At about one in the morning, I lost track of Merry… the cute little fellow was so mischievous and adorable! I love hobbits. Too tired to look for him, I collapsed into my bed. However, sleep just refused to come. Once I thought I saw the outline of a scraggly horse wearing some sort of blanket outside my tent, but it was just a dream (Hopefully). I tossed and turned for a few hours, but apparently being exhausted is less sleep-inducing than one would think.

Giving up around dawn, I stumbled out of my tent, staring groggily at the sunset.

"Where is the nearest Middle-earth Starbucks?" I groaned, standing next to Théoden.

"Aragorn is leaving," he replied, clacking his dentures.

"Thanks, but I need to find some coffee, not a Ranger."

"I like mustard on my toast."

Rolling my eyes, I shuffled away from him…

… only to knock Arwen into the mud and stumble into Aragorn.

Owling him, I decided that a good way to wake myself up was to make the guy as uncomfortable as possible. I resisted the urge to help Erica up, because we weren't supposed to know each other.

"Lord Aragorn! You can't just leave! Why would you abandon all of us?" I moaned.

Arwen cleared her throat loudly in back of me. Oops.

"Eowyn," Aragorn squeaked, staring from me to his girlfriend. "It is but a shadow of a doubt that you love. I have wished you joy since I first saw you."

"Good answer," I muttered, spinning around and making a playful, yet hopefully apologetic face at Arwen.

About fifteen minutes later, I was cantering Windfola alongside a buttload of men in battle armor. Merry was tied up on the path ahead, swinging from a flimsy branch that dangled above the road. I had packed all of his things, along with a hobbit-sized set of armor and his sword and a few supplies for myself. When I rode under him, he tried to kick my head with his filthy, giant, hairy, adorable feet. I grabbed him by the ankle, tugging gently, and the branch broke. With a squeak, he landed on the saddle in front of me.

"Hey, cutie pie! We're going to battle now!" I cooed at him, giving him a hug.

"I don't want to go to battle! I want to go sneak around at night some more and test out my blade!" he whined, his voice a few octaves higher than it should have been.

I frowned. "Yes you do! You're supposed- what is that?"

He smirked and held up a violin-shaped instrument of dark wood and a horsehair bow. "A Noreegwing Figgle."

"Excuse me?"

"That's what the name tag says."

Snatching the 'figgle' out of his teeny adorable hobbit hands, I gave it a hard stare. "It's Norwegian Fiddle, silly!"

"Whatever. I jacked it off a corpse- I mean, I found it in… in… the tree!" He gave me an innocent stare.

"Aww, you sure did!" I tousled his curly hair. Everyone knows that the best fiddles come from trees!

"We're down, I do cry!/ And we did not die!" Windfola sang as we reached the end of those freaky paths.

"Maaaaaaaaaaaaw!" came a call from a small clearing to the side of the path. To my astonishment, a short golden pony burst out of the shrubbery with a hobbit clinging precariously to its back.

"Sydney?" I cried.

"Olivia!" she shouted. "Make him stop!"

The pony tottered up alongside Windfola with another 'Maaaw.'

"What are you doing?" I whispered, trying to ignore the stares of the men around us.

"It's this darn Fatty Lumpkins! He keeps running off with me!" she complained, causing Lumpkins to grin. "I guess we're tagging along with you!"

"Ok… Well, you know we're going to Pelennor fields, right?" I seemed to remember Erica and Hannah talking about how she didn't know the names of any events in Lord of the Rings, but surely she knew the name of this? It was, after all, the battle where the Witch-King was killed! She had to know that! Right?

"Er, yeeeees…"

Ok, so maybe she didn't. I went off on a big spiel about what happened in the battle that consisted mostly of Eowyn's heroism and the hobbit's adorableness. It was probably just my imagination that she and Merry zoned out after the first sentence.

Note from Erica: Okay, sorry for the wait, but this week has been insane! Both Hannah and I had two exams and one essay due on Wednesday, mixed with Calculus homework every night (For Erica, I'd imagine Hannah had math homework as well) and a 10-picture photoshoot due (for Erica) and a cat-dissecting project (for Hannah). Yeah, it hasn't been a fun week.