"Blessed are they who have the gift of making friends, for it is one of God's best gifts. It involves many things, but above all, the power of getting out of one's self and appreciating whatever is noble and loving in another."
-Thomas Hughes

"Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow…" Amelia chanted to herself with each step the brown horse took. The saddle rocked with each step, branches occasionally left small leaves in her hair and she constantly felt like she was going to slip off the animal and land face-down on the ground, not to mention the jolting pain in her lower regions. And the horse wasn't going very fast. She felt slightly ashamed at how tightly she clutched the back of Boromir's tunic. At least he was courteous enough to not get angry with her. He was more patient than Amelia would have assumed, hadn't she met him herself.

"This is just awful." She mumbled to herself.

"At first I thought you to be making a jest when you said you were an inexperienced rider, but…" Boromir said dryly and Amelia made a squeak in the back of her throat.

"Inexperienced?! And I hope it stays that way! Jesus Christ, if I had to do this for hours on end…" Boromir chuckled lowly, a deep, honest sound, but it was a short laughter.

"If that is true then how came you to be here, in this valley? I know of no cities of men within walking distance."

"Okay, one, everything's within walking distance if you try hard enough. Two, I'm just as surprised as you that I'm here, buddy." She could imagine his confusion, but he didn't pry and she felt slightly grateful. She didn't feel like explaining that she was beginning to believe that she had smoked something funny and gotten high as kite, something that her youngest sibling had always been more wont to do than her. Then, she caught a glimpse of something pale moving within the trees and her head jerked around to see it again.

"What is it?" Boromir sounded instantly on alert.

"I thought I saw…" But then, a jovial, trilling laughter reached her ears and she saw more fair shapes running and dancing within the forest as the narrow pathway sloped downwards towards the city. She smiled a confused smile, still cautious in every assumption and impression, as they sung, in clear voices, ringing like a bubbling river and crystal bells,

O! What are you doing,
And where are you going?
Your horse needs shoeing!
The river is flowing!
O! tra-la-la-lally
here down in the valley!

O! Why do you roam
So far from your home?
From where do you hail?
What is your tale?
O! tra-la-la-lally
Tell us in the valley!

"They're… elves." Amelia observed, slightly breathless. She had no idea what was going on anymore, but decided to just roll with it at that point. "And… they're singing." Boromir hummed in affirment and then, Amelia smiled hesitantly, as the merry song continued. "I've never had a welcome like that before."

"This is your first time in Rivendell, then?" Amelia rolled her shoulders uncomfortably at the question.

"Yeah. First time seeing elves too. And a horse. And a guy with a weird haircut carrying around a sword. Lots of firsts in one day." She didn't consider whether she ought to think more on her words before she spoke them.

"You are here for the Council, I take it?"

"Hm?" It took a moment for Amelia to realize what he was talking about. "Oh, yeah. That's right. Sure. The Council."

"And whom do you represent?" Amelia blinked in confusion.

"Uh… me, myself and I, I suppose. No one really knows I'm here, you see." Her laugh was forced. He didn't inquire further or interrupt. "I suppose I… took a wrong turn somewhere." She finished lamely. She cringed inwardly. Social skills of any kind had never been her strongest suit.
She yelped and her arms unwillingly snaked around Boromir's chest when the horse sped into a full gallop, albeit a slow one. She was once again reminded of her dislike for horses and realized that the elves and Boromir had managed to briefly distract her from her discomfort.

"Did I mention that I hate riding?" She growled loudly to no one in particular, shame at her helplessness making her clench her teeth.

Amelia could have fallen to her knees and kissed the ground below her as Boromir helped her dismount, but she didn't get the chance, since she wobbled on her feet.

"Oh my god." She mumbled as she grabbed Boromir's shoulder to steady herself. "If I die, don't forget to feed my cat." Boromir gave her an incredulous look as she let go of his shoulder, looked up and lost her tongue once again.

If the city had been beautiful from a distance, it was even more so up close. The sound of silvery fountains mingled with chirping birds, as well as a distant harp, and the wind carried low, melodious chatter with it through the valley. The gentle breeze was warm, even though it looked like fall was approaching Rivendell rapidly, and it smelled of horses and something sweet that Amelia couldn't place. White archways loomed over her head and Amelia noticed a man clad in grey robes watching them from the foot of a white stair. She and Boromir weren't the only riders to have arrived. It seemed that some elves, tall and otherworldly, old and young at the same time, had ridden in as well and a group of stocky, bearded men that Amelia tentatively assumed were dwarves, stood separated from them, with heavy axes strapped to their backs and forked beards, mumbling amongst themselves. The discovery of yet another intricacy to what she desperately still tried to think was a vision of a dream was another blow to her stubbornness.

Then, she stiffened and turned towards the old man watching them with a faint smile on his lips.

"If you'll excuse me," Boromir looked up as he rummaged through his saddleback, "I have an ass to kick." Amelia growled out through grit teeth and stomped over towards the elderly man, whom she had recognized as a former customer of hers. The man gave her a kind smile as she stopped in front of him, face twisted in anger and fists clenching at her sides.

"You." She hissed, her blue eyes blazing.

"Me." Gandalf answered calmly. Amelia stood silently in front of the wizard and didn't notice that most of the elves looked at her and the dwarves were glancing her way.

"Why?" She finally choked out through her rage. The word came out as a disbelieving whisper when she wanted it to be a shout.

"Because," Gandalf answered calmly, with intense eyes, "This way we might finally know how the story might have gone, had things been different." Amelia gaped at him, at a loss for words. She spluttered.

"Why, you dumb, stupid little piece of assholing…" She was aware that several faces looked quite shocked as vehement curses spewed from her mouth. She suspected that they had never heard something as filthy as her talk, considering how big on the niceties Boromir had been, and to hear it from a woman only made matters worse. Gandalf simply waited as she vented, clenching and unclenching her hands, as if she'd like nothing better than to strangle Gandalf with her bare hands.

"My dear," Gandalf finally said once she held her tongue to take a deep breath. "It was by my hand that you happened to be here, on this day, in this year, at this pivotal time for our world, yes, and do believe me when I say..."

"No. Your world." Amelia spat at him. "Your world. Not mine. Not ours. Yours. For fuck's sake, I'm a Vermonter who goes skiing in the weekends and makes coffee for a living!"

"And who happens to have substantial knowledge of events yet to come. I fear not even I know as much as you do." Gandalf seemed like everything was already settled and decided. Amelia sputtered and cursed again before she decided to play along with his little game.

"You stuck-up, ignorant little... And now that I'm here, then what? I'll just fix everything and go back home like a good girl? Gandalf, I could…" Her anger slowly deflated as her mind whirled on ahead of her mouth, leaving her feeling spent and drained. "I could muck things up for real. I mean, shit… I've watched enough Doctor Who to know that this could go all sorts of haywire."

"But you could save a marked man's life." Gandalf added lowly, so only they could hear it. Amelia gave him a sharp look.

"You dumped me there on purpose, huh? To let me give all the boys a good first impression? Forget about it." She raised her voice again. "Forget about it. No. Way. Send me back home. People will notice if I just run off into the blue on some mad… fairy-tale quest of yours!"

"Not if I return you to the same evening you disappeared, in your own home. Your dear ones will be none the wiser." Amelia gave him a skeptical look. That actually took a great deal off her shoulders, even though she'd never admit it.

"Gandalf, I am a goddamn barista. Not even a particularly nice one. And there are hundreds of other nerds out there you could sweep along and get them back in time for dinner." Gandalf didn't grace her with an answer for that one and she practically growled at him. "Send me back. Now."

"I cannot." He answered, finally, and Amelia narrowed her eyes.

"Now listen here, you piece of-"

"Such a complex, powerful spell requires time, preparation and caution. Sending you home could take up to a month's worth of preparation." He might have just as well slapped Amelia.

"A… month?" She mumbled to herself and looked upwards, clutching her head with her right hand. "I'm stuck in this hole for a full month? Am I supposed to just… hang out with a bunch of prissy elves for four weeks?" Then, she did what she did best under duress; take a step back, view the situation with a cold, logical perspective, examine every outcome and make a calculated decision. She rubbed her face with both of her hands and fixed Gandalf with an even stare. "Alright. Here is what I'm going to do. I can't leave this place, because you're a fucking kidnapper who thinks he knows what's best for everyone, so I'll stay. I won't hesitate to speak my mind and if you think for one second that you can just… use me, you can go to hell, I won't care. I won't do anything to alter the course of events for now. But I'll be nice. I'll play along. But only because you are the only one here able to send me home again, and…"

"We heard shouting." A thin, light voice, male, said from the top of the stairs and Amelia was about to give it a piece of her mind when she got a good look at its owner.
Two men, only as tall as children, with bare, hairy feet and curly hair stood atop the staircase, looking at her and Gandalf while fiddling with the hem of their shirts. One of them was slightly smaller, with lighter hair than the other. She stared, her emotional turmoil only increasing.

"No, no, it is quite alright, my young friend. Merely getting acquainted with the young miss…" He trailed off and Amelia realized that he actually didn't know her name.

"Amelia. Amelia Jones." She paused. "But don't call me Lady. Miss is… alright, I suppose. Back home, we don't call each other things like 'Lady' or 'my lord'."

"Then what do you call each other?" One of the hobbits, the one with darker hair asked.

"Well, I just gave our favorite wizard here a taste of some of the things that we call each other." Amelia answered the question dryly. She glanced at Gandalf, narrowing her eyes angrily at him again. "Assbucket."

"You talk to each other like that when you are with your friends?" An elf asked loudly, sounding puzzled. Amelia shrugged and shook her head.

"Nah. I mean, when we're teasing or angry but it varies from person to person. If you're looking to ask a person about foul language, I'm your girl. Not exactly a people-person." Amelia cleared her throat. "Some swear, some don't. Some are loud, some are quiet. I don't really care. Some asshats do, but they don't matter. Idiots will always be around." Amelia noticed that Boromir was nowhere to be seen and she found that she didn't really care. He wasn't her friend. And she wasn't his.

"Meriadoc! Peregrin!" Gandalf called and the hobbits straightened their backs. "Do show our newcomer around. I'm sure our hosts will be busy attending to their other guests."

Amelia felt better after she had made her decision about what she was going to do. It wouldn't help freaking out or swooning dramatically. Distancing herself from situation quickly was a skill that had served her well.

She couldn't help a smile of wonder at the beauty of the place as Merry and Pippin skipped down the hallways though, chattering happily amongst themselves and sometimes asking her a question, even as she continued to inwardly rage and rampage.

"Is that the name of your homeland?" Pippin, the hobbit with the lighter hair, asked as they rounded a corner and emerged out onto a plateau with a fountain in the middle. He pointed a short finger at the word displayed on Amelia's sweater.

"No. Well… Kind of. It's the name of where I come from."

"Hm. I've never heard of Veermoont." Amelia snorted and hid her grin behind a hand.

"Its 'Vermont', not… whatever you just came up with. It's a state. And a cold one."

"Do you get snow?" Merry asked conversationally and Amelia nodded. A certain melancholy came over her and she realized that if she was already homesick, it would only get worse the longer she had to stay.

"Yes. Vermont is… very cold in the winter. Sometimes we get so much that I have trouble walking to the bus stop." She didn't realize that the hobbits didn't know what a bus was. "It's, well… it's home. And we Vermonters have a lot of stuff going on with the snow. I usually go skiing in my weekends."

"What's that?" Pippin asked curiously as they settled at the edge of a fountain and Amelia spread out her large coat for them all to sit on. The hobbits seemed to quickly have forgotten Gandalf's bidding to show her around, but Amelia also admitted that she most likely would have bolted when they started to bore her.

"What, skiing?" Amelia had to consider how best to explain it to them. "Basically, we strap fancy floorboards to our feet and down a mountain we go, breakneck speed and no safety net!" The hobbits looked horrified and she smiled at their faces, enjoying toying with them, even as it was a petty and indecent pleasure. "It's not so bad. I mean, accidents happen, but accidents always happen, whether you swim or run or climb, whatever. And I've gotten pretty good, since I've lived there for about two years." The hobbits looked at each other and finally seemed to accept that she wasn't just yanking them around.

"Where did you live before?" Pippin asked and Amelia got caught up in talking about summer trips to London, the glow of a thousand city lights seen from a plane and the pine trees in winter. Time was an odd notion in the hidden valley, it seemed, for her sense of it seemed to have disappeared well and truly, as if Rivendell was frozen in time and cut off from the rest of the world.

"But what about your family?" Pippin asked and Amelia had to admit that she had taken a shine to his inquisitive innocence. Amelia raised her eyebrows.

"My parents are pretty old, so my brothers visit them a lot, to make sure they're fine and all. My brothers, I've got two, they're… well, they're annoying. Scared my first boyfriend half to death. Kid was only seventeen. Anyways, Sebastian's the oldest. Two years ahead of me. Tobias is 25 and… well, he's a bit of a loose cannon. Doesn't really know what he likes, doesn't think about what he says until its said. And then, there's me. The middle child."

"Why did your brothers scare your friend?" Merry asked in confusion and slight curiosity. Amelia opened her mouth to answer, but hesitated. Middle-Earth had to have other views on romantic entanglement than her good old Earth.

"You know what? Ask me again in a few days or so and I'll tell you. Gotta save some stories for later. And you… you're from the Shire, right?"

"Yep. Sam already misses it." Pippin sighed and Amelia pretended to be confused, even as she inwardly sighed in exasperation at the mention of another well-known figure from her childhood.

"Sam?"

"Oh, a fellow hobbit who traveled here with as, along with a distant relative of mine, Frodo Baggins-"

"Pippin!" Merry shushed him and Amelia had to rein back a smile at his attempt at secrecy. If only they knew how much knowledge she held, she thought, amused.
Then they'd never stop pestering her with questions. She had interacted enough with her own siblings to know to never let them truly glom onto something.

"Don't worry. My lips are sealed." She reassured them and leaned back, content to merely gaze at the enamoring surroundings. She had taken off her backpack when she sat down and opened it, rummaging through it. She pulled out the old book she had inadvertently brought along to what seemed like an entirely different world.

"You brought a book along?" Merry asked curiously, and a bit puzzled, and Amelia hummed as confirmation.

"One of my favorites. Though this copy is falling apart as it is." It was true. The pages were no longer fastened to the spine of the book, half the pages were dogeared and Amelia's favorite paragraphs and lines had been highlighted with varying colors. Her brothers had always recoiled in horror whenever she did such a thing, but she cared more for her books of math and science than fantasy and fiction.

"What's it about?" Pippin asked and Amelia frowned a bit.

"It's, well… difficult to explain. It's about… prejudices and… bigotry and people being stuck in their ways. I must have read it, oh… hundreds of times by now."

"Then you would get along well with my brother." Amelia looked up to see Boromir walking towards them, hands clasped on his back. He had yet to change out of his clothes and Amelia still didn't trust him more than she trusted any random stranger.

"What, he the bookish sort?" Amelia asked innocently, remembering the inspiring leader Faramir had represented to her. His character had always been a beloved one.

"Yes. Very much so. Though he preferred his own fantasies to his studies."

"Or yet in wise old Ravenclaw, if you've a ready mind…" Amelia sang to herself and Boromir shot her a confused look. She smiled a silly smile to herself. "Never mind that. And I suppose you were the terror of the White City before you could walk? Did you learn swordfighting before walking?" She teased him playfully. He didn't smile but merely looked away from her position on the ground, along with the two hobbits, who shuffled uncomfortably, being so near the tall, imposing man. "I've never actually seen the White City." She admitted and Boromir glanced back at her.

"Neither have I!" Pippin chipped.

"Me neither." Merry sighed.

"So you are not from Gondor or Rohan then. Laketown, or Dale perhaps?" Boromir thought aloud and a hobbit started jabbering before Amelia could answer.

"No, she's from Veermoont!"

"It's 'Vermont', Pip!"

"Right. And it had snow and mountains and large metal birds carrying humans and, and… and skiing! She straps boards to her feet and slide down hillsides, I don't really understand that, to be honest…" Amelia saw Boromir fighting a smile at Pippin's enthusiasm. She allowed herself to study him, making mental notes of the things that were different from her own mental image of him before that day. His hair was darker, his face sterner and more distant, and he was both wide and tall compared to any man she knew in advance. With a frown, she looked away, but then her face cleared and she continued her train of thought was strange, to sit so casually before a man doomed to die and knowing that she would let it happen without interference, but let it happen she would. Returning to her home and her life would be a death-sentence, but it was not one she felt guilty about. Her conscience felt clean and a calmness settled over her as she looked at him again, imagining blood spotting his tunic and arrows sticking out of his broad chest.