"And so the small folk did drink and joke and sing and talk with relish about how they would soon toss gravy and grease on clothes made of strings from baby moths, while they did crunch and munch and feast upon the sheep and fish and birds and lambs, and sloths, and carp, and anchovies, and orangutans, and breakfast porridge, and fruit bats-"

"(Wrong story again-)"

"And unborn baby chickens and newborn hens and what had since been prime-life fowls served alongside little fattened baby cows," Nori growled like a demon looming over them all, leaving it obvious that he was going to switch to a story about little fattened baby hobbits if he was interrupted again, and whatever beastie liked to eat them most such as were-bats, and it turned the little devils into angels quite nicely.

Ori stared at his older brother.

Really, Nori?

And it wasn't like little ones could be expected to stay interested in a story about science. Ori could already see that the children were losing interest in the tale, as none of them really wanted to hear about duct tape they must have seen everywhere all their lives. Despite how incredibly clever it was if it managed to give a dwarf ideas for how to revolutionize ship building just to get away from a talk about fish gazing.

…

Wait.

Wait.

Kili wanted at all costs to not get involved in a talk about fish gazing and accidentally revolutionized ship building for his troubles. And invented submarines, that too. All because he was hungry but didn't want to get roped into that talk about hobbits and how… they… didn't…

"That's it!"

Cries of startlement greeted him, especially since he'd jumped to his feet apparently, but that wasn't important! "They're not crazy!"

"What?" Nori asked, eyes him strangely as the mini-hobbits huddled behind him. "Little brother, are you alright?"

"Am I alright? Of course I'm alright! I'm better than alright!" Ori cried feverishly as many random facts finally came together into a coherent whole in his mind! "They're not crazy!" Then he turned and shook Adalgrim Took by his lapels. "You're not crazy!"

The hobbit just stared at him, wide-eyed.

Ori released the hobbit and pumped both fists in the air. "You're not crazy!"

"Er… alright?" Adalgrim Took said slowly from as he backed off to stand right next to Nori.

"You're not all crazy!" Ori cried with all the fervor of a man who'd had his belief in the sense of the world shattered only to be shown that the world did make sense after all and oh, he was just about ready to start spinning around in relief even though everyone was watching but he couldn't be arsed to care right now! "After the past week I was sure you were all nuts, but you're not!"

"Alright then," the hobbit recovered pretty quickly and casually reached into Nori's breast pocket to pull out a stone-carved pipe with the initials I.T. carved into the side and Nori, how could you!? "Now that I've recovered the Thain's property – and I'm sure the good dwarf next to me would have returned it by eve's end as is proper for games like this, but I find myself in need of a fortifying smoke, you understand – maybe you can elaborate?"

"Everything was true!" Ori said breathlessly, rushing to dig through his stationery pouch. "Everything everyone said about hobbits was true! We weren't crazy to believe it and the hobbits weren't crazy for not living down to those expectations!" And Maker, his situational awareness had somehow gotten worse in the past few hours if he didn't notice Nori's storytelling draw in… pretty much everyone.

"Living down to- and just what expectations would those be?" Asked Drogo Baggins irately from where he was perched on the top of a lean-to next to Primula Brandybuck.

"That hobbits are private, suspicious people with too little interest in the outside and too high an opinion of yourselves!"

"Hey now-"

"But it's alright!" Ori waved his arms frantically, journal flapping erratically through the air as he hastened to reassure Adalgrim Took that he didn't mean any ill with his words. "It's not your fault we thought otherwise! There's a perfectly valid explanation! I can see it all now!"

"… And what's the explanation?"Adalgrim Took asked with the strange air of someone who was deliberately avoiding the real point of contention for some reason.

"It's all Bilbo Baggins' fault!"

Silence.

"No, really! It is!" Ori hurriedly leafed through his notes to check all the things Nori didn't mention in his story or that only Ori had recorded over the past week to confirm and – yes, he was right! "It all goes back to the Fell Winter!"

While Nori and the other dwarves in sight looked relatively interested, the silence coming from the hobbits and even the men around them carried the unmistakable nuance of duh.

"No, listen! Mister Baggins, you joined the bounders a year before the Fell Winter right?"

Silence.

"He's not here right now," Adalgrim supplied helpfully. "But that's about right."

"Right." Oh good, Ori had just make a complete fool of himself. How shocking. "Right, and then he wound up in the Old Forest, among other… things." Which was a polite way of avoiding the story of how Bilbo joined the bounders because his mother did. Or how the Brandywine Bridge froze completely and Belladonna Baggins and Bilbo were in Buckland when the worst of the wargs and goblins attacked. And how they then ended up driven into the old forest where Belladonna died and Bilbo somehow… became magic before coming home after the springmelts. Bungo Baggins then grew ill after the starvation and chill of the Fell Winter and never quite recovered, so he pushed through until Bilbo's Majority, then in Bilbo's own words went on his 'final journey.'

"Well?" Nori prodded slowly. "Go on?"

"Right, so, ahem," Ori cleared his throat, feeling his courage draining now that his initial exultation had passed, but he had a point to make dammit! Even though Dori had finally emerged from where he'd been laid out with soporific drink and Thorin and Balin were coming from around the corner and Maker, give him strength! "Right so… As years pass and Bilbo becomes magic, he starts entertaining at every party he can think of, as well as randomly when the mood strikes him. His dawn songs start covering Hobbiton regularly around this time."

Adalgrim looked surprised at his deduction but nodded.

"This doesn't really do much to the Shire as a whole, but what does have an impact is that immediately after this, Bilbo's failures at adventuring start." Snorts everywhere. "He still manages to secure shipments of magic dirt sacks during the first one though, which means that sacks of magic dirt start being delivered to the Shire by elves. This results in very palpable improvements to every field and orchard and meadow and herb patches and medicinal and flower garden and basically every crop ever. This, in turn, fills up ALL short-term and long-term storage places in the Shire within 2 years and only keeps going from there.

"The first major consequence of this is that hobbits start partying and feasting several times more often than usual because they may as well do something with the surplus. Also, because you begin to feel strain on pottery and crockery and start feeling increasingly hard-pressed to store the new batch of bounty every year. You start to party for even the smallest excuse because of this, I imagine, which Bilbo, naturally, would have encouraged as it only meant extra venues for playing his instruments, which only enhanced the gradual rise in general merriment among hobbits in a continuous cycle.

"However, this ultimately isn't enough to actually prevent all stores from filling up, forcing you to dig out, build or otherwise create new storage areas at home and elsewhere, which is a somewhat ongoing process still. And the surplus keeps mounting, meaning that at this point you can either feed perfectly good crops and such to the livestock-:

"Unconscionable and doubly absurd for medicinal herbs and mushrooms, what are you nuts?" Someone cut in.

"Or two, sell or export the surplus somehow."

No interruptions this time, thank Mahal, now don't look up Ori, don't look up. "Only hobbits don't have any system in place for this! The attempt to encourage ranger traffic didn't quite pan out even after Bilbo managed to inform everyone relevant about them and their real activities during the fall festival of five years ago. So you've been trying to come up with something else, or alternatively waiting for Bilbo to do that since he's the one to blame for this bizarre conundrum."

"Damn right," someone groused, to much hmm-ing and haw-ing.

"Don't you see!?" Ori blurted at his brother and Valar, he looked up and he couldn't stop talking oh Maker! "The mass donation wasn't just on a whim. Hobbits quite simply have too much right now. The Thain, Mayor and Master came over today so easily because they hoped the Dunedain might help them or give ideas how and to whom to offload some of their massive surplus without having to actually set up sustainable exports! That's why they're so fixed on us! Blue Mountain dwarves bound east this or next year will make for a perfect solution to ease this concern, even if we don't… do all we plan to do by next year, and that's why they're not asking for more than a few shipments of iron and tools in exchange! They're all they need or want right now to further expand their stores! Don't you see!? It explains everything! Bilbo unintentionally improved Shire productivity and lifestyle to the point where Hobbits have to change their whole approach to self-governance. They can't keep to themselves unless they can live with the idea of wasting all that good food on the pigs." And just because he couldn't help himself, Ori hugged the nearest hobbit within reach. "You're not all crazy!"

Fortinbras Took bore the treatment with stoic dignity and Maker, Ori had just embarrassed himself, his brothers and the entire dwarven race by going on a fevered rant in front of every one of the free peoples of Middle Earth ever.

"Well…" Arathorn mused as he presided over the strange, impromptu congregation, because why not drive the final nail into the coffin of Ori's self-respect? "I do believe now would be a good time to set off the fireworks, wouldn't you think Mithrandir?"



The party lasted all through the night, past even the early moments of the next day's dawn when some of the hobbits actually started to load up empty sacks and pots to take back to whence they were brought. Seated on the half of a log that had been improvised into a bench at some point the previous evening, Balin watched as a tenth or so of the hobbits set off with their wagons, mules and hinnies whickering under the stars. The lingering flames and colors of Tarkun's fireworks played languidly over their coats as they vanished into the distance, the few afterimages that still lingered in the sky after so many hours at least.

It had been merry and fulfilling, Balin decided, this unlikely gathering. His cloud of shame-birthed depression found itself brutally evicted half-way through the first hour before the feast even started, chased off by the sheer bewilderment of what constituted "trade" for hobbits these days. Whether or not they retook Erebor, the dwarves of the Blue Mountains would be set for food for the next five years at the very least, quite likely longer considering the sorts of quantities they ended up discussing with the Mayor of Michel Delving and Master of Buckland. After the well-deserved skepticism was overcome at least, which wasn't until second desert when Dwalin damn near exploded at him and Thorin to "get on with it before all the food is gone." Which didn't fool anyone considering the hungry stare he had locked on the platter of hot, freshly baked cookies at the time.

It was a bit awkward to sit and talk and draft deals without the Thain's input for that first hour, but the Hobbit King (no matter what the hobbits called him) was too focused on his returned brother for the first half of it, and then too busy being gloatingly vindicated when Isengar Took started to cry his big hobbit heart out when the realization finally hit him, that his life's work had just been invalidated within the space of ten minutes by a random dwarf he hadn't even been introduced to.

Kili had been so horrified and miserable at the sight – once he was replete enough to process any feeling that could be termed in any way complex, at least – that he looked like a beaten puppy. He was so pitiful, in fact, that Thorin was moved enough by the sight to give him an official excuse to get himself out of sight. Which was to say, he ordered him and Fili to make themselves useful elsewhere before they ended up causing a diplomatic incident. Specifically by keeping an eye on Bilbo in case he decided to arrange or make any other "deals" for them behind their backs.

Balin would have had something to say about that, but in light of the last discussion he had with the hobbit, he decided to keep any thoughts he may have had to himself. Balin also strongly suspected that Kili was grateful to have a reason to bravely abscond from the presence of the elf lord as well, who'd calmly but quite persistently been coaxing him for details about his submarine concept all through the evening. And then about any thoughts he had on shipbuilding in general, for some unfathomable reason. The old dwarf doubted he'd have handled it with any better aplomb, being the center of attention of Cirdan the Shipwright for so long. And that beard, why, it was just about the sort of thing that…

Actually, better not follow that thought any further.

Sipping at his hot mug of fortifying tea, Balin looked around the improvised party grounds. Men and hobbits stood, sat, lunged or outright lay asleep or insensate all over the place, on benches, next to benches and under tables and chairs. There were even a couple of elves on the far side, leaning against the party willow and sleeping the way of their kind, with eyes open and focused on nothing in particular. Other people were still up and about, quiet as to accommodate the rest but still perfectly upbeat, some eating and drinking as if they hadn't been doing that since last eve. Well, except for Bofur who was singing just as boisterously as ever, which Gorbadoc Brandybuck seemed to appreciate if nothing else. Isengar Took was passed out on that odd loveseat he and the Thain had tearfully reunited in, but the Thain himself was quietly conversing with someone or other. The Mayor had gone off somewhere not long ago, escorting a group of hobbits that had started to become rather too surly for everyone else's sensibilities. Balin wondered how two of those could possibly be related to Bilbo Baggins, but in a way it was reassuring that hobbits had their bad castings like every other race out there.

And that was what was missing from the picture. Bilbo Baggins was nowhere to be seen.

As fortune had it, that was the same moment when Gandalf's last fireworks faded from the sky, and the first shades of dawn began to break in their wake.

And with them, that same low, strange, soothing note started to be heard from afar like it had that first night after they met their burglar, though with one difference: Balin could actually tell what direction it came from, and that it reached them from far, far away.

Far, far away from the east.

After a minute, the note 'Do' stopped, then the instrument – a low-adjusted fiddle this time – made itself heard again. The note 'Re' was as clear and strong as before, but this time it wasn't as if they were right next to the source.

Then, after another ten seconds came the third minute: Mi.

Then Fa.

So.

La.

Ti.

And Do again.

Then, when the music finally in earnest began, with strings slowly plucked by languid fingers somewhere far in the direction of the dawn, it wasn't hobbits that rose to their feet to pick up instruments and play in tune. It was the men.

The Dunedain rose one by one, all of them from wherever they were. They rose and stared into the early dawn as if not quite believing what they were hearing, then as one turned their backs on the music.

Except they didn't, Balin realized with some unknown emotion. They hadn't turned away from the music, but instead turned towards the West. The Glorious West where the Valar waited but where no man would ever sail, no matter how great the yearning. Though the elves sailed and would still sail to Valinor long after all men that lived today were gone, man would never see those shores, nor anything else of the Undying Lands even after they perished, for they moved beyond the world, or so their lore and myths all told.

Where did these thoughts come from, the dwarf wondered? Or were they truly like eddies, swirling about him for Bilbo to weave into his song?

The dwarf watched, shivering despite not feeling cold, and when the first proper note of the song began, it wasn't from afar but from right there, where Arathorn, son of Arador, brought to his lips a flute and sung a slow, meandering sound that felt like hopes meant to be snuffed and burned under the weight of some great, weighty doom.

It wasn't until the harp on the other side of the field started being plucked that Balin realized this was no new, spontaneous invention.

The song flew then, as if trying to outpace the dawn itself, and when it inevitably failed to escape the world, the Dunedain added their voices to it as the far off fiddle faded, replaced by one closer to home. More music joined in from everywhere – Balin couldn't look around quickly enough to register them all – and the pace rose and rose and sped up to the point where the men went far past the march to war and in full fanfare.

A ringing, piercing woodwind tune struck it right that moment, come from the horizon far ahead, and Balin knew, with supernal certainty, what he was witnessing.

It was an hymn.

A memory of times long past that echoed still.

An anthem.

What came after… he would never be able to later recount in words and do it justice, the drumbeats, trumpets and men's voices chanting, chanting, chanting like footsteps and heartbeats and hooves and the life-beat of the kingdoms of heroes old. For minutes and minutes and minutes it went on, rising, rising in speed and cadence, as if the flow meant to outpace the reach of the world, the dawn of the sun behind them that they wished but knew could never leave behind, no matter how much they yearned to sail to the gods beyond the reach of the compass. Never had Balin seen or heard the yearning so conveyed, of the people who were ever only allowed the faintest glimpse of Valinor, but never a hope for more.

It felt cruel to him, Balin thought as he listened and his body shivered under the low, heavy voices that chanted a passion as deep as any felt by any dwarf in the history of the world. Chant that carried as much as it was carried by the Dirge of Arnor, chant that beat and struck and stopped, again and over and over and again. Each time, sudden. Each time cut short. Not even the strong, heartfelt vocal solo that emerged in its wake didn't overcome the weight of the feeling in everything else, fading into that same, low, solemn, sorrowful note.

He barely remembered the lyrics, themselves coming late in the melody, and not because they were in Adunaic rather than Westron proper. But he did recall them, or enough of what could make it through without being lost in translation.

A raven flies into the moonlight
The cold storm snow
He knows the message has to arrive
The kingdom will burn to the ground

The witches and demons have come to deny
The beauty and peace of our homeland
We know the message has to arrive and
The King of the North will rise


The words seemed so simple, so basic for such a solemn dirge, but he couldn't deny they were appropriate.

And the voices all fell quiet after, leaving the music to run out as if expended, the full breadth of emotion having been felt and spent to the point where only weary sorrow was left for anyone anywhere in the world.

Balin sniffled and wiped at his eyes with the handkerchief that some hobbit or other had just given him. Maybe there was something to these things. He would inquire as to whether they could acquire some before leaving, especially if Bilbo Baggins intended to make a routine out of these performances. The prior songs had all been moving but… not sad. Not like this, so deep and wide and beautiful, but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty chiefly came. For a moment there, the sadness in the lyrics threatened to feel almost vain, the voice feeling as if it essayed to drown the other music by the force of its voice, but it seemed that its most triumphant notes were taken by the rest of the melody and woven into its own solemn pattern.

Balin wondered what it meant that he expected the song to end abruptly, in one single cord the moment the woman sung the last word. Instead, the melody drifted in the wake of the solo, as if meant to play the part of a bridge to some other tune.

Perhaps it was for the best that it finally fell silent. Whatever was meant to come after… Balin had a feeling none of the men had it in them to truly hope would be more uplifting than everything else that had ever happened to the noble men of the North.

A deep silence descended upon the gathering then, one not bereft of life – crickets and larks both plied their own sounds as the morning emerged – but it was no less solemn or meaningful for it. Balin, and probably everyone else in the Company, would never make the mistake of lumping any rangers with all the other, greedy, selfish, mistrustful and prideful men in their minds, that was for sure.

Later, when morning had fully broken and early mists lifted and dissipated, it was doubtlessly due to that last, mighty song that Thorin proved amenable to the offer made to them by the Dunedain Rangers. Especially considering they had elven companions going the same way.

"The Rangers have offered to escort us east for part of our journey," the King of Durin's folk told the Company as he spread their map out on the table cleared out for their use. "They assured me that they can help us make up for the delay we incurred with our detour here, taking us by paths they maintain along the edges of the South Downs. We should be able to arrive to Rivendell by the fourth of June." And for a wonder, Thorin managed to mention Rivendell and their errand there without grimacing.

How Balin wished he could spare him the pain of having none among their own kin who could divine the secrets of Thror's Map. As much as he valued the cherished customs of the dwarven people, Balin wondered if maybe Thror and Thrain shouldn't have made an exception when Smaug drove them out, instead of rebuffing Thorin when he asked how they escaped, let alone anything else. So much knowledge had been lost this way.

"See here…" Nori's low query snapped him back to the present. "I don't suppose you know whether or not the Ranger chief will be escorting us personally?"

"He has his own business in Rivendell so yes, he will."

"Count me out then."

That was the opposite of what Balin expected to hear, or what Thorin and everyone else felt on the matter.

"Explain," Thorin ordered flatly.

"He brings bad luck. Bilbo says so!" What followed was a choppy, meandering explanation about why and how Arathorn, Chieftain of the Dunedain Rangers of the North, was the unluckiest sod to ever walk this unlucky world, and how anyone who tangled with his business was guaranteed to run afoul of the most terrible mischief they could never think of.

By the end of it, Thorin looked like only kingly dignity was preventing him from speaking his mind on this latest development.

"This is outrageous!" Gloin spoke for them all instead. "First we get diverted and lose six days' travel, and now the Halfling expects us to court whatever misfortune follows that hapless man? And after he abandoned us?"

Abandoned what now?

"He left around midnight," Thorin told him when he noticed Balin's reaction. "He brought up the topic with me and the Ranger Chieftain, claiming he had some errands of his own to run and that this would help up make up for time lost. Given that coming here cost us six days, I considered it a reasonable enough notion." The king then glowered down at the map. "I did not imagine he might merely be setting us up for further difficulties."

"Well I don't think he is!" Bofur said bravely. "He's been a mighty fine host no matter what any of you say, and he's only done right by us, even if it's been in his strange, hobbity ways." Bombur and Bifur nodded in agreement, followed by Dori and Ori somewhat more hesitantly. Though in Ori's case it was probably because he was still embarrassed over last evening's… lapse.

Balin should have kept an eye on him better. It spoke badly of him as a Loremaster and teacher that he allowed himself to become so absorbed in his own social failures as to neglect the state of his apprentice like he had.

"Well, it don't matter none," Oin said with all the loudness of the deaf. "We're back to 13 again, which is already bad luck on its own. Who's to say how much worse things will go if we join our path with the man's, if he's really as unlucky as all that?"

"I am starting to wonder if there is any worth to the halfling's word, or the Wizard's word for that matter, since he set us up with him," Thorin growled, incensed over this apparent duplicity on Bilbo's part.

That every scrap of information warning the party against having anything to do with Arathorn also came from Bilbo Baggins seemed to escape everyone involved.

Another round of playing Melkor's advocate, it seemed. Oh Mahal, what did he do to deserve this?

It was at that moment, when Thorin was looking almost willing to change his mind and decide to track the hobbit down and hold him accountable for this latest development, that something even more urgent and relevant finally made itself noticed.

"Thorin," Dwalin said sharply, looking around at their company of… 11. "Did you ever get around to telling the boys to stop tailing the Burglar?"

There was a long, still silence.

What followed was an utterly chaotic cavalcade as the Company spread out to look for those two, then an utter frenzy as the men and even elves got involved in the sudden search for the two disappeared Durin princes. The whole mess escalated rapidly as Arathorn started barking orders to go search for the two disappeared dwarves, along with oaths that there was no foul play at work on their parts but they would lend all their aid to tracking them down. The number of Rangers, Bounders and even random, regular hobbits that set out on foot, by pony, on horseback or just promised to ask around and keep an eye out while traveling back home by cart… it was a complete and utter, massive mess of impromptu scouting. A total logistical nightmare.

Everything almost came to a head late in the afternoon, when a harried bounder came running down the Sarn Ford bridge, brandishing a rolled-up letter. It managed to derail the shouting match that a red-faced Thorin and a forcefully calm Arathorn were about to break into as a result of some chain of strong emotional displays and misunderstandings that even Balin hadn't managed to fully keep track of.

The dilemma of whether to go with the rangers or try to head northwest, towards the Old Forest in the hopes of picking up Bilbo's trail and give him a piece of dwarven mind, had been entirely forgotten during the whole fiasco.

"Letter!" the unknown bounder gasped as he came to a halt. "Letter for Thorin Oakenshield."

Thorin almost pulled the poor hobbit off his feet, so quickly he snatched and unfurled the sheet of… not parchment, it was far smoother, whiter and that's not important! Balin quickly moved to read over Thorin's shoulder before whatever was inside set his king the rest of the way into an apoplectic fit.



To Uncle Thorin,

Hey uncle, this is Fili.

(And Kili!).

Yes, and Kili, the coward who refuses to own up to his mistakes again and needs me to explain his latest disaster, as usual.

(Oh, go suck air through a reed! I was physically exhausted and utterly soul-weary after the ordeals of the evening!)

Yes, how trying it must have been to be the center of attention for everyone at the party, and to have your plates and drinks personally refilled and replenished by the leaders of the world all through the night. You essentially gathered around you every single lord and king at the party and practically held court. What a dreadfully terrible fate to inflict on someone.

(I was interrogated, you arse, for hours, and on something I hadn't even given more than a few minutes' thought to before last night!)

Well if you weren't so willing to share all those dwarven secrets-

(Secrets? Secrets!? I had to basically redo someone else's life work within the space of ten minutes before I was even allowed to have dinner! And then they wouldn't let me go because they couldn't stop asking "details" about my "ideas" as if I had ever given any of it any thought before! I actually had to spell out the implications of a metal bowl floating as long as it's not tipped over. And don't even get me started on how no one ever thought to coat ship hulls in copper so ships wouldn't need to be scrubbed of barnacles every few months. And then one of the men actually called me crazy for suggesting it because 'oh, the nails will rust out' don't you know. Because it's not like elves use wooden nails just fine, and wouldn't you know it, copper nails are also a thing since yes, iron nails do rust, thank you, I am well aware. How was any of this a surprise to anyone!?)

How was it any surprise to you, you mean? You do realize that most men still think hobbits make sugar by milking birds, right? Why you still have such high hopes for their mental capacity I will never understand.

(Who cares about the men? The one responsible for most of my suffering is Lord Beardmaster himself! What next, am I going to find out there are people who still eat out of lead dishes? Maybe there are still folk who think tomatoes are poisonous, that would be a riot. Or oh! Tomorrow I'll run into that fool from Duillond again who needs someone to invent a whole new creation myth because he hates music. Won't that be fun?)

In the beginning there was nothing. Then God said, Let There Be Light! There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better.

(Oh, very clever!)

Anyway, uncle, Kili's gesticulating helplessly aside, the long and short of it is that after you ordered us to keep track of Mister Baggins, we ended up falling asleep because Kili was having one of his episodes-

(I Was NOT!)

-and ended up making us both pass out in the back of a cart because he's a cheating cheater who cheats!

(Excuse you! That is so not my fault! I'm not the one who challenged me to a drinking contest because he thought the Very Important Mission uncle gave us was too boring!)

Yes, uncle, he's not the one who wanted a drinking contest, he just proved, once again, that it's pointless to issue him any sort of honorable challenge.

(That's a terrible, vicious lie! You're just embarrassed to admit you passed out in the back of a wagon after just one drink!)

A single drink of Buckland Black you replaced my Green Dragon Emerald with!

(Don't listen to him uncle, he can't prove anything!)

Only because you disposed of the evidence!

(You can't prove that either!)

Never mind him, uncle, there's no reasoning with him, he's a lost cause.

(Ignore him, uncle, he's just embarrassed that he lost so badly at his own game.)

See, uncle, lost cause. And if that's not enough, then allow me to report that he somehow managed to fall asleep in the same wagon and snore his way through half a day's ride without any soporifics to help him along.

(I needed to recover my strength after my taxing, torturous trial!)

Anyway, the point is that by the time we woke up, we were already half a day's ride up the northwest road. Fortunately, this actually works great because Bilbo went up this same road not much earlier according to the good hobbit driving this good wagon, so we can still go on with the mission you gave us! The good hobbit also offered to find a bounder for us so we could let you know where we are.

(I'm not sure why you had Bilbo go ahead without you, but since Dori got doused with the same thing Fili did, I suppose you had to wait for him to wake up before properly setting out?)

Anyway, we hope you catch up soon!

Love, Fili,

(And Kili.)

P.S.

I just want to make it clear that I would have won that drinking contest, and anything Kili has to say about it is a terrible, vicious lie!

(He's right, you know. I am a lying frog. Everything I say is a lie. I'm lying to you right now.)

Oh, very clever!"



As Dwalin put his face in his hands and moaned about useless Durins and the various ways in which he was going to kill them, Balin gaped at the letter over Thorin's shoulder, aghast.

"Well…" he eventually said faintly. "I suppose that settles that."

A/N: With this, this story is up to date.

---

Kili dreamed. But was it really a dream when it was just reliving a memory? Even if it wasn't his own memory, he was pretty sure. Which was doubly strange, this wasn't the sort of thing that happened every other time in his life when he nearly drowned. This was a strange thing to have as one of his greatest mysteries in life.

Another one of the great mysteries of life was that people need more than intelligence to act intelligently. He would never genuinely consider Thorin Oakenshield a stupid dwarf, for example. The rest of the company might be a different matter altogether though, considering recent developments. Other than the unfaithful warrior, possibly.

None of whom were in any position to opinionate, given the situation. Especially the dwarf beating against him as though getting away was all that mattered in the world.

Song and Stone! He cherished all the People new and good, even those disabled or crippled, but would that it were reciprocated ofttimes! Linnar's lad was ever just one or the other, never both, he should still understand. The rusting axe stuck in his forehead rendered him inarticulate and occasionally blustering, not simple! A tragedy that it robbed him of the spoken word, beyond whatever Khuzdul grunts he occasionally remembered while signing, but what he was doing now was everything but signing. And speaking should be the farthest thing from his mind.

The dwarf choked and flailed against him, clawing and gasping in the black, trying to escape his hold in a desperate struggle to reach the light that trickled from on high. He didn't understand. The surface of Withywindle glimmered far above them. Far too far above them. The stream was never so deep, not even at its slowest around the Lake surrounding the Glimmering Isle. The Old Grey One was feisty! It was old and angry and did not distinguish between arms of death and those of burden. It would rid itself of the one whose death by iron it could not deprive all the same, even if it meant hurling them down the Water Paths.

No matter. Swimming amidst the black was the first trick he learned, long before he even knew of Hill, Water and Wood. Before Light. Before Wind. Before Music, when he'd barely achieved any sort of thought. Before Stone thawed to Fire inside his mould. Before he got around to finishing living the first day of life upon the world. Before he even learned his first word.

Definitely before he learned of it being possible to live with an axe in your head. Or stuck most other places for that matter. That was a new one.

What he was about to do was also a new one. Or at least it would be the first time he was on the giving end.

From the depths of his midst to the top of his lungs, he inhaled the Water. It was hard not to gag and choke in a body so unaccustomed. But he drew in in the Water until he could draw no more, and then rolled the flagging dwarf under him, leaned over him and exhaled into his mouth everything but the Water.

Linnar's son jerked and ceased his flails, eyes wide if only from the shock of it.

The axe head scraped harshly against his own forehead, but he let the feeling sink into the endless depths of his memory and hugged the dwarf close, then tightened his hold just so.

The dwarf wildly gasped his last breath of air back into his mouth, and with this he had the Water and the Wind to lead them both back to Wood and Hill.

He hurled himself and his burden back, tucked the thrashing dwarf against his chest, looked up until he was facing down, then blew out the air in one great ring of glittering bubbles.

The Water smoothed around them and light breached the fathomed depths, guidance bright and farthest possible thing from angry. A proper feel, he thought with what probably didn't pass for wittiness. But appropriate, given the way he and the other plunged through the hoop of bubbles.

There was no angry way to say 'bubbles.'

They breached the surface of a waterfall amidst smooth river stones, moss-covered bark, birdsong, and half of all the shades of every leaf in the world. Fronds and petals and needles alike hung and fell from trees that grew close and tall into an unbroken canopy. It stretched far and wide and cast a half-light upon all things that lived and didn't. There was not one glimpse of the sky anywhere through it all. That was good. It meant he found the way to precisely where he wanted amidst all other places that lead in and out of Wood, Water and Hill.

Linnar's boy flailed about, gasping for air one moment and choking on mouthfuls of foam the next. His mind failed to catch up to the reality of the shallows they were in.

He himself was long past such displays. From the depths of his midst to the top of his lungs, he exhaled the Water. Then he breathed in the Wind and exhaled again. And again. And again and again and again until he breathed nothing but breath.

Birdsong and all else living was silent when he was done. It left the toil of the dwarrow next to him the only sound out of place in the eternal dusk. Even that was winding down and growing in length and distance. Flesh and mind moved more and more out of synch with each other to make room for the Light, faint though it was so deep out. In this, too, he could relate. The flow of things was different here, and the light of Sun and Moon and Stars was nowhere to be had.

He grabbed the dwarrow from under the arms and dragged him to the shore. Linnar's get crawled and stumbled along, mind too slow to even conceive conscious will its own. He was still in tune with the rest of the world more than himself. Would remain so for at least a sunturn, thwarted by the Light even all the way out there in the thickest shade.

Probably not as long as he himself took the first time, though. He hoped to be there for it, but that was far in the future. If indeed it would happen at all without a glimpse of the First and Oldest. The Now called him, and called for him to move or ponder.

So he stood in the Wood and pondered.

He pondered the place from whence he'd swum, but it was barely different from all else he ever dreamt. He pondered where he could go also. But that, too, was less a destination and more a return to that which had already borne him hence, back when his life was less dreaming of dreams and more doing. He pondered where he had come from. He pondered where he might head now.

The moment loomed before him.

He felt the faintest stirrings of delight. Such a long time since he had been adrift, with no portents in sight! Oh, wouldst that he bore forth in else than this crude husk. His first had been but ore and Stone, but even that fit better in this place than this vessel of bone and blood. So soft if not as raw, it was fresh and untrained in every art that ever was. Alas!

Still…

For want of portents, he would make do as he always does.

And here and now, when portents don't abound, it could only be time for a song!

From the depths of his midst to the top of his lungs, he inhaled Wind and Wood scents.

Only to falter upon the sound of a distant judder twanging against his ears from far off, carrying forth the renewed sounds of birdsong and whistles and stalling any plan to bring forth any of his own.

It brought him no gloom.

Instead, the whistling that followed turned delight to elation whole.

That first Note…

Elation swelled into yearning unbounded and he was suddenly rushing through the woods so fast that he almost missed the weak moans and mumbling far behind.

Oh, thou dream! Even mastered it vexed him when he but wanted to indulge wants his own.

He stopped, turned around, marched back to the stream bank and found Linnar's descendant gripping blindly at the world, dazed from new time on his mind and tongue twisting around every new scent and color he tasted every other blink. Sympathy swelled within him at the sight, along with a spark of shame over having discarded him so swiftly. The sight before him was no different from himself of yore, back when he was ten times as slow and less than half as keen. At least before he gained will and might to call his own, he'd managed with help and guidance. Now, it seemed, it was his turn to pass it on.

The Wood crooned throughout him as it basked in the second Note. He stood with head backwards and closed his eyes, relishing every last moment of it. His mind was in tune with the flow within and without this World within the World.

Only when it was over a breath and age later did he look back down, at the dwarf laid out on the mossy forest floor. Even descended from miners and smithies and simple folk with simple tastes, even slow and stretched as his mind was across the Now and Thence, whatever the dwarrow picked up of the Note was enough to leave him lax and languid.

In the end this, too, was no matter.

Ordering and handling him with the ease of long personal experience undergoing the same, he soon had the dwarf on his feet and stumbling along after their joined hands.

The third Note carried them from dusk to evening shade, from thickets of yew and redwoods to more seldom birch and airy maples rich with fruit and bird flights. Larks and swallows flew through their crowns even as squirrels and hares dashed up, down and amidst their trunks.

The Fourth lured them further inwards, boots shifting dirt and foliage as they passed through close-knit thickets of rain-soaked palm and rubber trees. The rain still dripped from the leaves like a song unto itself, the song of a glad water coming down like silver. How well and true! Always this lot seemed as if rain had just ended, with new water running downhill under the boughs. As every other time he passed this way, he laughed and was glad, even as his companion could but stumble through the underbrush in his wake bewilderedly.

Then came the fifth Note, and the scent of the rainforest became thicker, headier, less wood and more hints of salt. The shade lifted some more and the forest became increasingly speckled with Treelight. Thin, long, pitching beams of white, silver, gold and every other color and off-color he cared to name. Which was many of them indeed but far from all, for even the Namer of Names never managed to name them all. Nor the myriad of creatures big and small scurrying, dashing, stalking and lumbering around them, some out of sight and some not hardly. Their boots sunk through leaves and mud up to their ankles. Still he trudged forward, not at all perturbed but instead emboldened when they finally reached the greatest of the mangroves. Here the smell of salt grew thick with a brackish scent that rose from the murky waters sloshing around bush and tree roots. They were full of grown water birds and baby chicks of all stripes swimming and diving after scurrying tadpoles. Seed-feeding birds, fish-hunters and scavengers alike lounged in the branches or flitted here and there also, even as raptors perched on the highest boughs of the trees he and his companion passed ever by. None attacked others and neither did they fear.

There was no Death in this Light true and free.

It was on the Sixth that salt water gave way to strong earth speckled with green once more. They walked out of the marsh up the mouth of a stream that washed their boots and feet all clean. He stopped there to drink from the fresh water. The drought invigorated them, a blessing after that trek that could well have lasted hours or eons. There was never a perfect way to tell in this place, even among sights as familiar as these. Fir trees of all sorts and heights stretched to the left and right as far as he could see, with no path through them to be found on mere fancy. Even game trails escaped his sight, though he knew well it was not for their lack. Nor for want of the Treelight either, though it could surely have achieved that and more. It was stronger here. Fittingly, none of the trees making up this final picket had and would ever lose their green coat of leaves, be they soft as silk or sharp as needles.

It was here, during the Sixth, that Linnar's get succumbed to Life and Light overwhelming.

Decision loomed before him once more.

Here, at least, he was not wholly bereft of portents. Would they were all of home and bliss rather than pain! Linnar's boy fell to his knees beside him, moaning in agony as rusted axe grew orange-hot a-cleansing. That decided him as much as anything else on that last stretch. He turned, put himself between the dwarf and the Light and drew him inward, face over his heart and arms around him whole. The heat of the axe lessened some, pulling from the addled dwarf a moan of relief that shook them both down to the bone. He basked in it as all good deeds should be basked in, but did not tarry elseways. Instead, he started walking backwards, pulling and leading the staggering dwarf further and further in, past firs and shrubs and over wood chips loosed from bark that fed the lush blanket of moss and grasses for ages upon ages. Woodlands, critters and plants glittered everywhere, gleaming and shimmering every shade as he gazed upon them. No color was out of place, but every last tinge was weighty like nowhere other. Such was the nature of life when filled to the brim with the Light of Everything that ever was and never hadn't not been.

The seventh Note came and stayed with them through the whole of the last span, longer, louder, nearer than all the ones before it and still not staggered at all. It ended just as the woodland ended and they reached the last bulwark of that scape. Behind and above, he knew, was a great wall of trees. All trees that were and could ever be, grown short, wide, tall and together. Commingled. Twined and intertwined here and tether in a wall. The First Wall that ever was. It was taller than one could see, farther than one could think. It was such that no place there was for Light to trickle through from the place within unremitting. A pity and a mercy both, for few could unaided suffer even the cambered slivers that seeped through copse and canopy. A pity and a mercy that there was no place for light to flow unhindered. No place save for a hole in the ground. The hole in the ground right behind him.

The hole in the ground right behind him that sloped forth and down and was lit with the Light reflected off the water on the other side.

He pulled the dwarf along and down, steadied him down the slope until it evened out, and finally they were stood on the bank.

Then he let go, grabbed the axe head, and yanked.

Linnar's descendant lurched violently with a cry. His eyes snapped open wide only to shut in pain less than a moment past. Then he choked on his last gasp, toppled forward and fell face-down in the turf deathly still.

But not dead in truth. Whether still of mind, breath or heartbeat, or even all combined, none who found this place could ever be so snuffed.

He turned away from kinsman downed and towards the clearing. The Light had him then. It was all-engulfing, brighter than the brightest glare, blinding without blinding. It routed all thought from his mind as skin and eyes accustomed to light ephemereal basked for the first time in Light which was everything but.

It was enough to strike one dumb. Leave any other who might have come still and ramrod. A statue stiff and wracked for a year and a day with every feeling save dismay.

That such did not happen to him was a bittersweet grace at best. Though a first for this body, it was not a first for him. That came and passed long since. How could anything ever compare to it? How could he do anything but gaze up to the Tree?

Alas that old hats, too, can fit poorly. His eyes could not bear the radiance.

With a shuddering breath, he looked back down and watched instead the unplugged depths that went unseen. Sights and scenes shone instead throughout it, at end of the rays that sunk into the water. It brought back sights midst trees, meadows, forests, hills, skies, towns, tents and glades all over. The images flitted in and out of sight beneath the ripples. People blinked in and out also, from tallish Men in cloaks clasped grey, to dwarrows odd and kinsmen known. Some wet their thirst by brooks. Others fidgeted awkwardly aside lakes built around underground memorials. The surface broke suddenly upon the last image, water rippling sharply. A tiny wren-like bird burst out from underneath the surface and shot for the far shore towards the Isle.

The song proper started then, low and slow and lilting. Birds chirped amid plucked cords and the sound of whistling. It wakened a longing in him, new and old and heavy. It filled him with haze of haste, thick and fast and heady. Try he did to look again, to the Tree unending. Still he failed, but that was fine! Time and song were with him.

He would turn to rock and dust before he missed the chance to sing the Melody, especially a song of such a sort that he had heard before!

He'd never thought to hear in full this number. His father-guide was singing up his sire!

The flute began its round and so he was resolved. From guess and memory he saw the coming rounds. Good songs needed a drum to roll. For want of such, though, hop on a stepping stone! There were none here and the lake was deep, but if stepping stones he wants then stones he'll get. Many are in the world for Water Paths to call, even in haste!

He stood until the third beat and then he jumped. And when his feet struck the lake atop, water splashed at his feet but he did not drop, and the thump was like the very drum he wanted heard.

The sound rippled all over the lake everlasting. So he stepped forth again, once, twice, thrice and hop again! When the lute joined in answer to the woodwind, his rhythm was all set. Step by beat by step he wended, then hop a drum and tread again and on. Hop and stomp and stomp and drum the steps until chord and woodwind joined in one. The lute then first went still. Upwards went whistles long and clear. But chords sounded regardless, even as fiddles long since quiet were heard once more across time and memory, singing upwards from lake and light for all around to see. So forth until mid-way through the melody. So forth until he stood mid-way to the far shore. All the while, the rusted axe grew hot and bright in hand so he let it free.

There was no death under the light of the First Tree.

It fell with a splash to parts and times unknown, exchanged but not with tools dropped forth by him of old.

And so, half-way to shore and mid-through longest note, it was his hand that took and plucked the chord.

Sound elsewise stopped. No else played on. Far lute fell still. The woodwind ceased. Grass and cloak whirled roundwise as surprise and marvel seized his guide-father and his father far on the shore ahead.

And so naught was heard in the Glade Everlasting, save chords plucked by his clever fingers and their echo ere long. It flew onwards and back across the Glimmering Lake, unbreached by beast or bird calls known. Joy filled his breast until he felt like bursting, pride and delight filling him wholly at the act. He'd brought the All to total hush! And look at guide-father, stock-still and stood astonished at his stunt. Surprised to see him, awed and stunned. The chants of kin rose up through Water paths from elsewhen at the sight. A sight so wondrous but so odd! By deeps and skies, he'd made him proud!

So proud that he missed his cue to pick back up. It was the strangest and most shocking sight he'd ever seen in his life.

But they were not bereft. Guide-father's father stood beside, and he was right alert. Guide-father's flute he took, thick and long and speckled. He brought it up to breathe and play just as his part was settled.

Fast then surged the melody, off and quick a-rising. Forth strode guide-father's own lord, was he really smiling? Shook himself the Singer then, moved to stand aside him. Pulled he did from water clear, fiddle long and gleaming.

Thus did three join in and played into memory, instruments entwined through Song and Melody. He could not fathom it growing even richer still, but it did. Drumming leaps drowned more in song than splashwater. Flute sung high only to be out-sung in turn. Guide-father's fiddle rose and rose thereafter, strong and grand and challenging to All. And as it did, guide-father's gaze was locked on him, sharp, firm and inspiring until it seemed to him as if his kinsmen were all there beside him. Young and old out of time and memory, they sung along, beat on their greatest drums and chanted in one voice.

Then came the peak. And it was all the wonder he could have hopes to hear.

It was not jarring. Nor was it sudden. But it stood out all the same just for its source. It came from on high. It came as a reprise of all the tunes already told. It came from a leaf blown. How proper for surroundings such as these, its own!

It was glorious and spoke of minds and hearts already joined. It filled every gap between the notes they hadn't known, blending everything together in its own, joyous pattern at odds with nothing of itself unlike every other song he could ever care to name.

His eyes were drawn unerringly to the source.

It was above. On high. Iarwain Ben-adar. Orald. Forn. He who is Eldest and knew the world when it was nameless. Perched high atop the greatest of the bough of the First Tree well aloft.

He was lying haphazardly on his back with one leg hanging astride the branch, swinging lazily and seeming as if his big, yellow boot was just about to fall off. The only other detail he could see of him was a bit of his brown beard sticking out from under the hat covering his face, and even that was almost hidden behind his blue coat and its rumpled color. The incongruous sight struck him dumb and jarred him out of dream and kin chants. The ancient didn't even deign to look at them!

He almost forgot to resume his lute song. It would have ruined the whole song just as it reached the very end, so jarring the scene was. Fortunately, he didn't miss his cue – alas poor guide father! – and the song reached its end thorough and true. But he himself didn't.

"Akhrâm'addad!" The moment his final chord elapsed, he tossed the lute out in the sand and charged with a joyous cry. His booted stomps carried him over the last step stones, past the beach sands and leaping forward in a rush. Guide-father barely had time to brace. It would have availed him none anyway, so small and light as he ever was. But that was alright. He was old hand at this. He knew best out of all how to judge speed and spans.

His sprint ended with him sliding the last stretch knees-first and his arms around guide-father's midriff. To the depths with deportment, who cared about scuffed knees? Light, life and love, he has all of it here! Even if he has to spend the rest of his days all in this kay, what else but joy should he feel for living again after he died to the black king? His guide-father was here. Guide-father sings again and now he lives again. His father's father too! Father of his guide-father. Grandfather? He couldn't wait to meet him! Let him live deep while he lives. Let him spend years just basking in the strong beat of glad hearts of his most dear. Let him feel the taste of ripe meat on his tongue even, the sweet tang of mead to see him through long weeks, because why not? For all the noise she made about the dwarrow and their axes on her trees, the Queen of the Earth didn't seem to balk at creating a whole slew of meat-eating horrors to torment, murder and strip the flesh off the more meek and peaceful of her creatures. Why, it was enough to drive one to-

"LOOKOUT BELOW!"

Tom Bombadil suddenly belly-flopped in the lake.

The water burst mightily outward in a gigantic flux, then back and upward in a huge spout only when it was already too late for the rest of them. A literal tidal wave as tall as five dwarves atop one another swept forth and washed them off the inner isle's beach. He barely had time to sputter and spin madly in the current, unknowing of here everyone else disappeared. Too soon it seemed like he was sinking back into depths unfathomed. And before he could think of spitting out some air to follow to the top, the Master passed underneath him. He was looking up straight at him with smile blithe and bright as the rest of him, fully seen in the deepening dark as if he stood in the noon sun.

That was as far as his mind got before Tom Bombadil used a cane of wood to bump him on the brow, and up and up he fell.

He burst out of the water a choking, coughing, sputtering mess, and struggling to disentangle himself from some roots or other that he didn't remember being there. Or anywhere. Drenched or not, though, the dwarf immediately began to feel very hot as well. There had also once been armies of flies buzzing round his ears, but now they were dead silent. Sleepiness fought his attempt to stand every step of the way, but he struggled as mightily as he could to break its hold. Even as his mind unfogged, though, he struggled to take in his surroundings. An eerily gentle noise was on the edge of his hearing, nothing like the Music in the dream. And what a time to dream a dream! How had he dozed? When? Why?

The last thing he remembered since Thorin and company caught up to them and gave them a piece of his mind was fighting through his drowsiness to go check on the ponies. He recalled that two had wandered off and he had just caught them and brought them back when he heard the loud noise of something heavy falling into the water. The other noise was like the snick of a lock when a door quietly snaps shut. More of the same then alarmed him enough to rush back to the bank. That's when he found Dori in the water close to the edge, with a great tree-root that had sprung over him out of nowhere. He also remembered that Dori hadn't been struggling either, even though he was drowning. He'd had to drag the big dwarf back onto the bank. But there was something else. Something important he wasn't remembering.

The details of the dream fought him as well, every time he tried to grasp at them. This, though, at least was nothing new. When it came to dreams he seldom remembered anything, save when he dreamed of dreaming, and even then he rarely kept anything but knowing of the strangeness of such vagaries in the waking world. Odd and fancy turns of word sometimes bubbled, like right now, but this was not the time for such rumination! He lifted his heavy eyes to find the sight of the old and hoary willow-tree. He had somehow wound up on the other side of the stream. The company had camped under it after Thorin and the rest finally found to the pair of them. Not that it was much of a task, lost and wandering dumbly through the woods as they had ended up. The only surprise was how quickly they had caught up.

Kili's addled thoughts cleared by the expedient of Bofur crashing down next to him with a splash.

"Gah!" the dwarf sputtered, stumbling to his feet in the brackish water. "Mahal wept! The tree! It threw me in!"

"Do you know, my prince," Dori had said, memory finally alight in his mind. "The beastly tree threw me in! I felt it. The big root just twisted round and tipped me in!"

Tree…

"… The willow!"

Kili and Bofur waded back to the bank as fast as they could, only to find barely half the company not stuck or trapped or lost somehow. Even worse was understanding the click that he had heard before he went under. Dwalin had vanished! The crack by which he had laid himself had closed together, so that not a chink could be seen. And Thorin too at some point, though no one was sure if he'd gone the same way or not. Even worse off than everyone left was Fili, who was trapped! Another crack had closed about his waist. His legs lay outside, but the rest of him was inside a dark gap, the edges of which gripped like a pair of jaws.

"Fire!" Kili gasped, an ember bursting out of his numb mind. "We need fire!" His eyes fell on the doused campfire. "What happened to the fire!?"

"We tried!" Ori wailed from nearby, standing crookedly and rubbing his eyes in wide-eyed panic. "The Willow almost split Fili in half!"

Suddenly the branches of the willow began to sway violently. There was a sound as of a wind rising and spreading outwards to the branches of all the other trees nearby, as though the anger of the willow tree was out to spread over the whole Forest. Everything from reeds to low and hanging vines started fluttering and moving about, grappling and twisting at their limbs. The branches of the great willow also started lashing about, as if to strike them down. At the same time, great roots began to break out through the ground, hitting, tripping and drawing increasingly foul cursing from everyone that nonetheless could little mask the panic rising fast. Kili had to throw himself backwards, and even then he stumbled and fell on his back.

Then, without any clear idea of why he did so, or what he hoped for, Kili took off at a run along the path crying for help. "Help! Help! Help!" He almost couldn't hear the sound of his own shrill voice: it was swallowed up by the willow-wind and drowned in a rush of leaves and winding stems almost before the words left his mouth. He had never felt a panic as terrible as this!

Suddenly, though, he came to a halt. It might have been jut wishful thinking, but it sounded almost like there was an answer! But it seemed to come from behind him, from deeper in the Forest at his back. Beofre he could wonder if he was going mad, though, Bofur and Ori both jerked and rushed to join him where he stood. Soon, there could be no doubt: someone was singing a song. A smooth, whimsical voice was singing carelessly and happily.

Then he started wondering if he was mad all over again because it was… The song was…

Hey then! What's this then, gone thunk-a-clanking?
Fight anon, come abscond, bad be that graftling!
Old man, Willow-man, wrong grown the sapling!

Half hopeful and half afraid of some new lunacy, Kili, Ori, Bofur and all the rest of the dwarves not snared by the creature one by one now all went still. Suddenly, amidst the sinisterly merry summation of their irreparable situation, the voice rose up loud and clear and burst into song.

Hey! Come dreary lot! Waterlogged Hadhodrim!
Fast comes the weather-wind and the storm a-roaring.
Down aright atop the Hill, singing forth the sundown,
There my clever son there is, Bombadillo's scion,
Clear glimmer amidst the dew, brightest at the sundown.

Bungo Baggins I, hapless guests a-wrangling,
Come to take you to my boy, can you hear me calling?
Hey! Come dreary lot, brook-doused sods out of your mines,
Bilbo, Bilbo, Bilbo, busy is amidst the skeins!

Grumpy Willow-man, you tuck your roots away!
Bungo's on a mission now, no Tom on the way.
Bombadillo home he is, crowning his sweet darling.
Tantrum yours my business is, do you hear me laughing?

The dwarves stood as if enchanted. The wind puffed out. The leaves hung silently again on stiff branches. There was another burst of song, and then suddenly, hopping and dancing along the path, there appeared above the reeds a beaked, velvety hood. With another hop and bound there came into view a hobbit more hobbitish than any they had ever seen, or so he seemed. He was as short as war proper, as tall as was proper, as jolly as was proper, as barefoot as was proper, and he strode ten times as silent as all of them combined on their best day, his leathery soles passing through grass like gliding on a breeze. His coat was greener than grass, his honey-brown hair peeked out from under his cowl, his face was creased with wrinkles of laughter, and his eyes were even greener than everything else on him. With one hand he stroked the tops of cattails and reeds as he passed, while the other held a bag over the shoulder by the strap.

"Help!" cried Ori and Bofur, running towards him with hands stretched, having clearly heard and understood not a word of what the newcomer was saying. Kili stood ramrod straight, feeling like he wanted nothing more but to lay down and dream at the worst time all over again.

"Well now, steady there!" cried the unexpected hobbit, holding up one hand, and Ori and Bofur stopped short as if they had been struck stiff. "Now, my hefty fellows puffing like a bellows, what's the matter here then? Do you know who I am? I'm Bungo Baggins. Tell me what's your trouble! Hurry now, storm and miscreants are afoot. You don't want to be caught out here if you've any sense!"

"Our friends are caught in the willow-tree," cried Ori breathlessly. "Fili's being squeezed in a crack!"

"One of me brothers is gone too!" gasped Bofur. "Tossed in the water, like half of the Company! And those who got through only got snared in the roots! Glon and Balin fought past, but I can't see anything of them anymore!"

"Oh dear," sighed Bungo Baggins, slipping past them towards the strife. "Old Man Willow! I knew it would be him! Tom would freeze his marrow cold if he were here, sing his roots off, sing a wind up and blow leaf and branch away. No matter, that can soon be mended. I know my own tune for him. Old Grey Willow-man! I'll sing him round his madness, back to the gloom and cowardice of his yester-yore if he doesn't behave himself. Old Man Willow!" Setting down his bag carefully on the grass, the hobbit ran to the tree. Low vines tried to trap him but they shied back at his glare. Hanging boughs tried to smack him but the hobbit leaned away and lashed back at the branches, tearing out a long sprig at the base as he bounded over and past dwarves snared and fallen. There he saw Fili's feet still sticking out — the rest had already been drawn further inside. Bungo put his mouth to the crack and began singing into it in a low voice. They could not catch the words, but evidently Fili was aroused. His legs began to kick. Bungo sprang away, and with the hanging branch he'd claimed before, smote the side of the willow. "You let them out again, Old Grey Willow-man!" he said, smiting once each tell. "What be you a-thinking of? You should not be waking. Eat earth! Dig deep! Drink water! Go to sleep! Master here I may not be, but my song is the Song all the same and I say Sleep!" He then seized Fili's feet and drew him out of the suddenly widening crack.

There was a tearing creak and two more cracks split open on the opposite sides of the large trunk, and out of it Thorin and Dwalin sprang as if they had been kicked. The earth thudded heavily as they crashed upon it, grunting breathlessly as if taking their first air in too long. Then with a loud snap the cracks closed fast again, a shudder ran through the tree from root to tip, and complete silence fell.

There was dead quiet as the dwarves of Thorin's company picked themselves off the ground and out of snares and water, bar one that was nowhere in sight but none had mind enough left to mind.

Bungo Baggins tsked. "I do so wish only one problem presented itself at a time. The world and life would be so much more orderly then. Alas that neither is prone to such abstract notions as orderliness and convenience." The hobbit shook his head. "Well, my big fellows!" he said, tilting his head so that he peered into their faces from beneath his hood, clean and unruffled as though he'd undergone nothing untoward. "You shall come with me! Worry not for your straggler, I know wherefore he rests. He'll be with you anon, alive and true, more so I dare say than ever! But that's all the talk you're getting now, storm approaches and night will find us soon. Tom's table is all laden with yellow cream, honeycomb, and white bread and butter. He and Goldberry are waiting on my son, but my son waits on me so I am done a-tarrying! Time enough for questions around the dinner table. You follow after me as quick as you are able!" With that the hobbit picked up his bag, and then with a beckoning wave of his hand went off along the path eastward, humming and singing as he traipsed.

Too surprised, relieved and tired to talk, Kili looked along with everyone else to Thorin who glared tiredly back at him for getting them into this mess even as he hugged Fili close to his chest, murmuring stilted somethings. But he gave a weary nod all the same, however grudging, so all followed after the hobbit as fast as they could.

A/N: That Hollywood didn't re-release the Peter Jackson films on the 20th anniversary of The Return of the King was stupid and wasteful, wouldn't you agree?

---

Bungo Baggins led their party to a gently rising hill. The water began to murmur. The white foam glimmered like rolling diamonds in the falling evening, where the river flowed over a short fall. Then suddenly the mists were left behind and the trees came to an end. The dwarves stepped out onto a wide sweep of grass. The river, now small and quick, was leaping carelessly past them, glinting in the shades of the evening and the soft light from the moon that was already showing his face in the sky.

The grass under their boots was smooth and short now, as if it had been mown or shaven. The leaves of the Forest behind were the same, clipped and trim as a hedge. The path was now plain before them, well-tended and bordered with stone. The path went down a hill again ahead of them, and then up again, along smooth hillside of turf all the way to the top of a grassy knoll. There, still high above them on a further slope, were the twinkling lights of a house.

"There be Tom Bombadil's house, up, down, under hill."

Nobody replied to the words of Bungo Baggins – Bilbo's father, really? – as they were all too glad to see the friendly sight. Already half their weariness seemed to leave them, so the dwarves hurried to follow Bungo up to the home. Finally, they stood upon the threshold, and a golden light was all about them.

Kili's eyes, though, strayed to the sight of the steep land that lay beyond the hill. Though the sun was still out, that place already looked more grey than green. Bare, almost. And beyond it, the dark shapes of hill graves, standing stones and menhirs stalked away into the eastern gloom.

"The Barrow-downs," Bungo said as he directed them to leave their boots on the porch. "A dreary place, one I'm loath to step upon even when I gather years enough to risk leaving the Forest at all, even just in spirit, but don't worry about it for now."

What does he mean?

The dwarves of Thorin's company – twelve now, as they were still missing Bifur – stepped over a solid stone threshold and felt uncommonly at ease in the space they now found themselves in. The room was long but low, lit by lamps swinging from the roof beams, and there was a large table of dark polished wood covered with many candles, tall and yellow, burning brightly. A short glance was all they got, however, as Bilbo immediately led them further in through another door.

They followed the second oddest hobbit they'd ever met, down a short passage and round a sharp turn, until they came to a low room with a sloping roof.

A penthouse, Kili thought. Built into the north end of the house.

The floor was flagged, and strewn with fresh green rushes. Its walls were of clean stone, but they were mostly covered with green hanging mats and yellow curtains. Four huge mattresses were there too, laid on the floor along one side and each stacked thick with white blankets. Against the other wall was a long bench holding wide earthenware basins, and beside it stood brown pitchers filled with water, some cold, some steaming hot. There were slippers set ready beside each bed as well, soft and green.

"The two rooms hence are same as this, so fret not for there is room for all. Your sleep will be safe and sound this night. But before the Master of this land returns, all shall freshen some. You shall clean grimy hands, comb out your tangles, cast off your muddy cloaks and wash your weary faces."

True to his word, they didn't have time enough to do anything past washing and combing out their tangles when Bungo returned and led them back to the first room. The table was now laden with all the foods Bilbo had talked of on the road. And beyond that, in a chair facing the outer door, sat a woman.

She was a fair lady, with long yellow hair rippling down her shoulders, and her gown as green as mountain moss in the evening sunlight streaming through the open windows, shot with silver like beads of dew. Her belt looked to be made of a chain of flag-lilies, golden all, with forget-me-nots in between like pale blue eyes. There were wide vessels of earthenware about her feet as well, green and brown and each holding water so crystal clear that it was like staring up at dancing sunlight from beneath the surface of Durin's Lake. The dwarves might have taken her for an elf queen on a throne set amidst glittering crystal, except none of them felt the inborn enmity that always seized them at the very thought of the elder folk, never mind when faced with one outright.

"Come, good guests!" she said, and as she spoke Kili felt oddly certain that he had heard her clear voice before, many times. Singing. But he was just as certain this was the first time he or anyone he knew had met her. Heard her voice. He found himself the only one who strode forth without hesitation, the others taking only a few cautious steps further into the room. Some half of their company even began to bow low, their movements surprised and awkward, as if they were beggars knocking at a cottage door to beg for a drink of water, only to be answered by a divine maia barefoot on mithril glass.

The lady sprang lightly up and over the water-bowls, and ran laughing towards them, and as she ran her gown rustled softly like the wind in the flowering borders of a river. "Come dear folk!" she said, taking Kili by the hand. "Laugh and be merry, for tonight you are under the roof of Tom Bombadil!"

"So we keep being told," Thorin said, though he seemed to not be weighed down by his usual dourness. "All the same, fair woman, I would rather know under whose roof I stand. Who is Tom Bombadil?"

"He is," said Goldberry, staying her swift movements and smiling.

The dwarves looked at her questioningly.

"He is as you will see him," Goldberry said in answer to their looks. "He is the Master of wood, water, and hill."

Thorin hummed. "Then all this strange land belongs to him?"

"No indeed!" she answered, and her smile faded. "That would indeed be a burden," she said lowly as if to herself. "The trees and the grasses and all things growing or living in the land belong each to themselves. Tom Bombadil is the Master. No one has ever caught old Tom leaping on the hill-tops, wading in the water, walking in the forest under light and shadow. He has no fear. Tom Bombadil is master. Thence he comes right now to shut out the night, along with all mist and tree-shadows and deep water!"

It was only then that Kili realized the door they'd come in was still open, and through it now came the sound of someone new singing a song. A deep glad voice was singing carelessly and happily, but it was singing nonsense.

Hey dol! merry dol! ring a dong dillo!
Ring a dong! hop along! fal lal the minnow!
Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo!


The beat was the same Bungo had kept, but richer, wilder, somehow more fitting like this voice was actually born to it.

Hey! Come merry dol! derry dol! My darling!
Light goes the weather-wind and the feathered starling.
Down along under Hill, shining in the sunlight,
Waiting on the doorstep for the cold starlight,
There my pretty lady is, River-woman's daughter,
Slender as the willow-wand, clearer than the water.
Old Tom Bombadil water-hawthorns bringing
Comes hopping home again. Can you hear him singing?
Hey! Come merry dol! derry dol! and merry-o,
Goldberry, Goldberry, merry yellow berry-o!


Goldberry – for she could be no one else – laughed happily as if she weren't surrounded by the roughest and crudest dwarrows of all, then lightly she passed them and exited the home to stand on the porch and sing back.

Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow;
Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow.
Tom's coming home again water-lilies bringing.
Home, the Hearth Forever, do you hear him singing?


The man's voice burst out laughing, but lost no word or breath, still singing loudly and nonsensically as he neared.

Now let the fun begin! Let us sing together!
Of sun, stars, moon and mist, rain and cloudy weather,
Light on the budding leaf, dew on the feather,
Wind on the open hill, bells on the heather,
Reeds by the shady pool, flowers on the water:
Old Tom Bombadil and the River-daughter!


The air grew lighter. The candle light seemed to glow all the brighter. There was another burst of song, and then suddenly, hopping and dancing up the path, there appeared out of the mists a man, as if he was always there, visible as if at midday despite the twilight. As heavy as any dwarf, but too large for one, if not quite tall enough for one of the men, though he made noise enough for both combined, stumping along with great yellow boots on his thick legs. He had a blue coat and a long brown beard, his eyes were blue and bright, and his face was red as a ripe apple, but creased into a hundred wrinkles of laughter. On his head was a sturdy felt hat, the only thing he wore that looked new, with a long blue feather in the band along the narrow brim. And in his hands he carried on a large leaf as on a tray a small pile of the largest water hawthorns Kili had ever seen.

I swear I didn't know half of these plants by sight last week.

Goldberry ran to meet the man, barefoot on the grass. She jumped to hang from his neck and he spun her around, laughing even as his flower-tray stayed aloft with not a petal startled. Tom and his Lady then walked hand in hand all the way back to the house, where he raised her on the crook of his arm lifted her over the threshold.

The man from my drowning fancy, Kili thought quietly. What is going on?

The others didn't seem to share his realization, but their tongues were every bit as tied as his. No words came to any of them that were good enough to express anything amidst the joy of their hosts. Where was Gimli when you needed him?

"Here's my pretty lady! Here's my Goldberry, clothed all in silver-green with flowers in her girdle!" Tom carried his lady further in and set her back down on her chair, them hopped around, still humming nonsense while tossing and dropping the hawthorns one by one in the earthenware around her chair. The flowers spun as they flew over Goldberry's head and fluttered down onto the water.

Goldberry twirled her hair happily around her finger until he finished, then Tom took her hand and cradled it to his heart. "Is the table laden? And we have guests too, do we?" Tom bowed to the dwarves. "I see yellow cream and honeyed berries, and white bread, and butter. Milk, cheese, and green herbs, and berry jam newly opened. Is that enough for us? Is the supper ready?"

"It is," said Goldberry. "And so are our guests, though our Bungo perhaps not?"

Tom let her go and walked up to them. He clapped his hands. "Bungo, Bungo! Your guests are fresh and clean, but here you still be as if just come from afield! Taken you again with fuss and bother?"

"Apologies, Master," the hobbit said. The dwarves had completely forgotten he was there. "But my boy's gone off on a brash whimsy again and I'm all afret." That's right, Bungo had said that Bilbo would be here, where was he? "I doubt I'll be the best company this eve, if he's in the Barrows as I fear."

"Then Bungo shall do as Bungo does, just as Bilbo does as Bilbo does, and then you will come back hither and have peace until your fears have flown away with the wind of the hilltop. Goldberry will leave a light for you."

"My gratitude is yours, as ever. I will gladly partake of your hospitality on my return." The hobbit bowed at Tom, then them and left the house.

"As for you dwarves, come now, my merry friends, and Tom will dine you!"

Sure enough, the dwarves were all soon seated at the table, four on each side, while at the head sat Goldberry and the Master. It was a long and merry meal. Though they ate as only famished dwarves could eat, the food never seemed to run out. The drink in their drinking-bowls seemed to be clear cold water, but it went down like wine and set free their hearts and their voices. Soon they were singing, more freely and merrier songs than they had done even back at Bag End, as if it was easier and more natural than talking.

Finally, when the night had well and truly fallen, Tom and Goldberry rose and cleared the table swiftly. The dwarves were commanded to sit quiet and enjoy guest right as guests are meant. They were all set in chairs, each with a footstool to his tired feet. There was no sense of a mind to the house like in Bag End, but there was a fire in the wide hearth, which was burning with a sweet smell as if it were built of apple-wood.

When everything was set in order, Tom went around putting out all the lights in the room, except one lamp and a pair of candles at each end of the chimney-shelf. Then Goldberry came to each of them, holding a candle and wishing them each a good night and deep sleep.

"Have peace now," she said. "Rest your weary bones, and your weary hearts also, until weariness and worry has fully left you. Rest well until the morning! Heed no nightly noises! For nothing passes door and window here save moonlight and starlight and the wind off the hill-top. Good night!" She passed out of the room with a glimmer and a rustle. The sound of her footsteps was like a stream falling gently away downhill over cool stones in the quiet of night.

Tom sat a while beside them in silence. He had no hat now, and his thick brown hair was crowned with rowan leaves.

Each of the dwarves tried to muster the courage to ask one of the many questions he had meant to ask at supper, until sleep gathered on their eyelids. At last Thorin spoke.

"Who and what are you?"

Tom stirred like a man shaken out of a pleasant dream. "Eh, what?"

Kili was surprised not to see any irritation in Thorin's eyes, even as the identity of this being came to him from a place far older than his mother's bedtime stories. "He is Forn," Kili said, somehow not daunted by all the yes suddenly on him, though he did wonder at his certainty. "The One who Belongs to Ancient Days."

Forn. Orald in Mannish, and Iarwain Ben-adar to the elves. He was said to be a mysterious figure that lived throughout the history of the world. Living in the depths of an old haunted forest, he was said to possess unequaled power, at least in the land around his dwelling. Kili had thought they were all legends and fairy tales, but now he wondered why he ever thought something so foolish.

The others became all abuzz, mumbling and whispering, but Kili only had eyes for Tom.

Thorin was much the same, though he seemed to have other things on his mind than old legends. "What are the hobbits to you?"

"They are themselves of course! Just like Tom is himself and Goldberry is herself and every tree, rock and creature is each of them themselves! Just like you are yourselves, even those of you who don't know."

Kili's drowsiness seemed to him as thick as the darkness of Dwarrowdelf. Did he just look at me?

Thorin shook his head. "The Shire seems to think the elder Baggins dead."

Tom laughed. "He certainly sleeps like one!"

Thorin thinned his lips, though with something like amusement instead of ire like Kili was more used to. "Who and what is Bilbo Baggins?"

"My good dwarrow, I just told you! Bilbo is Bilbo, what more can anyone say outside a song?"

Sounds about right, Kili thought, even as Nori said the same aloud.

Thorin snorted, so Kili decided to risk another word in before reality really took a tumble. "Are you the one who sent Bungo to find us?"

"Nay, it was no plan of mine. Bungo went looking for you himself, to ease Bilbo's worries when we learned you had wandered this way. Old grey Willow-man, he's a mighty singer, and it's hard for folk to escape his cunning mazes, even stout ones like you. Fortunately for you, Bungo knows how to sing a fair Song by now, and Willow-man knows better than to bluster too loud lest his off notes reach far enough to ripple upon the pool of the River-Daughter. He knows what's in store for him if ever I should walk that way and find it the slightest way in Discord." Tom nodded as if sleep was taking him again; but he went on in a soft singing voice.

Each summer's end I go there, finding water lilies,
In a wide pool, deep and clear, far down Withywindle;
There they open first in spring and there they linger latest.
By that pool so long ago I found the River-daughter,
Fair young Goldberry sitting in the rushes.
Sweet was her singing then, and her heart was beating!

Tom opened his eyes and looked at them with a sudden glint of blue:

Could have proved most ill for you, indeed and worse my dwarrows
For not yet do I go down deep, along the forest-water,
The year is almost old enough, but Tom's not yet gone passing
Old Man Willow's house this early in the spring-time,
Not till the merry morrow, when the River-daughter
Dances down the withy-path to bathe in the water.

Tom fell silent again, but this time it was Bofur that couldn't stay quiet anymore. "Tell us, Master, about the Willow-man. What is he? What did he do? Where-where'd he take our brother? Bungo said he'll be alright, but…"

"Aye, the addled one, I know wherefore he lies, but worry not for him! He had a nasty time of it for a spell, but he is the farthest as can be from ill befalling now. He'll be better than new by the time you're all caught up. Ask not about him again, not until the morning! Now is the time for resting. Some things do harm to speak in vain of, especially when the world is in shadow. Sleep till the morning-light, rest on the pillow! Heed no nightly noise! Fear no grey willow!"

Tom stood and smiled jovially.

"And fear not for your voyage either! It mightn't be quite as quick as if you'd gone with the elves and wizard onwards, but of lost days you can set worries aside! You'll reach your trolls, elves, goblin kings and eagles, spiders, even yon dragon all with plenty time to spare. Come the right morrow you shall be led along the quickest paths and gain one day for each one that you've spent so ably up to now." And with that, Tom took down the lamp and blew it out, and grasping a candle in either hand he led the dwarves out of the room.

Kili was not the only one with a thousand questions still unasked, but he was too drowsy and tongue-tied to ask them, and so was everyone else despite themselves. Nobody had the mind for combs or braids by the time they reached their rooms. The mattresses and pillows were soft as down, and the blankets were of white wool. They had hardly laid themselves on the deep beds and drawn the light covers over them before they were asleep.

In the dead night, Kili dreamed of sleeping. Then he felt a Doom so dire encroaching on his place of rest that he rose to flee before there was a sun and moon in the sky. He moved so slowly that it felt as if his limbs were made of rock. His mind worked so laboriously that the deep caverns themselves changed faster than his thoughts. He was sleepy, heavy, leaden in limb, laggard in mind, no notion of scent, unable to hear, unknowing what voice even was, and blind for his eyelids hung heavy and stiff, unable to rise the slightest crack.

Despite all that, he walked. Though he dared not take his first breath until he emerged from the mountain's womb, he walked. He walked even though his every step took an entire fullness of time as reckoned by stars he could not know. He walked from down to up, from darkness to shadow, from warmth out into cold so callous that his skin frosted over and his beard hung heavy with rime. He walked even as he did not know where he was going except away. Away from Doom, Doom right behind him, Doom that ever gained without chasing, looking, searching, not even knowing of him, but gaining, always growing, forerunning the frightful fortress of the Dark Lord crawling onwards down. He walked and walked and walked until he was still heavy, leaden, haggard, scentless, voiceless and blind, but not quite deaf anymore.

There was a thrum. First in his skin, then his flesh, then his bones, then all of him. It was with him for a thousand thousand footsteps until something warmed and loosened in his ears. A thrum that spoke of life and joy and laughter most good, what else could he do but follow? He followed it. Always away from the Doom he followed it. Always away and scarcely past the spawn of the Doom it led him, even those that were the most pernicious and most keen. Until, finally, he reached the Forest. The Forest and its waters that the thrum called from. Called him. Called through. Called forth that he should dive down under. So he did.

And so it was that swimming amidst the black was the first trick he learned, long before he even knew of Hill, Wood and Water. Before Light. Before Wind. Before Music, when he'd barely achieved any sort of thought. Before Stone thawed to Fire inside his mould. Before he got around to finishing living the first day of life upon the world. Before he even learned his first word.

He dove. He sunk. He inhaled the Water. He sunk further endlessly, until the bottom of the abyss began to glow with the distant light of a Fire that even his unmoving, closed and useless eyes could not keep out. Warm and warmer, hotter and brighter the closer it became, hotter and brighter the deeper he sank, even as the water stayed gentle and cool about him as he swam and reached wantonly for the Flame.

A blaze ignited within him where it had waited for the merest spark all along. The Fire warmed his bones, his sinews thawed, rapture was the blood flowing through his flesh for the first time, and his heart was beating.

Kili broke through the surface of the water and woke up all at once.

The dream faded with the first glimpse of his now open eyes, a light so bright it felt like he should have gone blind all over again, if not for the singer on the bank of the lake that cast him in his shade. Like Kili himself had sheltered Bifur in the dream before.

Was that Bilbo? Kili wondered. He'd never felt so off-beam in his life. It was definitely Bilbo, I'm sure of it.

Kili sat up in his bed, refreshed and wide awake. He felt like he had slept for ages uncounted. Looking around, he saw that it was still the deep of night, though his dwarvish eyes seemed to have even less trouble seeing in the dark than down in the deepest mines. All the others were still sound asleep. Their faces were smooth and relaxed, as if no worries existed for any of them. He looked to his right where Thorin slumbered with not the slightest snore. He looked to his left, to Fili whom he never did anything without.

He got out of bed alone, went to the western window and saw the Forest. It was just as sleepy and quiet as the house, the moonlight vesting the leaves and flowers into eerie shapes on each branch and the underbrush. It was like looking down on to a sloping mosaic-roof from above. There was a fold or channel where the canopy was broken into many winding gaps and splits, the valley of the Withywindle. There was no willow-tree to be seen anywhere.

Closer to the home was a flower garden, with crocus flowers and lilacs and many other spring flowers, some in bud, some in full bloom even at midnight. Turning, Kili went to the Eastern window and he saw a kitchen-garden. His view was screened by a tall line of poles already waiting for the climbing vines of beans, and freshly dug plots beyond them were already sprouting seedlings. The sky was clear and the stars and moon bright, but not a spark of yellow was in the sky in the East.

He stayed there at the window, looking past the garden to the barrow hills beyond for what felt like hours and more. For what he knew was more. Dwarves had an inborn ability to tell time's passage, a trait they were said to have been given by Mahal upon their creation, long before the world and stars moved to give Eru's trueborn children something to measure by. Yet now, even as he stood at the window for hours and hours, barely a beat seemed to pass within him.

Even the sky barely seemed to change, despite how many of his own breaths Kili counted, and the many times the wind changed and shifted on the hilltop. Through it all, the others slept on, dead to the world.

Beyond the vegetable garden, a stick flew past, followed by a small spotted dog. In their wake walked and hopped the Master himself, humming and whistling his nonsense up until he saw Kili watching from the window. Then he hopped over.

"Good morning, merry friend!" said Tom, opening the eastern window wide. Cool air flowed in but none of the sleepers even twitched. "Sun won't show her face for a while yet, but naught ill seems bent to rouse up any mischief this night either, with the Moon so high on his chariot. Since you're up, how about you join old Tom on a merry-go? We'll go leaping on the hill-tops, nosing wind and weather, wet grass underfoot, starry sky above us. Mayhap we'll even sing to the High Star a song or two, he's ever so grim and stern these years under that crown! And when dawn finally comes, you can go rustle up our hobbits while I waken Goldberry by singing at her window."

The words came out before he could second-guess them. "What of Bifur?"

"Your errant kin? That's up to him! If he comes over early he'll find breakfast on the table. If he comes late, he'll get grass and rain-water!"

Kili took that for the reassurance it was and joined Tom Bombadil on his nightly wanderings. They roamed the hills, enjoyed the night air, peered inside dens and bird nests, sang to the Moon and Star, and played fetch with the small dog who Tom understood as easily as every other creature, like it was talking mannish.

"He's only visiting," Tom said brightly. "Come dawn he'll be bounding back home to his good old granny and mean grump. Scaredy thing would be your host after me, when your path takes you by their home in yonder shaws! They won't be, but dwell not on sad tidings! Let not the pleasant night be brought down!"

All the while, Tom told and sang Kili many remarkable stories, sometimes as if talking to himself, other times with his bright blue eyes keeping Kili rooted in place from under his thick brows. Kili had expected tales of bees and flowers, of trees and the strange creatures of the Forest, and indeed he learned all of that. But there were other times when Tom spoke of further things, old things. Sometimes he talked as if Kili already knew what he spoke of. The dwarf did not, though he felt like he should, and every word was like a memory returned as if he was recalling something he'd seen or heard or done inside a dream.

Then, too, were low tunes and rhymes of times so ancient that it seemed to Kili as if no dwarrow, man or elf even existed in the world. Tom sang of terrible want and rumbling earth, of cold fire and warm wind battling for claim upon a world that was yet still a Flame inside an unhatched Egg, and of a mighty ancient laughter that sent the dreadful dark to flight. Kili listened to tales of big-gods and little-gods and plains and hills more ancient than the oldest ocean, and the lords of those places who were at first the sons of spirits of the highest's sons and daughters, then the fathers of the fathers of trees that aged no faster than the hills, and whom the countless years had filled with wisdom and pride and malice.

That malice lingered still, in this Forest that was a survivor of those vast woods forgotten, a hatred of things that go free upon the earth, the destroyers and usurpers that gnaw, bite and break, hack and burn those who once ruled the land. Tom's words revealed to Kili the hearts of trees and their thoughts, so often strange and dark, none more so than Old Man Willow. His heart was rotten but his strength green, a master of the winds, and a song and thought so strong that his grey thirsty spirit drew power out of the earth, and spread through the ground and the air like fine root-threads and invisible twig-fingers, till it had nearly all the trees of the Forest under its dominion from the Hedge to the Barrow Downs.

Suddenly, Tom's tales turned inward into the Forest, dancing down the withy-path to dive deep into the pool of the River-daughter, deep down through the water paths that one could only call open if they had Mastered the right Songs. His tale burst out through a lake's surface into the light of the First Tree, where nothing rots and all things bloom and wait, whole and hale, for when the marred world has been vanquished and the time comes to birth the World Anew from the Womb of the Old.

"The Music made the World, the Secret Fire gave life to the World, and that which was First heard in the World was Laughter." Tom sang in a bouncy tune that somehow didn't not fit the grim tale he was ending. "So it will be again once the final wrangle is done and done with. The Dark Lord will no more abide to grasp wantonly, and so his petty spite, too, will be no more to twist and bury all good things in darkness when he burns himself. The Egg will hatch, the Secret Fire will no more be Secret, and the World will mend and see a right and proper Spring, Unmarred this time."

Tom's words were like a Doom themselves, and Kili would have thought it one of those things that did harm to speak of when the world was in shadow. But unlike the terrible prophecies that doomed the Elves and Turin and Hurin and all those who sought to defy Morgoth and Sauron and Angmar's Witch-King, this one was not etched from the Discord. It felt like it was being read straight out of the Music itself, and made Kili feel hopeful and sure instead of cold. He always did despise the cold, for he always felt like his blood should be molten hot and his heart a furnace.

"Who are you, master?" Kili asked when his words finally returned. "What are you, really?"

"Eh? Don't you know my name yet? That's the only answer. Tell me, who are you, alone, yourself and nameless? You are the sapling grown from the base of an old tree, but I am older still beyond even its reckoning. Eldest, that's what I am. Mark my words, small unworn friend: Tom was here before the river and the trees. Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn. He made paths before the Big People, and saw the little People arriving. He was here before the Kings and the graves and the Barrow-wights. When the Elves passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent. Tom sang the first song, laughed the first laugh, and kindled the Fire's light before there were guests to host and dine. Tom knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless – before the Dark Lord came from Outside."

A shadow seemed to pass overhead, and the dwarrow glanced hastily up at the sky. A cloud was just passing under the moon, casting the night into deeper dark than Kili had seen it since leaving the Blue Mountains. When the Moon showed himself again, he looked back to the Master only to find that he was no longer there. Tom had wandered off and was playing fetch with the dog again. Kili hurried over and opened his mouth to-

"It will be a glad morning today!" Tom said suddenly, derailing Kili's oncoming words like a runaway mine cart. "Now, my dwarrow, go find Bungo!"

Kili, to his own astonishment, was half-way down the hill before he even realized what he was doing.

He found Bungo Baggins where the Forest ended and the Barrow Downs began. The elder hobbit was sitting on the boundary stone and looking eastward, as if he thought that peering hard enough would allow him to see past the twists and turns of the treeless hills. Kili stepped forth to stand next to the hobbit and waited in silence for what felt like weeks, even though the stars barely moved in the sky, and his inner sense of time barely advanced three turns. Finally, he spoke.

"I can see were Bilbo gets it."

"Do you now?" Bungo asked, his smile quite carefree in that brief moment when he was looking at Kili instead of the grim hills ahead. "Don't count me out just yet."

"I'm not." He really wasn't. "The Shire seems to think you long dead though."

"I would've been, but Bilbo brought me here instead, and the Master bore me hence into the firelight which abides by no rot or ending."

Kili dearly wanted to ask, but he knew a set-up for a joke at his expense when he heard one. "Time is strange here."

"The Master can be corralled by nothing, not plant, no beast or man, not by fear, and not by time if he so likes. And he only ever partakes of company on his own time, even if it means lingering in the coda between notes. He used to prefer the natural flow of things, but has since proclaimed that Bilbo mastering the Master's own goodwill was an omen of more stretchy times."

"… Can you do the same things as him?"

Bugo laughed. "No indeed! Tom alone is Master here."

"So you're his successor? Or Bilbo is?"

Bungo smiled with the air of someone in on just half of some secret joke. "I've not quite mastered all that needs be mastered. I can only hope I'll be able to overcome the last hurdle when the time comes. Alas, for the time to come means Bilbo needs to be in an untenable situation I wouldn't wish on strangers, never mind my dear son. I'll be glad when he finally settles down properly. Then I can go wandering far-off places on my own two feet, maybe, instead of haunting maimed minstrels like a ghost in my sleep."

Kili suddenly had a hundred new questions, but if the earlier bit had been a setup for a joke at his expense, this seemed ready to put on a whole play. No thank you. "Where is Bilbo, anyway?"

"Out there somewhere," Bungo vaguely indicated the gloomy Barrows. "Badgering ancient ghosts into fulfilling his whims, as usual. He's quite the brazen one, my boy."

You don't say? "Mister Baggins, I really have no idea what you mean."

"I'm sure you don't."

Well, that was a false vein if ever there was one. "Are you coming on the journey with us?"

"If only!" groused the elder Baggins. "Bilbo is certainly past the stage where he would feel stifled to be loomed over by his father, but I dare not. You lot are trouble. More trouble than even he will handle, I think, before the end. No, I shall stay behind and make way to lift my son up when at last he falters, as a father must. Ah, but fie on such grim talk, I must yet go finish my goodbye surprise!" Suddenly, Bungo hopped off the boundary rock and gave Kili the sort of look he only ever saw on swindlers. "There's a surprise in store for you lot too, and it wouldn't do to ruin it! I don't suppose I can persuade you to go retrieve him?"

Kili immediately said no, but even as it took a fair bit more than a moment this time, he still found himself half-way up the next hill before he realized he'd been blandished into changing his mind.

"I'll keep a song on!" Bungo cheerfully called from far behind, plucking at a small lute's strings. "Just listen for it if you can't find your way back!"

"That can happen?!"

"Well of course, lad! It's midnight!"

Oh. Right.

Kili traveled down along the floor of the hollow, and around the base of some sturdy, steep hills until he stepped into a deeper, broader valley. He was no ranger, but his steps were as sure as if he'd walked all over these places before. Bungo's song trailed behind him, not bouncy but somehow fairly-like. With each step he took, each note seemed to last longer before giving way to the next, and the time between his inner time beats got slightly shorter.

Kili didn't know what he was looking for. There was no tree or stream to guide him, only grass and short springy turf. Even those he barely saw, for though the Moon was bright and the sky clear, it was as if the Barrow-downs had their own mists veiling their secrets. Still, he figured that 'the biggest predicament around' was always the right bet with Bilbo Baggins, so he listened for music.

When he still only heard Bungo's meandering tune behind him, he listened instead for where the silence was deepest and the cries of strange, lonely birds were the most forlorn, and that's where he went. He traveled over the shoulders of the next hill, and the one valley and the hills behind that, then down their long limbs and up their smooth sides again.

Finally, in both more and less time than he'd have thought, he came to a hill that did not have the same grassy mounds on top as the rest. Instead, the top was wide and flat, like a shallow saucer with a mounded rim. The mist was flowing past him now in shreds and tatters, the wind hissing over the grass. His breath was fogging, and the darkness was near and thick despite the pale and icy moon above.

At the center of the hollow circle was a standing stone, shapeless and cold. It cast a long pitch-black shadow that stretched westward over him, and was bestowed with the significance of either a landmark or warning. Both of which were being currently disregarded.

Bilbo Baggins was at the base of the stone, sat on a long and naked sword while sounding out words and writing them down in ones and twos and threes.

And aside him, like a dark black shadow against the eastern stars, loomed a Barrow-wight that was teaching the hobbit Adûnaic.

---

You can read ahead on Patreon (karmicacumen), Ko-fi (karmicacumen) and Subscribestar (karmic-acumen), along with the advance chapters for Understanding Does Not Presage Peace, The Unified Theorem, and Reset the Universe.

The response I get for this one will decide if this becomes the third monthly updated story, or if I go back to Reset. Alternatively, I might cycle through my other stories on hiatus, as inspiration strikes.

A/N: With this, the Shadow of the Movies has finally been vanquished. If I never get back to this, at least this is a good place to leave it.

---

Bilbo watched the barrow-wight flutter like a sibilant curtain when Kili crested the hill, only to draw back when it was touched by the light the dwarf emitted in the unseen world. Like the magma glow it evoked, his light singed the dark specter. It was a light he didn't emanate when they'd last seen each other in Sarn Ford, but the core of his nature was the same. The same impervious gem faceted specifically so it directed all light and shadow alike inwards, but whose secret fire was now just a bit too large to fit all inside.

Soon, the wight fled back into the drab mists of the Barrow-Downs, to return to the petty tomb it was tasked to guard. Bilbo collected his things and then he and the dwarf set off on the trip back to Tom's house, neither saying a word.

The naked claymore was left behind where it was. Leaving the better half of the necromantic magic's anchor where Bilbo could use it in the future was just good sense. If the wight could make itself strong enough to physically haul it back so far from its barrow, it would have done it years ago.

It was only when Bungo Baggins' distant, drawling tunes became once again recognizable as a song that Kili finally spoke up.

"That thing felt wrong. And it looked wrong."

"What did it look like?"

"It's not the same to everyone?"

"I don't know, Tom's not one for plain descriptions and I've not had anyone else to ask."

Kili seemed disbelieving at something, but he didn't ask… whatever it was that had passed through his head. "I saw a shadow with a pale, icy light gleaming from what would be its eyes. Its voice was deep, hollow and cold. Just sharing the same air felt like I was trying to breathe ice."

"Yes, that's what it's like for me as well."

"You handled it better than I would have, that's for sure," Kili muttered. He was probably wrong about that. "What exactly was that thing anyway?"

"A man's spirit denied rest by his dark master," Bilbo replied. "He was of Númenórë once, but then he followed the rest of the mindless crowd into worshipping Morgoth at Sauron's behest. They've been slaves ever since, used by the Dark Lord and his minions to inflict all manner of terrors and torments on the remnants of the free peoples. The Witch-King of Angmar sent these ones here, to the Barrow-downs, in order to prevent the resurrection of the destroyed Dúnedain kingdom of Cardolan. The barrows here aren't just tombs, they're also treasure stashes. Gold, jewels, artefacts, weapons and other things."

"Everything you might need for a second founding. Or rebellion." Kili's thoughtful hum turned into an incredulous stare. "By Mahal's pickaxe, how did you get them to talk to you, never mind… teach you things?"

"Not them, just the one. Not all traitors are made equal. The greatest of the wights abide in the sepulcher of the last prince of Cardolan, and I was only ever there once, with Tom. This one, well, he's even weaker and more cowardly in death than he was in life. We matched fëa against fëa and he lost."

It had been his best musical improvisation up to that point, if Bilbo did say so himself.

Judging by Kili's face, though, that wasn't enough for the good dwarrow.

Bilbo grinned. "Of all the fell spirits here, that one was among the more skeptical about betraying the realm of Westernesse when alive, but it still did so because it was vaguely uncomfortable with the idea of disagreeing with the rest of the cult. Now, in undeath, it betrays its equally shackled kin and distant master just as readily, simply because the consequences threatened and demonstrated by us busybodies next door are closer. More immediate."

The dwarrow prince seemed most put off. "What could anyone possibly do to coerce a creature like that?"

"Make them remember." Bilbo tapped the strap of the fiddle hanging from his shoulder. "Songs can bring up any number of feelings in listeners. Emotions, memories, dreams, aspirations, memories of dreams and aspirations. With enough practice and heart put in, you can even affect others in more profound ways."

"I suppose you certainly can," the dwarf muttered.

"A mindless sycophant handles it very poorly indeed, when he is forced to recognize his foolishness. Then, too, it suffers when made to remember the time in the past when he was worth something. Such a wretch as that will do nigh everything, offer whatever prize you want in exchange for being allowed to retreat back into the mercy of mindless oblivion. The cowardly and self-deluded do not handle self-reflection well, and self-loathing even less."

"So it's like being blackout drunk all the time, except then you come along and sing it sober, which gives it the most horrid hangover of its life – unlife, whatever." Kili explained in the characteristic dwarrow manner. "Spiritually."

Bilbo laughed. "Yes, I learn foreign tongues and affect all manner of mischief by giving evil spirits hangovers, certainly, why not?"

Bilbo liked to think the creature remembered something of its eminently superior condition during the time of Numenor, and that it always succumbed to his binding incantations at least in some part voluntarily. Perhaps in some secret bid to defy its dark masters like it had never dared before. To cast forth into the world at least some echo of the Isle of Elenna and its denizens, when they were still noble and alive.

The hobbit wasn't going to hold his breath though.

He also had to find some other wording for that. These days he could hold his breath for as long as he could stretch a note, which was actually a fair chunk of time.

"Bilbo!" came his father's relieved cry from ahead. The older hobbit shouldered his lute and rushed to the very edge of the boundary where he proceeded to wring his hands impatiently. "Lad, would it kill you not to go on a megrim when I least like it? It's not as if we get much time together! Let a father have some time with his son, even if it's the most flighty, self-absorbed and selfish son that ever was!"

"What's that now?" Bilbo said blandly as he and Kili finally passed back into the undisputed part of Tom's domain. "Is that – ooph!" He grunted at his father's enthusiastic hug. "Is that lies I hear? For shame, dad, honestly!"

"Goodness me, to be slandered by my own blood!" Bungo let go with a groan most dramatic. "See if I give you your parting gift now, you grasslark!"

"That's definitely a lie," Bilbo said mildly, setting for Tom's home in lockstep with his dad, while Kili trailed behind. "The odds are poor indeed, that you'll keep anything back when there's a good chance this lot will get me killed and you'll never see me again."

"Don't try me," Bungo harrumphed. Any overt fear at that dreadful possibility was kept unvoiced and unseen. It was that same old practicality which had seen the older hobbit build his wife a home with her own money. For part of it, anyway. Bag End had been more than even a Took dowry could cover on its own.

Bungo looked back over his shoulder. "A fine work corralling him for me, Master Kili. I'd say I'm in your debt, but you and yours are going to be leaving this place far better off than I'll be left in the parting, so my thanks is all you're getting."

"I didn't actually do anything," Kili sad modestly. "The Barrow-wight just left and then we walked back."

"A Barrow-wight?! Again!" Bungo balked. "Bilbo, must you? Why do you do this to your poor, woebegone old man!"

"Oh come off it, I didn't do it to you," Bilbo scoffed primly. "I did it to me, you just insist on becoming self-inflicted emotional collateral every time."

"You see? This is what I have to deal with!" Bungo complained to Kili. "Take a good look at what he puts me through, lad, because you're all next."

Now that was neither fine nor dander! "Now see here!"

Bilbo and Bungo bickered all the way back to Tom's kitchen-garden. It was a grand old time, Bilbo wished they could do it more often. Or at least for longer. Alas, it took a lot of thinking time to come up with material good enough to use in contests of caterwauling, even with months and years between them depending on how Tom's time stretched. There were only so many put-upons even the most accomplished of wordsmiths could fletch for his quiver of kvetching, especially when propriety demanded no repeat performances.

Truly, the trials of a gentlehobbit's life had no end.

When they arrived, there was no one to greet them except little Roverandom, who ran over to bark and babble, hopping on his hindlegs while gesticulating wildly with his forelimbs. The frustrated dog then tugged on their bootstraps to follow him to the other side of the property, blabbering all the while in a vain attempt to make Kili understand that he really should hurry up already, there's dwarves crying afoot and it's all his fault, it's not every day that a lackwit regains his wits you know, you gotta come see, you just gotta, tell him Bilbo, Bungo make Bilbo tell him, just tell the silly dwarf already why don't you, you just gotta!

"What happened to him?" Kili worriedly whispered to Bilbo when the dog began running ahead and back in impatient distress at their pace. "I can almost understand him now, somehow, and he's – he wasn't like this last night, he's mucky and – and purple!"

"Don't worry about it," Bilbo waved. "He just took a dive in Tom's wine again, he'll be back to normal by tomorrow. Well…" Bilbo eyed the dog skeptically. "The purple in his fur might take a while to fade, and there'll be a tad more bravery in him than usual for a spell. He might be prone to gesticulating helplessly like a two-legged for the while, when something startles him, but he'll be fine."

"Who cares about him, I'm more worried about us, did you see his jaw strength? He just crushed that pebble between his teeth!"

"He only did that because he's stressed."

"If that's him afraid, I don't want to see what courage looks like."

"Wait till you see him in a boat."

That was when they turned the hill and saw the others gathered around the whole, hale and exasperated form of the one dwarf who'd been absent since the Willow-man.

"There he is now, the little nitwit!" Yelled the voice that had never more than muttered in dwarven before.

Kili came to a sudden, open-mouthed halt at hearing and seeing Bifur holler at him. In Westron.

"You nitwit, you left me!" Bifur stormed over in their direction, yelling the whole time. "You just left me, you dragged my halfwit arse through half the forest only to dump me on the banks of a lake of fire and just left me, you just left me there for my skull to melt all over my brain like an overstuffed smelter, the sod did you do that for?!"

Kili stared in shock at the elder Ur bother. At the dwarf's face. The dwarf's forehead that had no axe stuck in it. Not even traces of it. There wasn't even a scar.

"Don't you just stand and stare there, you can't fool me! There's only one lackwit in this company and it ain't you!"

"Well you's not a lackwit either no more!" Bofur blubbered over where he was sobbing big, fat, happy tears in his hat. "You was but now you's not!"

"I ain't talking 'bout me!" Bifur turned abruptly from his Kili-aimed stampede to snap back. "Forgesmith's beard, you've turned into a complete crybaby since I got axed, what'll mam say?"

"She'll be cryin' into this 'ere hat wimme an' you know it!" Bofur bawled.

"Oh get a hold o' yourself," the fat Bombur snapped as if his own red eyes hadn't dug deep trenches down his flabby cheeks. He was also making a fair bid at emptying their travel rations with his stress-eating. "You're just embarrassin' us both!"

"All three of us, Maker, at least Bofur can still count, and people wonder who I mean when-!" Bifur pinched his nose. "How you two made it so long without being eaten by a troll, I haven't the foggiest."

Bilbo leaned towards Kili. "Rather gruff dwarrow that one, can't blame you for leaving him behind."

"What are you two even talking about?" Kili erupted, which had the unfortunate effect of reminding Bifur that he was supposed to be on a squall. "No! Don't you start with me! The last time I saw you, you got tossed in the lake! Only you never showed back up!"

"And who's fault is that?!"

Bilbo discreetly backed away once the confused argument was properly underway. Not because he was afraid, but because it wasn't his place to get involved.

No, really.

Also, Kili didn't seem to realize that his gone-a-wandering of the day before hadn't, in fact, been just a dying delusion from being tossed into Grumpy Willow-man's waters to drown.

Bilbo would rather not be around for when Kili did realize the truth, and consequently began asking pointed questions about whether or not he'd hallucinated the lake, the tree, the light, Tom, Bungo and Bilbo himself as well.

Which he hadn't, why, the very idea was just silly. To think anyone could ever dream up that there music they all played together, the very notion was just preposterous, cofusticate and bebother these dwarves, honestly!

"That wasn't a dream?" Bilbo barely caught Kili muttering to himself amidst the arguing, just before he moved out of earshot. Well, normal earshot, he could still hear the ruckus just fine.

Alas, for the hobbit, though dwarves couldn't easily be called stealthy or light-footed, the ongoing bluster did serve to mask normal footsteps very thoroughly. It didn't prevent Bilbo from noticing Dwalin plant himself in the middle of his escape route, but it did enough that it would be bad form to evade him. The dwarf had made his deft escape from the drama before the three of them even arrived. And since he wasn't with the brooding Thorin up on the bench by the porch, that meant he wanted something from him specifically.

"Master Baggins," Dwalin said gruffly – no, not gruffly, if just barely. Politely. "Master Tom's got a thoroughly well-appointed home here. And stores."

"I'm sure he'd appreciate the praise directly even more."

Dwalin gave Bilbo a complicated look. He then looked at the delirious happiness of the Ur brothers for a long breath of time, before turning his eyes back to the hobbit with some manner of emotion even Bilbo couldn't decipher. "Master Hobbit, I think we've had enough of disguises and fakery. At least I have."

What did he mean? Or did he find something out? Did Tom tell him something? Maybe something he hadn't even told Bilbo, you never knew with the Master. "Such has always been my position on most matters, yes."

"I'll be asking you about the stuff that's not among the 'most' there," Dwalin promised. Warned. "Later."

"I may or may not answer. Later." Bilbo replied in kind. "Sounds like there might be something more immediately on your mind, though."

"There is." Dwalin hesitated. In embarrassment, Bilbo thought, though the look in his eyes was hard and defiant. "Is the Master as well supplied with, um, personal care products let's call'em?"

Bilbo blinked. He couldn't help but give the big, brawny, rugged, balding dwarf a good once-over. "As in what sort, exactly?"

Dwalin rolled his eyes. "As in things that might work as hair dyes." He practically glared at Bilbo then. "And 'specially the reverse."

Oh.

Oh.

Dwarves have had to make themselves look less conspicuous when traveling, haven't they? More and more as time passed since the last of Arnor's legacy kingdoms failed, and nobody couldn't be sure anymore how many bad men were mixed with the good. Not only were dwarves' colorful hair and beards an eyesore to those trained and raised to hate beauty and whimsy, it also worked as an added way to give away important lineages. Bilbo hadn't had cause to think about it until now, but it didn't much make sense that Fili and Kili had different colors of hair. They were nigh-identical in every other sense, despite not being twins. Also, both their parents and grandparents were blond, that much he'd learned off-hand when he was in Ered Luin.

Come to think of it, Thorin shouldn't have dark hair either. Even if he was an outlier in his family, he was too old for it regardless. And that short beard of his was, quite literally, a sacrilege.

But, if you wanted to give the impression that you're less affluent than you are… And if you wanted to obscure just how many among your lot are dwarves of a certain royal lineage, because you're going on a quest that would call literally every malcontent to seek a piece of you and yours if they knew anything of what you were up to…

Even though it was never going to work because of the personalities involved.

Truly nothing can pass through Tom Bombadil's house without finding some manner of healing, Bilbo thought quietly. Even the dwarven spirit.

"Come with me."

Bilbo led Dwalin inside the house and bid him wait in the den while he went to talk to Goldberry. Thankfully, it was still early enough that they hadn't broken fast, so Goldberry was still inside instead of out floating amidst the rising dew mists. He communicated Dwalin's request, and then his own assumptions about what and why he was asking. The River-Daughter merrily passed Bilbo the job to finish getting breakfast ready and skipped out to take the dwarf by the hands and lead him further in, then out of the house to what he needed.

Dwalin was thoroughly flustered, as well he should at holding hands with another man's lady who was also an embodiment of such daintiness, but followed where he was led.

Since it was a nice day outside, and the dwarrows liked their drama as long and well done as a boar on a spit, Bilbo was able to lay out breakfast on the garden table without them noticing until he rung the triangle bell. He then made his excuses and left them to it. That didn't mean he went hungry of course, perish the thought, he just made sure to eat his fill in bits and pieces and tasting everything being served.

The dwarves asked him to sit down to eat with them of course, very enthusiastically too. They were, in fact, practically demanding of his presence on account of the harrowing adventure they'd endured for his sake, though they still behaved a lot more politely and considerate compared to before. Why, Thorin himself never more than grunted!

Fortunately, Tom showed up singing and laughing and soon had the dwarves doing as proper guests ought, so Bilbo was able to demur on account of wanting to wash the pans before they crusted. It wasn't even a lie, he did in fact take the more gunky ones to the stream out back to clean them. While he was doing that, he looked downriver and spotted trails of new colors in the running stream. Murky ones.

With his keen sight, he identified what looked like limewash, except brown. Trails of foamy murk flowed into the main stream, coming from the tributary brook one hill over, downriver from where he was. From where the bathing spot was. Trickles, splashes, and traces of dark brown in the otherwise crystal-clear water. Drab pigment and stain was mixed with what might have been chalk and some sort of oil.

Dwalin wasn't with the others, Bilbo recalled as he rinsed the last skillet. If he's missing breakfast, it must be very important.

Bilbo put the pans away and then made his real escape while the others indulged themselves. As sympathetic as he'd grown towards the dwarves compared to the first night in Bag End, the reality was that he'd split off from Thorin's Company for more than a whim. He'd come here for a reason he wasn't going to abandon just because they'd decided to stick their nose into his business in spite of his wishes. Again.

Leaving the dishes on their rack to dry, he left the kitchen, paused at the exit from the house for a moment's thought, then doubled back and prepared an extra serving of food for Dwalin. Only because he was curious, so he may as well bring an offering.

The things I do for hospitality, Bilbo huffed quietly to himself as he left Tom's house through the other door

Alas, he was waylaid by an all-new, same-old distraction not long after he left the house, and it wasn't even a dwarf this time. It was Bungo Baggins, who was just as stubborn about following through on his reason for being there as Bilbo himself.

"I figured you'd abscond this way, son. Seems I might finally be getting the hang of your off-notes."

Bilbo was affronted. "I don't strike off-notes!"

"You're building up to one, you are, give it a month or five."

"How ominous," Bilbo said with disquiet he didn't show.

Good old dad was being unusually active this time. And constantly around. Come to think of it, ever since Bilbo had dragged him all the way here instead of letting the unnatural way of sickness run its course, Bungo Baggins hadn't spent so much time awake and away from the First Tree in… ever.

Bungo smirked at him. Bilbo wasn't the only one with a keen mind for unspoken words, alas. Not anymore.

Not here.

"I spend a lot more time out and about than you think, my boy," Bungo said blithely. "I just never tell you."

"Really?" Bilbo asked skeptically. "Why is that?"

"Because then it wouldn't be a surprise. Come this way, if you don't mind. Actually, best come along even if you do mind."

"Wouldn't what be a surprise?" Bilbo asked, to no reply. He sighed and dragged his feet. "Can this wait?" Bilbo motioned with the plate. "One of our guests is at risk of going without."

"Tom's guest, and the Missus has already seen to him. Bring the plate with you, though, you'll not let it go to waste, I'm sure."

Now, Bilbo's curiosity at this new mystery more than matched his curiosity at what Dwalin was up to. He shrugged and did as his dad bid. He followed him.

Bilbo Baggins Followed Bungo Baggins up, down, across the hill, then the next hill over to the gulley between the last and next-to-last mounds not bordering the Barrow-downs which still existed within Tom's territory. Uphill, downhill, through the clearest and liveliest glade, to a not-so-busy and certainly thicker and closier part of the forest, which Tom had ordered Bilbo never to step foot in.

Bilbo had never sensed any strange or dark machinations from the place, but he'd assumed Tom had a good reason for his command. Quite possibly related to all the owls roosting and hooting around the place, those things were tiny pillows filled with seething hatred. At least that's what Bungo always said about them.

Perhaps Bilbo should have thought twice about it.

There was a door in the side of the hill.

A round, green door.

Bilbo stopped and stared. He felt like the rest of the world had stopped completely as well, every bit as much as Tom Bombadil's penchant for pausing after and before the codas of the First Music.

"… That can't be what I think it is."

"It took a fair bit of hands-on work, but everything goes faster the second time," Bungo said proudly. "Who better for the job than the one hobbit who built it in the first place, eh?"

Bilbo didn't say anything else immediately. He was too thunderstruck.

Bungo waited.

"Is… this why Tom told me never to come here?"

"He was kind enough to grant me this small favor."

Bilbo had never been more thoroughly rooted in a single spot. "If that's what you consider a small favor, what even is a big favor?"

"You're perfectly right, 'build my flighty grown-up son an entire second home away from home' would be quite high up there, wouldn't you say?"

Bilbo didn't say. He stood and looked at the door to Beg End and didn't have it in him to say anything. The door was the same type of wood, the same hinges, same green paint, even the individual boards were the exact same size, shape and order.

In any other place, from any other person, he might just smile or scowl at the ridiculous idea that Bag End could have any manner of equal. But this was not any other place or any other person. This was the Old Forest, Tom's demesne sat above the-

"Naturally, it's fully furnished and otherwise appointed as much as was within my means as a single hobbit with access to all the timber and time in the world – and the second-best contacts beyond the woods of course – but alas… it remains a mere copy. A nigh perfect one, if I may say so, but still wholly lifeless. Empty." Bungo treated his son to a most meaningful gaze. "As always, the spirit of a place must spring whole from its master."

But Bilbo wasn't Master here.

… Then again, you didn't need to be the Master to have power and claim of your own, if it was freely won.

Or granted.

Bilbo looked back in the direction of Tom's hill, then back to Bag End. Again. And again several times.

Bungo tapped his son on the shoulder. "I'll let you settle in." Then he left.

Bilbo Baggins stood at the threshold of Bag End for… he didn't even know. Didn't keep track. He only roused from his stupor when the noon sun peaked over the treetops to warm him. The treetops bordered the… actually quite sizable front yard that Bungo had also toiled to clear out. However he'd done it. He'd done the same to a fair length of the path they'd followed here as well. Even found and placed paving stones from the door all the way to the fenced-off brook running between the hillocks.

With how big some of the trees were around here, Bungo had to have had some help from someone. More than one someone. Big and brawny someones. No. really, what did dad do, charm bears to do his heavy lifting?

Willow-man claims the trees as his kingdom, Bilbo thought. He must have been absolutely furious to see all of these ones cut down.

Bilbo hadn't really wondered at Bungo's rapidly growing skill in handling Old Man Willow's rages, but now it all made sense. By necessity, he'd had whole years of practice.

Bilbo reached out, turned the knob and pushed. The door opened inward with nary a creak. He stepped over the threshold. The sunlight followed him inside, warm and joyous. The entrance hall looked identical to the one in Hobbiton, save for the fresh new woodwork and varnish. The floor, the walls, the paneling, the furniture, even mother's glory box were perfectly recreated.

So it was that the first thing that was heard in Bag End was laughter.

Bilbo wandered the hallways and rooms for a long time. The smial had the same style, the same proportions, the same number of rooms and corridors, the same kind of candelabra hanging from the ceiling, and Bilbo knew Bungo couldn't have made those, he was no smith. Neither was Tom, technically, but surely he could do anything he put his mind to. Or did they just get them on order, from Bree or some other place?

Maybe it was all done in Buckland and nobody saw fit to tell Bilbo. Or they didn't know? Or pretended to? Gorbadoc Brandybuck, you sly old cat. Bilbo was going to have words next time he stopped by, if the dragon didn't eat him.

Bag End didn't have any of the newer additions or changes to the amenities. It didn't have any crockery or cutlery, for example, besides the most basic sets lovingly carved from apple wood. Nor any of the books and pictures. It certainly had none of the touches of a lived-in home, despite Bungo Baggins having arguably an even greater right to the place.

But for all that, here it was. Home. And here he was too, Bilbo Baggins. He'd traveled to the liminal boundary of the Eldest's realm, delved into the deepest depths of the Old Forest that he'd not been given leave to delve before, and now that he had, here he was. In Bag End.

There was wood already collected, so he lit fire in the hearth and watched the merry blaze. He was satisfied to see that the flame caught quickly. The smoke fled through the chimney just as well as ever too. His father had even recreated the old rocking chair, so Bilbo climbed in it and sat there. Thinking. Wondering.

He played mindless tunes on his flute. He plucked at his lute. He rubbed at his fiddle strings. He strung and hummed and plucked while wondering at what new song to sing for the occasion. He wondered about that for what felt like an entire day and night, despite that the sunlight in the windows didn't seem to move more than a foot.

Finally, he decided he could come up with no new song that was fitting. He decided new songs didn't fit the occasion at all.

It wasn't new tunes he needed, but the old.

So he sang those instead. Every song that was sung in Bag End, those were the ones he played, in the exact same order that they were first heard within the smial's walls the first time around.

The music sprung from him. Songs were sung anew, in perfect pitch with not a note out of place, save when he'd done something different the first time around. He didn't remember many things without writing them down on a schedule, but for music his memory was perfect. Sad songs, merry songs, slow ones, fast ones, and everything in between. They came in the same order that they had been played in Bag End the first time, on big occasions and small occasions, and most often on no occasion at all. When his fingers tired, his voice lulled the rooms and hallways awake. When his voice tired, he plucked and ran his bow over strings while eating and drinking from the meal he'd intended for another.

His fëa spread alongside his songs, infusing the walls, the roof, the floor and the earth beyond them, then further. Up through the grass and flowers to bask in the light of the sun. Wide along the roots of trees and shrubs to entertain the gnats and worms, and the moles that couldn't see but paused in their digging to listen because they could hear very well indeed. Further still his spirit unfolded, down the tunnel leading from the pantry into the earth beneath the brook and onwards from there.

It was a mirror of his own underpassage, which he'd dug and appointed all by himself all the way to the Took Hobbit-Home. This one led not there, but to Tom's home, and Bilbo sensed the underground water pooling and flowing just in reach of a good shovel and pickaxe, if he but put his back into it for a few months and weeks. Just below the spot where Belladonna's memorial would be, if this were the Shire.

Bilbo sang and played and sang and played until his fëa finally reached as far as the edge of the Forest to the west. Buckland. The Shire. And, through that, he touched the sleepy, probing regard of Bag End the First and Only, who always kept its mind aimed at the Old Forest after Bilbo Left. Always Bag End's own fëa wandered where its mind wondered, thinking and singing with Tom, and Goldberry, even Bungo when he wasn't haunting someone else half-way across the world, if he truly did as he boasted. All the while looking forward to the day of its own Master's return.

Bilbo could feel all their spirits now. He felt the traces of Bungo's fëa as he'd worked on the home but did his best not to leave more of himself behind than he should. He sensed the lively and pure tinkle and crinkle of the River-Daughter in every puff and whisp and vapour and trickling raindrop, in the streams flowing through wood and hill. Amidst and throughout all of them, the fëa that was Tom Bombadil was positively radiant and immanent, suffusing every last nook and cranny of the Old Forest and well past it. Even those spots and places that flowers, birds and animals held for themselves, and the trees that Old Grey Willow-man's presumed to claim as his own.

Deep beneath and within and around all, the light of the Secret Fire blazed and coaxed all living things to live their dreams as real as they were themselves. As they will be real, once the Music has run its course and a new, purer one may finally make a world unmarred spring forth.

Would it be presumptious of him, to bring one of those distant future notes into the Music of the now?

Even decades after he'd first wondered at that question, Bilbo still didn't have an answer.

But he still had precisely no qualms about doing it anyway.

What'll it be, home mine? Bilbo thought where Bag End thought, so far and yet so close. Will you dwell where I dwell, as before?

Bag End was shocked. Startled. Amazed.

It was disbelieving, hesitant, suspicious when probing at him, at the edges of Bilbo's spirit and mind, and then deeper.

But when Bilbo opened himself to it, his home joyously leapt forward and embraced him. It didn't even need to rely on the mighty and merry spirit all around that was Tom, and it didn't leave Bag End any more than it arrived to the new one. It was Bag End and Bag End was always Bag End, the one and the same and only, as sure as the Secret Fire blazed below and above and all around them.

Bilbo felt its mind connect with his. He felt when the tunnels of Here became the same as the tunnels of Back. He felt it when Back became one and the same with Here and Back again. He felt the fëa that was Bag End engulf his surroundings until it was as if Bilbo had never stepped out of his door at all.

Bilbo sagged in breathless wonder as Bag End nestled around him, in and through and all beyond the tunnels, walls, floor, roof, and all throughout the hill.

His fiddle trailed off, but the song continued. It picked up over in his music room, where Bag End sometimes played with him and for him on all manner of pipes and strings and drumbeats, because Bilbo had made it a point to collect at least one of every instrument he could find out in the world.

The furnishings moved and settled in their proper places. The crockery and cutlery was now all in their correct locations throughout the home, filling the desks and cupboards. With sudden clarity, Bilbo knew he would be able to walk to his office and find his desk right as he'd last seen it. His paper and books and inkpot, too, were right where he'd left them.

Most amazing of all, he sensed his pantry. And his larder. They were full.

Now what's that about?

He'd told the Gaffer and Fortinbras and everyone else with a nose in his business, to take what they wanted from his larder so at least the perishables didn't go to waste. Bilbo now knew, as he always knew everything in and of Bag End, that the Gaffer and Fortinbrasm and everyone else other than the Sackvilles had instead decided to regularly restock his larder and keep it that way, just in case.

Could Fortinbras finally be warming up to the idea to 'house sit' Bag End while Bilbo was away, as he'd offered?

How fortunate that is the case, Bilbo thought dryly as Bag End finally began to think past its all-new homecoming bliss to pay heed to what was happening outside. I don't suppose you can pretend we're not home?

Bag End didn't hear him. It was too excited. As a matter of fact, it swooned.

Bebother and cofusticate, why are you like this? Who sowed their oats around my hill when I wasn't looking? You certainly don't get this from me!

There came a tremendous ring on the front-door bell.

Bilbo hopped out of his chair, strode over to put on the kettle, put out a second cup and saucer, was most conflicted at seeing the plate of cakes that Bag End had rustled up from somewhere – even though it was too busy doting on the ruffian outside to even hear Bilbo thinking at it – and went to the door.

"I am sorry to keep you waiting!" Bilbo was going to say, when he saw that it was not any sight he expected at all. Or, well, it was, except instead of the drab and rough appearance of before, the dwarf before him had a long, well brushed beard tucked into a golden belt, and very bright eyes under a large, magnificent dark-green hood. Its collar was so wide and the back trailed so far down that it was practically a cloak, reaching all the way to the dwarf's ankles.

"Dwalin at your service!" he said with a low bow.

"Bilbo Baggins at yours!" said the hobbit, too surprised to say anything else in the moment.

Dwalin's beard…

It was blue.

When the silence that followed threatened to become uncomfortable, Bilbo shook his head clear. "I hope you appreciate what a heartfelt marvel you're wearing there." A little stiff perhaps, but he meant it kindly. What could one do, if an uninvited dwarf came and knocked on one's door wearing not just accoutrements most ancient, but also a large, pristine hood woven out of-

"Oh, believe me, we know," Dwalin harrumphed, walking in when Bilbo stepped aside and hanging his hood in the nearest peg. He grabbed his new belt, then let go as if he was embarrassed at being caught in the act. "This is a princely gift, it is. Dwarven craftsmanship like this hasn't disappeared, exactly, but it's up there, and the maker's mark is my great grandfather's."

"Princely in more ways than you know." Bilbo said, motioning for the dwarf to follow him. "What you have there probably didn't come from the tomb of the Prince of Cardolan, but it was undoubtedly from one of his prime retainers. They had many dealings with your kin in those days. I am not surprised Tom was able to find the perfect one for you, even in his whimsies he is most considerate. But that wasn't what I was talking about."

"Your meaning?"

"The hood," Bilbo said, stopping to look the dwarf in the eye. "The fabric is made of wool freely given by wild landraces fed exclusively on what Tom gives them by hand, it is dyed with the essence of the most verdant spring flowers, and it was sown together by Godlberry with string from her own hair."

Dwalin's eyes widened, and he looked furtively in the direction of the door they had left behind three turns ago. "I will cherish it like it was my own child."

"Let's not go quite that far," Bilbo shook his head, smiling. "I am just about to take tea. Pray come and have some with me."

"Don't mind if I do." Dwalin gladly accepted. "… Did your old man really just build a new Bag End here? It looks literally the same, same door and walls, even the fireplace mosaic is the same, and the curtains…"

"That's Bungo Baggins for you," Bilbo shrugged, choosing not to elaborate on everything that hadn't been present a while and a half earlier, including the curtains. He glanced at Dwalin as closely as he could without giving himself away, but the dwarf didn't seem to feel Bag End's spirit any more than he did before, without Bilbo to make the bridge. The house was carefully not doing any of the things that had disturbed the dwarf during his first visit.

Dwalin's hair was as blue as his beard.

They had not been at the table long, in fact they had hardly reached the third cake, when there came another, even louder ring at the bell.

"That'll be the boys, no doubt," Dwalin grunted. "They couldn't wait to be the first to clean up after they saw me do it. Well, one of 'em anyhow."

"It's not them," said the hobbit, and off he went to the door before he was asked to explain.

It was, indeed, not the princes. Instead, it was a certain contract drafter with his same long and white beard. Covering his head was again a cloak-with-a-hood, this one colored scarlet – no, no, still better to call it a hood-with-a-cloak, them dwarrows had wide shoulders. And big heads.

"Good afternoon!" Bilbo greeted the figure at the door.

"And so it is, though I think it might rain later."

Bilbo nodded. "Quite right, it's not Goldberry's washing day yet, but some things she likes to keep especially clean and sparkling throughout, and dew just isn't enough for some things."

The dwarf blinked at the information he had no way to understand, but decided not to ask. He caught sight of Dwalin's green hood hanging up. "I see the others have begun to arrive already." He hung his red one next to it and put his hand on his breast. "Balin at your service!"

"Bilbo Baggins, at yours," Bilbo replied, happy to find the words were all honest. He generally liked visitors, but these ones had been a notable exception. He was glad to be able to like them this time, even if he'd have preferred to know they would arrive beforehand. And to have asked them himself. Also, depending on how much more unrestrained they were this time, the cakes might actually run short, unlike before. If that happened, then he, as the host, might have to go without. How dreadful. "Come along in, and have some tea!"

"A little beer would suit me better, if it is all the same to you, my good sir," said Balin. "But I don't mind some cake – seed-cake, if you have any."

Oh dear, I'm not the only one acting more familiar and unapologetic about all this. "Amazingly enough, both seem to be available."

Bilbo led Balin to the dining room and left him with his brother to marvel over Bag End's second coming, while he scuttled off to the cellar to fill a pint beer-mug. He also went to the pantry to fetch two beautiful round seed-cakes which – he smelled them – ah, the Gaffer had baked them just that afternoon, and given them to Bag End because it looked lonely.

Those Gamgees, honestly.

When he got back, Balin and Dwalin were talking at the table about the exalted nature of their new hoods. Bilbo plumped down the beer and the cake in front of them, and the two brothers both opened their mouths at once – perhaps to vow all over again that they would care for their new cloaks like they were treasures instead of things to keep off the rain – when loud came the bell again, and then another ring.

Now it was the princes at the door, and while Fili looked the same save for his new garb, Kili could not have looked more different. Different from his old self, but almost identical to his brother, save for the shorter beard. The dwarves both had blue hoods, silver belts, and hair of a clear yellow like the flowers of a camellia tree. Each of them carried a bag of tools and a spade. And as soon as Bilbo had opened the door, they hopped in without prompting as if they'd been invited. Bilbo was hardly surprised at all.

"What can I do for you, my dwarves?" he said.

"Kili at your service!" said the one. "And Fili!" added the other, and they both swept off their blue hoods and bowed.

"At yours and your family's," replied Bilbo, making a vain attempt to cover his smile. "Not going to sully the glory box this time, I hope."

"Surely not!" Kili scoffed, and he sounded like an indulgent ancient king more than a mere boy, for a moment. Knowing whose dreams his odd luck had made him live out the day before, Bilbo wasn't really surprised by this either.

"Dwalin and Balin here already, I see," said Fili. "Let us join the throng!"

Bilbo followed after them and leaned against the frame to the den to watch them. The four dwarves soon were snacking and talking, about Bag End just for a little while, then about mines and gold and troubles with the goblins, the depredations of dragons, and how their new hoods were made by the Missus' own with her own hair so you two rascals had better not use them as wipers, you hear that?

Bilbo felt oddly like the talk should have been a tad bit more adventurous, when, dong-a-ling-dang, his bell rang again, as if little Hamfast was trying to pull the handle off. He actually felt like he was back in Hobbiton for a moment there, that's how faithfully even the bell had been recreated. Or was that just more of Bag End bringing itself over?

"That'll be three more," Bilbo said, blinking, looking outside through Bag End's eyes to figure out if it was the Ri or Ur brothers.

"And a fourth, I should say by the sound," said Fili. "Besides, we saw them coming along behind us in the distance."

Bilbo shook his head as he left for the entrance, pretending not to know what Fili was talking about. He also didn't let them know it wasn't four, but five now.

This time, Bilbo made sure to jump aside lest the pileup succeed in killing him like it failed the first time. Mercifully, however, these dwarves managed not to crash all over each other, never mind on top of him. Also, it wasn't the Ur brothers that accompanied Dori, Nori and Ori, but Oin and Gloin this come-around. Very soon, two purple hoods, a grey hood, a brown hood, and a white hood were hanging on the pegs, and off the dwarves marched with their broad hands stuck in their gold and silver belts to join the others.

The throng was more than half-way complete, and they were not shy of taking Bilbo up on his hospitality. Some called for ale, one asked for porter, one for coffee, and all of them wanted cakes. Needless to say, Bilbo was kept very busy for a while. He was rapidly reaching the limit that a single hobbit could do when playing host.

Before he could summon up one or three of the dwarves to help, however, a particularly loud knock sounded. Bilbo had to look out through Bag End's eyes again, just to make sure it really wasn't a hard hat that was banging against his beautiful green door.

It wasn't a hard hat. It was a long, gnarled, familiar staff.

Bilbo practically flew through the hallways to the door and pulled it open. This was where the world showed that the Music still had some bad turns to toss at the little people – Bifur, Bofur and Bombur fell forward in a heap all over again, just as they had the first time. Thankfully for Bilbo's life expectancy – and his back – his sense of self-preservation did make sure to have him out of reach of the pile-up this time around. He merely stood aside the door, altogether exasperated.

And there, behind the three groaning dwarrow, who else would be leaning on his staff and laughing?

"Gandalf," Bilbo harrumphed. "You better not have put a dent in my door, it's brand new!"

"All over again and also old at the same time, yes, I can well see," said the wizard. "Peace, peace! It is not like you, Bilbo, to keep friends waiting on the mat, and then open the door like a pop-gun! Now let me just pick up these three, let's see, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur-"

"At your service!" said Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur standing in a row. The happy smiles as they looked at each other for speaking all at once, all together were practically blinding. No, really, Bag End couldn't see anything for several seconds after it happened, that was how bright the unseen world blazed with their combined cheer.

The three hung up two yellow hoods and a pale green one next to the others.

"Now, almost all of us are here, once again!" said Gandalf, looking at the row of the twelve cloaks that also doubled as the best detachable party hoods. The wizard hung his own hat next to them, though with a peg left free between them, as they were still missing the thirteenth. "Quite a merry gathering! I hope there is something left for the late-comers to eat and drink! Is that tea I smell? No thank you! A little red wine for me, I think."

"You think," Bilbo echoed as he walked in step with the wizard to see to his guest right. "Where did you even sprout from, wizard? I didn't want to think you'd just abandoned this lot in a huff when they didn't wait for you in their rush to catch up with the princes. But you also never showed up at Tom's doorstep either, so I wasn't sure what to think."

"That I didn't show up at the door of Bombadil until now was not for lack of trying, I assure you." Gandald grumpily accepted the carafe of wine, settled on a chair near the window and took a long chug. "I was just behind this silly lot, up until they entered the Old Forest ahead of me. By the time I traced their steps, what should have taken me ten minutes ended up lasting nigh on two days! I know many queer things occur around this spot, but for time to go all wizened and senile is a first, even for this old wizard."

"I am relieved to learn it was such a silly predicament."

"That makes one of us," Gandalf huffed, taking another long drink before setting the wine aside to light his pipe. "If I did ought to annoy the Master of these lands, I'd appreciate not being kept in suspense so I may make whatever amends he requires, however unjustified."

"Tom's not that kind of Master," Bilbo said mildly. "I doubt he was thinking about you at all, when he did – well, what Tom does."

"My dear hobbit, that does not reassures me at all, why I've a mind to-"

The door pounded with the strike of a closed fist, once, twice, three times.

Like the first time, everyone else trailed after Bilbo as he went to greet the king of Durin's Folk. As before, the round, green door opened inward. Unlike before, however, Bilbo Baggins leaned against the edge as his eyes finally landed on the dwarf beyond the threshold, and he stared. There he was, Thorin son of Thrain, son of Thror, King of Durin's folk. Strong, wide, haughty, and wearing the most beautiful of all the hooded cloaks of all, a sky-blue one with a long silver tassel.

Bilbo didn't spare his attire the slightest glance. "What the devil happened to you?" he blurted instead. It was terrible manners, but what else could a hobbit do? All he had eyes for was Thorin's beard. It was so big and thick and long that it reached all the way to the ground. Also, it was snow-white.

Thorin glared. "I do not care to speak of it."

Bilbo covered his smirk too late. "You went to bother Tom when he was singing at Goldberry's window, didn't you?"

"I said," Thorin ground out through his clenched teeth. "I do not care to speak of it."

"Of course," Bilbo nodded agreeably, trying and failing to conceal the fact that this was the funniest thing he'd seen all year. "I understand the feeling well. The Master doesn't just serenade his Lady in the mornings, he does what he wants when he wants how he wants."

Thorin looked like his eyes might burn Bilbo to a crisp right where he stood. Considering that his eyes were blue instead of gold or red, that was quite the achievement.

Bilbo cleared his throat. "I assume that making even the most oblique suggestion that a dwarf might want to, say, trim his front hairs a little remains the utmost sacrilege?"

Now the only thing missing was the spitting lightning. Perhaps Thorin had a heretofore unknown affinity for it, rather than just flame? Poor dwarf wouldn't have any way to know, what with living under a rock all his life. Bilbo would have to ask Elrond about checking for it somehow, when they passed through the Last Homely Home. "Right then. Do come in, if it pleases you. Would you prefer tea or some other drink?"

With a visible effort of will, Thorin stopped frowning. Finally, he stepped inside the door. Unlike the first time, he forewent his bid for the title of the worst guest in the history of Hobbiton, placed his hood on the free peg near the door, and said: "I will have wine."

"And I'll have raspberry jam and apple-tart," said Bifur.

"And mince-pies and cheese," said Bofur.

"And pork-pie and salad," said Bombur.

"And more cakes and ale and coffee, if you don't mind," called the other dwarves from behind him.

"And maybe put on a few eggs, there's a good fellow!" Gandalf added glibly as Bilbo turned around to give the throng a flat stare over his crossed arms. "And just bring out the cold chicken and pickles while you're at it!"

"Well now!" Bilbo drawled. "Since you all seem to know as much about the inside of my larders as I do myself, how's about you come and lend a hand?"

"Way ahead of you, Your Highness!" Fili called from a bit further in, waving in the direction of the kitchen. "See?"

Sure enough, Balin and Dwalin were already at the door of the kitchen when he got there, though they didn't dare go in without permission. Bilbo supposed his performance the first night had stayed with them.

Good.

And so the dwarves helped the hobbit be a proper host. As well they should, the least an uninvited guest could do was not be a bad one on top of it.

The rest of the day was most good, full of light talk and grim talk, casual words and serious words, and soft words and merry shouts, and all the while good drink and fresh food sprang from Bag End's generous larders.

Bilbo got to sit at the head of his own table without any oblique snipes or slanted eyes from the thirteen dwarves all round. Gandalf sat at the other end of the table, then the sofa near the wall, then the second of the rocking chairs in front of the fire. The dwarves ate and ate, and talked and talked, and time got on. Until, at last, they pushed their chairs back, sung their cleaning song before Bilbo could even make a move to collect the plates and glasses, and everyone took to chairs and armchairs and lounges to be calm and at ease.

Even Thorin let himself go a little, making a fair bid at competing with Gandalf in the honoured art of blowing smoke rings. Bilbo decided not to poke him, but he did get Fili and Kili to prod their uncle about his uncannily permissive mood instead. It took some doing, but they made him admit he didn't want to impinge on the joy brought by Bifur's good fortune. Making him admit that was like trying to rip an osier out by the roots bare-handed, but prod they did and admit he did.

Bilbo was quite proud of those two.

And Thorin too, he supposed. A little.

Alas, Thorin inevitably lost the competition, as Gandalf sent smoke rings of his own to pierce and pop all of Thorin's one after another. The king put out his pipe with a grunt.

Then, to Bilbo's complete shock that everyone was likewise too stunned to notice, Thorin shouted. "Now for some music! Bring out the instruments!"

There was silence most stupefied.

Thorin scowled at the disbelieving stares of everyone around him and decided, for some unfathomable reason, that Bilbo would be the most reasonable choice of who to address next. "Master hobbit! Your kin close and distant boasted about you having every possible instrument there is. Care to show proof of claim?"

Bilbo, wonderingly, began to smile. "It would be easier to tell me what instruments you want, because you'll all fall asleep before I finish espousing them all." Which was not the same as listing them, the world didn't have that many different instruments unfortunately, it was why he'd made it his life's work to create an all-new one. But if they weren't going to make too big a fuss over it…

"You heard the hobbit, you lot. Get to it!"

The other dwarves sent Bilbo amazed looks, so he shrugged and motioned that they follow. Which they all did like big, loud, tromping ducks.

"And bring me a harp while you're at it," Thorin's voice followed them.

When he showed them into his music room, the dwarves filed in one after another and stopped to stare. Then, Kili and Fili to pick up little fiddles. Dori, Nori, and Ori went to the flutes, Bombur chose a drum, Bifur and Bofur went for the clarinets, and Dwalin and Balin waited for last, at which point they both chose viols as big as themselves. Dwalin offered to carry them both, so Balin went in one last time and, with Dori's help, picked up the massive harp and carefully carried it to Thorin while the rest of the company followed in their wake like a respectful fanfare.

It wasn't the most beautiful harp Bilbo had ever seen, in fact that honor belonged to Thorin's own harp, either made or plated wholly in gold. Bilbo had witnessed him play exactly once, that year when finally made it to the Blue Mountains, though for the sake of Gloin's son no one would ever be told. The only reason he got to see the performance, despite Thorin only playing in private settings, was because Gimli had secretly led him in through a service passage to listen in. He'd not expected that hiring the lad to figure out how to make his very specific steel cords would earn him that sort of favor, but that was a story in and of itself.

Right now, all that mattered was that Bilbo's harp, though not made of gold, produced, as all his instruments did, the perfect tune.

When Thorin struck the strings, the music began all at once, so sudden and sweet that Bilbo forgot everything else, and was swept away into dark lands under strange moons, far over The Water and very far from his hobbit-hole under The Hill. Bag End itself responded to the shift in mood, and though the dwarves experienced in unison the realization that this Bag End was every bit as Bag End as the other Bag End, they only sang and played along all the more keenly.

The dark filled the room, the fire died down, the shadows were lost, and still the dwarves played on. And, finally, first one, then two, and then others and more, added their voices to their strings and woodwind and drumbeats, until Bag End rumbled with the deep-throated singing of the dwarves in the deep places of their ancient homes.



Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away ere break of day
To seek the pale enchanted gold.

The dwarves of yore made mighty spells,
While hammers fell like ringing bells
In places deep, where dark things sleep,
In hollow halls beneath the fells.

For ancient king and elvish lord
There many a gleaming golden hoard
They shaped and wrought, and light they caught
To hide in gems on hilt of sword.

On silver necklaces they strung
The flowering stars, on crowns they hung
The dragon-fire, in twisted wire
They meshed the light of moon and sun.

Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away, ere break of day,
To claim our long-forgotten gold.

Goblets they carved there for themselves
And harps of gold; where no man delves
There lay they long, and many a song
Was sung unheard by men or elves.

The pines were roaring on the height,
The winds were moaning in the night.
The fire was red, it flaming spread;
The trees like torches blazed with light.

The bells were ringing in the dale
And men looked up with faces pale;
The dragon's ire more fierce than fire
Laid low their towers and houses frail.

The mountain smoked beneath the moon;
The dwarves, they heard the tramp of doom.
They fled their hall to dying fall
Beneath his feet, beneath the moon.

Far over the misty mountains grim
To dungeons deep and caverns dim
We must away, ere break of day,
To win our harps and gold from him!


The lines and rhymes continued well and long, deep into the evening, and then night. The dwarves sang the full history of the Lonely Mountain and its loss, and their hopes for reclaiming it and the wonders it would once again see and make. They plied their instruments and sung with their rumbling voices until the sounds of the forest faded, the fire burned to embers, and the stars came out in the dark sky above the trees.

In his chair across from Thorin, Bilbo watched and listened, even as Bag End followed the song, and the thoughts and dreams and memories of the dwarves, all across the water and land and forests and mountains, through old tunnels and new ones, and a kingdom built into a distant, lonely mountain hollowed out by hand.

The love of dwarves was fierce and jealous, but the love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning was as pure as any magic Bilbo had ever witnessed.

Or worked.

When the song finally ended, none seemed inclined to break it. They all sat and waited, in the dark. A dark room for business not nearly as dark as the one that had so harshly tainted it before. The business was still grim, however, as Bilbo was loath but resigned to see coming from miles off, though the dwarves clearly didn't share his view.

"Bring out the contract," Thorin commanded.

Bilbo sat forward in his chair and continued to meet Thorin's eyes as Balin and Ori rose, briefly exited the room, and returned with a large scroll folded up like a fourteen-segment accordion. Meanwhile, Nori produced and lit Bilbo's lantern, which the hobbit often used when going around at night, and which, unbeknownst to any of his guests save maybe the wizard, had been all the way back in Hobbiton until that very moment.

Bilbo accepted the new contract and read.

"Thorin and Company to Master Bilbo of Bag End, Kin Once Removed to his Royal Personage, Isumbras Took the Fourth, Thain of the Shire,

Greetings! For your hospitality our sincerest thanks, and for the honor of your professional assistance our sincere request. Terms: cash on delivery, up to and not exceeding one fourteenth of total profits (if any); all travelling expenses guaranteed in any event; funeral expenses to be defrayed by us or our representatives, if occasion arises and the matter is not otherwise arranged for.

"We have the honour to remain

"Yours deeply,

"Thorin & Co."

Bilbo looked up from the contract. He looked at Thorin, who was inscrutable. He looked at Gandalf, who had the grace not to look as if he thought Bilbo's agreement was guaranteed. He looked at the other dwarves, who were hopeful. He looked at Kili, who made no effort to catch his attention but nonetheless got it, because he was the only one among the dwarves who seemed to know what he would say.

Bilbo folded the paper back up, stood from his chair and gave the contract back to Balin, unsigned.

"Ask me again in Rivendell."

That night, when the dwarves and Gandalf were all asleep, Bilbo Baggins rose from his bed and set out, at long last, on his own errand. His one, big, most brazen, most important self-appointed errand since he finally made it to Ered Luin years ago, to get help making reality out of his big, all-new design for a never-before-seen music instrument.

He paused at the door. He listened to the dwarves' loud, rumbling snores. He looked at the instruments arrayed along the hallway wall. He looked at the blue wizard's hat and thirteen colorful hoods hanging by the door.

Bilbo Baggins left Bag End feeling like something that had long been broken in the world was now mended.