"Now that you have all decided to come we can begin," Elrond said sounding a bit exasperated at how long we took to gather, "I have been informed that you two ran into the Dúnadan and the four hobbits in the Midgewater marshes." He knew at least something of us already, "And I already know that Lady Stacey met up with Gandalf on the road from Bree. What I do not know is how you three know each other, or where you come from."
I was eager to get this over with, so I answered right away, "From school." I told him.
"Excuse me?"
"We all know each other from school." I repeated, if this kept up it would be all night before I got to hold Glamdring.
"Where is School located?" Elrond asked me, "I have never heard of this country before."
"Country?" I repeated, momentarily confused, "Oh! School isn’t a country, it’s just where our parents make us go to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic." I hastily explained, "The three R’s."
"Those don’t start with R’s," Elrond began, "Oh, never mind… If ‘school’ isn’t the name of your country, then where do you come from?"
"A place called Minnesota, which lies within the Americas…" I answered vaguely, "I doubt you’ve heard of it it’s across the sea. And it is quite far inland." I told him. Which was greeted by a series of gasps.
"Never before has any man claimed to come from across the Sea." Elrond told me, "I wasn’t aware of any ships porting on this side of Middle Earth."
"You probably wouldn’t notice our ships," I said waving his comment un-importantly aside, "Not many people notice them. They’re low to the water and very fast, and they don’t stay for long. We were just stopping for some quick supplies and we must have got left behind. Our ships are very long though, and can hold over a hundred men at once…" I continued explaining, my thoughts drifting to the Vikings (that is, historical Vikings, not the football team).
"That is enough." Elrond interrupted, "Perhaps there will be time later for you to tell me of your people’s skill in boat making, but for now let us stick to more important issues."
He was about to go on when I interrupted, "You have really nice swords." I said politely, hoping he would offer me one… or two.
"Yes, I have heard all about your visit to my armory. Do you not have any swords in your country? This Mini-soda?" He asked trying vainly to pronounce it correctly.
"No," I replied sadly, "We don’t have many swords in Minnesota."
"Oh." Elrond was a bit confused, but continued anyway, "If you three were together on the shore then how did you get so deep into our land without coming upon any villages, and how did you get separated?"
"We walked." Katy offered as explanation.
"And we did come upon one of your towns. There we had a little disagreement as to which way we wanted to go, and we ended up splitting up." I explained further.
Elrond cocked an eyebrow. We’d have to be crazy to split up in an unknown country. Then again, that may just be plausible. "Have you or any of your people been here before, Estel has informed me that you seem to know many subtle things about our land. Including names of places you would not know if you had come from afar not having prior knowledge of this place."
He got us there. None of us answered and the uneasy silence continued for at least ten minutes. Glancing over at Gandalf who was intently looking at us (and noticing his sword) I decided to go with people coming here before. "I think some of our men may have come here in the past…" I began slowly, "A man named John Ronald Ruel Tolkien was a great historian of the events which occurred in your land." I said, then hastily added, "Up until a short while ago."
Elrond looked at me skeptically, "So you know of our land from this spy?"
"Yes--" I started and then quickly corrected myself, "No, no, no! I mean, he wasn’t a spy! He was more like… A historian. Yeah, and he wrote a history of Middle-earth. You guys write histories, right?"
Elrond didn’t look too impressed with our explanations, but after a few more questions he reluctantly let us leave.
I sighed as we left the room. "Glad THAT’S over." I told Katy.
"Yeah," she agreed, "think he bought any of it?"
"Probably not much." Stacey replied.
"Why do you say that?" I asked, "I thought my stories were pretty good…"
"Maybe, but they contrasted mine a lot." Stacey told us.
"You already told him about us all?" I asked surprised, "Could’ve mentioned that to us earlier."
"I didn’t think of it until he started asking questions, and then it was kind of late to be telling you what I told him." Stacey said.
"I guess so." I stopped suddenly, causing Katy to run into me. I carefully looked up and down the corridor. Gandalf, who had came out the doors just after us, was nowhere to be seen. "WHERE’S GANDALF?" I exclaimed.
Katy and Stacey both looked down the corridor also. "I don’t know…" Stacey informed me helpfully.
"He’s probably hiding from you." Katy told me.
"Why would he be hiding from me?" I asked, shocked at the proposition, "He’s supposed to let me hold Glamdring…" I began pouting.
"That’s probably why he’s hiding." Katy laughed.
I looked scornfully at her for about half a second, then got over it. I turned and ran down the hall and turned left, asking every elf I saw where Mithrandir was… Okay, maybe I asked a FEW of them if I was pronouncing some choice phrases correctly, but we won’t talk about them. They’re rude.