The little fox had been searching for days on either side of the Pretty Good River, hoping beyond hope that he would encounter the fey wanderers before Gravlox and his fellow berserkers caught up with them. It was as if the earth had swallowed them! Which was very likely. No one in the history of Middle Earth took the subway and lived to tell the tale. The Balfrogs would have seen to that.
The diminutive canid was now headed for New Osgiliath, where everyone wound up eventually, whether it was canon or not. But in order to get there, he would have to go around Topfloorien. The fox quickened his pace in order to make good time before the traffic got bad. He turned on to the Outer Belt of trees that surrounded the overpriced, overdeveloped Elven sprawl like a bad case of ring worm. Though he was hungry, he sped by the beckoning light of the T.G.I. Thrimidge, and in short order left behind the Radagast Shack, Bath and Bodice Works, Bards and Nolder, and the Nienna Marchos anchor store.
He was almost past Topfloorien! The fox ran on as if he lay in a dark and troubled dream; it seemed that he could hear his own small voice echoing in black tunnels, calling If you lived here, you’d be home by now! Then the fox breasted a hill, and instead of a cozy fox condo, a good dozen or so hideous orc-faces grinned at him out of the shadows, and twenty-four hideous arms grasped at him from every side. Where was Meri?
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