Article: 225906 of rec.arts.books.tolkien Path: uchinews!news-hog.berkeley.edu!ucberkeley!news.maxwell.syr.edu!neel.uni2.net!news.get2net.dk!not-for-mail From: "Raven" <<>> Newsgroups: alt.fan.tolkien,rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Book IV, chapter 2 Lines: 372 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2919.6600 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6600 Message-ID: <2OS06.318$UF3.7951@news.get2net.dk> Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2000 01:51:06 +0100 NNTP-Posting-Host: 195.82.223.5 X-Complaints-To: abuse -aaatt- get2 -daht- net X-Trace: news.get2net.dk 977533182 195.82.223.5 (Sat, 23 Dec 2000 01:59:42 MET) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2000 01:59:42 MET Organization: get2net Internet Kunde Xref: uchinews alt.fan.tolkien:51485 rec.arts.books.tolkien:225906 So. Seems I lost a little tug-of-war with Prembone about Frodo's preferences. She established him as partial to males, though he discovered this himself only on the Barrow-downs... I broadened his tastes by letting him seduce Elf-girls in Rivendell with the Ring, and now it appears that he was merely faking. No bisexual there. Oh well. It isn't so important. In Rivendell I just wanted to get the snow off him, because I don't share the opinion that virgin men are ridiculous and justly targeted for laughter. Of course, I don't get nearly enough p~~~y myself to unhypocritically cause such derision... That pompous git and now confirmed felon (who voted in Miami only through fraud) Gandalf, now, I should have no second thoughts about positively pelting *him* with snowballs. But he will not appear in this chapter: someone else must do that, or not. And no, the rather unexpected turn of events that you will see is *not* my way of stopping further homosex between Sam and Frodo. When I got to the point where a somewhat less unexpected (and more obvious) thing happens, the idea just struck me... ************************************************************** Spiegel moved languidly, with her bust thrust forward so hard that Frodo thought that surely her upper back must ache like sonofabitch, which it did. Sam was in a fix: hand in Frodo's hand, Frodo's thumb caressing; eyes on Spiegel's bosom; and mind ferociously on Rosie, Red Rosie, Revolutionary Rosie. Rosie with the athame and hands as swift as her temper. Spiegel glanced at Sam and felt satisfied. She started down the path towards the marshes, her small yet shapely bottom drawing Sam's eyes like Playboy magazine draws adolescent boys and televangelists. The cat-calls from two passing joggers on their way towards the fast-food joint below proved that it wasn't just Sam: Spiegel was not as abhorrent as she thought herself. Two hours later they were gorging cheeseburgers and french fries. Spiegel would at first take only a few fries and a bit of salad from one of Sam's burgers. "Gulible, you really should eat some more," said Frodo. "You look starved." Looking guiltily at Frodo, the stick-thin hobbit-girl replied in song: /The greasy food upsets my mood it swells my bod. I'm grossly big I look a pig I feel a clod. I always feel ---/ "Ha! ha! What does we feel?" she said, looking furtively at the two men. "We'll tell you," she whispered. "He told me years ago, Baggins told me when I was just a little girl." A shudder shook her body, and Sam catching the look in her eyes felt a sudden sympathy welling in him. /Terribly fat; Nose like a hat; Always starving, ever growing; Look like needing tugboat towing; Never noticed till he said: Boys would always want me dead! Menfolk laugh behind my back 'Cause I waddle like a sack! That's what Bilbo Baggins told When I was just ten years old ---/ Suddenly Sam understood poor Spiegel's troubles. A self-starver, an anorexic little girl. How beautiful and popular could she have been! Even in her emaciated state she was attractive. With her green eyes and hair that when washed and tended would be a shock of flaming red, she should be the proverbial man-killer. That was the deciding moment for Sam as far as old Bilbo Baggins was concerned: with just a few comments to an impressionable little girl, just to while away some tedious afternoons probably, this rich bastard had shattered this poor working-class (Sam's assumption) girl's self-confidence... oooh, Sam couldn't wait for the revolution. Frodo felt a little of the same. He didn't notice that she was (to a straight man) beautiful, but he felt her shame and knew how unneeded it was. He looked at Sam. "Don't look at me," he whispered. "I know as well as you that Bilbo should not have said such things." Loudly he said to Spiegel: "Look, old Bilbo is my uncle. I know him better than you do. He is full of bovine refuse. You should have heard those language lessons I took from him... you are not fat!" "Yes, we isss!" "No, you issn't! Here, have a hamburger!" He handed her a quarter-pounder with extra cheese. Doubtfully she took it, and nibbled a single crumb. "Ack ack phbttt! Trying to poison poor Gulible they are, dumb menfolk! Grease and fat, Spiegel cannot eat that!" "Come on," said Sam. "Try it. Give it a chance. Frodo is right: you are thin as a twig. Ten of those would do you good - ten each day for a month. We aren't teasing you!" "Yes you isss! Baggins said we iss fat as a hippo in a butter factory." "And another Baggins says otherwise," Frodo replied. "Why believe in him and not me?" "Becaussse he isss straight!" The look in Spiegel's beautiful eyes was venomous. Frodo shrugged, not noticing Sam opening his mouth and shutting it again. "Have it your way then, fatso," he said. This being the last restaurant for several days, the hobbits bought several packs of vacuum-packed hamburgers in a nearby supermarket. Then they started towards the marshes. At first they followed a tourist trail, but this soon veered aside, and they left it. They were in the marshes proper. "I have been here before," said Spiegel. "Hobbit-mens should be careful. There are alligators here. They don't touch me, because I'm too fat: I bet their cholesterol count soars at the sight of us." "No, they won't eat you because gators eat meat and not sticks and wire with blobs of fat on them," replied Frodo, without noticing the hurt look that this produced in Spiegel. Sam noticed, and his hate against the upper classes increased another notch. Some time later, when Frodo was passing hraka behind a bush, Sam tried again to explain to Spiegel that she was not fat. "Have you heard about anorexia?" he asked. "Yes. What's that got to do with us? Only thin people who *think* that they are fat have it!" "Have you looked in a mirror?" "No! We hates mirrors!" "You cannot honestly think that you are fatter than me and Frodo!" "Yes we are! Look!" She grabbed a fold of skin between two fingers. "Look like the Michelin man, we does! Like a stack of car tyres. Truck tyres!" "There is no fat inside that fold," said Sam. Spiegel turned away and would not answer. "Spiegel, why do you always refer to yourself as 'we'?" "Because we are so fat that if ever we went by plane, we would have to buy two or three tickets. And boy would we be in trouble if they were not adjacent! Baggins said so." "How would that old coot know? He's so rowdy once he's had a drink or two that every airline has him on a file - they refuse him whenever he tries to buy a ticket. They've had enough of /him/!" At nightfall they made camp. Frodo took out the gas burner and inexpertly lit it. Then he put a grille inside a thick-walled pot and put three hamburgers on it. Soon a somewhat delicious smell spread. For a while Sam tried to convince Spiegel that she was not fat, when suddenly she relented. With a look of terrible revulsion on her face, she wolfed down a hamburger, and then two pounds of lettuce. Sam whispered to her: "And please don't sneak off and throw that up!" After a moment of thought he added: "You won't be a good girl if you do." Spiegel, the eyes of her mind upon Frodo's camera, sighed and curled up to sleep. Some hours later she woke up, finding the camera placed next to her. The other two were gone, but from behind some densely leaved bushes came a quiet, rythmic rustling. Heart pounding, she grabbed the camera and sneaked over to the bushes. Quietly she peered over them, then put the camera to her eye. And then lowered it with a sigh. Midnight and a low half moon are not the perfect lighting for photographing without a flashlight, and /that/ was not an option. The next morning Sam asked her if she had got a few good snaps that might be used for some revolutionarily useful extortion. She returned a brief explanation. Sam thought for a moment. "Hey, Frodo. I think we should stop travelling during the day. Spiegel says there are evil things about. Evil things with eyes, and they report to Minas Tirith(tm). It will go ill with your Núrnenshire hovel, er, estate if *they* get their hands on that deed." Frodo, by now trusting Sam totally, made no objections. Sometime later that day, Spiegel got some interesting snaps among those bushes. That evening Sam lit the gasfire. "Won't those Minas Tirith(tm)-spies see that gaslight?" asked Frodo. "No," replied Spiegel. "For one thing, it is difficult to see that little flame in broad daylight. For another, marsh-lights can often be seen around here." Frodo looked at Sam, who nodded. A little later, Sam convinced Spiegel to have another hamburger, with extra cheese. They were out of green stuff, but she ate tomato slices instead. Two pounds of them. At nightfall they packed their things and got started. "What did you do *that* for?!" Sam's voice was angry. "Had a change of preferences? Suddenly like women again now?" Frodo chuckled. "Not in a lifetime. Just wanted to see that lard wobble." "Spiegel, don't pay that rich slavemaster no attention! Just like his *father* Bilbo, he is. It's just one of them simian alpha-male power-displays that that family is so fond of. They'll be up against the wall the both of them one of these days, and you can be in the firing squad!" The girl, sobbing quietly, threw him a glance but said nothing. The night was dark, but not altogether so. Civilization was far behind them, and they were in a trackless land. But miles and miles away the lights of civilization were strong enough to illuminate the tops of the reeds even here: billboards, headlights, roving searchlights reflected off the clouds. As they walked deeper into the marshes, further from these lightsources, the night became darker. Then the sky turned pale in the east, and the mountain fences of Mordor glittering with pinpoint lights showed faintly against it. They made camp next to a wide mere. Now they were deep into the marshes. The ground was wet. The rustling reeds were tall, but there were no bushes. To Sam's relief, Frodo judged that they could have no privacy from Spiegel here. "The reeds would rustle too much," he whispered coyly. "They would sway like clusters of flagpoles in a gale. They would..." Sam closed his ears to the rest. Twice that day they cooked hamburgers. During their first meal, Sam coaxed Spiegel into having an entire quarter-pounder. "She already looks healthier," whispered Frodo to Sam. "Yes, really swelling," he added more loudly. Spiegel maintained a stony look. At their second meal they had to go without any vegetable stuff - she had eaten their onions, a whole pound of them, and her breath was not very nice for a while. More than once that day she had had the screaming hrakas. Sam failed to convince her to have a second burger in lieu of the vegetables that she had followed up her previous three burgers with. At nightfall they set out. Suddenly they stopped and shrank. It was foggy. Out of the air came two distant voices. /"...but honey..." "You are *not* killing that fine man, hear? Such a handsome, fine, strong, noble, handsome man! I saw him in the trailer. I think it was him anyway." "But I did kill him!" "He was not last seen dead!" "But my plotline demands that he be dead! It's my story after all!" "And this is my skillet!" / /"Ow! You silly old crone..." / /"Say it! Say he'll return to the story!" / /"Okay, okay, hon..." "Letting that fine man die and the miserable creature that stabbed him live..."/ The two voices trailed off. Frodo shivered. "What was that? I feel a strange and uncanny foreboding." The other two shrugged. Then the trio continued onwards through the marshes. "Aaah!!" Frodo's panicky shriek rang through the night. The other two turned like tops to face him. "There is a dead man! A dead man in the water! With weeds in his hair!" He was staring into a wide pool with several marshlights shining near the bank where he was standing. "That's strange," replied Spiegel, approaching him with apprehension. Sam cast a look at the dimly lit figure. "It's the corpse of a man alright. C'mon. He's nothing to do with us. Why haven't the alligators got him?" "It looks like..." Frodo muttered to himself, unable to extricate himself from the sight. He bent down closer to the corpse. With a splash a strong arm shot out of the water. Before anyone could react, Frodo was grabbed by the tunic, dragged into the water, and a shadow rose up out of it and pinned the wildly thrashing hobbit to the muddy bottom. A mad fierce gleam was in his eyes. The marshlights shone like Griswold Christmas lights. It was the man in the water, and he was alive! "Boromir(tm)! Boromir(tm)!" cried Sam. "You're alive! But I saw him kill you!" Boromir(tm) did not reply, until Sam reached out from the bank and grabbed him by the shoulder. Then he pushed Sam back with one hand, still holding Frodo down with the other. "Yes!" he cried. "That he tried! First he will take the Ring to the enemy who would devour us all, land and *slaves* being his promised wages, and then he tries to kill me! And *then* the others lash me to a raft and send me down the Rauros falls!" Frodo's struggling grew weaker. A burst of bubbles came from his mouth. Then Boromir(tm) drew his sword and pierced the drowning hobbit through the chest, to the hilt. At dawn they stood on the bank of the little lake in the middle of the marshes, not watching the feast of the alligators. On the ground lay pieces of wet confetti. "Lies," said Boromir, (tm) no longer, as he cast down the last bits of paper. They looked like chads. "Lies of Tyrannosauron and of El Rond. And this," he fingered the Ring, "goes straight into the fire. To Mount Viagra! It is an instrument of oppression. Are you with me, Sam, revolutionary Sam?" Pointing at the red froth of the alligators: "Is something like this not what you dreamed of all the time? *I* noticed the razor blade in his eggs!" "You...you're the son of the Steward," said Sam. "Yes, I can't say that I disapprove. Except for the signs at the tourist trails about not feeding the litigators. But *you*?" Boromir sighed. "I was always secretly uneasy about the corporate-feudal oppression that my family inflicts on the people. Then that little brat put his sword in me. I had drawn sword against him a few moments before, I must admit..." "I noticed." "Oh did you? Well, that opened my stomach. But what *really* opened my *eyes* was what happened after. Bleeding like a pig I fought against orcs, and they could not stand against me. They clove my horn, but they couldn't touch me! The survivours ran off, and I believe Lego-lass and Giggly had their share of them. If orcs it was: there was a strange metallic gleam on them that was not armour. They didn't bleed much when I made great gashes in them with my sword, and what little blood came was black. Orc blood is as red as ours... but I fell exhausted with the wound that Frodo had given me. And then... and then..." Greater rage gleamed in his eyes. "Aragon pretended that I was dead. He questioned me, and when Giggly and Lego-lass came, he lied and said that I was dead. The other two believed him, even though I spoke and protested! They knocked me cold, and when I woke up I was tied to a raft and drifting off the Rauros. How I survived I cannot explain. The fall into the churning bowl broke the raft into nearly sawdust, and I was free. I was unable to swim, but grabbed a larger piece of wood and drifted down the river, until I was washed up on the east bank. That Aragon is so wimpy at the sight of blood that he had closed my stomach-wound crudely with some rings from the chain-mail of an orc (or whatever it was), and that saved my life then. Otherwise my intestines would be trailing the length of the river by now --- I lay on the riverbank. Happily the sword-thrust had gone in at the diaphragm, and missed the gullet and lungs and heart and intestines and that. That Frodo was tall for a hobbit, and I had been bending forward. It was the dirt on the blade that nearly finished me off, not so much the wound itself. An old woman found me and carried me into a hut. She saved my life. She didn't speak. She kept a large and battered skillet in her hand most of the time... Then when I woke up and knew that I was going to live, the hut, the bed and the woman were gone. I lay on fronds near the river. I was dizzy with fever, even when I became stronger, and I staggered blindly for days, until I stumbled into that pool there. I nearly drowned. I put my head on a submerged tussock so that my nose just stuck out of the water. Then I look up, and guess who is looking down at me! And the rest you saw with your own eyes. Who is *she*?" "This," said Sam indignantly, "is Spiegel, nicknamed Gulible. She was convinced by *Bilbo* *Baggins* when she was little that she was fat and ugly. She's been an anorexic ever since." Spiegel looked at Boromir with shy yet gleaming eyes. "And that Frodo didn't help much either!" Boromir looked at her with sudden sympathy. "Ugly? You're not ugly!" "Yess..." There was a hesitant note in the thin girl's voice. "Come on, girl. I'm partial to men myself, and shall not deny it; but I know when a woman is pretty and when she is ugly. And you are pretty." The light dimmed in Spiegel's green eyes, but was not altogether extinguished. "Frodo was gay himself," said Sam, grabbing Frodo's camera and tearing out the film. There was no need for it anymore. "Was he now?" replied Boromir. "Well, an asshole is an asshole, no matter his taste in holes!" Two days later they emerged from the marshes. They were out of hamburgers, for Boromir was a large man, recovering from a wound and an illness, and Spiegel was eating much too, ballooning out towards a normal size. This was land that was largely controlled by Sauron (whom they wanted to avoid), but Gondor(tm)'s agents walked among the Mordorian neon glitz, disguised as tourists. They were now the enemies of the eldest son of the Steward, and would remain so even if Aragon toppled Boromir's father from power. Accordingly Sam and Boromir didn't dare show themselves, but sent Spiegel to do some shopping. By nightfall they had a cold meal in a little dell. The ground was covered in more than a foot of garbage thrown by careless tourists. After the meal they started walking towards the Gates of Mordor, brightly lit by megawatts of neonlights. Spiegel walked between the two men, the tall Boromir and the her-sized Sam. She was happy. For the first time since she was ten she smiled and was happy. Sam thought her dazzling. She told them: "Between you you have cured me of my anorexia." "Glad to hear it, dear." "Only one thing mars my happiness. Well, two things. One of you is gay, and the other has a fiancée. I can't have neither of you." She giggled. Boromir sighed. "Well, it can't be helped. But you are a pretty girl. You should have your pick of men, once we are in decent lands." "I have never *been* to decent lands," she replied. *************************************************************** I know that the death of Frodo has the appearance of a drastic change in the plot. But it isn't really. I have merely replaced him with Boromir. And the Boromir of the etext is (unless someone alters him later) as dedicated to the quest of destroying the Ring as Frodo is in the original text. And besides, if someone wants to resurrect him, I can see at least two easy ways: one is the singular toughness of hobbits and the professional courtesy among litigators and loansharks. And perhaps Boromir has a sword now broken a foot below the hilt, after his little journey down the Rauros falls... as for the other method, even in the original Gandalf was killed and then deus ex machinaed back into the fray. In the etext, I have just dea ex machinaed Boromir back. Corvus. Article: 225906 of rec.arts.books.tolkien Path: uchinews!news-hog.berkeley.edu!ucberkeley!news.maxwell.syr.edu!neel.uni2.net!news.get2net.dk!not-for-mail From: "Raven" <<>> Newsgroups: alt.fan.tolkien,rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Book IV, chapter 2 Lines: 372 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2919.6600 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6600 Message-ID: <2OS06.318$UF3.7951@news.get2net.dk> Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2000 01:51:06 +0100 NNTP-Posting-Host: 195.82.223.5 X-Complaints-To: abuse -aaatt- get2 -daht- net X-Trace: news.get2net.dk 977533182 195.82.223.5 (Sat, 23 Dec 2000 01:59:42 MET) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2000 01:59:42 MET Organization: get2net Internet Kunde Xref: uchinews alt.fan.tolkien:51485 rec.arts.books.tolkien:225906 So. Seems I lost a little tug-of-war with Prembone about Frodo's preferences. She established him as partial to males, though he discovered this himself only on the Barrow-downs... I broadened his tastes by letting him seduce Elf-girls in Rivendell with the Ring, and now it appears that he was merely faking. No bisexual there. Oh well. It isn't so important. In Rivendell I just wanted to get the snow off him, because I don't share the opinion that virgin men are ridiculous and justly targeted for laughter. Of course, I don't get nearly enough p~~~y myself to unhypocritically cause such derision... That pompous git and now confirmed felon (who voted in Miami only through fraud) Gandalf, now, I should have no second thoughts about positively pelting *him* with snowballs. But he will not appear in this chapter: someone else must do that, or not. And no, the rather unexpected turn of events that you will see is *not* my way of stopping further homosex between Sam and Frodo. When I got to the point where a somewhat less unexpected (and more obvious) thing happens, the idea just struck me... ************************************************************** Spiegel moved languidly, with her bust thrust forward so hard that Frodo thought that surely her upper back must ache like sonofabitch, which it did. Sam was in a fix: hand in Frodo's hand, Frodo's thumb caressing; eyes on Spiegel's bosom; and mind ferociously on Rosie, Red Rosie, Revolutionary Rosie. Rosie with the athame and hands as swift as her temper. Spiegel glanced at Sam and felt satisfied. She started down the path towards the marshes, her small yet shapely bottom drawing Sam's eyes like Playboy magazine draws adolescent boys and televangelists. The cat-calls from two passing joggers on their way towards the fast-food joint below proved that it wasn't just Sam: Spiegel was not as abhorrent as she thought herself. Two hours later they were gorging cheeseburgers and french fries. Spiegel would at first take only a few fries and a bit of salad from one of Sam's burgers. "Gulible, you really should eat some more," said Frodo. "You look starved." Looking guiltily at Frodo, the stick-thin hobbit-girl replied in song: /The greasy food upsets my mood it swells my bod. I'm grossly big I look a pig I feel a clod. I always feel ---/ "Ha! ha! What does we feel?" she said, looking furtively at the two men. "We'll tell you," she whispered. "He told me years ago, Baggins told me when I was just a little girl." A shudder shook her body, and Sam catching the look in her eyes felt a sudden sympathy welling in him. /Terribly fat; Nose like a hat; Always starving, ever growing; Look like needing tugboat towing; Never noticed till he said: Boys would always want me dead! Menfolk laugh behind my back 'Cause I waddle like a sack! That's what Bilbo Baggins told When I was just ten years old ---/ Suddenly Sam understood poor Spiegel's troubles. A self-starver, an anorexic little girl. How beautiful and popular could she have been! Even in her emaciated state she was attractive. With her green eyes and hair that when washed and tended would be a shock of flaming red, she should be the proverbial man-killer. That was the deciding moment for Sam as far as old Bilbo Baggins was concerned: with just a few comments to an impressionable little girl, just to while away some tedious afternoons probably, this rich bastard had shattered this poor working-class (Sam's assumption) girl's self-confidence... oooh, Sam couldn't wait for the revolution. Frodo felt a little of the same. He didn't notice that she was (to a straight man) beautiful, but he felt her shame and knew how unneeded it was. He looked at Sam. "Don't look at me," he whispered. "I know as well as you that Bilbo should not have said such things." Loudly he said to Spiegel: "Look, old Bilbo is my uncle. I know him better than you do. He is full of bovine refuse. You should have heard those language lessons I took from him... you are not fat!" "Yes, we isss!" "No, you issn't! Here, have a hamburger!" He handed her a quarter-pounder with extra cheese. Doubtfully she took it, and nibbled a single crumb. "Ack ack phbttt! Trying to poison poor Gulible they are, dumb menfolk! Grease and fat, Spiegel cannot eat that!" "Come on," said Sam. "Try it. Give it a chance. Frodo is right: you are thin as a twig. Ten of those would do you good - ten each day for a month. We aren't teasing you!" "Yes you isss! Baggins said we iss fat as a hippo in a butter factory." "And another Baggins says otherwise," Frodo replied. "Why believe in him and not me?" "Becaussse he isss straight!" The look in Spiegel's beautiful eyes was venomous. Frodo shrugged, not noticing Sam opening his mouth and shutting it again. "Have it your way then, fatso," he said. This being the last restaurant for several days, the hobbits bought several packs of vacuum-packed hamburgers in a nearby supermarket. Then they started towards the marshes. At first they followed a tourist trail, but this soon veered aside, and they left it. They were in the marshes proper. "I have been here before," said Spiegel. "Hobbit-mens should be careful. There are alligators here. They don't touch me, because I'm too fat: I bet their cholesterol count soars at the sight of us." "No, they won't eat you because gators eat meat and not sticks and wire with blobs of fat on them," replied Frodo, without noticing the hurt look that this produced in Spiegel. Sam noticed, and his hate against the upper classes increased another notch. Some time later, when Frodo was passing hraka behind a bush, Sam tried again to explain to Spiegel that she was not fat. "Have you heard about anorexia?" he asked. "Yes. What's that got to do with us? Only thin people who *think* that they are fat have it!" "Have you looked in a mirror?" "No! We hates mirrors!" "You cannot honestly think that you are fatter than me and Frodo!" "Yes we are! Look!" She grabbed a fold of skin between two fingers. "Look like the Michelin man, we does! Like a stack of car tyres. Truck tyres!" "There is no fat inside that fold," said Sam. Spiegel turned away and would not answer. "Spiegel, why do you always refer to yourself as 'we'?" "Because we are so fat that if ever we went by plane, we would have to buy two or three tickets. And boy would we be in trouble if they were not adjacent! Baggins said so." "How would that old coot know? He's so rowdy once he's had a drink or two that every airline has him on a file - they refuse him whenever he tries to buy a ticket. They've had enough of /him/!" At nightfall they made camp. Frodo took out the gas burner and inexpertly lit it. Then he put a grille inside a thick-walled pot and put three hamburgers on it. Soon a somewhat delicious smell spread. For a while Sam tried to convince Spiegel that she was not fat, when suddenly she relented. With a look of terrible revulsion on her face, she wolfed down a hamburger, and then two pounds of lettuce. Sam whispered to her: "And please don't sneak off and throw that up!" After a moment of thought he added: "You won't be a good girl if you do." Spiegel, the eyes of her mind upon Frodo's camera, sighed and curled up to sleep. Some hours later she woke up, finding the camera placed next to her. The other two were gone, but from behind some densely leaved bushes came a quiet, rythmic rustling. Heart pounding, she grabbed the camera and sneaked over to the bushes. Quietly she peered over them, then put the camera to her eye. And then lowered it with a sigh. Midnight and a low half moon are not the perfect lighting for photographing without a flashlight, and /that/ was not an option. The next morning Sam asked her if she had got a few good snaps that might be used for some revolutionarily useful extortion. She returned a brief explanation. Sam thought for a moment. "Hey, Frodo. I think we should stop travelling during the day. Spiegel says there are evil things about. Evil things with eyes, and they report to Minas Tirith(tm). It will go ill with your Núrnenshire hovel, er, estate if *they* get their hands on that deed." Frodo, by now trusting Sam totally, made no objections. Sometime later that day, Spiegel got some interesting snaps among those bushes. That evening Sam lit the gasfire. "Won't those Minas Tirith(tm)-spies see that gaslight?" asked Frodo. "No," replied Spiegel. "For one thing, it is difficult to see that little flame in broad daylight. For another, marsh-lights can often be seen around here." Frodo looked at Sam, who nodded. A little later, Sam convinced Spiegel to have another hamburger, with extra cheese. They were out of green stuff, but she ate tomato slices instead. Two pounds of them. At nightfall they packed their things and got started. "What did you do *that* for?!" Sam's voice was angry. "Had a change of preferences? Suddenly like women again now?" Frodo chuckled. "Not in a lifetime. Just wanted to see that lard wobble." "Spiegel, don't pay that rich slavemaster no attention! Just like his *father* Bilbo, he is. It's just one of them simian alpha-male power-displays that that family is so fond of. They'll be up against the wall the both of them one of these days, and you can be in the firing squad!" The girl, sobbing quietly, threw him a glance but said nothing. The night was dark, but not altogether so. Civilization was far behind them, and they were in a trackless land. But miles and miles away the lights of civilization were strong enough to illuminate the tops of the reeds even here: billboards, headlights, roving searchlights reflected off the clouds. As they walked deeper into the marshes, further from these lightsources, the night became darker. Then the sky turned pale in the east, and the mountain fences of Mordor glittering with pinpoint lights showed faintly against it. They made camp next to a wide mere. Now they were deep into the marshes. The ground was wet. The rustling reeds were tall, but there were no bushes. To Sam's relief, Frodo judged that they could have no privacy from Spiegel here. "The reeds would rustle too much," he whispered coyly. "They would sway like clusters of flagpoles in a gale. They would..." Sam closed his ears to the rest. Twice that day they cooked hamburgers. During their first meal, Sam coaxed Spiegel into having an entire quarter-pounder. "She already looks healthier," whispered Frodo to Sam. "Yes, really swelling," he added more loudly. Spiegel maintained a stony look. At their second meal they had to go without any vegetable stuff - she had eaten their onions, a whole pound of them, and her breath was not very nice for a while. More than once that day she had had the screaming hrakas. Sam failed to convince her to have a second burger in lieu of the vegetables that she had followed up her previous three burgers with. At nightfall they set out. Suddenly they stopped and shrank. It was foggy. Out of the air came two distant voices. /"...but honey..." "You are *not* killing that fine man, hear? Such a handsome, fine, strong, noble, handsome man! I saw him in the trailer. I think it was him anyway." "But I did kill him!" "He was not last seen dead!" "But my plotline demands that he be dead! It's my story after all!" "And this is my skillet!" / /"Ow! You silly old crone..." / /"Say it! Say he'll return to the story!" / /"Okay, okay, hon..." "Letting that fine man die and the miserable creature that stabbed him live..."/ The two voices trailed off. Frodo shivered. "What was that? I feel a strange and uncanny foreboding." The other two shrugged. Then the trio continued onwards through the marshes. "Aaah!!" Frodo's panicky shriek rang through the night. The other two turned like tops to face him. "There is a dead man! A dead man in the water! With weeds in his hair!" He was staring into a wide pool with several marshlights shining near the bank where he was standing. "That's strange," replied Spiegel, approaching him with apprehension. Sam cast a look at the dimly lit figure. "It's the corpse of a man alright. C'mon. He's nothing to do with us. Why haven't the alligators got him?" "It looks like..." Frodo muttered to himself, unable to extricate himself from the sight. He bent down closer to the corpse. With a splash a strong arm shot out of the water. Before anyone could react, Frodo was grabbed by the tunic, dragged into the water, and a shadow rose up out of it and pinned the wildly thrashing hobbit to the muddy bottom. A mad fierce gleam was in his eyes. The marshlights shone like Griswold Christmas lights. It was the man in the water, and he was alive! "Boromir(tm)! Boromir(tm)!" cried Sam. "You're alive! But I saw him kill you!" Boromir(tm) did not reply, until Sam reached out from the bank and grabbed him by the shoulder. Then he pushed Sam back with one hand, still holding Frodo down with the other. "Yes!" he cried. "That he tried! First he will take the Ring to the enemy who would devour us all, land and *slaves* being his promised wages, and then he tries to kill me! And *then* the others lash me to a raft and send me down the Rauros falls!" Frodo's struggling grew weaker. A burst of bubbles came from his mouth. Then Boromir(tm) drew his sword and pierced the drowning hobbit through the chest, to the hilt. At dawn they stood on the bank of the little lake in the middle of the marshes, not watching the feast of the alligators. On the ground lay pieces of wet confetti. "Lies," said Boromir, (tm) no longer, as he cast down the last bits of paper. They looked like chads. "Lies of Tyrannosauron and of El Rond. And this," he fingered the Ring, "goes straight into the fire. To Mount Viagra! It is an instrument of oppression. Are you with me, Sam, revolutionary Sam?" Pointing at the red froth of the alligators: "Is something like this not what you dreamed of all the time? *I* noticed the razor blade in his eggs!" "You...you're the son of the Steward," said Sam. "Yes, I can't say that I disapprove. Except for the signs at the tourist trails about not feeding the litigators. But *you*?" Boromir sighed. "I was always secretly uneasy about the corporate-feudal oppression that my family inflicts on the people. Then that little brat put his sword in me. I had drawn sword against him a few moments before, I must admit..." "I noticed." "Oh did you? Well, that opened my stomach. But what *really* opened my *eyes* was what happened after. Bleeding like a pig I fought against orcs, and they could not stand against me. They clove my horn, but they couldn't touch me! The survivours ran off, and I believe Lego-lass and Giggly had their share of them. If orcs it was: there was a strange metallic gleam on them that was not armour. They didn't bleed much when I made great gashes in them with my sword, and what little blood came was black. Orc blood is as red as ours... but I fell exhausted with the wound that Frodo had given me. And then... and then..." Greater rage gleamed in his eyes. "Aragon pretended that I was dead. He questioned me, and when Giggly and Lego-lass came, he lied and said that I was dead. The other two believed him, even though I spoke and protested! They knocked me cold, and when I woke up I was tied to a raft and drifting off the Rauros. How I survived I cannot explain. The fall into the churning bowl broke the raft into nearly sawdust, and I was free. I was unable to swim, but grabbed a larger piece of wood and drifted down the river, until I was washed up on the east bank. That Aragon is so wimpy at the sight of blood that he had closed my stomach-wound crudely with some rings from the chain-mail of an orc (or whatever it was), and that saved my life then. Otherwise my intestines would be trailing the length of the river by now --- I lay on the riverbank. Happily the sword-thrust had gone in at the diaphragm, and missed the gullet and lungs and heart and intestines and that. That Frodo was tall for a hobbit, and I had been bending forward. It was the dirt on the blade that nearly finished me off, not so much the wound itself. An old woman found me and carried me into a hut. She saved my life. She didn't speak. She kept a large and battered skillet in her hand most of the time... Then when I woke up and knew that I was going to live, the hut, the bed and the woman were gone. I lay on fronds near the river. I was dizzy with fever, even when I became stronger, and I staggered blindly for days, until I stumbled into that pool there. I nearly drowned. I put my head on a submerged tussock so that my nose just stuck out of the water. Then I look up, and guess who is looking down at me! And the rest you saw with your own eyes. Who is *she*?" "This," said Sam indignantly, "is Spiegel, nicknamed Gulible. She was convinced by *Bilbo* *Baggins* when she was little that she was fat and ugly. She's been an anorexic ever since." Spiegel looked at Boromir with shy yet gleaming eyes. "And that Frodo didn't help much either!" Boromir looked at her with sudden sympathy. "Ugly? You're not ugly!" "Yess..." There was a hesitant note in the thin girl's voice. "Come on, girl. I'm partial to men myself, and shall not deny it; but I know when a woman is pretty and when she is ugly. And you are pretty." The light dimmed in Spiegel's green eyes, but was not altogether extinguished. "Frodo was gay himself," said Sam, grabbing Frodo's camera and tearing out the film. There was no need for it anymore. "Was he now?" replied Boromir. "Well, an asshole is an asshole, no matter his taste in holes!" Two days later they emerged from the marshes. They were out of hamburgers, for Boromir was a large man, recovering from a wound and an illness, and Spiegel was eating much too, ballooning out towards a normal size. This was land that was largely controlled by Sauron (whom they wanted to avoid), but Gondor(tm)'s agents walked among the Mordorian neon glitz, disguised as tourists. They were now the enemies of the eldest son of the Steward, and would remain so even if Aragon toppled Boromir's father from power. Accordingly Sam and Boromir didn't dare show themselves, but sent Spiegel to do some shopping. By nightfall they had a cold meal in a little dell. The ground was covered in more than a foot of garbage thrown by careless tourists. After the meal they started walking towards the Gates of Mordor, brightly lit by megawatts of neonlights. Spiegel walked between the two men, the tall Boromir and the her-sized Sam. She was happy. For the first time since she was ten she smiled and was happy. Sam thought her dazzling. She told them: "Between you you have cured me of my anorexia." "Glad to hear it, dear." "Only one thing mars my happiness. Well, two things. One of you is gay, and the other has a fiancée. I can't have neither of you." She giggled. Boromir sighed. "Well, it can't be helped. But you are a pretty girl. You should have your pick of men, once we are in decent lands." "I have never *been* to decent lands," she replied. *************************************************************** I know that the death of Frodo has the appearance of a drastic change in the plot. But it isn't really. I have merely replaced him with Boromir. And the Boromir of the etext is (unless someone alters him later) as dedicated to the quest of destroying the Ring as Frodo is in the original text. And besides, if someone wants to resurrect him, I can see at least two easy ways: one is the singular toughness of hobbits and the professional courtesy among litigators and loansharks. And perhaps Boromir has a sword now broken a foot below the hilt, after his little journey down the Rauros falls... as for the other method, even in the original Gandalf was killed and then deus ex machinaed back into the fray. In the etext, I have just dea ex machinaed Boromir back. Corvus.