YO MA MAEYS~ I'm so sorry that I haven't posted anything lately... like wow. Because right after finals I kinda had a grade drop aand my electronics were taken away so I could focus on getting them up... So now that I'm back (hopefully for quite a bit) I really want for this story to move forward... Anyway I really hope you guys enjoy. But it's kind of late right now and I really wanted to post something to let y'all know that I was alive... and ya. So I hope y'all enjoy...
If life was a box of chocolate's, Ann wanted to know when she was going to get one that didn't taste like Bertie Bott's every flavored beans. It was just one rotten chocolate after another, bad experiences kept on running right up to of Ann's most abhorred memories was one at the county fair. Usually it was quite the opposite, and people enjoyed the rides, people and food. Ann liked the people and the food, just not the other one. She hated to ferris wheel. It took too long up high in the air, and the Kraft Mac'n'Cheese sponsored one at the fair had nothing to keep you from jumping or falling out. Then there was the pirate ship, that rocked back, and forth, and went higher and higher until you felt yourself go weightless. That was the worst, when she was a child she had almost slipped and gone over the rails on it. That was when she had started hating heights.
Really it had started out small, like her not wanting to be on the top bunk anymore, and having Jane switch with her. Then she didn't want to go into fort in the tree that their father had made with them when they were small. He was absolutely crushed when she stopped wanting to have their annual summer 'campouts.' Then there was the final time when she was twelve and she had run away from her grandparents at the fair when they tried to make her ride the ferris wheel. She hadn't found them for an hour.
Suffice to say, Ann had never felt as scared as this, this weightlessness? Not the butterfly feeling you get when you get handed a chocolate, but the kind of feeling you get when you left your project at home, and your teacher tells you that you get a zero. The kind of feeling you get when you realize that something has happened to your Mom, or your Dad. The kind of feeling you get when you're at a funeral.
Ann woke up, and her head hurt. She opened her eyes and sat up, realizing that she had actually fallen, and was not in fact in any afterlife. Unless heaven felt cold, and windy, and wet, and rainy-
Ann sat up, looking wildly around, which only inspired a dance of black dots in her vision. Ann gasped and cradled her head in her hands. With a deep breath Ann took her hand from her head and was hit with a deep bout of nauseousness. There was blood covering her hand.
"Great. Just my luck." Ann wiped her hand on the jacket she was wearing, it wasn't hers. Ann struggled to remember what happened before she fell. She was walking, and it was raining-
"One step at a time Ann." Ann struggled to make her breath deeper and not hyperventilate. "Yeah, it was raining, and, and Fili gave me his coat. It was dark too." Ann felt like screaming. It was like walking through chest deep water, trying to remember. Ann stood up, gripping the wall to keep from falling.
"God why do I have to be the one to get into such deep shit?" Ann shouted, kicking the cliff face. "Does it even matter how I got here? I fell. Really that's it." Ann muttered, but it sounded as if she was trying to convince herself.
Feeling for her sword she discovered it missing. With a feeling of panic akin to when she was running late and couldn't find her phone, Ann frantically swept the ground looking at every crevice-
It was hanging off of the ledge, and it was falling-
Ann dove for it, and grabbed it by the strap that hooked the scabbard to her belt. As the relief faded, Ann was smashed with a black cloud. Ann couldn't see.
Ann crawled back to the cliff face, and found her pack along the way. Leaning against the rock, Ann unsheathed her sword, and with fumbling fingers reattached the scabbard to her belt, this time making sure the knot was tight. Ann sat there for a while, sometimes rubbing her eyes, or waving her hand in front of her face, in case it was night, and she wasn't blind.
Ann soon began to panic. It was a slow mounting panic, like when you realize you forgot something, or when you're phone is running dead. But really Ann felt horrible. She knew she was screwed when she felt tears slowly building up with unshed tears.
"What am I supposed to do?" Ann put her head in her arms, drawing her knees up to her chest, and letting the tip of her blade rest upon the ground, Ann began to stop panicking, and become angry. "I did everything the way the movie says it-"
Ann took a deep breath, "But maybe, it's supposed to be like the book." That was Ann's problem, she had seen the movies, not read the books. "Maybe fate wants the plot to be different."
But that brought up a new question, what was different in the movies?
Ann heard a scuffling to her right, and automatically looked up, and to her relief found that the black in her vision was gone. She looked around and saw that the sky was composed of mostly clouds, and a couple of patches of faint washed out blue. Grinning, Ann grabbed her pack, and slung it over her shoulder, filled with a hope that maybe she could get to the mountain with the dwarves and rejoin them, after all, the last time they were separated it wasn't that bad.
Ann walked in the direction that the sun rose. She assumed that she had only slept the night and part of the day away, and hoped that she wasn't wrong. After a while, she began to get bored. She tried to make shaped out of the clouds in the sky, but after almost stumbling off the path, she deemed it a bad idea. Her next game was trying to remember all of the tunes she could, and whistling them, but when humming Carry On Wayward Son, a creepy off key echo came back to her, and she grew silent.
It was lunch time, and Ann wished now that she didn't have Fili's cloak thing, because it was heavy and fell down past her knees, which made it hard to walk. But when nightfall came, she was thankful, as her blanket had gotten lost in her fall, along with most of her provisions. So Ann was rationing herself, but speed walking and jogging are hard when one has an empty stomach.
It had gotten dark quickly, and she settled for sitting and having some cram and really salty meat. It was at this time, that Ann wished she had a waterskin, but all of those resided with Bombur. But when it became too dark to walk, she wasn't very tired, and to take her mind off of her stomach's incessant growling, Ann amused herself with thinking to remember the Hobbit's plot.
"We know there are three movies. One where they get Bilbo, one where they kill the dragon. Then the last one, is where they all die." Ann frowned, and tried to remember more about the last movie. She had brought her boyfriend Alex with her, and had fallen asleep during the movie. Ann put a hand through her hair, which came out covered in flakes of dried blood.
Swallowing the bile back down her throat, Ann tried to work out most of it, but her head was so tender that she was only able to get a very little of it out. Ann gave up and tried to start with the names if the movies.
"Desolation of Smaug, no wait that's not it. Um, a journey through the Shire, the unexpectedness of fate, the unexpected journey. Yep, that's the one. Then they uh, get to the mountain, and uh, kill the dragon, which is the death of Smaug. No, desolation of Smaug." Ann grinned smugly, proud of the fact she could remember that. "And then the Battle of Five Armies." Ann chuckled, remembering how she had waited for Jane to stop crying over the death of Kili, Thorin, and… Fili. Ann realized with a jolt that she really didn't want Fili to die, especially at the hands of the white bad guy, "Azog the defiler." Ann muttered.
There was a cackle, and spinning around Ann realized that it was coming from a cave she had passed a couple of paces back. Recalling what Thorin had said about goblins in the mountain caves, Ann decided to put as much distance between her and the goblins that may-or-may-not-exist as she could.
Marching onward, keeping her right hand on the wall to her right, and her left tightly gripping her sword, though it was a bit awkward as she was right handed, Ann hurried forward. The cackle was closer now. Ann turned and let out a curse, as the goblin was only a few feet from her.
She took a swing with her right, and then brought her sword up and slashed savagely. The goblin took a couple of steps back, and disappeared into the murky darkness.
Ann came to a curve in the path, and quickly ruffled through her bag, and retrieving the tiny box of strike anywhere matches. She lit one, and switched her hands, so her sword sat in her right hand again.
Ann let the match burn until it was almost searing her fingertips, before dropping it and quickly lighting another one. This one too, took too little a time to burn, and Ann was fumbling to light the third match when the goblin came at her. She barely had time to shove the matches in her pocket before his curved piece of bone-knife was swinging at her.
Ann lifted her sword, and the impact of her block rebounded into her arm and up her shoulder into her head. Ann clenched her teeth, and took a half hearted swing, but she was exhausted from walking all day, and she was sore all over.
Ann heard a thump behind her, and turned to see another goblin. The first one, which had an uglier snout than the second, knocked her blade to the ground, and she was forced at the end of the blade to the cave, where there were goblins dancing around a fire and beating drums.
The drums only added to Ann's ever growing headache. There was a screeching and all of the goblins swarmed her, and Ann never felt so invaded in her life. She landed a good few punches, before one got her back right in the head, which inspired a bout of dizziness. Ann fell to the ground, but the pinching grabbing hands pulled her back up, and now that her pack, and sword was gone Ann was shoved to a chute where she found herself falling.
The weightless feeling tore a scream out of Ann and she felt a rush of adrenaline, she tore a knife out of her boot, and slammed it into the wall, where it felt like it wasn't slowing fast enough. The tunnel evened out a bit, so it wasn't falling so steeply, Ann realized she had to stop here, or else she would fall into the goblins clutches. Ann felt around Fili's coat, surely there had to be a knife-
Ann's clumsy fingers found it, and pushed it into the wall, and with an earsplitting screech of metal on rock, she came to a stop. Ann hurried to brace her legs against the chute, but it was hard, as she was pushing herself against the wall to keep herself from falling.
With a half sob, Ann realized that she was in way over her head. In goblin tunnels with no idea where the hell she was supposed to go, besides down. Ann realized she would just have to go down fighting. Shoving Fili's knife into her boot once more, Ann prayed that they wouldn't torture her or the like, that they would just kill her quickly.
With a last deep breath Ann let her legs give out, and with a gasp, she was falling once more.