#balinxreader

For your own sanity, you started to put your entry into this world far in the back of your mind.  

Though you still had a plethora of questions about why the flight of stairs marked “DO NOT ENTER” at the Halloween haunted house led you to good and bad fictional worlds (you couldn’t get out of King’s Landing fast enough! Stupid Joffrey was still alive!), you realized that understanding the details might scare you more than you could handle at this point.

You stepped into worlds one after the other like you were turning pages in a very thick storybook. Westeros, Neverland, and now, Middle Earth.

As fictional fate would have it, you were on the heels of the Company of Thorin Oakenshield.

Only Bilbo acknowledged you until he was rebuffed by both Thorin and Dwalin. A few days after that, Gandalf defied the two grouches and took it upon himself to hang back from the group to talk to you.

You told him your unusual tale, and he thought on it for a few minutes as you walked the dusty road together.

“You would be wise to steer clear of anything presenting itself as ‘haunted,’ ” Gandalf said gravely.

“It was supposed to be fun.”

“There are harmless tricksters, and then there are demons. In taking those stairs, you stumbled upon the latter. How else would you explain encountering that malicious King Joffrey you mentioned?”

No argument there. No more haunted anything.

“About your predicament,” Gandalf said, “I can send word to the head of my order asking how to return you, but it will take a few weeks, I’m afraid.”

Weeks? It was like a punch to the gut, but what could you do? 

“I understand,” you said meekly.

“Now, onto another matter,” he said, first making sure the others weren’t within earshot before going on. “Why are there metal chains on your teeth?”

And that’s the question that moved your obsessive thoughts from the creepy stairs and world-jumping to what was supposed to happen the day after Halloween: finally getting your braces off.

The Nov. 1 appointment had been set for several weeks. You had even planned a little party to celebrate, and cleared your phone’s storage to handle a boatload of selfies and group shots with your friends.

You had the traditional kind of braces, with the brackets and wires. You explained to Gandalf what they were and how they worked.

Then you asked him not to tell the company about your teeth chains or where you came from. You were a strange enough bird to them; no need to make them any more suspicious of you than they already were.

After that conversation, when you weren’t creeping behind the group,  you dashed into every business you encountered in every little town, looking for a Middle Earth version of an orthodontist to remove your braces.

You were getting quite desperate. Of all things, you simply needed the normalcy of a dental visit, a reminder that you were still you.

But - and it should not have come as a surprise - no one knew how to help you, and actually looked at your corrective metalwork in fear.

Sitting behind a wide-trunked pine tree one late afternoon in a wood hissing with noisy insect life, about to eat a handful of blueberries, you suddenly heard a voice above you say, “don’t eat those, child!”

Your head jerked up to see the white-haired Dwarf named Balin standing over you, his eyes wide.

“Why not?” you asked, placing your berry-free hand in front of your mouth.

“Those are pokeberries. They’re poisonous.”

You gasped and threw them away from you. Terrific.

“Glad I came over,” he said.

“Yes, thanks. What brings you?” You were used to being avoided, not approached. Lowering your hand, you reminded yourself to keep your lips tight when you spoke, so you wouldn’t startle him - yet.

“Gandalf will be back in a bit, but he wanted me to tell you his friend Saruman had good news about getting you home, though it still won’t be as quick as you’d probably like, he said.”

Your heart leaped anyway at just hearing the word ‘home.’ Gandalf had found a way! 

“I’d be happy to give you some food and a mug of water,” Balin added, turning around to see if his leader was watching: he was. With disdain. 

Bilbo used to sneak you food but Thorin told him to stop doing that, as you might be a “spy.”

You stood. The top of Balin’s head came to your chin.

“Instead of food, good sir,” you said, “do you know someone who can get rid of these?” You stretched your mouth into an exaggerated smile, and Balin stumbled back.

“What in thunder are those?!” Balin asked, his voice rising.

“Braces. I need them to be taken off.”

“I’ll say!! Why are your teeth in torture devices?!!”

You shook your head. “No, no, you see, they straightened my crooked teeth. But now the job is done and I need to get them off.”

“Er, why not wait till you’re home, child? Didn’t someone there put them on?”

“Yes, but I don’t know when that will be. And without proper oral hygiene and all this harsh water I’ve been drinking, they’re really starting to bother me.“

He frowned as he stared at your mouth. Finally, he said he had an idea of someone who might be able to help, and that he’d be back. You leaned on your tree and waited, watching him return to camp and talk to Thorin.

And a few minutes later, who should stroll up but the company leader himself.

“You have metal on your teeth, spy?” he said, frowning harder at you than Balin did.

You straightened up quickly from your tree post and nodded, forcing yourself to talk through your onset of both jitters and irritation. “I’m not a spy, and yes, I have metal on my teeth that needs to be removed.”

“Stoop and open your mouth.”

You did as he barked, and he got so close to your mouth to peer inside that you actually felt like you were in Dr. Craig’s chair for a second.

Thorin backed up, and you straightened your legs.

“What else is there besides metal? A plaster of some sort?” he asked.

“Yes, exactly… sort of! Bonding cement.” You were so glad he got the gist. “In my land, the people who put these on and take them off are called orthodontists. Is there someone like that here?”

Thorin turned around and started walking off, toward camp.

“Stay there,” he said over his shoulder.

You returned to your tree lean, facing away from the company’s camp this time as you silently gave thanks. You were ecstatic  that even though Thorin was obviously still dubious of you, he was being speedy about summoning a professional. FINALLY! 

But after several minutes, Thorin came back with a small box of tools, accompanied only by Balin, Dwalin and Bilbo.

In each hand, Balin was holding buckets of very hot water from the nearby spring, boiled over the campfire. Anxious-looking Bilbo juggled several towels and a lantern, while Dwalin held a bottle of whiskey in one hand and in the other, a small bowl with a white blob in it: lard.

“Is this a cooking class?” you asked nervously. “Where is the orthodontist?”

“I am he. Sit on that stump,” Thorin said, gesturing toward the hunk of wood a couple of yards away.

“And here,” Dwalin said, handing you the whiskey. “Take a few swigs.”

“Wait a second,” you said, hyperventilating and backing away from the bottle. “You’re going to do it? Do you know what you’re doing? These are my teeth!”

“He’s worked as a blacksmith, child,” Balin said, setting the pails next to the stump.

“SO WHAT?”

“Metal is metal, spy. Sit down,” said Thorin.

 Dwalin set the lard on the ground to unscrew the whiskey bottle top.

“I don’t drink.”

“Trust me,” Dwalin said, both of you looking at Thorin’s daunting “dental” tools, “you do today.”

You grabbed the bottle, trepidatiously took a few swallows of the burning whiskey and coughed like you were dying before thrusting the bottle back in Dwalin's hands. Then you started toward the stump, wringing your hands the whole way.

You would gladly forget what happened over the next two hours if you could.

Dwalin sloppily applied the nasty lard on your teeth, trying to help loosen the bonding agent. Thorin sterilized his rudimentary tools in one pail of hot water, and at several points during the arduous procedure, he had you lean over the other bucket, teeth bared like a rabid animal, and a towel tented over your head in an effort to further weaken the stubborn cement.

As a side benefit, the steam opened your facial pores nicely.

The rest of the company left camp but stayed back, gathered in a circle, craning their necks to see what was going on. 

Throughout the ordeal, Bilbo held the lantern up in one hand and with the other  patted your shoulder reassuringly. When he got in Thorin’s way, he handed Balin the lantern and went to your leaning tree, calling out, “You’re doing great!” while you howled.

“Ihyooo weh ma tee ow, ah wih kihyooo!!!” you growled to Thorin, your head tilted back as far as you could go while Thorin twisted and bent your wires with two different tools.

“What was that gibberish?!” Dwalin roared, not expecting an answer.

Thorin interpreted as he worked: “The spy said, ‘if you rip my teeth out, I will kill you.’ ”

“I NUH UH PY!!!”

“Sure, you’re not a spy. Now stay still!”

“I SEH, I NUH UH PY!!!”

“Quiet.”

About 30,000 tugs later, Thorin was done.

Your brackets and wires and the peeled off adhesive lay in a small pile on one of the towels that Bilbo brought. With another, he gently wiped your face and told you how brave you were. Everyone else was busy cleaning up.

Your neck, cheeks, gums and tongue were sore, as if you’d been repeatedly pummeled. Your teeth felt gritty in some spots, slimy in others. You used one untouched end of the face towel to run along each pearly white row. 

Even though you were applying very soft pressure, it hurt. But you didn’t want to imagine how bad the pain would have been without the whiskey. 

Delving into your back pocket, you brought out your phone and turned it on for the first time in weeks. 

“Another torture device?” Balin asked, staring at the phone curiously, along with the others.

You laughed. It was the most accurate description of a phone you’d ever heard.

You had shut the phone down at 40 percent battery power after it became painfully apparent that Verizon didn’t have service in fictional worlds.

Switching to your camera, you looked at your wonderfully straight teeth, smiling like there was no tomorrow.

“Ok, time to celebrate!” you announced happily, leaping from the stump. “Braces are off, and I’m going back home…someday soon, I hope. Gather ‘round the torture device!”

Bewildered, everyone, including the onlookers, did as you asked, with Thorin standing beside you.

“We’ll have to do this a few times to get everyone,” you advised. 

“Do what?” was the murmur.

They all had a thousand questions about the unusual rectangle in your hands, which you promised you’d answer later. You raised the camera up high and told them to smile. They didn’t ask why they were grinning at a flattened box with a looking glass in it; they just obliged.

At the last second, before you pressed the button, you leaned over, pecked Thorin’s cheek and whispered “thank you, doctor.”

His face heated up to the boiling point as you snapped the photo.