You're My Light in the Dark

Chapter 6: Of Insanity and Ratscrews

Adjusting to this different lifestyle was incredibly odd. It wasn't easy. About a week after our reunion at the Green Dragon, Lauren, in one of her half-awake states, had even looked for a vacuum at one point while tidying up Bag End. After I wished her luck in finding one in this world without electricity, she then cursed the stupid fates that had decided to mess with her head – before proceeding to bang said head against the wall for a good length of time. Trying to make light of the situation, I had then commented on the fact that losing brain cells was only going to mess up that head of hers even more. She hadn't been amused.

We found that we craved certain things we never thought we'd miss all that much, things that we had once taken for granted. The major staples of modern day life in the twenty-first century (such as televisions and cars, for example) were easier to let go, since we were prepared and had let them go the minute we realized we were in Middle Earth. It was the little, insignificant items that really got to us, though; the sorts of things you never gave a second thought about until you went to use it and it wasn't there for you to use. It feels as if we've gone on a permanent vacation – and in a way, I suppose we have – only our luggage never made the trip. Oh, the random things we miss: Listerine, Oreos, fuzzy socks; the list goes on.

And yet at the same time, it's been a very relaxing change. The two of us had lived hectic lives, running to and fro from gyms and ice rinks and somehow squeezing school work in between. Getting pushed past our limits by unforgiving coaches, being sneered at and snubbed by supposed team mates, driving ourselves to push through fears and injuries in order to live up to both our mother's and our coaches' expectations – it was a stressful lifestyle that ran on pure nerve alone. And that sort of constant stress had worn us down to the point of utter exhaustion. This phenomenon, of how we found ourselves here in this world, was like a breath of much needed fresh air.

"You can add cards to that list of yours," Lauren called over to me, startling me out my reverie. I was just cleaning up the remnants of afternoon tea, and after wiping the last cup dry; I set it back up in the cupboard. I could only assume she was referring to The List of Random Objects to be Missed. The two of them sat at the kitchen table, Frodo with curious wide eyes, my sister with the ever present playful gleam in hers.

"Cards? Really now," I murmured, hanging the dish rag up to dry on the back of one of the chairs.

"Yeah, as in a deck of cards. Frodo here," Lauren jabbed a thumb in the dark haired hobbit's direction, "Has never played." She pouted, her lower lip jutting out as she sniffed a bit; putting on a whole theatrical show of her sad expression. "You poor deprived child." She even had the gall to pat him on the head as she said this.

"Are these cards as great as she's making them out to be?" Frodo questioned, swatting the invading hands away.

I chuckled at my sister's affronted look. "Lauren sure seems to think so," I grinned. And at that, she threw her hands up in the air with a huff.

"Alright, that's it – I'll make my own damn cards; and you, Frodo Baggins, will play whether you like it or not." The playful gleam in her eyes had turned into a determined one at this point, and I could tell that Frodo was a bit surprised at the way she was acting. Then again, I'm quite sure he's never had to deal with people like us before – crazy American teenage girls that we are – so I could hardly blame him. But he seemed to be more amused than anything else, so I suppose we weren't bugging (or frightening) the hell out of him as badly as I feared we would.

His eyebrows shot up to his hairline. "Is that an order?" he asked lightly, a hint of teasing in his voice.

"You bet your ass it is!" she exclaimed forcefully, slamming a fist down upon the table, "That way, you'll see for yourself just how awesome a game of cards can be!" And with that, she stood up abruptly and dashed out of the room.

The second she was gone, Frodo let out a laugh. "She certainly has a lot of energy, eh?"

"If you think she's bad now, just wait till it's her birthday," I muttered, rolling my eyes.

A grin tugged at his lips and after a moment or two, he fixed me with this calculating gaze. It was an expression I'd seen him send in my direction a few times this past week since we started living with him. I could tell there was something he wanted to say, to ask me, but he never voiced it, whatever it was; as if he wanted to try and figure it out on his own. His electric blue eyes seemed to stare right into my very soul, and I was half-afraid that he was actually able to read my mind.

"You're a kind person, Kat; you and your sister both are," he said at last, using Lauren's nickname for me. His eyes were still searching; it wasn't an intrusive stare, or at least it didn't seem as if he meant to be, it was more of one that searched for an understanding. "But, there's something very different about the two of you. I mean no offense, it's just… you aren't like any hobbits I've ever met before."

It didn't slip by me that he had refrained from using the word 'normal' to describe other hobbits, nor did it surprise me. While Lauren and I were as far from being 'normal' as could we be in any sense of the word, and how we really didn't give a damn one way or another about it, I understood why he refused to actually mention the word aloud. From what I've seen and heard so far in our short time here, I've gathered that Frodo and his uncle Bilbo aren't all that popular because they aren't considered to be what their fellow hobbits constitute as 'normal.'

I could also tell how much it actually bothered him.

And because of this, I knew exactly what he was getting at. I was mentally cringing at how I was going to have to skirt around the truth, but it couldn't really be helped.

"I bet," I replied to him with a smile, leaning up against the counter. "We've always been a bit crazy."

"You're not—"

"We're odd enough," I said, defending our insanity – embracing it even.

"That's not what I meant," he implored.

Of course I already knew that; knew what he found to be so different about us. But I couldn't very well tell him about our whole situation. Because then he'd really think we were crazy, not to mention the horrible unknown fates that could possibly happen to the future of Middle Earth if I let that slip.

It was then that Lauren not only came back into the kitchen, but also to my rescue. "What didn't you mean?" she asked, a stack of papers in one hand, a quill hanging out of an inkwell in the other.

"He questions our insanity," I clarified.

Her left eye twitched. "Ugh, the nerve!" she ground out, setting the inkwell on the table before giving Frodo a good whack over the head with the stack of papers. "Honestly, Baggins, soon enough you're going to change that opinion."

"I don't think—" He never finished his train of thought, for she began hitting him with the papers again. His arms had gone up to shield the top of his head, but alas, she had moved to other places, such as his face. He spluttered, and then began to laugh whole-heartedly. "Aye, I think you're completely nutters! Please stop!"

Frodo's eyes were wide; he hadn't been expecting the sudden attack and didn't seem to know what to expect next. I chuckled as well. "Oi, Lauren, alright already. Stop abusing the poor guy."

"Fine," she sighed, as if by asking her to quit it was some big injustice, "But I don't think he truly believes what he just said." She then gave him one last thwack for good measure before taking a seat at the table, waving at me to join them. "Come on, sister dearest, don't think I'm letting you off the hook that easily. Come help me make the cards."

I rolled my eyes heavenward… but complied, pulling out the chair next to her and sitting myself in it. She shoved a piece of paper in my direction before turning back to the one she had already started folding into eighths. Back and forth she folded it in each way possible and then made a nice clean rip right at the crease. "I'll do the reds, you do the blacks," she notified me.

"Alright, alright," I said, getting to work on my own paper.

Frodo looked on with curiosity etched all over his features. "How exactly do you play this game?" he questioned.

"It's not limited to one game, really," I said while piling up eight cards and grabbing another sheet, "It's a set up that can be used for several different games."

"Solitaire, Poker, Bullshit," Lauren rattled off absentmindedly, doodling some hearts in red ink. Frodo glanced over to her sharply, eyebrows raised; and I had to laugh at his reaction. I guess he still wasn't used to hearing curses coming from a girl. "What?" she asked innocently, "It's the name of a game."

Frodo sighed dramatically then, dropping his head down to thud against the table. I leaned over to pat his hand sympathetically, "I knew the crazy would get to you soon enough." He turned his head in order to fix me with an exasperated look, opening his mouth to say something when all of a sudden a knock sounded at the front door, rudely interrupting him. "Look, I'll go get that," I offered, jumping up. "Laur, why don't you start going over the rules for whatever game you wanted to play."

The knock sounded again, louder this time. My sister waved a hand at me. "Yeah, sure," she called as I retreated from the room and down the hall. On my way I let out a heavy sigh, not altogether sure how I had managed to skirt around Frodo's curiosity. He's highly observant. I had a feeling that we were going to have to be more careful around him; that we were going to have to try harder and learn faster at how to act in a more hobbitish manner.

Opening the front door revealed two hobbits; one with a dirty blonde colored mop of hair, the other with a shade of light brown. They were leaner than most of the hobbits I've met so far, and I noticed that they seemed a bit younger than Frodo - perhaps they were even around the same age as Lauren and me, but I couldn't be sure. They stared at me for a moment, seemingly struck speechless as their eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

"Er, hello," I said awkwardly.

The break of the silence seemed to jump-start the two of them, for the brunette immediately flashed a stunning smile. "Hello!" He said brightly, taking me by the hand and giving it a vigorous shake. "Looks like our cousin finally got himself a girl, eh Pippin?"

I gaped at the hobbit that was still bobbing my hand up and down, and I could only assume that he was the Brandybuck of the inseparable duo. "Uh, I'm not-"

"You look familiar," the dirty blonde – Pippin – commented, tilting his head to the side.

And that's when I realized that I've seen these two before, on that first night at the Green Dragon. They were the ones that had been with Lauren!

"I met you at the Green Dragon, remember?" I said to the odd boys standing on the doorstep.

Head still tilted, Pippin shook it about in the negative. "Sorry, lass, but I don't. Must've had loads to drink that night…"

"What he means to say is," Merry piped up, "Is that you remind us of a lass we met a few days ago—"

"The one with the odd name!"

Merry shot his cousin a look and the Took at least had the decency to seem a little sheepish.

"At any rate," Merry continued, "She had helped us in a time of dire need."

I rolled my eyes and could only imagine what the hell the three could've been up to. "I bet she did. I'm Lauren's older sister, Kate, by the way."

"Oh," they chorused in understanding.

I opened the door a little wider, giving the two a smile as I invited them in. "Frodo's in the kitchen with her, you know. Since I'm guessing you're here to visit him."

"Too right," Pippin said, and they bounced in past me. I shook my head as I closed the round green front door, having a feeling that the rest of the afternoon was going be very interesting.

After the customary introductions went around – "This here's Merry and Pip I was telling you about..." – "My cousins..." – etc, etc (which were entirely unnecessary but I nodded and smiled through them anyway); we were all forced into a game of cards.

"The game is called Egyptian's Rat's Nest, gentlemen," Lauren declared, shuffling our home-made cards. She froze mid cut, frowning a bit. "Gentlehobbits? Anyway," she went on, waving that particular line of thought aside, "It's a card game similar to War."

"They don't know how to play that either," I but in, taking in the confused expressions of the three males.

She rolled her eyes at me. "I know that Kat, lemme explain it." She grabbed a small section of the deck, keeping the cards in a pile face down on the table. "Alright, the game of War is very simple. Everyone has their own pile like this one here, and all you do is take the top card and put it in the middle of the table," she flipped the top card of her pile so it was face up (it happened to be the 9 of clubs), "Like so. See the number nine on the card? The person with the highest number wins and gets to keep all the cards that were flipped for that round."

"Oh," Frodo said. "So the object of the game is to win all the cards away from everyone."

"Exactly," Lauren beamed, pleased they seemed to understand.

"You're forgetting about face cards and battles," I commented.

Merry and Pippin's eyes lit up with excitement at the mention of that. "Battles?" Pippin questioned eagerly. "What sorts of battles?"

"Battley-battles of War!" she cried in response, going a little overboard with the theatrics as she waved her arms about. "For instance, say: Kat, Frodo and I are playing and Frodo flips a two while Kat and I both flip a five-"

"So you fight to the death to see who gets 'em?" Merry asked quizzically.

"Not quite," I chuckled.

"We have a battle," Lauren corrected, "Where we both put three cards face down… for W… A… R… spells WAR!" and while she shouted war, she flipped a fourth card face up, revealing the two of diamonds. "Dammit. I probably would've lost that one, had we actually been playing. Two's the lowest number in the deck – and whoever has the highest number on that fourth card there wins all the cards in the middle."

Merry clapped his hands, rubbing them together eagerly. "Okay then, doesn't sound too hard; let's start playing!"

"No no no no no," Lauren said really fast as if it was all one word, shaking her head and tutting a bit. "We're not playing War, I had only explained it because Egyptian's Rat's Nest is very a similar concept, only it's a lot more fun."

"But… battles…" Pippin said woefully, seeming awfully upset at missing out on those so-called 'battles'.

Meanwhile, Frodo frowned, obviously still trying to understand how to play. "This Rat game… it's more complicated than that War game isn't it?"

"Yep," Lauren and I drawled in unison.

"It doesn't actually involve rats, does it?" he continued hesitantly, "Since I'm afraid I don't have one of those." Oh, the look on his face was simply priceless. Lauren and I couldn't help ourselves; we broke into a mad fit of laughter. I was even crying for goodness sake, and when I saw the three male's looks of both confusion and concern, I quite nearly died.

"Oho, my sides," Lauren whined through her mirth, toppling out her chair with a plop.

Samwise Gamgee headed around toward Bag End's back garden, in pursuit of the pruning sheers he must have forgotten there the other day when he finished tidying up the rose bushes under the kitchen window. And just as he thought, there they sat beneath his well-kept roses, gleaming in the afternoon sunlight. Right when he bent down to retrieve them, he heard a resounding BANG! come from inside the hobbit-hole, closely followed by several pain-filled yells.

Eyebrows furrowed in concern, he wondered what in all of Middle Earth that could have possibly been.

Then again, on second thought, he probably didn't want to know. Things have been kind of strange around Bag End these past few days, after all. Those foreigners, as nice as they might seem, they were certainly odd at times.

So with a resigned sigh, Sam figured that Ted Sandyman's hedges could wait a few more minutes, and went to go investigate.

"Those are definitely my cards!" Merry scowled. "I slapped them! I saw the sandwich!"

"Are not! My hand totally got there first!" Lauren argued, holding up her bright red hand as proof. "You hit me, not the cards!"

I couldn't help but cackle at the two of them; shaking off the stings coursing through my own bruised hand. The typical argument instigated by this game brought about a normalcy of sorts for Lauren and me. It's sad, how something so simple could be so comforting, but it was true.

I hadn't had this much fun in ages.

"You gotta be quick, man, gotta be quick!" I commented. "Builds up your reflexes."

"What sandwich? I missed it," Frodo pouted.

Merry pointed towards the end of the line. "See there? 7 – 8 – 7." Frodo gave a sigh, mourning how he missed an opportunity to re-stock his dwindling pile of cards.

"I think that's what Kat means by being quick, cousin; you have to pay attention more," Pippin piped up, flipping a card down to start a new line. Frodo flipped his own to the pile, rolling his eyes in response.

Lauren was next, flipping hers down. And that's when we all saw it: two 2s in a row. We all sprung into action, slamming our hands down atop the pile. The whole table shook, and the sound of flesh hitting flesh or hand hitting table echoed throughout the room.

"OW!"

Merry came out victorious this time, swiping the cards in the middle into his own pile. He shook his hand out gingerly. "My goodness, you're vicious!" he said, sending a half-hearted glare in Lauren's direction. She merely shrugged, smiling a bit, obviously not bothered by his accusations in the least.

"It wasn't just me, you know. Your hand was at the bottom of the pile, you got the full brunt of everyone's slaps. Besides," she said, "The harder you hit, the less likely people will be willing to actually put their hand out there next time."

"Oh Eru," Frodo muttered, taking note of both his cousins' enormous grins, "I'm out." He pushed his cards in my direction. "I'd rather keep my hands, thanks."

"If you insist," I said.

I should have seen it coming; really, I should have. But I was doing so well, and I'm highly competitive – therefore I'm never one to back down during a game, especially one such as this. Frodo was the wise one. Really, he was. He quit at exactly the right time.

For on the next slap, which happened to be a 10 – Jack – 10 sandwich, Merry and Pippin went completely ballistic on our asses. It was by far the scariest thing I had ever seen while playing Egyptians' Rat's Nest. It was almost like a flail, really. And the two of them sitting next to each other made it seem like a wall of sheer explosive power – certainly a force to be reckoned with.

My god, it was so painful! My hand felt like it was on fire.

The game ended then and there, with Frodo and I having to hold back a furious Lauren from maiming the two of them.

It was then that Sam entered the kitchen holding a pair of garden sheers, looking at us like we were all completely out of our minds. Lauren immediately changed tactics and lunged in his direction instead – my guess is that she saw the garden sheers as a perfect weapon. He jumped back, blinking owlishly at the insanity of it all, and thankfully Frodo and I were able to keep our grip on her in check.

"I don't even want to know," Sam muttered, leaving just as abruptly as he had arrived.