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[ringwinner]

The terrible thing about getting ready to die, Bilbo thought, is that there is really no good way to go about it on short notice. It was all very well to prepare for it in old age, tucked up snug and safe in one's own hobbit hole, but it was quite another to be faced with death on a battlefield where even a magic ring is of little practical use

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[goingtodorking]

Karen and ShorHor stand and watch him from a safe distance. He's been lying there for a while and he's been wearing a helmet. She takes off her pink plastic sunglasses and squints at him, shading her eyes with one hand.

"You're not dead," she calls.
She's only trying to be helpful.

[ringwinner]

"Yes, thank you, I think I've managed to puzzle that out for mys..." Bilbo paused and gaped for rather longer than was really polite. It was one thing to suddenly go from the middle of a battle to a forest, but quite another to go from the middle of a battle to a forest and find a girl and a very small horse staring at you.

"You can see me?"

[goingtodorking]

"No," deadpans Karen, both eyebrows raised. "I'm talking to you even thought I don't know whether you're there or not." She wishes that Jack was here - he'd think this was really funny.

"ShorHor can see you too."

[ringwinner]

He was still wearing his ring, though he almost thought he wouldn't be until he looked down at it. It had never not worked before, and the fact that it wasn't working now did nothing but bewilder poor Bilbo. "I'm sorry, but what is a... a ShorHor?"

[goingtodorking]

"He is," says Karen, nodding at the very, very small horse at her side. "ShorHor. It's short for Short Horse. Because he's a very short horse."

She says all of this like it's obvious.

[ringwinner]

"Oh. Of course. I should have realized that earlier." Bilbo looked uncertainly between the girl and her very short horse. It had been a very trying and befuddling day.

"Is this all a dream? Are either of you going to sprout wings or extra limbs or turn into dwarves and start smashing up my crockery?"

[goingtodorking]

"A lot of people don't realise it. Because grown-ups are stupid," she says, wandering a little closer. ShorHor decides to keep his distance. "I don't think we are. We haven't been dreams before."

She tilts her head.

"How old are you?"

[ringwinner]

"Fifty-one," he answered, unfortunately looking even more confused than he was before. There were many questions he wanted to ask, but none of them had to do with anyone's age. "I'm sorry, but you wouldn't happen to know where we are, would you?"

[goingtodorking]

"But you're so small!" she says, looking delighted. She raises both eyebrows and studies him for a moment. "You're tiny!"

She manages to gather herself together.

"You're on Tabula Rasa. It's a magic island. We have dinosaurs."

[ringwinner]

Though the answer would most likely come back to haunt him later, for the moment Bilbo neglected to inquire as to what a dinosaur was. Perhaps it was all for the best though, as finding out that he had gone from a mountain lately inhabited by one enormous lizard to an island inhabited by many of them may have been a bit more than the hobbit could have decently handled.

"I am a hobbit, thank you, and quite an average one when it comes to size." He did his best not to look too terribly disappointed. "I take it you don't have many hobbits here?"

[goingtodorking]

"Hobbits!" says Karen, and then she turns to Shorhor. "Like in Lord of the Rings." She supplies that much in a stage whisper and then turns back to him, setting her hands on her hips.

"Do you want to go to the compound?"

[ringwinner]

"I'm not sure..." Bilbo was, I regret to say, at something of a loss. He had spent so much time recently with dwarves and wizards and elves, that he had almost quite forgotten how to deal with children. It was a bit difficult for him to even properly think of the girl as a child, after all, she was taller than he was!

"What is the compound exactly?"

[goingtodorking]

"It's where everything is," explains Karen. She might only be nine but she's given this talk almost as much as anyone else on the island. "It's where all the stuff is. The offices and the kitchen and there are beds and things. I've got my own hut but a lot of people live in there."

[ringwinner]

"But none of them are hobbits," Bilbo remarked with a glum expression. The child seemed to be a Man, which was quite all right, he supposed, but a part of him was getting quite tired of being the only hobbit wherever he happened to go. "There wouldn't happen to be any dwarves at this compound, would there? Or a wizard perhaps?"

[goingtodorking]

"Harry Potter's here," she says, still with her hands on her hips. She's starting to feel a bit sorry for him. "He's a wizard. So...if you need one. He might be able to help you. Or Hermione. She's cooler." She thinks about it for a second. "And there's always the Doctor. He can fix anything. He's got a sonic screwdriver."

[ringwinner]

The hobbit thought over her words carefully. He had heard Gandalf mention other wizards several times, but he did think that he would have remembered if one of them had been named Harry. "Oh. I don't think I need a doctor though. I'm quite fine really, just a slight bump on the head."