Two pairs of hobbit feet pounded down the hall trailed behind by guilty giggles. Running full speed through the door, Anee and Rose burst into Anee's small yet comfortable bedroom out of breath from running so fast and laughing so hard. Rose threw herself upon the bed, abandoning all pretense of dignity, and threw a plump pillow at her friend. Anee caught it deftly and exclaimed, "Let's not go to sleep all night!"
Though both hobbits had just entered their tweens, the normal time of growing and maturing, tonight they were determined to act as gay and silly as the youngest, most mischevious hobbit child playing in the Shire.
"Of course," Rose replied delighted. And the pair of them spent the night staging mock battles with swords of feather pillow, scaring each other with old wive's tales
passed down for time out of mind, and talking till the moon had risen high over the night sky. Finally, the conversation slowly trickled off, and both hobbits lay curled together, each lost in their own private thoughts. Rose felt her mind being drawn irresistibly back through time through time to the voyage of the Lonely Star. Her eyes closed slowly, feeling the wooden prow dip and rise with the sea. Bird, strange and beautiful; the tall, strong Mithadan; Pio strongwilled and fierced when pressed but a blessing to her friends, Cami whose face was looking rather tired, whose eyes sometimes seemed to be looking at someone else: the old crew, whom Rose had come to treasure, and whose faces were locked safely in her memory, awoke and smiled down at her.
Rose twisted restlessly on Anee’s soft bed and drew the covers farther up under her chin. The cloth was coarse but warm and waves of sleepiness broke over her as the ocean breaks upon the shore. The young hobbit felt herself covered and pulled by its irresistable tide, and for only a moment she resisted before falling completely submerged into the realm of dreams.
A great army of elves were marching to battle, off to defeat the stronghold of Angband and draw out The Black Enemy, and Rose was in the lead, clad in shining mail armour and carrying a deadly sword. She was suprised to see herself riding a spirited stallion; hobbits were not generally made for such modes of travel. A great shout was taken up by the soldiers and Rose reined in her steed to see what was the disturbance. An ambush! As common in the manner of dreams, the fantasy skipped ahead, and the small hobbit was now battling fiercely with five orcs. As intensely as she fought, the orcs began to overwhelm her. A great leering face flashed in front of Rose, swinging upward a heavy iron sword. With a scream she ducked...
And rolled with a hard thwump into a ditch. Confused, still trying to fight away the vicious orcs, Rose heard the steady beat of horse hooves upon a road, and she wondered for one wild moment if she had been knocked out in battle. Rising unsteadily to her feet, the young hobbit lass turned to see if Anee had been awakened by her struggles, but her friend was nowhere to be found.
Instead, Rose discovered herself plump in the middle of a lush countryside, a land which looked slightly familiar but which she had left what seemed like many years ago. Or had she left at all?
Poor Rose had forgotten all about the rider, who was stopped and now staring at her in much the same fashion as the young hobbit was staring at the fields lining the road. Feeling the sharp pair of eyes boring into her back, Rose turned to see the only character to make the strange dream she seemed to have landed inside even more bizarre.
“Miss Pio??” Rose managed to gasp outloud, shocked to see the elf’s figure, quite round in the middle, straddling a beautiful horse with only slight difficulty.
[ March 13, 2003: Message edited by: theWhiteLady ]
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