Chapter Text
It was right after the whole troll-fiasco, and all of the dwarrow’s spirits were kind of low. Trolls and parasites will do that to you.
“If we couldn’t defeat three trolls without the help of a halfling and a wizard, how are we supposed to defeat a blasted dragon? ” Bofur whispered to Nori as they kept watch.
Nori pinched his nose. “This whole thing was a mistake. I shouldn’t have let Ori come.”
“Forget Ori,” Bofur said. “What about Bilbo? The halfling almost died because of this, and now we’re sending him to kill Smaug? ”
Nori sighed. “Do we even have a plan for getting the dragon out of our home?”
“Maybe you could make friends with it,” a small, high-pitched voice chimed in.
The two dwarrow spun in unison to face the threat, axes and daggers drawn.
Then they lowered their weapons, confused.
Standing before them in a red dress that was not at all suitable for the cold weather, with her dark brown arms wrapped around a stuffed dragon and her curly hair up in two buns, was a little human girl.
“What on earth…?” Nori muttered.
Bofur, seeing the girl's wide, confused eyes and sensing that she was probably lost and definitely scared, temporarily put his confusion aside to kneel on one knee before her, trying to not look too intimidating. He extended his hand in the greeting that was customary for big folk.
“I’m Bofur, of Thorin Oakenshield’s company,” he said cheerfully. “What’s your name?”
The girl opened her mouth, then closed it, looking confused. She eventually reached out and shook his hand back.
“I’m Cassie,” she said. “And I thought Thorin Oakenshield was dead.”
Earlier that day
The princess of her own little kingdom sat in the corner of recess, pretending that she was a well-loved damsel and Copper was her fearsome dragon. Cassandra watched Jenny (her best-friend-who-would-rather-play-four-square) run around with the boys, her straight brown ponytail whirling.
She imagined Copper (that was her stuffed dragon) coming to life and swooping in. All the kids would want to play with him, but he would only hang out with Cass. Then Jenny would want to talk with her.
“Cassie, do you want to go play in the sandbox?” tried one of her teachers.
Cass shrugged. “No, thanks.”
She knew that Miss Angela would give up and move on to a more willing child sooner or later, so she ignored the teacher and returned to her kingdom.
“She says that you died,” Bofur told Thorin.
The company was all gathered in a loose huddle, looking at Cass.
“That Smaug killed you,” Nori chimed in helpfully.
“And your sons,” Bofur added.
Thorin gave Cass an uncertain glance. “I don’t have sons.”
Cassie hugged her dragon tighter. “But I thought…”
When she didn’t finish her sentence, too shy to continue, Thorin realized that they probably made a pretty intimidating bunch.
“Give her space,” he and Bilbo said in unison.
They looked at each other, and Thorin gestured to Bilbo to take it from here.
Bilbo quickly stepped forward and scooped Cassie up with a soothing smile. “Hello, little seedling.”
Cassie’s face lit up. “Bilbo!”
When school let out that day, Cass had crawled into her car seat and sat down with a cheerful humph. She had recently graduated from the big, clunky car seat with the ears to a smaller, sleek car seat that didn’t go all the way up the back of the car, and she was loving it.
“Buckle up,” Jeremy reminded as they cruised out of the school. Cassie did so, also with a cheerful humph. She was feeling good today, and she didn’t know why.
Of course, her brother had to ruin it.
“You need to make more friends,” Auggie lectured as they turned onto the street. Auggie, paler than all the others and with curly black hair, tried very hard to act more mature than the young tween he was. “You can’t play with your dragons forever.”
“Auggie, don’t lecture your sister, that's my job,” Jeremy scolded.
Cassie stuck out her tongue at August.
“But Cass,” Jeremy added, adjusting his clear-framed glasses that he insisted were in style, “Maybe you should try a bit harder to join the other girls' games, okay?”
Cassandra rolled her eyes and she stared out the window (she would’ve propped her head against it, but the road was too bumpy). They just didn’t get it.
See, the other girls were weird. Jenny had stopped wearing skirts recently, she said she preferred shorts, which, why? Dresses were way prettier, and Cass didn’t understand why Jenny would want to change.
And most of her school was acting the same. The girls would say things like, “I’m not a kid!” or, “don’t call me short!” which didn’t make any sense, because they were kids and they were short.
Cass even knew one girl who pretended to be a dog and went around licking people. Like she was realizing more and more, the girls at her school were weird.
And the boys all had cooties, so she couldn’t play with them.
Cass pulled her sneakers up to play with the laces, then realized something. “Where’s Ricky?”
Jeremy said a word that Cass wasn’t allowed to repeat and slammed on the brakes. “I forgot my boy!”
Ricky was the third-youngest (he called himself the second-oldest) in the family, in between Auggie and Jeremy, and he was the quietest sixteen-year-old in his entire school. Auggie said he was a nerd, and Cass had to agree.
They pulled up to Ricky’s school and Ricky hopped in, apparently unbothered by being left behind.
He started babbling about Tolkien-something-or-other-hobbits-blah-blah, and Cass zoned out for the rest of the ride.
Jeremy pulled into the driveway, nodding indulgently as Ricky went on about Samwise-Gamgee-is-the-ideal-husband-blah-blah-blah.
Ricky, like Cass, never really spoke up at school. But at home, they both talked a mile a minute about anything and everything (Jeremy said they were ambiverts, whatever that meant. Cass thought it sounded like a cool weapon).
Ricky was Cassie’s favorite brother. Out of everyone in the world, he was also the only person who was always willing to play dragons with her.
“Where did you hear that Thorin died?” Bilbo asked, scooping her up. He was small, but she was smaller. “And how do you know my name?”
Cassie squirmed up higher in his arms, feeling antsy. “Well, Ricky told me, and he's got your poster from the movie plastered all over his walls. Auggie said I wasn’t old enough to watch the whole thing, though, which is dumb, because he’s the one who’s scared of orcs, not me. I’m not scared of anything! ” she thought about this. “Except spiders.” she thought some more. “And the dark. But, like, who isn’t scared of the dark?”
Bilbo decided to focus on that first bit. “Where did, er, Richy hear this?”
“Ricky,” Cass corrected. “He read the book.”
“What book?”
“Hobbit.”
“Yes?”
“No, he read a book called The Hobbit.”
“Oh?”
“Plus, he watched the movie.”
“What’s a movie?”
That night, Cassie managed to rope Ricky into a game once more. He wiggled Copper’s arms around, making squeaky noises in his horrible dragon imitation.
Cass flopped back on her bed and groaned, pulling on the skirt of her red dress. “I want a dragon so bad! ”
Ricky shrugged. “Eh, dragons aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Haven’t you heard of Smaug?”
Cass wrinkled her nose, trying out the expression and finding that she liked it. “He’s the one from Narnia?”
“No, Eustace Scrubb is from Narnia. Smaug is from The Hobbit, you uncultured swine,” Ricky corrected with a light smack to the head. “He killed my favorite characters.”
Cassandra perked up at the mention of death. “Who?”
Ricky hesitated. “Well, he didn’t actually kill Thorin, it was Azog who did that.”
“Which one’s Thorin, again?”
Ricky scoffed. “Uh, Thorin Oakenshield, King of Erebor, the best example of a tragic hero ever !”
“What’s a tragic hero?”
Ricky flopped onto the bed beside Cass. “I think he’s like, a hero who had a sad life? I dunno. It was on my AP flashcards.”
“What’s AP?”
Ricky rolled over and ruffled her hair, messing up her space buns. “You know what? I’ll write it all down later.”
“So, it’s like a… moving painting that talks?” Bilbo asked.
Cassie nodded eagerly. “We have loads of them back home. I like the ones with the princesses a lot, but Raya and the Last Dragon is my favorite.” Cassie bent so far back in his arms that her head was upside-down. “I like dragons. But Ricky said that your dragon is mean.” she arched back up with the flexibility of a slinky. “Is he? What’s he like? Have you met him? Do you fight him? Does he eat you? Can I meet him? I bet he’d be a nice person --I mean, dragon? yeah, dragon-- I bet he’d be a nice dragon if you got to talk to him. Do you think he would be?”
“Uhhhh,” said Bilbo. “Hold that thought. I’m going to talk to Thorin.”
After Ricky went back into his own room to do ‘homework’, Cass looked to her desk and realized Ricky left his book there.
She picked it up and turned it over, trying to read the letters on the page. The… hoebit? Habbit? No, the Hobbit, that’s what Ricky called it. Oh, just like the movie!
It was a pretty book, with a green cover and gold letters. Cass opened it, twirling one of her dark brown curls around in her finger.
And then the book lit up.
Cass screamed and dropped it. “RICKY!”
The book started shaking, still glowing, and Cassie backed away, up to the corner of the room. She snatched Copper up for extra security but couldn't find her pocketknife, and she screamed for her brothers. “RICKY! JEREMY! SOMETHING-”
And then, to Cassie’s extreme disgruntlement, the book ate her.
“What did she say?” Balin asked.
Bilbo glanced to the girl, who was sitting on the ground with Kili and telling him about her pet “roomba”, whatever that was. “Lots of things that didn’t make sense.”
“Do you think she was telling the truth?” Thorin kept his voice low. “About the story, and the book that, uh, ate her?”
“How else would she know my name?” Bilbo asked, more to himself than anyone else. “What are we going to do with her?”
“Well, we can’t leave her behind,” Thorin said. “Let me ask her a few things.”
The king crossed the clearing and knelt next to Cassie and Kili, automatically softening. He had always loved children. “Hello there,” he said.
“General Kenobi,” she chirped. Then she giggled.
“Um, right,” Thorin responded. “Do you know where your home is?”
“I’m from Texas,” Cassie said, looking around. “But I don’t think Texas is from here.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” Thorin admitted. “Do you know where your family is?”
“They’re in Texas too,” Cass replied. “Well, except Lauren, but she’s my fiance-in-law, so I dunno if that counts. Fiance means ‘almost married’, that’s what Jeremy said. He's getting married to her soon. I’m gonna be the flower girl.”
“...congratulations,” Thorin said when she didn’t expand, because ‘flower girl’ sounded like a title one would be proud of. Perhaps someone who scattered seeds over fallen soldiers' graves, like they did back home. “Do you know how to get home?”
“No,” Cass said, face falling. She rubbed her arms. “I was hoping… well, Auggie and Jerry always said to not talk to strangers, but I don't know what else to do. So... I was hoping maybe you could help?”
Thorin looked her in the eyes. They were on a quest, and they really shouldn’t be stopping to talk to every random person they met. The fate of Thorin’s home was at stake.
But… children were precious and rare as diamonds, and he certainly wasn’t going to leave one shivering in the cold with only a stuffed animal for company.
Not to mention the fact that she could apparently see the future.
He took off his coat and offered it to her. “I would be happy to.”