I hurt waking up the next morning. I really hurt. Muscles I didn't even know I had hurt. I groaned and wondered whether the paralysis was going to be permanent.

"Rise and shine," said Mirwold. He was smiling from ear to ear. I liked him less every time I saw him. I gritted my teeth and tried to repress the urge to hunt down and slay the cruelly perky person who had taught him that phrase.

"Mrphmx," I protested grumpily.

"The best cure for stiffness is exercise," Mirwold informed me as he turned back to his campfire, where he was apparently cooking something in a small pot. Fadrornion helped me to my feet, where I swayed for a few minutes before sitting down again. Englas was nowhere in sight. I crawled over to investigate breakfast only to realize with a sudden pang that the pot that it was being cooked in hadn't been washed in some time. I knew better than to ask questions by now, and had learned that sometimes it was best just to forget everything that I had ever learned about basic cleanliness. After all, what could you wash a pot *with* in this forest? I seemed to have been unlucky enough to have arrived in the middle of the only puddle in Mirkwood, I thought miserably.

There were more important things to complain about, though. I was still wearing the same clothes that I had put on two days ago. Even if they did smell uniformly of campfire, it was still extremely disgusting. Like so many other things, I could do absolutely nothing about it. Mirwold and company didn't travel with a lot of spare clothes as far as I could tell, and I doubted that they had changed their own shirts in months.

"It's porridge," said Mirwold, in answer to my unthought question. He stirred the pot with a random stick. "So, will it cause diseases and bacterias to eat this?"

"Probably," I sighed, "but burning your food to the bottom of the pot tends to kill at least some of that stuff."

"Are you implying that I'm a bad cook?"

"You're stirring up little black flakes with your stick," I pointed out to him.

He looked down and hastily took his pot off the fire. "Observant, aren't you? Well, breakfast is served. Et mat, Wiglaf." Fadrornion sat down beside me and began munging. Englas still didn't appear. I was beginning to secretly hope that he had understood my message and would return bringing Legolas and some of his friends to my rescue. It wasn't the most rational thing I've ever thought in my life, but I was desperate. I hadn't brushed my teeth in a long, long time.

Englas did reappear, however, and it wasn't with Legolas. I sighed again. "Eat up," Mirwold prompted me, "We're not going to patiently wait forever for you to finish eating, you know. Women may be helpless creatures according to certain friends of mine, but I assure you, I am smarter than both of them put together, and if you don't hurry up, I will find some way to trick them just as I have done repeatedly in the past."

"You're evil," I said, in between large spoonfuls of glue-like porridge.

"I prefer the term 'bad', myself," shrugged Mirwold serenely. Clearly, the whole Bob thing was taking over his mind.

"You can't trick elves," I told him defiantly.

Mirwold choked on the remains of his breakfast. I hoped that he was being struck by a pang of fear, not uncontrollable laughter.

* * *

"Are we there yet?" I demanded as Fadrornion, Englas and Mirwold loaded up their packs and set off onto the road again.

"No," said Mirwold, who was in a ludicrously good mood despite the long, long walk facing us, "but we're not far. It's only about three weeks."

Three weeks! A few days had nearly killed me! And to go where? Esgaroth, the capital of boring. I was going to die. Tylenol, sweet Tylenol, where art thou? And dental floss. . . and normal people. . .

"So, what kind of elf are you?" I asked Fadrornion out of sheer boredom.

"Kind of elf?" repeated Fadrornion blankly, "I am an elf."

"It's Fadrornion's only English phase," said Mirwold hastily.

"Where do you live, then?" I asked Fadrornion, ignoring Mirwold.

"Live?" repeated Fadrornion slowly, as if trying to process the question. Suddenly he brightened: "I home own in Ro-"

Mirwold coughed loudly, drowning out the end of Fadrornion's sentence. "What he is trying to say is that he is from Rowan. It's a suburb of Mirkwood."

"Mirkwood doesn't have suburbs!"

"How do you know?"

"I -"

"Well?"

"It wasn't in the book!"

"Were Sauron's parents in 'the book'?"

"No, but that's different!"

"Why?"

"There was a map of Mirkwood in the book."

"Who made the map?"

"I don't know. People? Dwarves? Hobbits maybe?"

"Well, there you go. It was probably drawn by someone who couldn't tell Mirkwood from Taur e-Ndaedelos."

"But there is no difference between Mirkwood and Taur e-Ndaedelos!"

Mirwold stopped dead in his stupid argument and stared at me.