Loyalty, Honor, and a Willing Heart

Chapter 35 - The Storm Approaches

Wolfram woke up to see his first impression was true. His sister was now black-haired and had pointed ears; her oldest daughter had grown a side-beard and shrunken almost one foot, and the youngest had hairy feet and was a bit more than three feet tall. A solicitous Bombur handled him a cup of water and left the room, while he sat and tried to shake the dizziness out of his head.

“What, in name of goodness, is happening here?”

“Welcome to Erebor, my brother! And what a lucky meeting, indeed!”

“Sister! Girls! You are alive! I found you! I was so afraid I would never find you again! What happened? Why didn’t you take your cell phones with you? I’ve got almost crazy not having means to contact you!”

“Why would we carry extra weight if we were going to a park where there would be no network?”

The man shook his head at this and the women condensed the story for it not to take too long, and as they spoke it was becoming clear Wolfram’s memory had the same blockage they had – he remembered things that already had come to be, but had no hint of the future.

“Vinnie warned me that some Gates have this effect, some faster, some slower, so this is not completely unexpected.”

“You say for yourself, brother! Who is this Vinnie?”

“A friend of mine from NerdNet who helped me to get here.”

“What is NerdNet?”

“A bunch of friends that have, huh, some knowledge about weird things, so to say.”

“I never heard about them! Why didn’t you tell me about this NerdNet stuff? Why didn’t I ever hear about it?”

“You are not nerd enough, dear!”

“I’ll take this as an insult!”

“Usually, it is not you that hear about the NerdNet, it is the NerdNet that finds you.” His enigmatic smile was priceless. “Well, when I found out you had taken the enchanted map, I put all efforts in finding another Gate and rescue you; I had a lot of help.”

“So you knew what this map could do? And left it on the table like any crap of paper?”

“Who would imagine someone would take it?”

An uncomfortable silence fell on them as they glanced at Iris, who was suddenly interested in a certain curl of the hair on her left foot.

“Well, it doesn’t matter anymore, I found you, we can go home now.”

“What do you mean?”

“To go home. Back to our world. What’s the matter?”

“Ah, brother, I think we must make something clear first. All this time we spent here in Middle-Earth we have come to... we became very close to someones... if you take my meaning.”

“No, I don’t. What do you mean?”

“Me and Lily are compromised to certain dwarves. We will have our weddings in less than a year from now. We will not go back.”

“You what?”

“We will not go back. I’m betrothed to Kili...”

“What happened to your ‘out of business’ state?”

“...and Lily is Thorin’s bride. Or who do you think rescued him from gold sickness?”

Wolfram shook his head between his hands.

“I think I’ll faint again! This is most definitely interfering in other reality! The NerdNet guys will kill me, we have a compromise of non-interference!”