Chapter Ten: The Quest Begins

Jo rolled out of bed with an intense feeling of foreboding. Worse than usual, actually. She was just about to head downstairs to the dining hall for breakfast when high-pitched giggling from the closet caught her attention. Rolling her eyes, Jo swung the doors open, to see Iendil sitting delicately on the ground with six massive piles of clothes around her, color-coordinated.

Jo raised an eyebrow as Iendil looked up and beamed at her. "What exactly is all this?"

"Gee, silly, have you like forgotten that like the Fellowship like leave tomorrow?"

CRAP.

"Mffllddggh." Jo groaned into the table cloth.

"Beg pardon?" Elrohir asked, throwing a questioning glance at the girl with her head on the table.

"If I heard right," Glorfindel put in mildly, "I believe Lady Jo is venting her frustrations that she will soon be stuck in the wilderness with…well, if I have to finish this sentence, I will really have to wonder where you've been for the past few weeks…"

Finally lifting her head, Jo had a look of disbelief on her face. "You should have SEEN the amount of clothes she was planning to bring!"

Iendil chose that moment to waft into the hall, her hair in tight golden ringlets. Her dress was pure white and had the habit of defying gravity. She seemed to take the whole 'coming back from the dead' thing as an excuse to act like an angel.

An angel with an excessively high libido.

It seemed that her 'absence' just fueled her raging hormones to an almost destructive level. Not one male in Imladris was safe from her attentions—one could always find her "batting her long, inky black lashes" or "tossing her golden waterfall hair over her slim shoulder" or something equally ridiculous.

Iendil was even so bad as to go after the Dwarves as well. As a Mary Sue, that was bordering on insanity for her kind. Most of Gimli's companions had hightailed it the heck out of there, along with Legolas's kin. Arwen kept fierce vigilance over Aragorn and Sam protected Frodo to the best of his ability. The others were on their own. Legolas took to climbing really high trees to escape the wandering hands of everyone's least favorite Sue.

And this all took place in only one day!

Aragorn was exceedingly nervous that night, realizing that by the next day, he would no longer have Arwen to ward off Iendil. Legolas was coming to terms with the fact that there would not always be trees high enough to climb on the quest. Boromir was feeling left out, but rather thankful. Gimli could often be seen with his hand on his axe whenever Iendil came near him. Merry and Pippin were wondering about the crazy lady who would stare at them with a weird glint in her eyes. Frodo was more preoccupied with the Ring, and Sam was more preoccupied with Frodo's health. Gandalf was wondering what the hell he'd gotten himself into. So was Jo, for that matter.

Everyone gathered in the Hall of Fire that night after dinner, for the last farewells before departure the next morning.

"So…" Elladan began. "…You are leaving tomorrow…"

"Yeah, yeah, rub it in!" Jo muttered from her position on the couch next to him. "Can't say I really blame you. After tonight, you're rid of the wench."

A grin spread across his face. "Yes…we are, aren't we?"

"You suck."

"Shouldn't you be getting to bed, Jo?" questioned Elrohir. "It's rather late, and you rise at dawn tomorrow."

"Yes, Mother!" Jo grinned before getting up, saying goodnight, and heading off to her room.

Iendil was already asleep, and judging by the extremely contented look on her face, she was probably dreaming nasty thoughts about any male in the vicinity. Rolling her eyes for perhaps the millionth time that day, Jo walked past Iendil's three bulging suitcases that she was never going to be able to take with her and climbed into bed.

Tomorrow was going to suck.

Jo woke up to the sound of Iendil singing that Iendil would deem a sweet melody. It was actually more like her sounding like nails on a chalkboard at the top of her lungs at an ungodly hour of the morning. Needless to say, Jo had her head under her pillow and her fingers in her ears in pain.

"Rise and like shine sleepy head!!" Iendil chirped, pulling the covers off of Jo. The cold morning air hit her and she let out a string of muffled curses.

"Like grab your stuff and like let's go!"

Jo sat up groggily and rubbed at her eyes. "The things I do for canon…" she murmured.

"…May the blessings of Elves and Men and all Free Folk go with you."

Cause we're gonna need it… Jo sighed, eyeing Iendil trying to cram her bags onto Bill, who was obviously not very happy with it. The Elves clustered around to see the Fellowship off were sending subtle glares in her direction. Which of course, she misinterpreted to be glances of admiration and love. Blowing kisses and waving, she finally managed to stuff all her crap onto Bill.

Whose knees promptly gave out, sending the poor burdened horse crashing to the ground. Several shocked Elves hurried over and tossed Iendil's junk into the bushes without a second thought.

She looked affronted for about 2.6 seconds, until her attention was diverted by a shiny object.

Let's just say that the Elf whose hair she started petting was not pleased.

"This is getting ridiculous," Jo muttered, seizing Iendil's arm and dragging her out of Rivendell before she could realize that she would be out in the wild for weeks without hair care products.

"Like bye bye Elronny!" Iendil chimed brightly.

All the said Elf Lord could do was weakly nod his head towards the very hyperactive girl as she trailed behind a very annoyed girl as they followed a very foreboding Fellowship.

It was needless to the point of idiocy to say that after the Company departed, the occupants of Imladris were more jubilant than they had ever been before.

TBC…