[Diamond18]

"Where are we? What do you mean 'where are we'? We're in the Mire," Vogonwë answered, resheathing his unused arrows.

"But... but why am I covered in ketchup?" Pimpi repeated worrisomely, though her worry was not enough to prevent her from licking her fingers.

Vogonwë paused, presented with a connundrum. "I don't know," he admitted. "One moment you were screaming because no one was attending the cart, then you were smiling like an elf on 'Mudwater, and now you're covered in this thing you call 'ketchup'. It's most puzzling."

"Idiot!" said Kuruharan impatiently. "The hot dog cart just exploded. We're all covered in ketchup!"

"Ye gads!" Vogonwë cried, looking down. "And Sauerkraut, too!"

"You mean cabbage?" Pimpi asked, brightening.

"No! Sauerkraut!" horror raised his tenor to a falsetto. "Bits and pieces of wizard flesh! Strands of silvery white wizard hair! Ketchup colored wizard blood! Chips of ivory wizard tooth enamel and strings of greeny wizard stomach goo!"

Pandemonium enveloped the crowd like a stink bomb. Newly un-zombified hobbits ran in circles screaming and waving their hands in a most unseemly fashion. Soon hobbits were jumping into the Randywhine river; some drowning as their fellow munchkins dove in on top of them, others succumbing to their inability to swim after floundering about in vain. "Oh, the hobbitry!" Soregum quoth.

None of the Itshippers, fortunately, joined in the watery mêlée.

Chrysophylax was too busy chatting up the Wyrm to notice or care what new unwholesome substance was clinging to his scales. Kuruharan was busily erecting a state of the art Soap and Shower stand complete with an accompanying gift shop that sold sponges, shower caps, towels, flotation devices, and incinerators, among other useful items.

Grrralph simply sighed and shook his head, picking his Cell-antir up from the ground and pocketing it. His cloak came equipped with ACMÉ splatter shedding technólògy. The motto on the tag: "From hot dog fixings to wizard goo, ACMÉ keeps nasty stuff off of you".

Earnur and Orogarn Two were trying to preserve a modicum of manly dignity, by calmly paying an exorbitant amount of money to Kuruharan for bottles of soap and wire brushes. "It's for Merisu," they both told the dwarf, who nodded and winked.

Merisu, meanwhile, had fortuitously stood off to the side when the dubious shower of hot dog fixings and indeterminable other things had rained down on the less prepard. She alone remained spotless and crisp, and shook her head sadly at the antics of the others.

Pimpi, in a panic, tried to dive into the river after her distant cousinlings, but was saved by Soregum, who seized her arm and cried, "Don't do it, Miss! There lies death-by-flailing-hobbit-feet-to-the-head!"

Vogonwë, who had set about writing down his speech in a verse titled, "Wizard Guts in My Beloved's Hair", flung his notepad to the ground and rushed to pry Soregum's fingers from his beloved's arm. "I'll do the hobbit-damsel saving around here," he said hastily, then steered the dazed and confused damseling over to Kuruharan's Soap and Shower stand.

Leninia moved over by Earnur and innocently asked him if he could check her over for wizard bits.

Gateskeeper stood in a dark corner, trying to make himself inconspicuous. "Fools," he muttered to himself. "Everyone knows that the westerly wind blew all vestiges of wizardly body and spirit away." Then he paused in thought. "Or perhaps only wizards realize what happens when a wizard kicks the can." He then mused, as he idly picked sauerkraut off his robes, that perhaps it was best that the Itshippers were taken up with the hysteria of the moment. Perhaps they might even forget how he had so desperately revealed his wizardliness, and no awkward questions would have to be asked.

Alas, he was to be disappointed....