You're My Light in the Dark

Chapter 3: A Tale of Mushrooms

Sunlight was what woke Lauren up. With a yawn she rolled over onto her stomach to get her eyes out of the irritating light, only to get a face full of dirt. She sat up spluttering, her sleep-tousled hair going every which way as she shook her head frantically and rubbed at her face. "What the—"

When the oddity of getting smothered by dirt instead of a pillow as was expected finally dawned on her, Lauren glanced up slowly. When she took in her surroundings her jaw dropped. She was sitting in the middle of a cornfield, which definitely wasn't where she had fallen asleep.

Lauren knew she wasn't dreaming; this seemed far too real. She patted the earth beside her as if to reassure herself she really wasn't still asleep. Was this some sort of prank? A rescue attempt? Lauren honestly wouldn't put it past Jill to try and save her from the perils of her mother's rage. She got to her feet and looked around curiously, just waiting for her friend to jump out from behind the corn stalks to claim the rescue or prank as her doing. But Jill did no such thing.

"Jill, come on out! This isn't funny!" Lauren called. Jill, however, didn't answer. Not that Jill would have known to find her in the basement anyhow, as not even Kat knew. But Kat… she sighed. There were now more pressing matters at hand, such as where the hell she was.

What's going on?

"Get out of my crops you little thieves!"

The shout sounded distant, it must have come from far off. Thieves? Lauren glanced around her, hoping this farmer wasn't mistaking her for a thief or whoever was doing the stealing. But who in their right mind would want to steal vegetables? She could understand CDs, clothes, or jewelry; but vegetables?

"Hurry up, Merry!" another voice shouted. This one was closer, and Lauren soon realized the thieves were headed in her direction by how much closer the reply sounded and how she could now hear the corn stalks being moved aside as they went along.

"This is all your fault, Pip!"

"My fault! My fault? It certainly was not! It was all because of that great big stupid dog!"

It was then that a guy wearing no shoes (which Lauren found particularly odd) came barreling out of the corn stalks and into the clearing Lauren was in, and not expecting her to be there, plowed right head-long into her. The two went airborne, vegetables flying around them. "Oof!" Lauren landed painfully with the guy on top of her. His dirty blonde curly hair hung in his eyes, and he propped himself up on his arms to give her a proper apology.

"Quite sorry, lass," he said and quickly got up and gave her a hand up as well before picking the vegetables back up. "Have I seen you somewhere before?" he asked, giving her a sidelong glance.

"I don't think so," Lauren replied slowly. She had been wondering the same thing about him. He too seemed familiar, but she couldn't figure out how so.

"I'm Pippin," he supplied as he piled more carrots on top of the growing pile in his arms.

Lauren frowned. She knew where she's heard that name before. Some Lord of the Rings fanatic probably named their kid after that character, the rational part of her brain was thinking. That was when another barefoot curly-haired guy then stumbled into the clearing as well, and did a double take when he saw the two of them. "What's this?" he panted. "We have no time. Farmer Maggot is coming this way! Hurry!" Before Lauren could protest or give a second thought about anything, vegetables were shoved into her arms and the pair pushed her onward with them.

"Do you do this often?" Lauren questioned. Pippin went on further ahead, and while stepping over her slightly-too-long fleece pajama bottoms and with the other guy pushing against her back she found it hard to keep up.

"All the time!" Pippin called back. "It's such fun. I only wish Maggot would get rid of those dogs! They almost took off my foot one time."

The guy pushing her along scoffed. "I think that's the whole point of them, Pip – to keep us out of the crops."

Pippin laughed slightly. "It's going to take a lot more than a couple of vicious dogs to keep us from those mushrooms, eh Merry?"

All these names are from those movies! Now Lauren figured that she must be dreaming. But if she was, then why did her legs ache so badly from all this running? Why was she so short of breath?

Barking. A dog was barking, or a couple of dogs. Well, that can't be good…

"Ah!" Merry squeaked. "The dogs! The dogs have caught up with us! Come on!"

For Lauren, a glance back was what did it. Two very large black dogs were chasing after them, growling and barking madly (for a split second, she could have sworn she saw them foaming at the mouth, but that might have just been her imagination) and she had no doubt that they would be able to tear off one or many limbs with little to no problem or hesitation. Lauren had never run as fast as she did then in all her life. After crawling under a wooden fence, running across a dirt road, through a patch of woods and up a tree only then did they stop. They stayed in the branches of the tree for a long while. The vegetables were hidden in a bush beside its base, the two dogs were barking and growling and snapping at them, trying to bite at the three's dangling feet.

"So, having fun yet?" Merry asked from the branch above Lauren.

She glanced up at him with raised eyebrows but found herself nodding anyway. She gave a laugh. "You know, with the fact that we almost got eaten by dogs aside – this is pretty fun."

Sitting beside her, Pippin grinned, pumping one fist into the air and with his other hand ruffled her already messy hair. He almost lost his balance when he did this, the dogs below them barking and jumping in excitement about it, but Lauren steadied him before he could fall the long way down to the ground. "Had a feeling you'd like it," Pippin said. He leaned over a bit and stuck his tongue out at the two dogs below.

Merry rolled his eyes at his cousin and stuck a hand over Lauren's shoulder. "I'm Merry, by the way," he said. Lauren shook his hand a bit awkwardly due to the position they were in, but it couldn't really be helped.

"Lauren," she supplied.

Pippin took a mushroom out of one of his pockets and took a bite of it. "Odd name you have there," he commented with his mouth full, succeeding in spraying bits of mushroom all over Lauren.

She wiped them off with a grimace. "Er… yum," she said sarcastically, "Say it, don't spray it, dude. And it's not as if your name isn't weird." Pippin gave her a confused look for a moment then shrugged before digging out another mushroom from a different pocket on his vest.

"Here, have a mushroom!" he said and threw it in her direction, hitting Lauren square in the face.

Merry chuckled whole-heartedly at Lauren's flabbergasted expression. "He hit me!" she cried, pointing an accusing finger in Pip's direction, "He had the nerve to hit me with a mushroom!"

"It wouldn't have hit you if you had caught it," Pippin said logically.

Lauren scowled at him before tossing the mushroom as far as she could, causing both Merry and Pippin to yell, "HEY!" at the same time and give her light smacks on her arm or in Merry's case, the top of her head.

"What was that for?" Merry questioned with a pout as he watched Farmer Maggot's two dogs dash after the thrown mushroom and out of sight.

Lauren swatted their hands away and simply said, "We couldn't very well sit in a tree all day," before climbing back down to the ground.

"Where are you taking me?" Lauren questioned for the umpteenth time. She had been following the two guys she had met sometime earlier for a while now, her arms full of the vegetables. Her feet were cut up and blistering from all the running away from dogs and walking through woods without shoes and whatnot. She was still in her pajamas, and judging by where the sun was in the sky, she could take a guess that the time had slipped into early afternoon. Lauren never felt this out of place or so utterly confused in all of her life.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"We've just passed into the borders of Buckland," Merry answered with a smile, "We're almost at Brandy Hall now."

"Brandy Hall? Buckland? Where's that?" Lauren asked again. Lauren couldn't possibly fathom why both Merry and Pippin had started laughing at the question, but obviously they found it hilarious. Frankly, the fact they were laughing at her ticked her off.

"Why, in the Shire, of course!" Pippin said as if it the most obvious thing in the world.

Lauren sighed. "Stop playing, okay? Don't you mean New Hampshire?"

Merry gave her a worried glance. "Are you all right?" he asked with a frown.

"Bah! She's fine," Pippin said as he waved a carrot in the air and stuck it out in front of him like a sword. It really was quite a sight to see with him practically juggling vegetables in his other arm. "It's just those stupid dogs. The first real rush, eh? It can really mess your head a bit the first few times. Remember, cousin?"

Merry nodded. "Aye, I suppose you're right," he smirked. "Perhaps that's why you can be a complete dunderhead at times, Pip. We've done it so many times it's most likely too much rush for your system." At this, Pippin promptly whacked Merry over the head with his carrot sword.

All three of them laughing, they continued on and soon saw a rather large house not far off. To Lauren it looked like a rustic, old fashioned house built into a hill, but the fact that it seemed as big as a mansion made it even more impressive. "That's Brandy Hall," Merry said with a hint of pride.

"Hell," Lauren commented. "You live there?"

"Aye, I do," Merry confirmed, "While Pip here lives over in Tookborough. We still manage to cause enough trouble together though. Now come on and follow me. We'll go in through the back."

"Nooo," Pippin complained as they hopped a stack of wood so large it looked to be a fence. "Not the back way, it takes so much longer and I'm starving."

"Stop whining, Pip, you know my mum's got guests today and we can't very well go through the front door with our nicked food to show off what we've got. She'd have my head," Merry said and led them through the trees behind his house. As they got closer, they ducked as they crept along the as to not be seen in the windows.

Merry opened the round wooden door that led down into the cellar. "Lasses first," he said and ushered them all in before closing the doors behind them, leaving them in total darkness.

"Ow! Stop stepping on my foot!" Lauren said.

"Sorry," was Pippin's reply.

"Indeed," a woman's voice said. "You had better be sorry, Peregrin Took. You as well, Meriadoc Brandybuck," she said sternly.

"Hello, mum," Merry said quietly.

A light turned on, a little oil lamp Lauren could see the woman was holding. She was standing on the other side of the cellar, one hand on her hip while the other supported the oil lamp. Now that she could see the woman's face, Lauren noticed Merry took after his mother a lot. He had the same coloring as she, light brown hair and eyes. Merry's mum had a pointier nose than her son, much like Pippin's, and Lauren would learn sometime later it was a trait from the Tookish part of the family.

"You boys were out at that crop again? And you dragged this poor lass along with you? Oh you poor dear. This wasn't exactly what I had in mind when I said I wanted you meeting some nice lasses, Meriadoc," she continued on, shaking a finger in her son's direction.

"Mum… " Merry started to say warningly, but his mother waved him off.

"Now come along, my dear," she said, motioning for Lauren to follow her, "You look a right mess. Let's get you a proper outfit to change into, eh?"

Shrugging to herself, Lauren dumped the vegetables she was carrying on top of Pippin and followed the woman up a small set of stairs and to the main area of the house, where she almost got run over by a group of children playing tag. They giggled at her as they ran by, and some even stopped to tug on her arms.

"Come play, come play!" a little dark haired boy squealed.

"Yes, come play!" a girl piped in from beside him. She looked to be the boy's older sibling. "You're a friend of cousins Merry and Pip, aren't you?" she asked brightly, bouncing on her toes. (The whole lot of them were barefoot, something Lauren still couldn't seem to understand.)

"Uh… yeah," Lauren replied slowly.

The two of them started giggling again. "Now Daisy and Doderic, what have I told you about playing tag in the house?" Merry's mum reprimanded gently.

"Sorry Auntie Esme," they chorused.

'Esme' gave them a small smile and said, "Now off you go now, she can always play with you some other time." The two pouted a bit, but did as they were told and went on their way. "What's your name, dear?" she asked, leading Lauren through the house.

"Lauren," she replied.

"That's nice. Different, but nice. You can call me Esmeralda, dear, and you're welcome over any time you like," Esmeralda said. "It's so nice the lads have taken a liking to a lass such as yourself. It's good for them to have some female influence other than me, you know." She led Lauren into a small bedroom and rummaged through a chest of drawers. "Aha!" she said and pulled out a short-sleeved dress with a quilted skirt. "Try this on, dear, it should fit well enough." Esmeralda practically bounced out of the room after handing the dress over to her, leaving Lauren standing there in the middle of the room feeling slightly like a lost puppy.

What is going on? Lauren thought to herself. There were so many questions that weren't being answered. Could she really be where she thought she was? But that's impossible.

After checking to make sure the door was closed, she pulled her sweatshirt over her head and threw the rest of her pajamas in a ball on the floor before slipping into the dress. Surprisingly, it actually did happen to fit her, and she spun around, loving how the skirt flowed around her.

She paused when a knock sounded at the door. "Are you done in there yet?" came Pippin's impatient voice from out in the hall.

"We want to take you to the Green Dragon with us to make up for helping us back there like that," Merry piped in as well.

Or maybe it isn't so impossible…

"Coming!" Lauren said excitedly, grabbing her clothes off the floor and tucking them under her arm. She wasn't sure what type of place this Green Dragon was, but as she went out into the hall and saw the two of them leaning against the wall with their hands in their pockets and grins on their faces, she found that she trusted them; regardless of the fact that she barely knew them. For some odd reason that she couldn't explain, she trusted them – and at the moment that was good enough for her.