B2MeM Challenge: Crossover 1: N-41, "with mythology"
Format: Fable
Title: Why Hobbits Don't Like Heights
Genre: Crossover, Myth
Rating: G
Warnings: N /A
Characters: OCs
Pairings: N/A
Author's Notes: This is a hobbitified version of the myth of Icarus, with a somewhat happier ending…
Summary: Why hobbits don't like heights…

Buttercup was a hobbit lass who lived long, long ago, before hobbits came West over the Mountains to the Shire. She was not the oldest child in her large family, nor was she the youngest. She was right in the middle.

Now there were many mouths to feed in her family, and so she decided to go out and make her way into the world, so that they would have one less child to feed. She packed up all she had into a kerchief and set off down the road.

She left her village and went down to the next town, and there she met an Old Man. Now Men are peculiar things, but he needed someone to keep his house and help him with his projects. Now keeping house is a thing Buttercup knew well, and the wages he offered were good enough that she could send them to her family, and so she took the job.

Keeping his house was easy. She dusted and swept and cooked his meals and washed the dishes. But his projects were a different thing altogether. He wanted to make a carriage that would go without a horse; he wanted to harness the lightning.

But most of all he wanted to figure out how people could fly. This strange idea was funny enough to Buttercup—until she learned that he wanted her to be the one to do it.

"You are smaller and lighter than I am," he said, and she had to admit that was true.

"I am paying you very good wages," he said, and she had to admit this also was true.

"I can turn you out if you don't do it," he said, and knowing this was true, she agreed.

And so she found herself standing near a cliff with a huge wing-like device strapped to her back. It was tied to a large ball of cord which her master kept hold of, "For see," he said, "I will not risk you flying off and getting lost in the sky."

Buttercup thought, "How kind." But she did not say it aloud.

"Run!" he ordered.

And closing her eyes she ran towards the edge of the cliff, wondering what her parents would say to seeing her doing such a fool thing. Off the edge she ran, and to her surprise, it worked. She felt the wind come up under her and soon she was borne aloft. She could look down and see her master, running about the field near the cliff holding on to the string and letting more and more of it out, as she rose higher and higher. Soon he was only a tiny dot. But the winds were stronger, and she found herself being buffeted about. To her dismay, she suddenly felt the string go slack.

It was nearly dark now, and Buttercup was feeling frightened. How was she to get back to the ground? But as she blew about the sky willy-nilly, she heard a sound behind her.

"Whatever are you doing up here?" asked a kindly voice. A coach, drawn by six white horses drew abreast of her; it was driven by an old Man with a long white beard. She knew at once it was the Man-in-the-Moon. When she explained her predicament, he drew her into the coach and took her back down to the Earth.

She found her master standing in the field looking very dejected, and he looked even more so after the Man-in-the-Moon finished scolding him for putting her into a danger which he would not try himself.

As for Buttercup, she gave notice at once. Her master, now much chastised, paid her double wages. She tied them up in her kerchief and went back to her village and her family, who were much pleased both at her return and at her wages.

But her tale of what she had been through made her and all her family after resolve to keep their feet firmly planted on the ground.