Disclaimer: Everything really isn't mine. No money being made, etc., and only humour being derived from fanfiction, etc.

A/N: I had quite a few reviews telling me off for being anti-American and howling at me for undermining Americans when I wasn't an American myself. I beg to differ. I live in Georgia, go to school in Indiana, am working in New Mexico over the summer, and cringe madly whenever I come across a LOTR Mary-Sue, of which there are plenty, I assure you. Whenever a Mary-Sue is inserted into a LOTR fic, she is either American, an Elf, or of some amazing never-before-mentioned-in-canon race. I have been fed up to the gills with the American Mary-Sues, as they are the most wildly improbably of them all, and this fic is merely a casual sort of observance. Seriously, if any of you American readers were suddenly flung into Middle-Earth, would you suddenly be stunningly cool, gorgeous, smart, etc., and would you save the entire Fellowship from destruction? As likely as not, you would end up screwing quite a few things up, and you would, once in a while, get leaves stuck in your teeth and land squarely in a mud puddle. I like canon; canon is one of my very best friends (the others being livejournals like deleterius and lotrbabb), and I protest vigorously against people who think that the Fellowship needs random little teenagers to brighten it up.

Think author's note is finished by now. Hope so, anyway. If offended, see livejournal, linked in profile, and leave bitter diatribes which I will read to the last drop and will give due consideration to logically worded complaints. Promise.

Of Mud and Wild Confusion

Assuming by now that this strange thing was wildly insane, the Fellowship curled 'round and stared at her. She was very, very tall indeed, had light brown hair that, for some reason, was bleached in chunks, and was wearing breeches and an unnecessarily fitted tunic of some imitation-silk material. Her shoes were not visible through the mud, but then again, neither were anyone else's. She had a habit of squinting along her shortish nose, and had tied a number of knotted bracelets around both wrists.

"It's rude to stare," Josephine informed them, flicking mud off of her eyebrow. "And I think you ought to tell me what's going on. Why am I here?"

"I have no idea," Gimli said gruffly. "And why you should think we would know what your business here is—"

"Gimli!" Gandalf warned shortly. "Enough."

"I agree with the Dwarf," Legolas put in. "For once, at any rate. Let us continue. We have no obligations here, beyond ensuring the—"

He paused, stumped.

"It is of the race of Men, I think," Boromir whispered. "Although possibly of the muddiest faction."

"Beyond ensuring the lady's well-being to continue her journey."

"Wait," Josephine interrupted. "Journey? What journey?"

"The one you are on," Gimli pointed out. "You must have come here on your way to someplace."

"But I didn't!" Josephine protested. "I didn't, I really didn't! I don't know what on earth I'm doing here; I was just downloading songs for my iPod and unplugging the microwave because the newscasters said something about a tornado warning and suddenly something went fzzzt and here I was."

Simultaneously, the Fellowship blinked.

Then it blinked again.

"Yes," Aragorn said finally. "Eh."

"How close is the nearest healer?" Pippin hissed to Merry.

Gandalf thoughtfully buried the end of his staff in the ever-clutching mud.

Gimli, to avoid looking at the madness, considered rebraiding the end of his beard.

"I want to go home," Josephine said fretfully, realizing quite well that the people around her thought she had jumped into the deep end of a writhing sea of madness.

"We had better take her along," Frodo said, painfully and slowly. "She isn't well, and I don't think she would survive long if we left her."

"Just until the nearest healer," Sam agreed. "I think it's gone off its head, Mr. Frodo."

"Gandalf?" Frodo asked.

After a long pause, the wizard sighed and beckoned to his companions, who clustered around him in a tight circle, leaving Josephine sitting up and curious.

"Tell her nothing of our quest, and say nothing of who you are. She may be a spy, but the best we can do in any case is to leave her at a practicing healer's home, who can be trusted to keep her locked away. I would prefer to have a spy known to us and directly in our midst than unknown."

"I agree," Aragorn nodded. "After all, how much trouble can one girl be?"

He was going to learn just exactly how much trouble one girl could be, and, if he had asked that question a week or two later, the rest of the Fellowship would have presented him with a long list inclusive of annotations, footnotes, and heavily underlined words. However, at that point, Josephine was wildly unknown to them, and so they merely helped her out of the mud, watched chivalrously as she tried to dump the mud off of her clothes and did not snicker when she got a leaf stuck in her teeth.

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