Heroes, not by choice

[WP] "So you're saying we should save this world that hates us and where every living thing in it wants us dead?", question the goblin. The orc shrugged, "Yeah, I mean we live in it too.". The goblin sighed, "When do we start?".

*****

Plenty has been written about the Fellowship of the Nine Companions tasked with helping Frodo, the Ring-bearer, destroy The One Ring in the volcanic fires that engulf Mount Doom. But few if any of Middle Earth are familiar with two unlikely heroes who played pivotal roles in saving Middle Earth from the Eye of Sauron. Their names were, Boglick and Arsehair.

Boglick used to be an elf in centuries past but as time raged forward an unkindness washed over his people during the most unkind times. He was changed and became what is commonly referred to as an Orc.

Boglick was a fairly normal Orc as far as orcs go. He was somewhat untidy, moderately cruel, and would scream and cheer whenever someone nearby tripped or accidentally impaled themselves. He did as an Orc must do but not much more.

One night, just before the start of an epic battle he was standing in a row of fellow Orc soldiers about to run head first into a calvary of oncoming humans when he got excited, screamed something unintelligible, and caught a spear in the chest, keeled over immediately, and died. Surprisingly, however, that was not the end of dear Boglick.

Hundreds of years passed and one warm putrid-hazy night a broody wizard named Saruman the White (his buddies called him Carumo) excavated Boglick and his old army battalion from deep within the earth where they had fallen all those hundreds of years past and then reanimated them. Boglick was just thankful the hole in his chest from the spear attack healed quite nicely.

Once again, Boglick found himself in the military. Having been in the military once before and having died in the way he did, that didn’t quite sit well with Boglick. He had had a bit of an existential crisis, a series of panic attacks, as was quite common among Orcs who had been reanimated. Not only do reanimated Orcs have to deal with the trauma of their death but then also the fact that hundreds of years have now passed and Middle Earth is still very much an unpleasant place. Very few creatures talk or write about the hardships of reanimation on Orcs but awareness is better and there are now support groups for that sort of thing.

Anyway, Boglick had decided to ditch Saruman the White and his army and go off and do something more rewarding on an experiential level. Perhaps live in a cabin in the woods and spend his days learning to make cheese wheels.

Running away was easy. He just walked into the woods and never looked back. Well, he looked back a few times but that was because Orcs scream and grunt and growl and exclaim a lot so he just had to make sure they weren’t making any of those noises in reaction to his leaving camp.

Life in the forest was a nice change of pace for Boglick and for most of his days and nights he had few complaints. But one particularly cold night during heavy rain, Boglick sought the comfort of a nearby and seemingly shallow cave. Unbeknownst to him, the cave was anything but shallow for it was, in fact, the entrance to a vast cave system that goblins (the love caves) had terraformed. Boglick inadvertently stood over a trapdoor whereupon he immediately fell through and slid down a rock slide and directly on top of the person of the other hero of our story - Arsehair.

Arsehair, ironically enough, was, at the time, also fleeing his people, having been fed up with always being stuck down in the murky caves, forced to run for his life every time some demon decided to go for a walk through his neighborhood cavern (which was surprisingly more often than one would think), and he just didn’t really much care for the general gloomy aesthetic that most goblins seemed to prefer. Arsehair was more of a sunny clear blue skies kind of goblin

“Oi,” said Arsehair. “Git yer frumpy trunky bloody blobby body off me, you corkless Orc!”

Boglick struggled up and removed himself from Arsehair squirming beneath.

“Sorry about vat,” Boglick said extending his hand to Arsehair.

While Boglick and Arsehair’s exchange was uneventful and rather polite as far as Goblin Orc conversations go, the two got to talking. They discovered they were both on the run and wanted the same things out of life - what was left of life anyway.

So Boglick and Arsehair partnered up. They became fast friends much like Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee. But one day they were forced to hide as one of Saruman’s Orc army marched past. The duo had overheard Saruman’s plans to take over the world, the desire to find the Halflings who were rumored to carry The One Ring, and how if those Halflings weren’t stopped, The One Ring and then The Eye of Sauron would be destroyed, bringing lots and lots of sunny clear blue skies to Middle Earth for as long as perhaps all eternity.

Boglick and Arsehair didn’t even have to share a word but knew what it was they must do. While they would have loved to have spent their days just trying to make the best of the remaining days they thought about what really mattered and so without even saying a word they turned, looked at each other, and gave one another determined head nods. Boglick and Arsehair would attempt to help these Halflings no matter the cost.

Now, it must be stated here that while the efforts of the Halflings and the Fellowship of the Nine were instrumental in saving Middle Earth the problem with history is that someone, usually the victors or someone who the victors allow to function as a historian, is responsible for transmitting facts about any given event. And, unfortunately, while I do greatly admire the efforts of Bilbo Baggins's memoirs to recount the adventures of his youth, the problem here is that, well, to put it quite bluntly, they were a pack of filthy profiteering liars.

Now, I know many will be outraged at such a claim and others still will even completely refuse to believe their beloved national heroes are not who they said they were. It really should not come as any kind of surprise that a person would lie about themselves especially when it came to traumatic events such as the one the aforementioned heroes certainly did, to some degree, suffer. But the truth is, Boglick and Arsehair are far more pivotal in the redemption of Middle Earth. Having said this, please proceed with caution.

The truth can be quite unsettling.

The following is a short list of the misattributed actions of Boglick and Arsehair:

Boglick and Arsehair were the ones to save Pippin Took and Merry Brandybuck from Grishnák the Orc who desired to eat them. Grishnák was stopped when Boglick dropkicked Grishńak in the chest as Arsehair knelt behind him causing Grishńak to stumble back where Treebeard then flattened him.

It was Boglick and Arsehair who then went back and placed Pippen’s leaf broach on the ground for The Nine to find.

It was Boglick and Arsehair who woke the eagles to save Gandalf from atop Saruman’s tower.

It was Boglick and Arsehair who convinced the Treebeards to enter the war.

They stopped Boromir from robbing Frodo by unleashing a hail of arrows upon him.

It was Boglick in particular who lit the beacons, not Pippen Took. In fact, it was Pippen who, afraid of heights, crying, and soiled, then needed help from Bog and Arse to return safely to the ground.

It was Bog and Arse who saved Frodo from being eaten by the Spider.

It was Bog and Arse who beat up Gollum after Gollum kicked the ever-loving wits out of Frodo who was threatening to throw The One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom.

And it was Bog and Arse who threw the ring into the fires when Frodo couldn’t bring himself to do it because he said he didn’t want to lose a finger for “nothing”.

Their final act was a selfless one, the true mark of any hero, a sacrificial offering to the gods of a true and good story. When Frodo lay amongst the rubble of the dying Mount Doom, about to be swallowed by the rising tide of lava, Gandalf had appeared with the Eagle. Yet, Gandalf could not find Frodo. Who he came upon instead was Boglick and Arsehair clinging to one another surrounded on a rock surrounded by very splashy lava. And like any good hero in a story, Bog and Arse refused to hop aboard the Eagle because as everyone knows the capacity of an Eagle is exactly two. And since neither Bog nor Arse would leave one another, they pointed out Frodo in the distance.

“Save that pathetic wretch first,” Arse said rather bravely. “Then come back for us.” Gandalf looked into Arehair’s little goblin eyes.

“Are you sure, you fool?” Gandalf asked.

“Oh, you bet your arse he’s sure,” replied Boglick. “Go save that little jerk.”

Gandalf, as everyone knows, did save that little jerk, but unfortunately never did come back for Boglick and Arsehair.

I’d like to think they made it off that rock that maybe some other Eagle had been passing by and gave them a lift to a happy place where they could sit and enjoy a sunset knowing they made another clear blue sky day possible for the citizens of Middle Earth. But everyone knows that’s more the stuff of fairy tales and not really the stuff of life.

No, Bog and Arse likely died a very terrible painful no good death but try not to dwell on that fact. Boglick and Arsehair should be remembered for their sacrifice, and their love of peace and tranquility, and we should be encouraged to imitate them.

After all, deep inside every one of us, there’s a little gloomy Orc or Goblin who could use a little more sunny clear blue skies in their short pathetic lives.

*****

THE END