Never Back Again // The Hobbit, Fili X OC

Friendship through vandalism

"You are making a terrible mistake."

Her lord and savior Bilbo Baggins really timed that perfectly. The two trolls in the background stopped arguing about how they were going to eat the dwarves, and the third troll too close for comfort stopped in its tracks. The hobbit drew their attention to himself, giving Emma the opportunity to escape.

She saw the grubby four fingered hand being pulled back, and heard the heavy footsteps getting farther away. She risked a peek over the tree trunk and saw that Bilbo had somehow managed to get himself upright and was hopping along in his burlap sack, spinning some grand tale about the secrets to cooking dwarf. The trolls were captivated by his words, eagerly listening to his advice. This was her chance to slip away, and she snuck over to hide behind a boulder, allowing her to better observe the behavior of their gracious hosts.

The two who previously argued with each other asked more about Bilbo's expertise on herbs while absentmindedly spinning the dwarven spit above the fire. The last one was still a bit on edge, she noted, constantly looking back to the log where she almost got caught. He was probably their leader, or at least the one with the most say between them. A bit more intelligent than the other two, she mused. Not that that said much, he was still about as smart as a cow with a concussion, mind you. He was actually so stupid that her plan might just work.

With the dwarves incapacitated and Bilbo quickly running out of excuses, it was now her turn to do something. She made sure that everything was in place, running the plan through her head one last time, before confidently stepping out from behind the boulder, spinning her revolver around her finger for extra dramatic effect.

"He's right, you know." Her loud voice laces with easy confidence caught the attention of not only the trolls but also the dwarves. Someone yelled at her to get away before it was too late, and one of the trolls manning the spit jumped over towards her, trying to grab her by the waist.

She sidestepped out of the way and kept talking as if nothing happened, keeping confidence was the key to success. "You really are doing yourself a disservice by roasting them like this." Her words were either distracting or intriguing enough to catch their attention, as no other attempt to grab her was made.

"An' what do you know about cooking dwarf?" one of them asked suspiciously.

She eyed the spit up and down, as if inspecting it thoroughly. "I know more than you from the looks of it." As she talked, she kept slowly moving towards the pile of dwarves in the sacks. "But I am nothing if not generous, and I will gladly share what I know with you fine gentlemen." She had some experience as a con artist under her belt and these were by far the easiest victims. Just some smooth words and an easy smile and they already hung on to her every word.

She continued, improvising on the story as she went, "You went through so much effort to catch these dwarves, it would be such a shame if you didn't cook them to the best of your ability, don't you think?" The shouts of protest from the company did nothing but make her story more believable to the trolls who carefully considered what she said.

The leader troll nodded at her to go on, and she told them that marinating would be their best option. When one of them argued that he had eaten raw dwarf before without any issue, Emma was quick to interrupt. "If they would taste fine like that, just imagine how good they'd taste if you put a bit more effort into preparing 'em." As she spoke, she gestured around animatedly drawing everyone's attention away from what she was truly doing.

Her words certainly got them thinking, but she still needed to cross half of the camp. Stepping up her game, she started ranting more excitedly than ever, the trolls mistaking her carefully crafted lies for genuine excitement. She threw in some fake background story about how she met a famous chef from Austin once who taught her all the best ways of preparing different types of meat. Her gestures became grander, and still no one noticed that she was secretly positioning the knife she had hidden in her sleeve.