Totally Normal (A Hobbit story)

Well, We Can't Have Faith For Everybody

And all the while the gaggle of headless chickens ran around looking for the cobblestone road, the path itself was in actuality only on the other side of a mini hill, just out of their field of view. They had unknowingly left it some time before, and the hallucinations taking its sweet time to long enough for them to see it.

~

So for a good long while, The Company wandered. The forest's dark influences had begun to affect them faster and faster as they staggered about.

Balin was shaking his head. "I don't remember this place before. None of it's familiar."

"It's got to be here." Dori insisted.

"What hour is it?" Thorin uttered.

"I do not know." Dwalin replied. "I don't even know what day it is."

Thorin- with clenched fists, extended his arms out from either side of him and cried out, "Is there no end to this accursed place?"

On one of the many breaks they had taken to catch their breaths, Bilbo was seated on a small boulder and lazily and absentmindedly began plucking at a spiderweb that was spread from the ground and networked into the trees. The silk fibres vibrated and continued through the various linked tendrils and far off into the forest. With fascination, Bilbo plucked at the web again, and the vibrations shot through the webs again.

But then he began to hear a strange whispering noise.

Looking into the branches above him, he could not see anyone or anything specifically, but he could definitely feel eyes on him.

He glanced over at Tanya, who was brushing her fingers through the tangles in her hair.

"Do you ever get the sense that you're being stalked, but you can't see who it is?" He asked her.

And she turned to him and made a face like he had asked the dumbest question in the world. After a moment of awkward silent staring, she replied, "I'm a girl."

~

As they continued walking; strange visions and illusions began to cloud Bilbo's head; such as when he looked down at his feet and saw himself walking backwards.

Or when he looked back at Dori who was shuffling behind him, and he saw himself staring back.

Or when he glanced around looking for Tanya and her hair had turned the same ghostly colour of blue as the forest surrounding them.

And then when she turned to look at him; her eyes had gone black, and her mouth opened into a grin- to reveal every one of her teeth had come to a sharp, fanged point.

But then his sight flashed back to normal and revealed Tanya only looking forward- having never even glanced at him in the first place, as lost and dazed as the rest of them.

His entire vision began shifting and tilting.

~

In an instant, Bilbo realised he was laying on the ground, with his arm underneath him like a pillow.

And suddenly he was remembering how they had made camp in a grove of fallen trees hours before, to get some rest.

Most of the company was still and quiet- only a handful of them actually asleep.