Disclaimers: I do not own The Lord of the Rings. In fact, the lease on Tolkien's intellectual property is so steep that I can't even afford to pay the rent. I am, in effect, a literary squatter. Please don't call the Thought Police on me—they've had to evict me three times already and I sense they're getting tired of it.

A/n: Move over, IHOP: the Waffle is back in the house!

(winces) Wow, that line sounded a lot better in my head than it looks on paper. At any rate—hello, everyone! Sorry I haven't updated anything in an Age and a half; the tyrannies of Real Life have schemed rather mercilessly against my writing habits. In order to tide you over, however, and give proof of my continued existence, here's a fic I whipped up a few nights ago while I was "studying" for "Algebra". I pin the inspiration for this somewhere between Van Helsing and Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which really says it all, I think. Enjoy!

Night fell swiftly in Ithilien, the thick obscuring foliage of the brown-leafed trees conspiring against the swiftly-shortening autumnal days to cast the entirety of the forested realm in premature darkness. The moon had risen early that night, a bright and luminous eye winking against the ink-dark sky, but swirling black clouds from the west had since blotted it out, choking it with misted fingers. The last vestiges of silvered light cast strange, mottled shadows on the ground below, shifting and changing with the rustling trees, flitting like pale misshapen ghosts across the forest floor. The shivering of near-dead leaves was the only sound to be heard on this evening; the forest creatures and birds of the night seemed to have been struck dumb, even the fiercest predators fallen prey to the near-palpable pall of fear that had descended over the land.

Only one shadowy figure moved between the silver-trunked trees; navigating the suffocating darkness with instinctual ease, it moved in utter silence, not a twig or a frail-skeletoned autumn leaf stirring in its wake. With the shape of a man and the stealth of a beast, the figure did not need to use its eyes to penetrate the gloom; it could smell the very presence of the trees, could taste the salt of the distant Sea on the changing breeze. The figure was invincible in the comforting shadow of the night, and no living creature could escape detection under the scrutiny of the figure's far-reaching senses. The shadowy figure's mind was bent on but one purpose this night, its thoughts on one goal: survival. Sustenance. Blood.

Silently still, the shadowy figure proceeded onwards, guided by the keenness of its razor-sharp instincts, and with an ease that almost defied all natural law it

Thunk.

"OUCH! Who put that goddamn (censored)ing tree there?!"

From then on, the shadowy figure began wearing night-vision goggles.