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Bilbo's pony is a stout, quick little thing, and despite ample warning from the lookouts, Elrond must hasten the last few steps down into the courtyard to reach it in time to greet his guest.
"Mr. Baggins!" he calls cheerily. "Welcome to Rivendell! We had quite begun to despair of you, it has been so long since your last visit."
"Master Elrond!"
Bilbo bows deeply, although the effect is quite ruined when his pony jostles his shoulder with its mouth as he comes back up.
Bilbo harrumphs, and produces an apple from his pocket. The pony neighs happily.
"Well, yes - I'd have come sooner, you see, but I've acquired a child."
"A child!"
Elrond is not quite able to hide his surprise, and Bilbo shrugs a little helplessly before handing the reins of the pony off to a stablehand come to help.
"Well, a ward, really. My nephew, Frodo. So we have roamed rather close to home these last few years. He's off to stay with his mother's people for the summer, so I thought I'd come to haunt your halls for a little bit."
Elrond's pleasure grows the more he hears, and by the time Bilbo finishes speaking, he is smiling widely.
"Well, that is a fair reason indeed for not coming to see us sooner! Come, let us get you settled - though I hope you will have supper with me in my rooms tonight and tell me all about young Frodo."
"Yes, yes," says Bilbo, shaking his hair out of his face with a huff. "Just let me wash this grime off first, and I will happily help you plunder your own larder, Master Elrond."
The wonderful thing about hobbits, Elrond thinks as they eat, is that they like to take their time over a meal.
He has always been partial to it himself - enjoys nothing so much and so innocently as a late evening with a glass and a friend, or remaining under warm covers on a cold morning. His wife had indulged him and embroidered many a kirtle sitting in bed with Elrond's forehead and nose pressed against her hip as he drowsed. Gil-galad had too, lying down till morning in a procession of shared tents and cots while they fought side by side with Elendil and his sons. The King had always claimed it set a good example for his Army, to respect the night time quiet the Men needed, but Elrond knew it for the personal kindness it was and had treasured it.
"You always were a malingerer," Elros had spat at him the night after they had made their choices, both drunk and hurt and scared. The night had ended in bruises, tears, and finally an embrace. An Age and more later, Elrond finds he cannot defend himself against the accusation. He has never seen anything wrong with slowing his reading to make the last pages of a beloved book last longer, although his children had objected vigorously against any such strategy when it came time to read them stories.
It is a pleasure, therefore, to eat with a hobbit - for no one enjoys food and wine quite so much as they do, nor at such length. It is one of the reasons why Elrond has always encouraged Mithrandir to bring his small friends to Rivendell whenever he decided to take one away for an adventure. Still, he never had expected one quite so remarkable as Bilbo to appear.
The first part of their meal has been comfortably silent, each happily enjoying the dishes the kitchens have sent up. Only by the time they reach dessert does Bilbo begin to speak of his journey - a relentless parade of misfortunes, misadventures, and multiple near-misses, if his retelling is to be believed. As the living proof of its happy ending, Bilbo is delighted to recast what seems like a rather complicated journey as a merry tale, and Elrond is equally delighted to be entertained by it.
Although the hobbit will never make a happy rider, Elrond thinks, the fact of his safe arrival argues that he is at least adequate - despite the almost joyful way in which Mr Baggins describes every proof of his own incompetence along his way. The pony, Bilbo explains, is the result of necessity rather than choice; his nephew is due to return to Bag End by the full moon after next and he must be back in time to collect him.
Elrond refills their glasses.
"Will you tell me about your nephew, then?" he asks.
Bilbo nods, tilts his head and stretches his neck.
"Frodo, yes. I suppose I am technically his cousin, not uncle - his father Drogo was my second cousin on my father's side, and his mother my first cousin on my mother's side, from down in Buckland. Well, the Bucklanders have always been a bit adventuresome - my mother scandalised a baker's dozen of neighbours in Hobbiton in her time, and her sister who married into the Brandybucks was even worse. Drogo was pretty daring himself, for a Baggins. So he and Prim made a rather dashing couple, always going off to do extraordinary things together."
Bilbo smiles at the recollection, but a sombre look steals upon his face as he continues.
"And so it happened that they were both out on the Brandywine in their boat when it capsized. Neither could swim."
The hobbit clears his throat and takes a gulp of his wine.
"I am truly sorry to hear it, my friend. They must have been dear to you," says Elrond.
"Yes, well," replies Bilbo, clearing his throat and staring determinedly at the bookshelves some way behind and above Elrond's shoulder. "Yes, they were. And poor Frodo left behind. He's a rather thoughtful and serious young fellow after what's happened, and after seeing him all alone in the throng at Brandy Hall a few Yuletides in a row, I thought he'd better come and live with me."
"That was kind of you," offers Elrond, and Bilbo shakes his head.
"Only right thing to do, really, with the big old hole all to myself! And we get along well enough, the two of us. I am sure some of his Brandybuck aunts would like to see his ears and face washed a bit more often, but he's healthy and happy, diligent at his lessons, generous to guests, and kind to his friends. Perhaps I've spent too much time in the wilderness, but it seems to me that that is about the sum total of what one could reasonably hope for, from such a young fellow."
"Unless it be quiet in the morning when one is trying to sleep," says Elrond a little wryly, and Bilbo laughs.
"I think your troubles with that were vastly magnified by having gone and made a pair of twins!" he says - mirth dancing in his eyes - and then goes on to tell him how Frodo and the gardener's boys had accidentally and thoroughly ruined one of the guest bedrooms by bringing and then leaving two goats unattended in it.
It is clear that Bilbo enjoys the company of his young cousin and his friends immensely, and Elrond is glad. Although the hobbit had never said so outright, Eldrond had always had the impression that Bilbo rather missed the more lively days when he'd been young, his father and mother alive, and his peers unmarried.
"It's all well and good to host neighbours and relatives," he'd said to Elrond once, "but bundling the uncles home in their carriages at midnight is rather less entertaining when there is no one who is free to stay overnight and gossip about it over breakfast the next day."
It was a droll quip, Elrond had thought, but a sad one too; for Bilbo Baggins is a poet and a scholar with three kings in his debt, in a land where the first two are regarded with deep suspicion and the third is inconceivable. He has always been a great favourite in Rivendell, for his good humour and keen interest in languages and history; Elrond knows he is not the only one who will be happy to hear that he no longer lives alone in Bag End.
"It is a good thing you did, taking him in," he says when they have laughed a great deal about Frodo and Poppy Twofoot's unsuccessful attempts at drinking Bilbo's sweet wine without detection. "Unclehood suits you."
Bilbo laughs, but the tips of his ears go red.
"Oh, I only try my best. And Frodo will have to judge if I'm doing well or not!"
"Far less able guardians have succeeded in bringing children safely to adulthood," says Elrond, struck by a pang of loss so acute that he struggles to mask it.
Bilbo regards him for a moment. Then he takes out his pipe and laboriously packs it with pipeweed, lights it and leans back in his chair.
Elrond does not smoke himself, but the bittersweet smell of the pipe is relaxing, in its own way, and he sits back and lets his feelings wash over and past him.
After a while, Bilbo speaks.
"I never could quite tell from poems and the histories, to be honest. So if I may ask - who cared for you while you were with the Fëanorians?"
Elrond exhales.
"Maglor," he says finally, and Bilbo's eyebrows shoot up.
"Himself?" he asks, somewhat incredulously.
"Yes. After the Havens of Sirion, only a small company still remained loyal to the remaining sons of Fëanor. Himring and the Gap had fallen long before. We moved about often, for Maedhros wished to pursue the servants of the Enemy. Maglor -"
He pauses, considers.
"Maglor did not wish to draw his sword again unless he absolutely had to. So we three stayed behind with a guard and a servant, and the company would come back every third moon or so."
Bilbo is staring intently at him.
"Was he kind to you?" he asks, and Elrond nods.
"Yes,” he says quietly. “But they were neither of them well. They were sick with grief, and anger, and the terrible knowledge of what the Oath had made of them and their brothers. Of all the sorrow and death Fëanor caused with his Oath, I believe the injury he did his own sons was the greatest violence of all."
Bilbo exhales heavily.
"And you would know," he states plainly.
Elrond chuckles humorlessly.
"Yes," he agrees, thinking of Elured and Elorin and his mother. "I would, wouldn't I?"
Another wave of loss hits him, and he closes his eyes for a moment
"Forgive me, Bilbo," he says when he opens them again. "This is no way to feast a long-awaited guest."
Bilbo shakes his head, looking unhappy.
"No - no, no, no. It is I who should apologise - barging in here with my overly familiar questions! I should have stuck with making conversation about the weather and the wine!"
Elrond laughs.
"You are thirteen dwarves and a dragon too late for that, my friend," he says, and there comes Bilbo's smile back to his face. "You are an extraordinary person, Mr. Baggins. And the lives of the Eldar are so long indeed, that unless an extraordinary Man or Dwarf or Hobbit comes along to hurry things up, we should still be exchanging polite pleasantries by the time you were a gaffer."
"Gaffer Baggins!" laughs Bilbo. "With hard candy in my pockets. Now that would be a fate to fear! No, I believe I much prefer to be Uncle Bilbo, with quills and frogs and all manners of trinkets in them instead."
The hobbit nods contentedly to himself and puffs his pipe, but a shiver dances up Elrond's neck. How old, he thinks to himself, is Bilbo now? It has been many years of a mortal life span since the dwarves' quest - yet Bilbo looks much the same as he did back then. He tucks the thought away, to discuss with Mithrandir when next he visits.
Relaxed once more, Bilbo blows a smoke ring, and then asks Elrond for news of Estel’s journeys, and of Arwen in Lórien. The twins he needs no news of, he says, for he had heard them offensively tralalalallying a day’s ride west.
Elrond refills their glasses, happily tells Bilbo all he wants to hear, and more, too. Bilbo has never met Arwen himself - she went to Lórien long before Bilbo and the dwarves had passed through - but he is fond of Estel, and knows that Elrond hid his reluctance to let the young man leave Rivendell as deeply as he hides how much he misses his daughter. Bilbo has never in his conversations with Elrond made any distinction between the children of his body and the child of his adoption, and Elrond is grateful for it. He thinks to himself that Frodo and Bilbo will do well.
From Elrond’s children their talk eventually turns to genealogies; the archives at Minas Tirith and the lore chants of the Rohirrim; the origins of pipe weed (Elrond is sure he had seen it somewhere in Middle-earth even before the arrival of Elendil's people); and the proper composition of songs.
The evening has grown very late by the time Bilbo bids him goodnight and stumbles down the hall to his chamber, his large feet somehow keeping him upright without any apparent cooperation from the rest of his body. Elrond hears music from the Hall of Fire when he pulls the balcony doors shut, and thinks that it is good to have Bilbo back among them.
The wine sings a slow, steady tune in his blood as he goes to his bedchamber. The low drone of the waterfall drowns out the other noises of the Valley and is a pleasant hum in his ears and the soles of his feet. He will sleep deeply tonight.
As he undresses, he reaches out in spirit to his wife, and his careful touch is rewarded with a playful prod back. The Sundering Seas are too wide for them to do much but feel each other's presence, but even this is enough to make him smile. A happy, playful Celebrían, still up in the late hours of the night, is a Celebrían a world away from the pained shell of her that had departed from Mithlond. He thinks she must be with friends and family tonight, dares hope that the company might include his lord and King.
Oh, but he is tired of being here alone.
He tries to imbue their connection with all his love and gently prods her back, then slips Vilya off his finger and onto the chain around his neck. The feeling of winds buffeting him from all sides falls away and the world is still.
"Soon, my love, " he thinks, hoping it is not a lie, that this chapter soon will end. Then he blows out the candle and slips into a dream.