo mutter something that sounded suspiciously like "touched in the head".

"You're in a bloody book!" I finally shouted. I was aware somewhere that I starting to sound more than slightly hysterical. "The bloody lot of you! On a stupid quest for a stupid mountain in stupid middle earth!"

"I beg your pardon?" Bilbo said loudly, looking miffed. Gandalf, however, looked deeply troubled.

"I think you best come inside."

Just like that, all the hot air I managed to build up in my rant expelled in one gust and I slumped where I stood, nodded mutely and followed him inside. As he tried to usher me into the drawing room, Bilbo called out to him.

"Gandalf! What are these dwarves doing in my house?"

"They're a merry gathering, Bilbo. Go join them, get used to it, I won't be a minute." Gandalf waved his hand dismissively behind him.

"No. No. I don't want to get used to it! The state of my kitchen! They p-pillaged my pantry! And you heard what that woman said, about some mountain quest! If this is about that adventure malarkey, I won't have it!"

"'Scuse me. I'm sorry to interrupt, but what should I do with my plate?" A young dwarf suddenly appeared in the hallway by Bilbo, who flushed horribly for a second.

"Here you go, Ori, give it to me." And yet another arrived, taking the plate and throwing it down the hallway - to where I couldn't see - obscured by Gandalf who still lingered there. More plates followed.

"Excuse me! That's my mother's West Farthing crockery, it's over a hundred years old!" I heard Bilbo cry, desperately chasing after them, only to get sidetracked by the thumping and clattering in the next room and hastened to shout at them too. That's when the song started. Gandalf ducked under a bowl and turned back to me. I realised I must have looked like the definition of constipation, with my mouth drawn tight and eyes wide. He passed me by, deigning to take a seat near the hearth.

"If it's any comfort to knowing that you're just a book character - the song... it's a little different to the books at least," I told him, feeling my face twist with bitter humour at the sound of their fun-making. "God, I must be mad. Talking to a character from a kid's book about the reality of their existence. I must be hallucinating, having a fit on the floor of the shop... could explain the memory loss."

"If that is truly the case, what makes you so sure this is all fictitious?" Again with that question. I abruptly stopped fiddling absentmindedly with my septum piercing and frowned at the floor. Distantly, I noticed the song come to a rousing finish, fuelling the dwarves with laughter until three knocks at the door drew it short. "He is here. Stay here, Miss Jackdaw. We will finish our discussion later."

"Stay? Stay here?" I squawked angrily. He couldn't just tell me to sit like some lassie dog.

Gandalf shot me a stern look.

Apparently, he could. I dropped into the nearest armchair with a loud thump and chased him with a venomous glare as he left.

The murmur of a new voice was faint and a conversation followed but I had no desire to be nosy about any of it - lest it ring too true to that damned book sat somewhere on a shelf at the back of the shop. So I sat and sulked. The hearth hadn't been lit yet, but I could see the trinkets on the mantelpiece fine by moonlight. They were very shiny, and silver, most probably. They'd make for good post-bad trip souvenirs. But I was no longer a light-fingered preteen nicking sweets off corner store shelves, where the only security was a wispy, old coffin dodger behind the counter. There were armed dwarves out there. Best not to try and filch the finery.

The voices in the hallway had dissipated at some point and returned to the dining room, but Gandalf had not come back. Surely he hadn't meant for me to wait all night? Annoyed and a little miffed, I tiptoed out into the hallway... and went to eavesdrop on the conversation anyway. I never said I followed my own advice. Though ankle boots were not, nor will ever be, prime skulking material - not that it mattered because I stumbled right into Bilbo as he came around the corner.

"Sorry," I mumbled, shoving my hands deep into my pockets and trying to affect an innocent face. He looked at me funny, like I wasn't convincing anyone, and grabbed a candle from the cabinet to his left. I watched from behind the wall of the doorway as the candle was set and they started conferring over a map. I took this reprieve to really study my surroundings, for once.

It was... strange. They looked almost normal. I could have sworn they were all so peculiar in the book. Not to say that being short and having massive, braided beards wasn't peculiar anyway. But honestly, that star shaped one definitely wasn't in the book. One of them didn't even have a beard, not really.

I only remembered I was supposed to be spying on them when Gandalf started choking on his own smoke rings and all the voices rose sharply. Arguing, they all stood, pointing fingers and making harsh statements.

"Atkât!" The one at the head of the table - Thorin, he must've been - barked and stood up. Everyone fell silent, like they were standing to attention and I admit, even I swallowed a feeble noise of surprise. The dwarves stared at him in awe as he carried on, and it was at that point I noticed that I was right behind him, gaping like a fish at the table.

"It seems... we have an eavesdropper," The dwarf with the white beard from earlier (Balin, I believed) murmured. I realised that the speech had already gone and finished. I also never said I was a great listener. Fifteen sets of eyes levelled themselves with me and I felt my cheeks heat and blotch with that terrible red they always went.

"Indeed." Came Gandalf's disapproving voice. "Well. Thorin Oakenshield and Company, meet Miss Jackdaw." He gestured at me with a chagrined expression. I remained steadfastly half-hidden behind my wall. If those judging eyes were reserved just for my face I didn't want to see what they made of my clothing.

"Hi," I said. Lamely. With a wiggle of my fingers.

"Gandalf," Thorin stated gravely, to which the wizard's face grew more pinched. "You were sworn to secrecy."

"And I broke nothing. Not even the Valar could have predicted this," Gandalf snapped. "Miss Jackdaw believes us all to have come from a book. Isn't that so?"

"Oh. Yeah, sorry to break it to you but I've lost my marbles, am currently spitting foam on a floor somewhere and have brought you all to life in my death hallucinations," I announced as sardonically as I could muster - without actually listening to my own words or I'd sob myself to sleep right there on Bilbo's rug. It's a nice rug.

"And yet, not all is true to text."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"The song, as you mentioned, was changed."

"It's a little changed. Well, a lot has changed. There was another song, to be sure. And I remember a blue beard somewhere here, I never forgot that detail. What else..." It had to be years since I read that story. After all, I was twenty four, my favourite childhood book was just that - a childhood book.

"There are no blue beards here." A bald dwarf muttered, crossing his arms over his broad chest. And he... or his appearance, definitely wasn't in the book. I knew it didn't spare much detail on the company, but none of it was that severe. The story was light-hearted, kid friendly.

"It is as Master Dwalin says, no dwarf has a blue beard. And we all heard one song. So we are left with the knowledge that you, from another realm, have seen a book foretelling this very eve - yet it is wrong. About many things, if I am not mistaken. So, Miss Jackdaw, if it were all fictional, would not everything follow the book?" Gandalf took a puff on his pipe, looking very smug to have figured it all out, while the rest of us were still stumbling around in the dark.

"Hallucinations don't have to follow everything to the letter," I argued back, somehow feeling cross that the idea of being merely insane had been rebuffed. I took an aggressive step away from my hiding place. "They're like dreams, they change. They take things from real life and-"

"Just like books?"

"Obviously. But not all books! That book wasn't, you said it yourself!"

"All stories are embellished, Miss Jackdaw. The book may be inaccurate but it does not mean this is not real. Tell me, do you believe hallucinations work as well as this? As vivid, as logical?"

"Vivid? Yes. Logical? No. But that's okay, because none of this is logical anyway - it's just terribly consistent and life-like!" There was a moment of silence after our back and forth argument. One in which I had a daunting and horrible feeling come across me. "Oh…"

"And thus, you have come to the conclusion we have already reached. Miss Jackdaw, you have crossed realms. But the real question is: how?" And the burning stares returned to me.

"Beats me."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I mean... you know, whatever." I shrugged, crossing my arms, uncomfortable. Wasn't it enough that I had to admit that I wasn't hallucinating?

"She does speak in strange turns." A ginger dwarf observed, as if to give Gandalf's theory his approval. The others nodded like it was sage wisdom. I was, at this point, 90% sure I looked like I had swallowed a very sour lemon. Thorin, who had been watching the whole ordeal with his own personal thundercloud - and thus trumping Bilbo as the grumpiest of the lot - stood yet again.

"Even if this woman speaks the truth, to whose allegiance does she owe?" I twitched. The whole 'woman' thing was starting to bother me. I had a name. "If she has even the slightest foreknowledge, to whom would she give it? What would she seek to change? We do not know her, Gandalf, nor what she knows. She is dangerous."

"You know Bilbo no better. But you make a fair point. Miss Jackdaw, you cannot be allowed to meddle in a realm that isn't your own. Goodness knows what effects your appearance could have already caused, for better or worse." Gandalf conceded easily.

"Well, that'd be super if I knew how to get home," I bit out.

"And, alas, neither do I."

"That's great! Really. So what now, genius? You just gonna sit there, smoke your pipe, twiddle your thumbs, go on an adventure while I'm fucking stuck here?" I shrieked at him, well aware I was bouncing angrily in my place. What use is a bloody wizard if he couldn't help? There were a few shocked intakes of breath.

"Of course not. I'll bring you before the White Council. Perhaps then we will know what to do with you. For now, you can stay out of the way," He announced coldly. I realised I had lost this battle and very spectacularly if the scowls directed my way were anything to sniff at.

Clenching my fists and snarling in his general direction, I turned heel and stomped as loudly as I could back to the drawing room. Where I sulked for the remainder of their meeting.


I'd soon admit, after some humbling, that I couldn't have made a poorer impression. Really, throwing a tantrum? I hadn't thrown one of those since at least two weeks previous (at a coffee shop... at a coffee machine... at a shop employee. It was progress for me, okay?).

To summarise the Very Important Conversation I had gotten myself sidelined from as per temper tantrum, the dwarves found a way into the mountain and attempted to contract Bilbo as their burglar. However, as all story heroes are wont to do, he fainted at just the mere thought of the dragon. Typical that, the real life version was somewhat of a quivering homebody.

So now he sat in an armchair in the drawing room, clutching a cup of tea fiercely and conversing quietly with Gandalf. It was some schtick about Bilbo embracing adventure just like his great-something-uncle. I would have bothered to listen, but I was still fuming and pointedly ignored their existence from my little corner even when Gandalf tried to raise his voice about stories in some obvious jab at me. Like I hadn't already conceded defeat. Whatever, this was all incredibly disappointing and I actually preferred the fake books at this point.

Namely because I could put the book down and piss off into the real world whenever I liked.

Gandalf sighed heavily as Bilbo got up and walked out.

"Where is he going?" I tried to ask nonchalantly.

"To bed, I suppose. He is an obstinate hobbit." The wizard shook his head, eyeing me now that I had decided to try and make nice again. Sort of.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"He refuses to sign the contract."

"No... no, he doesn't. He signs off right away, he can't not go. The book is named after him, for god's sake." I glared at Gandalf, as if this were his fault. He took a long, considering drag of his pipe, oblivious or not caring for my disdain of everything at that moment.

"Maybe the book got that wrong. We just discussed this, Miss Jackdaw, stories are exaggerated and the world lies not in books."

"It's Elliot," I mumbled, stubbornly not replying to his obvious logic - arguments don't count if there's no one to listen to them.

"Miss Elliot, then." Gandalf smiled, not pressing the issue, and then gestured with his pipe to listen.

From another room, the living room maybe, drifted a low humming. Out of the humming came a deep, melancholic voice singing of mountains and gold, of dragon fire and tragedy. The others joined in, carrying the song to its finish with a sombre note. Very different to the tune of the earlier song.

"Well, there's the second song," I said, then smirked at Gandalf like I had expected this would prove me right. I wasn't going to mention the changes. It was my small victory.

"I suppose that was. You best get to sleep, Miss Elliot. We will venture to Rivendell at some point, no doubt I could request the White Council to convene there and deal with your plight. So it seems for the moment, you will be joining us. Though I will warn you again, do not go meddling in middle earth affairs." Gandalf stared at me, face grave. I battled down my instinctual complaint and nodded, keeping my head down as he bid me goodnight.

"It looks like we have another companion for the road, if not temporarily." Balin's voice drifted out to me from the doorway, and I looked up to see him puffing on his own pipe, the dark shapes of dwarves drifting around the hallway behind him. Hypocritical earwigger. "You will need provisions for the journey ahead, and a pony. Lucky for you, we will have sixteen. But your own things, you will need to borrow from Master Baggins or buy somewhere before we enter the wilderland."

"And how do you suppose I do that, with nothin' but the clothes on my back?" I asked, raising an eyebrow as he doled out requirements.

"You can make do - we've all had to - those necklaces will sell for a pretty price. You can sell them somewhere here, in the Shire, and buy what you can with what you make. Clothes, mainly. Your, ahem, attire is least appropriate for where we're going." He gestured pointedly at my state of dress.

"Wasn't like I was considering middle earth fashion when I left for work this morning," I mumbled bitterly, turning slightly from him and scowling at the cold hearth. I wasn't about to sell my own damn necklaces to get home, I'd borrow some of Bilbo's things and that should suit me fine. Even if he was a foot shorter than me and dressed to the nines rather than for backcountry camping.

"That's not our fault either, lass." Balin smiled, though it was barely sympathetic at best. I'd really bombed that first impression. "Find somewhere to rest before dawn breaks."

And with that, he left me to stew in my chair. The house was quiet. Once again, I could hear the crickets outside and now the soft snores of dwarves. The ringing had long abated. I considered sulking for a while more, just to spite the advice from the elderly dwarf but it was getting a little cold and uncomfortable after all - even in a plush armchair.

Many of the guest bedrooms, I discovered, were naturally taken and filled with dwarves and even the wizard. Even Bilbo's hobbit hole did not have that much room for visitors so I found myself in the living room they had abandoned. The hearth crackled on and the smell of something sweet burning still hung in the slightly muggy air. It'd do for the night - I'd done my fair share of sofa hopping in my time. So I tucked myself into the largest I could find and tried to bed down for the night.


Well, there's the introductions, I hope it wasn't too slow or OOC or anything. Feedback, positive or negative, would be great - I'd really like to see where I could improve!

Thanks!