One Day You'll Know

Chapter 16- The Ring Goes South

It was the evening of December 24th, the day before the Fellowship was about to depart Rivendell. Noelle sighed and glanced around her room, taking in her beautiful surroundings one last time. In relief, she had finally been able to change out of her gorgeous dress, and into more comfortable clothes for the journey.

She had decided to ditch the ugly, cream-colored tunic she wore over her sleeveless Mandalorian shirt. Instead, she took a dark grey, long-sleeved shirt to wear over the Mandalorian shirt, black corduroy pants, a brown leather corset vest to protect her upper body and elven armguards. She kept her black boots and the sword. A makeover was nice, and she didn't care about anyone's objections. Elrond, Boromir... they could think whatever they wanted. Noelle wasn't traveling long and far in a stupid dress to drag her down. If they wanted her help, she was going to need to be able to fight in pants.

Other than her new clothes and sword, Noelle had no other belongings. She had left Earth with nothing. That was basically how she had been for the past four years anyway. Homeless and indecisive.

Oh well, Noelle thought. Made things a bit easier so she didn't have to keep track of a bunch of junk.

She also felt kind of bad, because Alwanis had seemed kind of sad to see her go.

Noelle took off her vest, armguards, and boots, and laid down on her bed for one last night in Rivendell. She fell (thankfully) into a dreamless sleep.

~~~~~~

The next morning, she shot out of bed, thinking she was probably late. She hurriedly got dressed, strapping on her armguards, and pulling on her boots, when she suddenly remembered something that had been hiding in her closet behind the velvet and silk fabrics for almost two months.

Ahsoka's grey cloak. The one she had given her before they went their separate ways.

Noelle stopped for a moment, before stretching out her hand to pull the cloak off her rack. Part of her wanted to forget the Jedi, but this was Ahsoka. Her friend. Swallowing, Noelle pulled the cloak around her shoulders and strapped her sword on her belt. It was time to go on and move forward into the future.

As she strolled down the halls of Elrond's house one last time, (or at least, she had a feeling that it was going to be her last time), Noelle remembered that it was actually Christmas Day. Luckily, Middle-earth seemed to follow by the same calendar as Earth, so this was the first time Noelle had a sense of the dates in a while. But this was proving to be the strangest Christmas she had ever had. Normally, back home, her grandma would come over and her mom would make the biggest dinner of the year aside from Thanksgiving. She and her two little brothers, Alex and Joe would receive presents after dinner too, because grandma was really Mrs. Claus. Noelle actually laughed aloud a little, thinking about this, when she looked up and realized she was already at the front gates of Rivendell, where the rest of the Fellowship was standing around, waiting for Elrond to give departing words.

"Am I late?" she asked Gandalf.

"Technically... yes you are."

"Hmph. I wonder where I learned that from?" Noelle crossed her arms and rolled her eyes.

"Certainly not from Gandalf," Aragorn chimed in with a smile.

"No, definitely not," Noelle replied, smirking. She noticed the four hobbits huddled together in the corner and Sam speaking quietly to Bill the pony. Gimli was saying his goodbyes to the dwarves (to which Noelle had already done yesterday morning) Boromir was fiddling with his gear, and Legolas met her eyes before she even got a chance to see what he had been up to. He tilted his head and studied her expression.