Work Text:
Aman, Age of Arda Indeterminate
He walks in a garden not far from the lake, a terraced garden that is beautiful and yet somehow wild as if every part of it was not planned, but allowed to grow as it wished. I hurry to catch up, as he continues on his meandering way through the butterfly bushes and roses.
“You know, of course, that Bilbo Baggins' version was but one of many possible.”
“I thought it was the one Frodo Baggins swore was real.”
Now he stops and turns to face me. “Do most elves think Pengolodh’s version of Laws and Customs of the Eldar is 'the' one, true version of what elvish life is like for all elves?”
“Well… no. But he was writing for a mortal audience.”
“Bilbo was as well. His book was for his nephew and for Hobbits.”
“So, you’re saying he wrote a version that his folk would enjoy.”
He smiles and continues on his way, and soon we are in a sprawling herb garden where he stops and spends much more attention and time.
“This version of events that you have told us, my lord….”
“I didn’t write it.” He straightens, a long spring of blooming rosemary in his hand. “It was given to me by Gildor Inglorion, but I have no idea how it came to be in his possession or who wrote it.”
“Are the events true?”
“It certainly happened that way for the writers, didn’t it? Why else tell such a long and winding story?”
“But it’s a story. Fiction. None of it actually happened that way.”
“You would have to ask the writers, wouldn’t you?”
I see there is no true answer here, or rather, his answer is so very elvish that I have to admire it. “That I cannot do, my lord. They are surely gone and the breadth of the Starry Sea is between us.”
He stops again and looks at me, and there is a smile in the grey eyes that are always full of kindness for a curious hobbit like me. “Ask your father, child. How is it that you came to be, when there is no mention of it in the Red Book of Westmarch?”
It is a good point, and I grin and tap my notebook with my pencil. “Perhaps I will, Lord Elrond. Perhaps I will.” I turn and then stop and look back. “Sir, you won’t mind if we print these stories up, for others to read, will you? I mean, that is, if my father agrees. I don’t wish to demean his story in any way, or Bilbo’s. It’s a right different tale after all.”
“If your father approves, you have my good will.”
“Thank you, my lord!”
Of course, my father didn’t mind, nor did he think old Bilbo, who had passed years before, would either. So. Here I will tell you the tale as it came to me from Elrond Half-elven and Gildor Inglorion and from him… two individuals known only as “Hollers and Holmes”. How they came by it is unknown, but perhaps it was a version given to them from someone; an ancestor, from long ago, who lived through the events. I only know that this is how they wrote it.
Best Wishes and Good Reading,
Felagund Baggins