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"Howling ghosts they reappear in mountains that are stacked with fear," you sing loudly along with your iPod as it plays at an inadvisably loud volume in your car. The windows are cracked, letting in some of the cool fall air and letting out some of your noise pollution. The man in the cadillac next to you shoots you a stern glare, and you grin widely, beating the tempo on your steering wheel. "But you're a king and I'M A LIONHEART," you continue as the light changes to green. You hit the gas, eager to get home and not worried about facing the cops in this part of town. A few minutes and you'd be home in time to settle in with a microwaved dinner and watch the Order of Pheonix as it played in the ABC channel's Harry Potter marathon.
Ahead, the road narrowed from two lanes to one, making room for the trees to close in on either side. You floored it, pulling ahead of the cadillac with a cackle. "A lion heart," you hum a few times, falling into the automatic headspace of driving a familiar path, helped along by the repetition. Then. "HOWLING GHOSTS THEY REA--SHITTYFUCKINGSHIT!!" Figures poured out the trees into the road ahead of you, and you jerked the wheel to the right, sending your car directly into a ditch. There was a crunch and a loud squeal of brakes, a blowing horn, and you were left blinking dazedly at a deployed air bag wondering why your head and chest hurt. Remembering the people, you undo your seat belt and pull the handle to open your door. You climb out on shaky feet to find that there are new brake marks in the road, leading into the distance beyond the group of people, no doubt from the shitty cadillac driver as he apparently sped off into the distance without stopping to help.
You surveyed your car, which was miraculously mostly undamaged, the crunch being from it running over a young tree. The tree lost, and the majority of its body lay off to the side the trunk sitting lonely behind your left rear tire. You breathed a sigh of relief. Your boat of a car had survived with barely a scratch, and as long as you could back it out of the ditch you could continue home with no one knowing of this embarrassment but you and the crazy people in the road. Thinking of them flipped the switch of your adrenaline fueled emotions from 'thank god i survived' to 'Those absolute fucktards'.
You turned, only to feel your rage increase as you realized that the group consisted of a group of grown ass men (judging by the real looking beards) cosplaying as characters from Tolkein's Hobbit. "Don't you fucking retards know better than to run out into the middle of a fucking road?!" you shouted as you climbed up out of the ditch. Your chest throbbed whenever you moved your shoulders, no doubt forming a bruise imprint of the seatbelt as you spoke, and your head spun a bit as it adjusted to the small change in altitude. You paused, trying to stop the road from swaying back and forth.
"Ma'am?" one of them asked hesitantly, and you put a hand to your head. It came away red.
"Get out of the way!" one of them said loudly, pushing to the others to the side. He waved an authentic looking ear horn in your face, asking you about symptoms. Holy crap, it was Oin.
"I can take care of my damn self," you muttered rebelliously, but lowered your head for him to look at it all the same. Who knew - maybe he was a doctor who'd chosen the medically skilled dwarf to cosplay as an inside joke.
"Ma'am," one of them said firmly, stepping forward. He had long black locks and a fluffy fur coat. You were guessing Thorin, though his face was broader than that one guy's in the movies and his muscles had followed along with the trend. "What was that beast you were riding?"
"Where are we located?" the Balin asked.
"What kind of road is this?"
"Is there a place to buy supplies nearby?"
"Do you know which way to Mirkwood?"
"Thorin got us lost."
"QUIET," the Thorin roared. The rest fell quiet with a few rebellious mutters.
"Lady," he started. "We can pay for any information you may offer." He withdrew a few of what looked like actual rubies from his pocket. You looked around into a series of faces, dressed and looking differently than you were familiar with but still recognizable, and felt your sense of disorientation increase.
"I am Thorin Oakenshield," the leader continued after a pause. "Son of Thrain, son of Thror, of the line of Durin. I assure you, we do not mean to harm you. Does your beast need medical care as well or is it well and truly dead?"
Your eyes narrowed. His rings weren't just heavy silver, but engraved with runes that actually reminded you of the khuzdul alphabet you'd seen once on tumblr. His coat was stained with mud and he had leaves in his hair. All of them smelled like dirt and sweat and people who had been in the woods without modern amenities for a long period of time. One or two of them still had weapons out, which you assume they had drawn to fight off the cars, and they looked sharp and worn with use. The Bombur had loose fabric bunching at his stomach, where he'd lost weight from not having access to as much food on the journey. The Ori had holes at the hem of his cotton shirt, where it may have torn from constant nervous tugging. Several had suspicious brown stains that looked almost red in some light, like blood, on various pieces of clothing.
One of them had abnormally large feet, and as you looked the huge toes wiggled and curled, and Bilbo began to look embarrassed. Those weren't prosthetics. Those were real feet. Those were real swords and real tattoos and real scars and probably even real rubies.
"Lady?" Thorin prompted again.
"You look nothing like the dude that played you in the movies," you told him faintly before surrendering to your head wound and passing out at his feet.