This story was written for Marigold´s Challenge 42

The Challenge was to write a story that includes a fight. There was one character of choice and a list of opponents given from which one could choose.

Character of choice: Pippin

Given list of possible opponents: Gandalf, Frodo, Gimli and/or Arwen

Chosen opponent: Frodo

Beta by: Marigold J Thanks!

Ages: Pippin 20, Merry 28, Frodo 42, Ragger 25, Perry 24, D 23, Red 24

          ( 13, 18, 26, 16, 15, 14.5, 15 in Human years)

Tookland Trolls

Prologue:

Life is a labyrinth with infinite possibilities. A crown of a tree, as big as the universe, with millions of junctions, that as well again branch out multiple thousand times.

Some ways lead into dead ends, others into ruin and then again others into luck.

Every made decision is another branch in the crown of the tree. Sometimes we have to try to keep our balance on very thin branches and sometimes we even get lost, when the foliage takes our sight away.

Some fall and are lost forever. Others are safely caught and find themselves back on their right path.

Some crowns wear dark green leaves. They contain more wrong ways, temptations and dangers than others. Shaken by the storm, hurt by the axe, their songs of sorrow getting carried on the windy waves of the stormy air.

Other crowns wear a new dress of linden green spring leaves. Fresh and young, born under sunshine, stroked by the warm hands of love.

Middle-earth was strewn with dark green trees, with some smaller linden green dots in between, however the bigger they grew, the darker they started to become.

But there was one little piece of land that was striking. It shone like a diamond in the sun, because all of the trees there were linden green and they were not shaken by storm. A soft breeze of wind ran through the leaves and let them dance and the friendly, tickling sunbeams elicited an hearty laugher from them.

Sometimes there also was rain, but the drops pearled gently off the leaves and only seldom one would get hurt.

A little bird was sitting in every tree and leading the souls on longs ways up the crown.

Sometimes however it could happen that the souls lost the way, but mostly they found the way to the bird back quickly.

But also here, even very seldom, it did happen, that a soul went so far away in the wrong direction, that the whistling of the bird became only a weak echo of memory in the distance.

Pippin Took was an especially bright, little tree, with a lot of many branched out boughts and a funny, colourful birdy.

But one day it happened, that a black raven landed in the crown. His loud croaking drowned out the pleasant sing-song of the multi coloured bird and opened closed gates to forbidden ways.

That raven was not the only one that had come to the linden green, sunny land. Four of his brothers were flying ahead of him, accompanied by dark clouds that shadowed the sun behind them.