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Chapter Text

The air is cooler this high on the mountain, with brisk breezes coming down from the north and gentle scatterings of snow brought down from the mountain’s top. But the soil is moist and the sun’s rays still reach them, so Bilbo is able to bring together some semblance of some gardens. He talks with those that remember the farms of Dale, and thinks on the crops cultivated by the hobbits of the now distant North Farthing. Terraces are sketched onto thin paper: root vegetables on this terrace, herbs on this one, flowers here, hedges round ever precipice for protection from the wind, and trees to save smaller plants from raging rain. It is not what he once had at Bag-End, but it shall suffice.

He kneels in the soil now, breathes in the scent of soft earth and hard mountain rock, gazes upon the beginnings of leaves and hardy stems creeping ever upwards, feels downward to the young and tender roots. It is yet small, and it is yet weak. But they shall survive, these gardens of his. He shall not let it be otherwise.

“Master?” The voice is unsure, worryingly so. He turns towards it, and is greeted by curious eyes.

“Yes, Haruna?” She is one of his apprentices, a surprising addition to how he imagined life within Erebor. He never considered that dwarves might be interested in agriculture, but is quite glad to be proved wrong. Apprentices! They all have a passion for the growth of good green things, of course, but Haruna is quite possibly the most dedicated.

She gestures now to the plant beneath her, her long grey plait swinging about her shoulders, her beard braided tight about her chin. “This plant, I worry,” she says, and though her Common is irregular at best her meaning is somehow always clear.

“The leaves, yes.”

“Yes. Wrong colour, drooping. Why?”

They talk about irrigation and sunlight and fungal infections, and Haruna proposes moving the plant to another part of the garden. Sometimes he feels this woman has the earth-sense of a hobbit. He says as much, and she grins demurely, pleased at his praise.

As they work the earth in the garden paints her hands a hearty brown, though she was never truly pale before. She has always been tanned, but not in the way a western dwarf might tan; the undertones are different, Stonefoots far removed in appearance from the Longbeards of Erebor. Bilbo wishes more of her people were here so that she would not stand out so much among her fairer cousins, but Haruna tells him her people are not travellers. They prefer the privacy of their hidden halls, and their numbers above ground are never great, let alone this far west. The only place she truly seems to blend in is Dale, where some of the people have skin to match hers and dark eyes of a similar shape. Their ancestors were from the east, Haruna explains, just as she is.

“But different part. With horses and small tents and flat grass-plains. Hair thicker than other people’s.” They are in Dale’s market today, surrounded by a riot of noise and colour. Haruna sketches a picture with her hands, of wide open lands and wild horse herds and a people that rode around unafraid of the open sky.

“How can you tell?” He asks. “They have no horses here.”

Haruna points, at a hat made of scales and rimmed in fur that sits snugly upon a guard’s head. “Hats, master,” she says. “Hats always tell things. Same hats. Here, there. Same same.”

Haruna always seems full of information, and always eager to learn more. Bilbo supposes that may be part of what drew her to Erebor, to the uncertainty and excitement of travel. In her he recognises a kindred spirit; someone who wanted to go beyond the safe and familiar, and someone who doesn’t quite fit in where they ended up. So he is perhaps more indulgent of her than of his other apprentices. Which may be a good thing, as her constant questions require rather a lot of indulgence.

“Master, this plant, strange colour. Why?”

“Master, this, what is called?”

“Master, this word, what mean?”

“Master, I move this here. Ok?”

“Master, that dwarf, hair so red. Is common?”

Goodness, she does have a lot of questions. But they never seem to be frivolous. She always uses the information she gains in some way, always interweaves it with what she already knows.

“Master,” she says as he is kneeling in his garden, a lower terrace, feeling the growth of his little corner of the world through the fingers he has buried in the dirt. “King Thorin, want come in. Say yes? I get tea.”

“Oh! Yes, yes, invite him in.” He scrambles to his feet and does his best to wipe himself clean, knowing even as he does it that it is a futile gesture. He has been in on the terrace too long today to be anything but filthy. With luck the soil may not stand out on his brown skin, but he has little luck nowadays. He waves at the rest of his apprentices to keep to their duties and turns inside. It has been a while since he last saw Thorin. Things have been...difficult, maybe, is the best word. Understanding has grown between them, and forgiveness begun, true, but the hurt of betrayal is something that will take a long time to heal. On both sides. So as he heads out of the sun and into the cool shade of his rooms he remembers that he is going in mud-stained clothes to meet a man that is not quite a friend, and not quite his King.

This may take some delicate words, and Bilbo has few enough of those as it is.

“Halli,” he says, just before he leaves the terrace, and the dwarf looks up at him. “Keep an eye on those onions while I’m gone. Don’t let me forget what it was I was doing.”

Halli nods, and turns back to zir task. A good dwarf, is Halli. Ze had been most surprised on meeting Bilbo; had expected him to be more ignorant than he was, ze said, about people like zir. Had thought the Shire would be much as the towns of humans. They did things rather differently in the Shire, Bilbo told zir, and thank goodness for that, or Bilbo himself would have been in rather a pickle. It’s rather a comfort to know dwarves at least have the right idea on some things.

He passes up stairs and through the training room where he gives lessons – this morning it was on crop rotation and varieties of cattle – and walks on to the room he typically uses to receive guests. It is large enough to be comfortable, but not so large as too be daunting, and it commands a truly magnificent view down the mountain through the windows he asked to be made. They are as round as the great door to the Gardener’s halls, as round as his own door back in Hobbiton, with thick glass panes sectioned off by wood and stone so they can be opened one at a time but never, even if all open at once, create any danger of falling out. Cushioned benches fill the lower half of each window, and heavy curtains means one can sit and look upon the mountain entirely in a world of one’s own. Bilbo loves them, and takes every opportunity to sit with his back to thick curved stone and nurse a warm cup of tea. But he shall not sit there today: today he shall only enjoy the light the windows give, no more, sat in a wide chair in the centre of the room, surrounded by carpets brought from Dale and the Iron Hills showing everything from boars to festivals. With warmth below him and light to his side, above him shall be a comparably plain ceiling of grey rock, the monotony only broken by hanging baskets of flowers that have not yet fully bloomed. It is a bit of a pretentious room, all told. Which makes it perfect for hosting.

Haruna is already there, ushering Thorin toward a chair and speaking to him in quiet Khuzdul. Asking what he would like to drink, no doubt. Bilbo walks forward, stops at an exact distance of five feet and executes a precise bow of a guild head to their monarch that would have Dori joyfully sobbing over its perfection.

“Your majesty,” he says, quiet but clear, and says no more until he has risen out of his bow and Thorin appears to have made himself comfortable. His eyes do not stray from a point just forward of Thorin’s feet. “To what do I owe your presence within my humble rooms?” The words do not feel genuine. They are the artifice of Grand Master Baggins, skilled gardener of the Upper Halls, not the heart-felt conversation of Bilbo Baggins, formerly of the Shire. But he has a role to play here, outside of his gardens, in the presence of the King. He’ll be damned if he doesn’t play it well.

Thorin’s brows crease, as if he can hear something other than what Bilbo intended. He waves Bilbo to a chair, and Bilbo takes the furthest one he can without being rude. They speak of the growing populace, of Bilbo’s hopes for the terraces being constructed on the mountain’s west side and those yet waiting plans on the east, on the recovering fields around Dale. They speak of trade to the Shire, in toys and pipe-weed and knowledge.

The knowledge seems cause for concern. “We should not give them too much,” Thorin says, “I fear what they might tell the elves.”

Bilbo has heard this line before, and he grows tired of it. It smacks of an old paranoia that needs burial. “You always fear what people might tell the elves,” he snaps before he can catch himself, and scurries to recover. “Hobbits are not people to give secrets away idly. Friendships and trust are not easily broken.” It is too much of the truth, and skirts too close to the day on the wall, Arkenstone gone and his feet dangling over open air.

Thorin does nothing but stare at him for a moment, eyes pensive and jaw clenched. Finally he speaks. “You are right, of course.” Bilbo almost sighs in relief. The talk circles away from trust and old hates, and by the time Thorin leaves the mood is almost jovial.

But then he hesitates by the door, one hand pressed to familiar stone. “There is a banquet tonight,” he murmurs. “Your presence is...required.” It is said with such great reluctance that Bilbo wonders how much Thorin had to push himself to say it. He almost refuses; required is quite obviously not kin to wanted. But he has his role, his duties, so his gives vague reassurance that he shall be there at the allotted time and then goes straight back to his gardens, where he immediately flops onto his back on a clear patch of earth and resists the urge to scream.

Some of his apprentices look over at him.

“Are you alright, master?” Gróa calls, before she is shushed by her fellows.

“It was just the King,” Halli says. “You know how he gets when he has to meet with the King.”

“You do all know that I can hear you perfectly well?” He drawls, and they hurriedly bend back to their tasks. All but Haruna, who walks over to him with her massive feet skilfully avoiding anything delicate and gently sinks to her knees beside him.

“Master,” she whispers, “need tea?”

He shakes his head.

“Need stronger? I have rice wine, good for stress. Everything become suddenly not important.”

He laughs at that, Haruna grinning down at him. In the end he decides that they all deserve a break, so he and his six apprentices sit at the edge of a terrace with their backs to the door and share a small glass of rice wine. They all agree it to be good, if peculiar, and Bilbo promises to look into importing some.

“Perhaps we could grow rice on one of the new terraces, when they’re completed.” Ase suggests. She has a quiet manner, and Bilbo is always pleased to see her come out of her shell.

Haruna shakes her head. “No. Too cold. Rice likes heat.”

“Don’t worry,” Bilbo says to the chorus of disappointed moans, “I’m sure we can find something suitable to grow to be made into a quality drink. To be consumed in moderation, of course.” His apprentices snigger, and he thinks wistfully of barely and hops, of the Green Dragon Inn. He straightens his shoulders, and raises the almost empty glass of rice wine in a pseudo-salute to the mountain. “I may not be in the Shire anymore, but I’m still a hobbit. Just you wait. The mountain will do well by us, and we’ll have those terraces growing good, wholesome produce in no time.” They cheer, and the sun glints off the snow, bathing them in sharp, cool light.

The noise of the hall rises up and crescendos like bubbles in a boiling pot, growing in one place and then another: laughter, a song, a shout. Candles create soft shadows and pools of light, the colours of a multitude of garments blending into a kaleidoscopic vision before her until she has to blink abruptly and refocus. She shakes her head, and, following the heady scent of roasted meat, carefully walks over to a table bearing food of kinds she has still not become familiar with, despite her time here. Master Baggins, she knows, will not be dancing much longer; even now she can hear the final notes of the song. He will find her here and hopefully instruct her on which dishes might be to her taste. She is wholly out of her depth, the food too foreign. Although, in truth, the food is the least of it.

Haruna does not fully understand the ways and customs of the Longbeards. She can see some similarities, of course, as they are all dwarves in the end. But often she will be surprised by the sudden differences: a roar of greeting where she expects quiet, respectful salutations; gallons of mead where she thinks to see moderate morsels of rice wine; raucous group dances where people of all genders mingle when she has prepared for the light, singular dances of her youth.

Awkward, snide interactions when Grand Master Baggins should be receiving only the respect due the head of a guild.

She fights to keep her face passive as the crowds ebb and flow. Fights to keep her tongue tame; she wants, desperately, to unleash sharp, subtle barbs in defence of her master, but she knows he will not appreciate it. Especially not if she does it in Khuzdul, the only language she truly has any great grip over, and the only language he shall never be allowed to learn. Keeping near him and offering tacit comfort is all she can achieve in so public a setting, and even that is a struggle. The feast is not a still affair, with dances collapsing and reforming with seeming spontaneity, groups breaking apart to seek out new conversations and bodies constantly flowing around the gargantuan tables of food and drink. More than once she turns to him only to find he has been unceremoniously pulled into a wild jig, or she ventures to get drink for the both of them only to be caught up in talk of her homeland with merchants and ambassadors. They must both endure; to step away would be rude, and whatever excuses she can conjure seem to fall flat even before they’ve left her mouth. The most she can offer her master with any regularity is a meeting of eyes, a flick of an eyebrow and a silent inquiry.

Are you alright?

No. You?

No. But we shall survive.

It is woefully insufficient.

He finds her, finally, face suffused with a healthy blush. He takes one look at her, one look at the table, and says, “Don’t eat the pork. You’ll hate it.”

She inclines her head, happy to defer to his judgement. “Chicken? Smells...interesting.”

The chicken is eyed critically before being noted as acceptable with a vague shrug. “What you should really try is the steamed vegetables, that dish there. They used some of our earliest parsley crop, and you can really taste the difference it makes.”

She takes a sample of both dishes, finds herself delighted at the depth of taste in the vegetables and turns to voice her opinion on it when the King is rather abruptly in their space. She curses internally even as she offers a bow, her master giving one a few inches shallower.

“Your majesty,” Bilbo says, with Haruna saying it just behind him. She can see the moment he affixes a smile to his face, resolved to tough this out. “A fine feast so far. We were just admiring some of the food.”

“Grand Master Baggins. Indeed, the kitchens have turned out some fine fare.” King Thorin flits her but a brief gaze and a nod, the true weight of his attention seemingly reserved for the Grand Master. “I understand we have you to thank for some of the work that went into it.”

“Only a little,” Master Baggins demurs, “herbs and garnishes and such. My apprentices did most of the hard work.” Haruna has to resist a smile; he is always seeking to gain them recognition in a kingdom still so sceptical of gardeners and their trade.

“They are learning well then, your apprentices? You are satisfied with them?”

Haruna is not sure of His Majesty’s tone, bordering as it does between careful question and insult. Master Baggins seems decided that it has leaned too close to the latter.

“Of course.” His lips thin and pull taunt. Haruna is sure that if he were one of the grandiose birds her clan kept at court than he would have ruffled his feathers and grown to twice his normal size. “Why should I not be? They have grown so much in knowledge and skill, far quicker than I anticipated. You would almost think them hobbits!”

Her master is always careful to keep to courtly speech about the noble classes, and Haruna knows he will be kicking himself later for that outburst. But she cannot intervene. She is only an apprentice.

As it is, the King seems startled into further suspect speech. “Hobbits! I should hope not, for then we will find all the Upper Halls renovated with round green doors and our tables filled with odd blue cheese.” But there is a slight smile on his face, and if Haruna didn’t know of her master’s history with the King then she might think it...teasing.

But no. Master Baggins’ reaction precludes that.

His hands are fisted upon his hips, and though he is careful to keep his volume low his words are no less sharp. “Mahal forbid! No, we are consigned to great stone abominations for doors and dishes with so plain a taste as to make a person despair of all further eating. Whatever should we do without the predictability of Longbeard customs? To have even a smidgen of, of exotic hobbitness would surely bring nothing but misery upon us. That I should even compare my apprentices to myself! A travesty! Good day.” With that he bows – correct despite the utter lack of regard he manages to convey though it – and walks off in terrible haste; away from the shocked King and his gossiping nobles, past his supposed peers, superiors and their retinues, acknowledging them with nary a nod, until he is clear of the hall and secluded from sight in a shadowed alcove.

Haruna can barely keep up with him. When she draws level with him it is to find him staring listlessly at the wall.

“You should return,” he murmurs. “Tell them...something. I am sick. Yes.” His eyes do not move.

Something of the argument between him and the King sits ill with her, but she says nothing. Just nods, turns, and goes back to the hall.

Sólveig’s mother hadn’t wanted her to become a gardener. ‘Not a respectable profession’, she’d said, ‘The Grand Master is one of those strange halflings’, she’d said, ‘Only ninnies wanted to work under the sun’, she’d said.

Bah. Working under the sun is the single greatest joy there is in life, and that is that.

As for the other things, well. Perhaps it isn’t respectable, but Sólveig had long ago given up much hope of being respectable when she realised that respectable meant that the only way she would be allowed to play around in the mud and muck is if she became a miner. And the Grand Master – he’s a great laugh and whip sharp to boot, a good fella. He’d also been quick to put the halfling nonsense to bed.

“I’m not half of anything or anyone,” he’d said, and had then gone on to prove it with a deep well of information on sowing, fertilizer, irrigation, weed management, crop rotation, soil density...

Sólveig hadn’t been half so impressed all her life. There’s not any dwarf so knowledgeable west of Rhun, as far as she knows.

Her opinion of him has only grown in the months since her apprenticeship started. Not many who aren’t dwarves and Longbeards both work in the mountain with either regularity or skill, but the Grand Master has become a permanent fixture. He deserves it too; to be able to make gardeners of a nation so resistant to anything remotely resembling agriculture is not difficult so much as near impossible, but he manages it. With tea and doilies and small red waistcoats.

The red waistcoats become a bit of a thing, as it happens. It looks nice, and Sólveig fancies one, so she gets her aunt to make a simple one up for her. Her aunt is a pretty talented tailor, so it fits smooth against her undershirt and looks rather fine even if it is only made of rough cotton. Sólveig just wants to see what they’re like, these odd hobbit fashions, so she isn’t thinking too deeply about it when she happily pats the whole ensemble and then covers it with her outer robe, hurrying off to the Upper Halls. It isn’t until later that she has cause to think about it again, when the Gardeners Guild rooms and terraces are filled with tradespeople from elsewhere in the mountain and it’s hot enough under the noonday sun that she shucks her outer robe and goes in momentarily to grab some water. Some soft-footed, milk-drinker of a dwarf takes a look at her and makes a callous remark about her waistcoat, the Grand Master, and the intelligence of gardeners. She makes a comment about the questionability of his parentage and before you can say ‘escalating quickly’ she’s got him dangling by his boots from one of the flower baskets that hangs down from the ceiling and is using a spade to dissuade anyone else from starting a ruckus.

Well, after hurt feelings have been soothed – though not the bruises, that bugger will have them for a few weeks yet – and all but the gardeners ushered out, the Grand Master sits them down in the wide chairs of the teaching room and rather pointedly eyeballs her waistcoat. Sólveig shuffles uncomfortably.

“I wasn’t taking the mick.” She blurts out. “I just wanted to see what it was like to wear one.” The Grand Master raises a brow. “It’s pretty neat. Makes me feel all smart-like.” His mouth twitches, the corners fighting to rise into a smile. When he snorts, Sólveig knows she’s in the clear.

“It does make you look very smart,” he says, with perhaps a shade of pride colouring his voice. “By hobbit standards, at any rate.”

“Well, that’s like, the point, isn’t it? I mean, begging your pardon Grand Master, but I wouldn’t be a gardener if I was much bothered by dwarven standards.” There is a bit of a silence, the Grand Master’s face doing interesting things, and it occurs to Sólveig that she should really start thinking before she does stuff, for pity’s sake. Though even as she’s thought that she’s already got her mouth open again, no more foresight than salvage it salvage it. “Not that there’s naught wrong with hobbit standards,” she rushes out. “That ain’t what I’m saying. I’m saying they’re pretty alright, see. Like, the potatoes, and the afternoon tea, and – and – I like ‘em. Cause – ya know. Cause – you were wearing one.” And that, right there, is the crux of the matter. Of course it’s also devilishly embarrassing, so Sólveig ducks her head to try and hide her blush.

Next to her, Ebbe, stout and with his curly black beard reaching to his waist, nudges her with a shoulder. “You do look nice,” he says, ignoring her muttered ‘shut up’, “who did you get to make it?”

“My aunt,” she says, still looking at the ground.

“Do you reckon she could do one in my size?”

Sólveig looks up now. “Course she could. She’s a right good tailor.”

The Grand Master gently clears his throat, and six heads swivel instantly towards him.

“I don’t suppose,” he says with a measured tone, “that she could make up eleven more?”

Which is how they all end up getting two waistcoats each; comfortable, well-fitted and a warm, radiant red.

They come to wear the waistcoats on a regular basis, almost every day save their rest day. It become a bit of a mark of the Gardeners Guild, and the Grand Master even commissions them a more formal set for special occasions, such as feasts, presentations, and meetings with other guilds. Sólveig feels a bit a pride each time she pulls hers on.

She still feels pride when, upon being sent to answer a heavy knock at the door, she hurries to pull it open and reveals the King, who looks at her – blond hair a veritable mess, beard done in a hurried braid, face ruddy and muddied blue robe barely covering her pristine waistcoat – and appears ready to go back out and try another door.

His Majesty obviously doesn’t know what he’s missing, poor thing. Waistcoats are nothing to be sniffed at. But she holds her tongue – being flippant with royalty will get her nowhere good – and welcomes him as politely as she knows how.

“Your royal majesty,” were she bowing much lower she is sure her nose would be brushing the floor, “how may the Gardeners assist you?” His gaze is still affixed to her gleaming apparel, befuddlement running rampant over his face. He seems to be tongue-tied. “We’re working in partnership with the Apothecary Guild on some ointments for lost voices, if you’d care to have a look,” she says before she can stop herself, at which point three things happen.

She belatedly realises she is mocking her monarch and colours a furious red –

– King Thorin’s eyes snap up to her face and his lips pull back in an unfriendly manner –

– Grand Master Baggins yells through the rooms at her, “Sólveig, have you answered the door? Don’t be tardy now, my lass.”

“I’ll announce you,” she says to the King, and gratefully escapes whatever it was he was about to snarl at her.

The Grand Master quietly sighs when she announces the King, who appears beside her just as she finishes speaking.

“Your majesty,” Grand Master Baggins waves towards his receiving rooms, and flicks her a look that Sólveig interprets as I hope you’ve not been a nuisance, now go and make some tea. She hurries off to their small, serviceable kitchen. “We were not expecting you,” she hears the Grand Master say, voice smoothly rebounding off the polished stone.

“It is not an official visit, Grand Master.”

“No? I always presumed we were too far from the courts for much but ‘official visits’ to push anyone of high rank to come here, majesty.” Sólveig winces. The Grand Master is being barely civil and undeniably cold, and that always sets her teeth on edge.

Sólveig sets the kettle on to boil and hums in an effort to distract herself from the chilled conversation happening a room over.

The King sounds like he is choosing his words very, very carefully. “Not so. Do my niece and nephew not frequently take time to come to your halls?”

“To escape from unwanted duties, no doubt.” Ouch.

“The transition has been trying for them, I will grant that, but I do not believe it the cause of their time spent here. They have great affection for you.”

“Truly? That any dwarf may have affection for any hobbit comes as a great surprise to me. We are but foolish beings, after all.”

Mahal strike her down, anything would be better than listening to this. It holds venom only present in an argument between those who were once great friends. She fumbles with the kettle and nearly burns herself, cursing up a storm.

“You refer to my words at the feast.” Even over the debacle she is making of the tea Sólveig can hear the despondency in the King’s tone. “They were ill thought out. Grand Master – Bilbo –”

It is at this point that Sólveig makes her ignominious entrance, and boy does she wish she hadn’t. The King has one hand extended toward the Grand Master, who in turn looks ready to hit anything that comes within range. They are stood close together, eyes bent in some fierce emotion upon each other. The Grand Master’s face is upturned, a scowl present but being undermined by some uncertainty. The expression on the King’s face in the second before her turns to her in anger is not one she can read, but it is of such intensity that Sólveig cannot find it within her to doubt the sincerity of his half-finished apology.

“Tea?” She squeaks.

She almost doesn’t finish serving up two cups before she flees out of the room with a pathetic mumbling of ‘biscuits’ as her only excuse. She resolves to be as long as she can get away with in retrieving them, so as to avoid having to stand in attendance during such a painful talk. But the words of the King still wind through to the kitchen, and she cannot escape a horrified feeling of embarrassment.

“Bilbo. Were I able I would take back my words. They were –”

“Ill though out?”

“Ill thought out, foolish, cruel, idiotic, nonsense, terrible, inexcusable –”

“Yes, yes, I can see the point you are trying to make.”

“And yet you do not believe my emotion!” She can hear His Majesty’s heavy tread going hurriedly to and fro. “I would bring this up before the court, if I did not fear my own nobles would laugh at me.”

“Bring this up before the court! Whatever for?”

“It matters not. I shall give you the words in any case.”

Sólveig sucks in a sudden breath. Give him the words, by the Void. This is no normal argument, for the King to be so serious about it. The Grand Master’s esteem must mean a lot to him.

She can hear the moment the King clasps arms with the Grand Master, hushing his objections.

“Bilbo Baggins,” he begins, and Sólveig considers running back to the balcony and then onto a terrace, any terrace, but she’s sure she would be spotted through the large doorways between the rooms. “I have done you wrong, abused your kindness. My words were cruel, and though I intended no harm I dealt you harm all the same. My actions were inexcusable. I offer you my heartfelt apologies, knowing I am not deserving of your forgiveness.”

Oh Mahal.

The Grand Master’s voice, when she hears it, is quiet and quavering. “You needn’t be so dramatic about it.”

“It was not dramatic, it was – is – the truth.”

“Well, a sorry would have done me. I suppose I should say sorry too. Oh, don’t look like that – you’re forgiven, you theatrical fool.”

There is a strange burst of laughter from the King, and Sólveig realises she has been gone too long. She creeps back out with a plate of biscuits, and gratefully takes her leave when Grand Master Baggins waves her away. The balcony is a welcome respite, though the others do badger her as to what, precisely, the King wanted. The normally gentle Ase looks ready to rush in to his defence.

“Don’t worry,” Sólveig tells them. “They’re just – I think it’s going to be alright.”

They break up and go back to work, the balcony emptying. The Grand Master does not rejoin them for a long while. But, if they listen, they can just hear the soothing echo of voices coming from inside and softly meandering through the plants.

Chapter Text

Amina is not as uncomfortable in the mountain as she thought she would be. Perhaps it helps that her tribe is here with her; the jungle does not seem so far away when she can but turn to her aunties for tales of Ghinjo and her midnight hunt, to her uncles for a clay jar of emboldening war paint, to her sisters for a day spent combing and oiling and weaving innumerable heads of hair. These northerly reaches are chill, true, but she has her furs and memories of broiling heat upon her dark skin to keep the winds at bay. The stars are different, and the sun trails across the sky at a strange angle, but she is sure she shall get used to it.

Of course there is more of her tribe than simply those who travelled here after the dragon’s fall. There are also those who came long before.

She can hear a hundred myriad footsteps, tip-taps and thuds and shuffles. Laughter rushes by under the disguise of a stray breeze. The scent of saffron flits by her when she is nowhere near the markets. Her hands and clothes are tugged at gently, pulled by invisible fingers and teeth. And in every instance she will turn to see who it is that wants her attention and find no corporeal being, but rather the whisper of a shadow of a memory. She catches herself smiling at them, these vague outlines of people long past, glad for their presence. Even whispers a reply once when her concentration is particularly bad. That does not do her any favours; to her western cousins – mundane and utterly blind to the ancestors congregating around her – it looks like she is talking to herself.

She walks, steps measured and sure, down the tall bright corridors of Erebor. The stone shines. Tapestries and murals burst with colour. The sharp and powerful scent of heated metal follows her even to the front gate. And always she is tailed by a dozen dancing ghosts. She is never truly alone; it is a comfort.

Her role in the mountain is a proud one. Among all her tribe she has been granted a position within His Majesty’s Honour Guard. There have historically always been a few positions reserved for dwarves from the other clans, but they have not been filled since before the arrival of Smaug. In fact there has not been an Honour Guard at all. The wilds do not easily allow such privileged trappings. Only recently was the Honour Guard renewed, and while dwarves are hard to budge from their entrenched tradition her position had not been guaranteed. There were some who believed – and still put up considerable protest – that those chosen to protect His Majesty should only be taken from those of Durin’s blood, as if all other dwarves have somehow become terribly untrustworthy in the intervening years and would like as not put a knife in the King’s back at the first opportunity. It is a particular kind of nonsense prone to affect those who can only ever see the very worst of others; betrayal of trust, abandonment in times of need, forsaken ties. Amina can understand a healthy scepticism, especially from a nation as wounded as Durin’s Folk, but this furious paranoia does more to damage than to protect.

She worries to see tendrils of this paranoia present in her royal charge. Mayhap the rumours are true.

She pulls aside one of her younger sisters during a quiet morning meal. Waseme – face bearing harsh white brush-strokes upon her black skin, hair and beard peaked into a line of warrior’s spikes – snarls at her but comes when bid. She is a loud woman, flinging words around like a butcher does their knives. Able to spy a choice truth before it has even left a person’s lips.

“Waseme,” Amina’s voice rumbles, always deeper than people expect, “I need you to look into something for me.”

Waseme growls, and smiles, and finally laughs harshly at Amina’s request. She flicks a finger against the bone hanging from one of Amina’s long ears. Tugs the cords tying her own bland robes, runs her fingers along the invisible runes stitched into the fabric.

“Of course sister. I shall do this for you.” She says.

Amina loves her sister. But she thinks that if Waseme wasn’t family, she might regard her as one of the most uniquely terrifying women alive.

The meal does not finish; will probably not for some time, given the number of them who have yet to eat. But Amina has eaten her fill. The apartments of the Traore tribe are left behind as she ascends – from their deliberate location close to the giant forges of Erebor – to the royal chambers.

The rooms that belong to the royal line are gilded in a way no other area of Erebor is, walls laid over with gold and studded with precious jewels. Upon one wall, sapphires. Another houses rubies the size of ravens eggs. The floor is strewn with furs from all corners of Arda, spots of brown and stripes of grey and a few with the purple eyelets Amina recognises from the jungles of her home. But the pride of place is reserved for something much less glamorous. A doorway to His Majesty’s personal crafting chamber, small and unassuming, its arch edged by a band of steel inscribed with simple etchings denoting wisdom and patience. It gives her some hope to see it, more than all the wealth resurrected Erebor might display.

It’s from this door His Majesty now exits, face ruddy with heat and covered all over in a fine layer of soot. He turns to her as servants come over with a bowl of clear water and fresh clothes. She keeps her eyes affixed to a point above his shoulder, given he has not yet addressed her, but all the same she catches a slight grimace at the servants attendance. It appears he is not entirely used to being waited upon.

That may be good. The day he takes such a thing for granted is the day he becomes a poorer ruler.

“Ser Amina,” he says, “one moment.” He cleans his face and then disappears behind a nearby screen. She waits.

It is not long before he re-emerges, changed and clean, and beckons her over as he shrugs himself into a large, red coat. He waves off all attempts at help by the servants.

“There has been a change of plans,” he tells her. “The trip to the Jewellers Guild has been postponed.”

She nods. Watches as he buckles on – a dagger? He does not usually go for such small weapons.

“I have – a personal matter to attend to.” He sounds hesitant, and waits until all the servants have left the room before continuing. “We head for the Gardeners’ halls.”

Well, she is not sure what to make of this.

He affixes a measuring gaze upon her. “I can trust in your discretion.” It almost becomes a question.

“Yes, Your Majesty.” She answers. “Shall it be only the two of us today?”

He nods, eyes still on her, and frowns heavily. “Ser Amina, do you know what it means –” He stops, and bids her follow as he heads back through the steel rimmed door into his crafting room. On a small table, surrounded by tools meant for polishing precious metals, sits a simple gold necklace. He picks it up, gentle, afraid almost. It is a fine piece. As he turns back towards her the light catches on it and highlights the most minute of etchings. Dozens of runes, all capturing a Longbeard vow almost as old as Durin himself.

Amina is not a woman prone to unintentional dramatics, to gasping and exclaiming. But she cannot stop her eyebrows climbing rapidly.

She shouldn’t, it is impertinent. But –

“Ah. Grand Master Baggins?”

The look on the King’s face answers for him.

There is silence after, Amina not sure what to say and the King apparently unwilling to say anything. She flicks through all she knows of this custom, and just as she begins to become frustrated with her lack of knowledge hears a whisper in her ear.

“I understand,” she ventures, trusting in her ancestor’s quiet information, “that that these are often given alterations by the giver?”

The King nods again, and a look of incredible fondness overtakes his face. “Just so, if one is not given to metal craft. I was able to craft this entirely by myself.”

She cannot help but smile at him. “An admirable act, Your Majesty. You have my discretion in this matter, as in all things.”

With that, His Majesty makes his final preparations and they leave. The walk up to the Gardener’s halls is quiet, the King deliberately taking the less-travelled paths. They see no-one, though Amina doubts their own invisibility: the Spymaster of Erebor has eyes everywhere, and the King will likely not be able to do anything ever again without it being noted down by someone. For his own safety, perhaps, but it is a strange kind of benevolent invasion that Amina hopes she doesn’t warrant.

They come back to a more frequented thoroughfare not two minutes from the entrance to the Gardeners’ halls, and His Majesty stops for a moment. Amina waits while he takes a fortifying breath. Careful not to look at him, she allows him a quiet, dignified second to gather his strength.

He speaks softly, and at first she is unsure if he is directing it at her at all. “Is it not always the way of things that the one most likely to sabotage our happiness is ourselves?” The hallway is given a trepidatious gaze. “I pray, Ser Amina, that it will not be so this time.” With that, he marches away. She follows.

They reach the door, a recent addition, the normal tough stone overlaid with smooth wood painted a bright forest green. It is a masterpiece, with delicate carvings of leaves and vines crawling up the edges. In the centre stands the carving of a great tree, filled with all manner of critters and divided into four sections which display the four seasons in turn. Along the vines and branches lie cirth runes denoting words in both Khuzdul and Westron; the words vary, but the most common phrase tells Here dwells the Grand Master Gardener and all of their Guild. It is quite something to behold. His Majesty directs Amina to knock. There is a muffled sound of shouting from inside as she does so, and what might be cursing. The King stifles a laugh.

“You should know,” he says with eyes still affixed on the door, “that these folk are less practiced with proper court etiquette than you or I.”

She nods just as the door is thrown open to reveal a harried looking dwarf, red hair escaping from braids and eyes wide.

“Halli child of Hálfdan, at your service” the dwarf says, zir eyes growing wider still at the sight of the King. Ze executes a surprisingly proud bow, considering zir visible distress. “How may I assist you, Your Majesty?”

His Majesty inclines his head. “We are here to see Grand Master Baggins, if he is able to receive us.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. Please, if you would wait here while I speak with the Grand Master.” They are led inside to some soft chairs within the entrance hall, a small circular room in which the only decor is the mural of dwarves at work on terraces that winds round the wall and meets itself again, and Halli walks swiftly off.

His Majesty gives her an amused look.

“Just as you say,” she says, a smile pulling at her features.

Within only a few moment Halli returns, bowing again and heralding the entrance of zir guild head. He switches from Khuzdul to Westron for the sake of the Grand Master. “His Majesty Thorin, King under the Mountain, son of Thráin, son of Thrór, and – er –”

Poor soul. Ze is trying. “Ser Amina of His Majesty’s Honour Guard, born of the Traore tribe,” she tells zir.

Halli nods gratefully. “And Ser Amina of His Majesty’s Honour Guard, born of the Traore tribe, to see Grand Master Baggins, head of the Gardeners Guild.” Ze steps back, zir eyes coming to rest on the Grand Master in question.

“Thank you Halli,” the Grand Master says. “Goodness knows that was quite a mouthful. You are excused. I think the southern hedges are in need of your attention.”

Halli nods and makes a graceful exit. The Grand Master turns to them more fully, flitting his gaze to and fro as if measuring them.

His Majesty does not seem to hold up well under the scrutiny. “Ze did not recite all of your titles,” he says suddenly.

“No,” the Grand Master says, waving them through to a larger room. “I’ve found them tedious and unnecessary. A soul could stand all day just trying to get through introductions. Everyone knows who I am and where I’m from. Reiterating it at every opportunity...” He trails off with a shrug, though Amina cannot parse the emotion behind it.

By all accounts the Grand Master of the Gardeners is an oddity and an enigma, and so far he is living up to his reputation. There has been barely a blip of emotion on his face, nor a sight of unintended movement. Amina recognises it a little too well; some of her tribe have learnt to be thus, careful and hidden. The Longbeards have not always been welcoming to outsiders in recent years. Justified or not, it causes tension.

The kingdom scrutinises him at every opportunity. And yet he has the favour of the King. What an odd position.

The Grand Master bids them sit before he himself carefully sinks into a plush chair. Lips part and appear on the cusp of giving speech, but he is halted by the arrival of another dwarf. She bears a tray of tea and small biscuits, placing them on a low table by the Grand Master’s side. He smiles at her. It may be the first hint of true emotion he has shown.

“Ah, and this is my apprentice, Haruna.” He says. “I do not believe I have ever truly introduced you.”

The King says something in return, but Amina has already attached her focus onto the bowing figure before her and found it held there. The woman rises, and Amina feels as if she has been struck.

Haruna has eyes that seem to hold an uncanny focus as they flick from person to person, placed in a wide face with undertones unlike anything Amina has seen among Durin’s folk. Her silver hair and beard are caught up in braids of simple elegance which trail over wide shoulders, down past strong hips and stronger thighs.

She is...beautiful.

Amina drags her gaze back up to Haruna’s face, and is startled when her stare is returned by piercing grey eyes. She takes a deep breath and drags her attention back towards her King.

“I came here with a purpose of great importance,” the King is saying, “which I have waited too long to do.”

“Really?” The Grand Master’s tone is surprisingly neutral. Perhaps he doesn’t know what His Majesty intends. “What purpose is this?”

His Majesty gets up from his chair only to sink to his knees before Grand Master Baggins, and brings out the necklace. It gleams in the morning sun that comes in from the Gardeners’ terraces. Pale gold light shines about the room, until everything looks like it is bathed in glistening liquid. Grand Master Baggins’ eyebrows rise until they just about disappear into his hair.

“This is given rarely among our people. But it is entirely appropriate for me to give to you, Bilbo of the Shire. It is a display of my regard. A promise for future days.”

“Well,” the Grand Master says, spluttering, “I hardly know what to say.” He stands and shifts from foot to foot, hands clenched deep in his pockets.

Amina slides her gaze to King Thorin. One wrong word, she knows, and he will be crushed.

“Well,” the Grand Master says again. Then he steps forward tentatively, and slides his hands under King Thorin’s. “You needn’t have made such a show,” he says quietly, “I hardly needed all of this to know – well, you’ve made plenty of promises before, is what I’m saying. But you are ever fond of theatrics, I suppose.” He clears his throat. “I, uh, I accept this gift in the manner in which it was given.”

The sheer joy on His Majesty’s face could light up the blackest of nights, Amina is sure.

“Goodness, look how pleased it’s made you,” the Grand Master mutters “perhaps you should give me gifts more often. Don’t take that as a suggestion now! This is quite enough for me.” With that, he delicately lifts the necklace from King Thorin’s hands and weighs it in his own. “Get up off your knees now, come on. If my mother could see this, heavens knows what she’d say.”

“I would hope,” His Majesty ventures, his voice rumbling with the force of his joy, “that she would be happy.”

“Among other things.”

His Majesty climbs to his feet and places firm hands on the Grand Master’s upper arms. They stand like that for a moment, beaming, eyes for none but each other. Later, Amina thinks, she shall have to describe this to her sisters. She has rarely seen a picture like it.

His Majesty lowers his hands. “If I may?” He asks, reaching for the necklace.

The Grand Master nods, and lets himself be turned around so His Majesty can affix the necklace in its proper place. It rests on the Grand Master’s collarbones, sliding slowly beneath his shirt. Only a hint of its golden gleam peeks out.

“Very fine,” the Grand Master says to the King, “very fine indeed.”

The small hall they stand in is filled with all manner of decorations, some of which Haruna has never seen the like of. Lanterns of silver hang from the ceiling, some with precious jewels hung strategically in silver mesh so the candles within light the jewels’ facets just so. The floor is a grand mosaic, tiles of every colour depicting dwarves in the throes of a dance; the detail astounds, with dresses and robes bearing intricate patterns and the expressions of the people featured easily readable. The entire thing is bordered by a pale cream stone shot through with veins of blue. Marble, if she had to guess, though not one she’s familiar with. She was almost beside herself when she entered and caught sight of all of it. Though she was easily trumped by her master, who wouldn’t stop exclaiming over the sheer exquisiteness of the mosaic. She’d had to drag him away as the rest of the apprentices had come over, murmuring that the royal family was just about to enter.

“But the floor – ” her master had said.

“Must be clear for the King and family.” She’d said firmly, and then had held her tongue as the King and his kin were announced.

They wait now, watching as figures enter clad in deep blues and browns.

“And to think,” her master whispers, “that this is supposed to be a small affair.”

His apprentices nod, some craning their necks to get a better look.

“I still don’t understand why we’re here,” Halli says, putting voice to what they’re all thinking. There are murmurs of agreement.

Her master turns to them with a wicked grin. “That, my dear Halli, is entirely my fault.”

Halli snickers at his expression. “What did you do, master?”

“Well, I was invited by His Majesty. And I dropped a word or two about my apprentices never getting to go to fancy banquets, and he immediately invited all of you as well. Funniest thing,” and here their master’s expression turns confused for a moment, “and I haven’t the foggiest idea what prompted it. Perhaps he was just feeling gracious.”

Halli turns zir gaze towards the royal family. “He does seem happy, I guess. Oh.”

“Oh?” Sólveig asks.

“He seems to be looking at us. And...smiling?” Halli’s voice has dropped to a whisper.

“Oh,” Sólveig says, then “oh, nah, I don’t think it’s at us. I think...oh.”

“Oh?” Halli says.

“I think he’s looking at Grand Master Baggins.”

“Oh –”

“Hush,” Haruna tells them, unwilling to listen to them parrot back and forth any longer. “Observe in quietness.”

They do, with their master looking more and more bemused by the second. King Thorin is indeed looking at him, eyes lit up with some jubilant emotion, face cracked by a smile. It is an unfamiliar expression for him, at least by what Haruna knows of his temperament.

“Perhaps he’s been at the mead already,” their master mutters, before he catches himself. “Don’t any of you ever repeat that!”

His only answer is quiet laughter, but his shoulders relax from their tight position. He knows, Haruna is sure, that he has their loyalty in all things.

Besides the royal family and the Gardeners, there are only a few others there; members of the King’s Company, his Honour Guard and one or two dwarves Haruna knows are the King’s friends. Of course there are servants too, but they have long ago mastered the art of disappearing when they want to. She barely notices them flitting among the crowd, dressed in cheerful yellow, softly smiling at those attending. The head servant, a bull of a woman clad in a tunic of cool grey, steps genteelly to the centre of the floor and claps her hands above her head. There is a quiet wave of humming and tuning of instruments from the musicians’ podium, then a quiet stream of music begins. The woman turns toward the King and bows as the music crescendos.

“We dance at the King’s pleasure,” she says.

The King nods, and she clears the floor as dwarven couples form and begin to dance.

“Here we go,” Ebbe says, adjusting his formal red waistcoat, “good luck everyone.”

Ase snorts elegantly. “You don’t need luck. I taught you well.”

“Yeah yeah,” Sólveig says, and tempers her words with a grin and a firm grip on Ase’s hand. “Come on, show me those moves again!”

Within seconds all the gardeners have found someone to dance with, and they take off to the floor. Haruna takes a turn with Ebbe, then Halli, then one of the King’s Company – Ori, she thinks. Seven red clad forms partner together again and again; the Grand Master takes a spin with them all, delighting in each movement. None of them save Ase have much experience with the dances of the noble classes, and perhaps it shows, but they enjoy themselves nonetheless. There is a grin on each face. Haruna is glad to see it. They deserve a little happiness.

She pulls aside after a while, trying to catch her breath. The whirling of colour and sound is enchanting but overwhelming sometimes.

“Haruna?” Grand Master Baggins appears at her shoulder. “Here you are. If you have the breath left, I believe it’s your turn to drag me around the floor.

Haruna laughs. “Truth? I think you drag me.”

There is a bit of snickering at their mutual expenses, then another song starts up.

“Come on,” her master says, “I want to dance with all of you before the meal. Let’s put Ase’s teachings to good use.”

They pull each other out onto the dance floor, still snickering slightly. It’s not elegant, even compared with their earlier attempts, but it is fun. Haruna twirls and twists, fighting tiredness. But she is worn enough not to guard where her eyes wander, and they slip to where they have been straining to look all night; Ser Amina, of the King’s Honour Guard.

She is a graceful figure, resplendent in light blue-stained leathers, black skin gorgeous in contrast. It seems to glow where it catches the light of the lanterns. Her eyes, deep, dark brown, catch Haruna’s own, and the warrior blushes as she looks away. Haruna can’t help a smile.

“Something caught your eye I see,” her master says quietly, a sly grin upon his face.

Now it is Haruna’s turn to blush. “Do not know what master is talking about.”

“No?”

“No,” Haruna replies, smiling all the while.

“Well then, we shall have to trust my eye instead, hm? Which, as it happens, has caught a good place to rest. I am wearying, dear Haruna.” He affects a yawn, false as false can be, and pulls her toward Ser Amina.

Sly, clever man. “If master is tired, he must rest,” she says, voice wavering a fraction. But she knows what she wants.

They come before Ser Amina, and her master gazes upon her as if he has only just seen her. “Ser Amina,” he says, every bit the Shire socialite now, “what a pleasure to see you again! Oh, and what a boon, too. I was just saying to Haruna, here,” and now they trail to a stop, and her master holds her hand forward like her mother might once have, presenting her to a pretty woman, “that old men like myself grow tired easily.”

“Indeed?” Says Ser Amina, looking between Haruna and her master frantically.

“Yes, but she has not yet tired of dancing herself. Indulge a weary hobbit, ser, and take my place. You shall be a better partner than I in any case; I can never seem to get the steps of these dwarven dances right.”

Haruna is blushing furiously, she is sure, and Ser Amina looks much the same. But she is resolute, so when Ser Amina offers her hand, she takes it.

They move off to the sight of her master’s broad grin. Ser Amina is as elegant in movement as she is in stillness. Haruna has to fight herself; her feet keep reaching for the familiar light steps of home, trying to fit them among the heavier Longbeard movements.

She is desperate to talk to her dance partner, and remembers with relief that she can do so in Khuzdul. The words feel at home in her mouth in a way Westron never will.

“These dances are passing strange to me,” she says, and Ser Amina starts. “Do they hold much similarity with the dances of your own home, Ser Amina?”

“No,” Ser Amina replies, “but I have had much time to learn them, and a dedicated teacher.”

“Truly?”

“Indeed. My clan has a good presence here, and many masters of their crafts among them. A dance master was not so difficult to find.”

Haruna sighs. “I am the only Stonefoot that I know of within the mountain.”

Ser Amina looks personally distraught. “A difficult thing.”

“I content myself with letters and news from home. But yes, it does worry one.”

“If you ever desire a break from Longbeards, my clan’s halls are open to you.” Ser Amina looks shocked at having said such a thing, and Haruna knows better than to take such an outburst as genuine.

“That is kind, Ser Amina, but I would not wish to trouble your clan with my presence.”

“It would be no trouble,” she says, and where but a moment ago she was hurried and unsure she now sounds absolutely certain. “No trouble at all. I – I insist.”

Haruna blushes. “You and yours do me great honour. I am humbled.”

They dance for a while longer in an easier silence than before. Haruna lets her gaze roam the room, always keeping note of where Master Baggins is, as she has the whole evening.

“You keep looking at him.”

Haruna blushes again, and directs her gaze square onto her partner’s. “I apologise if I appeared inattentive. It was not my intention.”

Ser Amina shrugs, twirls her, and pulls her into hold again with a smile on her face. “I am not offended. Merely curious.”

Haruna struggles to find the right words for a while, even in her cradle-tongue.

“He is dear to us,” she says at last.

“Who?”

“The apprentices.”

Ser Amina frowns in thought. “I can’t read him. He is a mystery to me.”

“Not so mysterious,” Haruna says. “He – he has done so much for us. He carved a space for us in this mountain, baptised us in good fertile earth. We all owe him more than we can express. Watching out for him is the least we can do.”

Ser Amina nods, hands squeezing Haruna’s gently. “I see.”

They talk more now, dancing interspersed with casual conversation. It is going well.

Haruna feels her peace shatter when she sees the King offer a hand to Master Bilbo. She almost steps on Amina’s toes.

She recovers herself with an apology and tries to find them in the room again. What is he doing? His political manoeuvring is so odd as to be unrecognisable as such. This is not at all how it would be done back home. Let the princess or prince dance with him, for they are not so estranged or hostile. But the King? It can only go badly.

And indeed it does. Her master cannot refuse, so they take to the floor. But she can see that he does not easily make eye contact, that talk is stilted, the movement of their lips going in stops and starts, and that he seems to have suddenly forgotten all he has learnt of Longbeard dances. What an awkward mess.

She excuses herself from Ser Amina as the song finishes, promising to visit her in her clan’s halls. She moves off with as much sped as courtesy and honour will allow.

Her master has finished dancing as well, thanks be to the creator, and has retreated into a corner. Other gardeners surround him already, smiling for the crowd and gently sheltering him from view. He is talking when she reaches them.

“I don’t know what to do,” he is saying. “One moment he’s belittling my very existence, the next he’s all smiles and uncalled-for gifts –” He cuts himself off abruptly. “You don’t need to hear this.” He whispers.

Ase shakes her head, and gently wraps her arms around his shoulders, giving him time to refuse. Instead he seems to go almost boneless in her embrace.

“We are here for you, master,” Haruna tells him, placing her own hand on his arm. “Things is difficult. Erebor is not all times kind. But we en- we en- ublûri.”

“Endure,” Ase finishes for her.

Haruna nods.

They can say little else to him: the bell rings for the meal, and they must all go to their seats.

Master Bilbo, to their dismay, is not to sit with them. He is invited to sit next to the King.

“Most irregular,” Ase says.

“Really?” Haruna asks. “Inconvenient, yes, but how is it irregular?”

“That space is reserved for family or highly honoured guests. I wasn’t aware that the Grand Master was either. I don’t know what game he’s playing,” she says, glaring at the King, “but I don’t much like it.”

The meal is short and informal – well, as informal as a royal dinner can ever get – but painful to bear. The apprentices look to Haruna for orders as Bilbo looks more and more overwhelmed. Even the dwarves surrounding the pair begin to look uncomfortable.

“Ase,” she says just as desert is served, “can you distract the King?”

Ase, the estranged daughter of a noble house, jerks her chin upward defiantly. “Of course.”

“Very good. Take Halli. The two of you can play a comedy pair to your heart’s content.” Halli smiles, well aware of zir political failings. “Sólveig, distract the princess and the prince however you can; goodness knows if you rile them up enough you’ll have half the assembled dwarves watching you. Ebbe, Gróa, mingle and intercept as necessary. Look to Ase if you’re unsure.”

The meal finishes with a clatter of cutlery, and in the hubbub of clearing away the detritus so the dancing may begin again each gardener finds their mark, and Haruna finds Master Baggins. She slips her arm through his and leads him speedily to a corner,shielded from view by voluminous curtains. Her master takes gulping breaths.

“What a nightmare,” he mutters.

“Breathe,” she whispers, “breathe.”

He does as she bids, until his colour has returned and his features have settled. He rubs his hands over his face and down his neck, and then stops. Slowly, face blank, he draws out the gold necklace King Thorin gave him just yesterday.

“This – this wretched thing. I should never have accepted it. Accepting gifts from kings never does any good.”

She is silent, uncertain what she should say.

“I don’t even know why he gave it to me. It seemed so wonderful, like getting a flower from a friend, but these are dwarves, not hobbits, and...Haruna,” he says, whispering just beside her and not taking his eyes off of the curtains in front of him, “what do I do with this?”

Haruna has no answer. She shrugs.

Her master huffs. “Very helpful, thank you.”

“Longbeard ways not always same as my ways, master. They do many strange things I not understand.”

He looks down at the necklace in his hand, brows creased. “Well, that makes two of us I suppose.”

“Is not just simple gift?”

“So I hoped, but look where it’s got us. An awful dance, terrible dinner conversation, I’ve made a fool of myself yet again. Sometimes I feel like every interaction I have with him is just like signing that wretched contract all over again. I should never –” He cuts himself off. He is never sure of his words now, it seems. “I need a drink.”

“Ok,” she says.

Within half an hour they are giggling like a pair of drunken youngsters, which she supposes isn’t far off what they actually are right now. That fifth mug of ale may have been a bad idea. But at least they have cheered their spirits, and avoided dancing and royalty both hidden behind the curtains. She will take a headache in the morning for that.

Her master gasps for air. “What do you call decapitating a goblin in the Shire?” He waits for her response, but she has no idea, so vigorously shakes her head at him. “Golf!” He declares, and falls about laughing again.

She doesn’t get it.

He stops laughing enough to look at her with a frown, waving a hand at her in a vague reprimand. “That joke is hilarious in the Shire.”

“What is golf?”

“Ah. Well, I suppose it is less amusing if you don’t know the context.”

“I do not know much hobbit things, master.”

He burps, muttering an apology. “Well I can teach you easily enough. Here – um.” He takes a moment to think, and she wonders if she should get them some more ale. But she doesn’t decide before he’s speaking again. “Oh, I know! On our birthdays, we tend to give out presents.”

How odd. “Not receive them?”

“No, which I understand is how other peoples do things. But hobbits, ah, we give away things on our birthdays. To family and close friends and such.” He gestures expansively, taking in an imaginary throng of hobbits. “I had a birthday on the road, you know. Soon to have another one here.” And no-one to give gifts to, he doesn’t say.

Suddenly their little corner seems terribly lonely. There should be others here, others with bare feet and pointed ears and bright jackets. But there is only her.

“Can give me gift,” she blurts out, not thinking, the ale talking for her. “If you want,” she tacks on to try and salvage the impropriety of such a statement.

The Grand Master looks at her, mouth turning up and down like he can’t decide on an appropriate expression. “Really?”

She nods.

He looks down at the necklace in his hands, runs it through his fingers. “That is terribly kind of you. I – well, I –” He stops, and his shoulders fall back, his fingers still where they hold the gold chain. “You know, this necklace is rather like a mathom.”

She feels slightly thrown off kilter. “A mathom?”

“Yes. Pretty enough to look at, but not serving any practical purpose. After all what use does a hobbit have for such jewellery? We’re simple folk.” Eyes rise to meet hers, and the Grand Master looks immensely happy. “And mathoms are considered the perfect kind of thing to give away.” He begins to hold the necklace out to her, then stops. “Wait, hold on. We shall do this properly. Tell me happy birthday.”

“Happy birthday,” she says, and her enthusiasm is genuine.

“Right, and then,” here he leans forward, on tiptoes, and graces her check with a soft peck, “that’s a good way of showing friendly affection among hobbits. And, yes, well, I do declare, what have I here but the perfect birthday present!” He holds the necklace out to her, spread over both his hands and accompanied with a theatrical smile. “Here you go, my dear Haruna!”

She takes the necklace, and bows as low as she feels she can without toppling over. “Thank you most much. Shall treasure this most beautiful mathom.”

The Grand Master laughs. “At least until your birthday; you can give it to someone else then!”

They are quickly reduced back to their earlier giggling, heedless of some of the looks they are garnering.

Haruna never thinks to look closer at the engravings on the necklace, mind too addled by drink. Later she shall place it in a secure box, and think of it with fondness, but not look. The Grand Master shall not ask after it, and by and large any mystery about it will be pushed aside.

She shall regret that later. But now she laughs.

On the rocky crags of Erebor’s arms, Kíli wonders how long he can push it before he really has to go back inside. It’s already been a few hours without success, and if he comes back without a catch after being so insistent on going his mother is going to have some choice words for him. Disappearing for an afternoon is all very well, but he’s been consistently disappearing for weeks now, and he knows her worry is reaching its peak. He just...can’t bear to be inside. Then he’d have to witness the slowly collapsing calamity that is his uncle’s romantic ambition.

It’s a tragedy, it truly is.

It had been fine in the beginning, as far as Kíli remembers. Of course his memory is still a bit patchy, but he’s sure Fíli would have told him if he’d got something wrong, and in all their conversations she never has. Not about this anyway. So Kíli is confident when he recalls Bilbo’s gentle blushing in Laketown, and Thorin’s wayward looks. It had been rather nice to think his uncle might find a partner. Especially Bilbo. Kíli was dearly fond of Bilbo. But it is all a bit of a mess now. The damned dinner hasn’t helped any. Mahal, the look on Bilbo’s face when Thorin had asked him to dance.

Kíli shivers. The winds on the mountain’s sides are cold, cutting through his leathers and sending goosebumps cascading up and down his skin. He pulls his coat tighter around himself and moves forward, keeping a weather eye on lands about him. The next moment he all but throws himself to the floor. Inch by inch he raises his head; he must look a fool, but there’s no-one to see, and fresh game trumps embarrassment any day. If fresh game it is, and he’s not imagining it.

By the grace of Gimizhbuznâl he’s not. A small herd of deer stand several hundred feet down the mountain side. They have not yet spied him, and he remains downwind. With skill and a bit of luck, he should have one of them downed within the hour, and he’ll be able to justify his escapades to his mother for a bit longer.

He follows them as they head northward through harsh scrub and young, struggling trees. The desolation of the dragon is not yet even a quarter recovered. It stretches still for miles, around Dale south unto the lake, westward until but a few miles of the forest edge, and all about the mountain. Some game has returned, such as the deer herd he is stalking, and some flora is valiantly trying to grow in the harsh soil, but it is slow going. Dale’s surrounds are faring better than Erebor’s. Kíli couldn’t say why. Perhaps with more farmers Dale just has a greater pool of expertise. But he worries it is more than that; Dale works hard on the lands about Erebor too, in conjunction with Bilbo and his gardeners. Kíli fears, in the quiet and still places where his mind has no distraction, that the land will never recover. That they have poisoned it.

It is no small fear. He’s shared it with Tilda, Bard and Satomi’s youngest. Perhaps he should have gone to Óin instead, or one of the other bashkhâzd, but he doesn’t want to say things like this out loud to another dwarf. Saying it out loud might make it more real, somehow, which he knows is an entirely childish way to think about it. But it doesn’t stop the thought from circling in his head. Voicing it to Tilda is easier. She’s no dwarf, that it would hit her heart hard, but she has something similar enough to the bashkhâzd about her that Kíli feels utterly comfortable in her presence. Not to mention Óin trusts her judgment on the less mundane aspects of life, which is a testament to her reliability in itself.

When it comes up, Tilda often speaks of how the state of the people affects the state of the land. Especially those most closely attuned to its moods and seasons. Perhaps, she says, it is less their efforts and something that sits in the hearts of the workers themselves. He looks at the desolation, and at his uncle and Bilbo, and thinks her right.

The wind changes suddenly, and carries his scent toward the herd. He ducks, nocks an arrow, and waits. Maybe he will have to loose an arrow earlier than anticipated. The deer perk up, twisting their ears to and fro and sniffing. One or two dance about nervously. Kíli picks his mark, a male, larger than the rest, and sights his arrow. He looses, and the tension snaps. His mark falls with a cry, and the rest of the herd scatter. Panicked and fearful, they thunder about before breaking west. In a moment they are gone.

He steps forward, another arrow nocked, and waits to see if his mark will rise. It struggles, panting, but does not look fit to move. So he unsheathes his hunting knife, and with thanks to Mahal, finishes his task.

The deer is heavy, but nothing he hasn’t had to deal with before. It sits comfortably enough on his shoulders as he carries it. Then begins the long walk back to the small door he uses; it has only been opened again recently, Smaug’s detritus cleaned out and the stonework strengthened. Kíli is glad for it. Going out the main gate is a hassle. This small door is much closer to his rooms, and easier to escape out of when he wants to avoid something. Which is quite a lot recently. Today is no different. The whole of the royal quarters is a mess of gossip and confusion, and he wants no part of it. But he has caught his catch, and there’s really no reason for him to stay outside now. All the same he dawdles a while longer, placing the deer down with a grunt, fiddling with his quiver and giving a longing gaze to the rough lands to the west. Then he sighs, goes to the door, swivels back, mutters, and plonks himself down on a low rock.

“Bugger it all,” he says. He’ll not go inside yet. There’s no-one here to demand he must.

He picks out his pipe from among his jacket, taps it and scrapes the bowl with a nail. It feels calming to fill it with pipeweed, a smoky variety his cousin Dain brought out of the Iron Hills, to light some of his hempen rope with flint and tinder and push it deliberately into the bowl. He breathes in the smoke, and breathes out some of his tension. Worries the stem between his teeth. Wonders what waits for him behind the door.

It’s a good door, make from the mountain’s rock, inconspicuous until you get up close and closed to all save those who have the right key. He’s got one, Fíli another. Fíli has many keys, all bound up on an iron ring, and Kíli hasn’t a clue how she remembers what they’re all for. He has no doubt that she does though: Fíli isn’t one to let important facts slip out her ear, as it were, and she has a lot of those to worry about now. Their uncle is relying on her a lot, training her up as best he can, knowing one day she’ll stand where he stands now.

Mahal, their uncle. Kíli almost doesn’t want to think about him. He glances at the dead deer, at the door, and at the struggling remains of the desolation about the mountain’s feet. From here he can trace the route they took up, from the distant haze of Mirkwood and Laketown in the south up through the desolation to Dale and Raven Hill. It feels like forever since he first caught sight of Erebor, a solitary peak rising out of the mist like a bashkhuzd emerging from the smoke of their fires. He’d been so optimistic about the journey east, and that first glimpse of his ancestral home had been a confirmation of all his best hopes.

Thinking of bashkhâzd inspires a course of action he hasn’t taken in a while. Fíli is the one who does it most often now, but it used to be him; prayer. Every action you take is a form of prayer, of course, if you are engaging in work and creation as Mahal does, and for most mundane folk that serves well enough. But sometimes there are more direct ways of doing it. He slides a knife out of its sheaf, brushes a hand over the deer’s pelt and picks the softest patch of hair he can find. Then he cuts some off and holds it, tight. He’s no bashkhuzd, but he still knows the rhythms of a prayer.

 “Ya furk’ursuh omhîla mohil. Tur Gimizhbuznâl ra Mahal furukhi furkhuh.”

The rest doesn’t need to be said out loud: Mahal knows the hearts of his children, and Kíli hopes that Gimizhbuznâl watches over the children of her earth. Kíli cannot wish for the union they once saw ahead, all the Company, in visions of smoke and through ulganizd ‘izûgh stone or in the more mundane observance of two men, but he can wish for peace. He can wish for the past to be laid to rest. For clarity.

Of course, it may be that he’s got his clarity already. Why else would Bilbo kiss Haruna so, a smile upon his face and laughter at his lips? Why else take off his necklace? Kíli can’t say, unless somehow Bilbo just doesn’t know, just doesn’t see what such things mean, but that doesn’t feel right. If it was all just some giant misunderstanding then things would not be near so painful.

A strong breeze springs up around him, and with a last sigh Kíli lets the deer hair go. Clarity will come. If not to him then to Fíli. Fíli always knows what things are about, eventually.

Kíli unlocks the door and pushes it open, jamming it with a rock so it stays. He heaves the deer carcass onto his back, plods through the door, and kicks the stone away. The door swings shut with a whisper that belies the speed. It would probably take a finger off if Kíli was fool enough to get one stuck between the door and the jam.

He trundles off along the corridor, a narrow thing that could only hold two dwarves astride, at most, and so is just a tad tight for one dwarf with his kill. It turns back on itself at intervals, ninety degree angles that confuse those without a sense of the stone, and it dips and rises seemingly without purpose. Kíli knows in truth it skirts around larger rooms, wider hallways that aren’t so secret. Not that this hall holds the prestige of the door they first came into the mountain through, the invisible moon door on the western side, but all the same few know about it. So it was designed. At intervals other halls turn off, small cirth written about the lower corners, telling those who care to know where the hall leads. One to the royal war room, another to the bashkhâzd observatory with its glass ceiling as thin as spun sugar. Kíli ignores them. He is heading for the Gardeners’ terraces and their tall green door. He has been visiting Bilbo and his Gardeners often, though never for very long: being a Prince of Erebor means his free time is less plentiful than he would like. Today should really have been given over to letter writing, answering missives from the Orocarni clans and from Thorin’s Hall in the Blue Mountains and the dwarven nations that live in the jungles far to the south. But that can wait. Today he will bring a gift to the Gardeners’ Hall, an effort, however small, to try and smooth over the consequences of his uncle’s ill-fated romance.

He knocks, acutely aware of being the only one in the corridor. The gardeners are still largely pariahs, due in no small part to Bilbo’s position as Grand Master. If Thorin had appointed a dwarf, one of the cave farmers perhaps, things would have been different. Although the terraces might not have been as productive; the habit of farming above ground is one not often practiced west of Rhun, and the ways of it had been abandoned along with Erebor, so few dwarves remain who could have taken to the task with the same finesse as a hobbit, or even a human.

But Thorin had been adamant. Bilbo was to be Grand Master, for as long as he wished. Kíli doesn’t know whether Thorin’s choice had been driven by guilt, love, or his deep pragmatism. Probably a little of each.

The opening of the door shakes him from his thoughts. Ebbe peaks around the corner, and grins when he sees Kíli.

“Cor, but I am ever glad it’s you.” He says.

Kíli laughs as Ebbe ushers him in. “Who else would it be?”

Ebbe’s smile vanishes, and he flashes a final glance down the hall outside before closing it with a hunted look. “No-one o’ note.”

Of course not. Just the King. No-one of note.

Kíli sweeps his gaze across the room, taking in the quiet. “Where is everybody? Out on the terrace? I’ve a gift for you all.”

“Wouldn’t happen to be that beast slung over your shoulder, would it?”

“Well now, I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

Ebbe walks him out to a small side terrace, one covered in herbs and sheltered from the cooler winds by a huge outcrop of rock present along the north side. It used to have a glass roof, Kíli knows, and will again once the Glassblower and Metallurgy guilds can lower their noses long enough to make one. Bilbo, helped expansively by Ase, has had to wrangle and bully his way into most of his repairs. Once or twice Kíli has leant a letter to their requests, but he can’t do it as much as he’d like. Fíli says that the Gardeners have to stand on their own two feet from the start, no special royal treatment, or the other Guilds will never grow to respect them. It makes Kíli grind his teeth.

Bilbo and the apprentices are tending to the terrace, clipping herbs and digging borders and doing something to the hedge along the outside wall that is utterly opaque to Kíli. Bilbo has his hands in it, and from this distance it looks like he’s gently rearranging individual branches. No doubt it’s a very secret Gardener trick.

“Look who’s passing by,” Ebbe says, and the apprentices all poke their heads up, halloing and chuckling. Bilbo flicks a look over his shoulder and gives a small smile once he sees it’s Kíli.

“I brought you something,” Kíli shouts to him, shifting the deer and placing it on the floor with an utter lack of grace.

Bilbo guffaws, and extracts his hands from the hedge. “Well you can’t leave it there. Come on now, let’s bring it into the kitchen. Break, everyone!”

That gets a cheer, and Kíli hefts the deer back on his shoulder and into the Gardener’s expansive kitchen. Bilbo mutters and dithers around a teapot, so Ebbe waves him to a back room with the tinge of blood in the air. The deer is put on a wide, well stained table. Kíli pats its flank once, sighs, and wonders if there’s anything he can say.

“Family, hey,” he whispers with only the dead deer to hear.

 Bilbo and Haruna cobble together an elaborate tea ceremony. Apparently he’s the first non-Gardener to experience it, and is serving as a bit of a test subject. They want it to be a Gardener tradition, Bilbo tells him, a distracted smile on his face. Good. Traditions are good. Gives a person something solid to ground themselves on.

But that would be too...raw to say, however truthful. “You should make those cakes of yours a tradition as well,” he says instead.

Bilbo only looks at him as if he heard every unsaid word.

They take their tea, and Kíli does get a cake in the end. Sólveig declares she’ll have a gander at the deer once she’s got the sage to behave, then nods at Bilbo, who nods back after a bemused moment. That seems to be some sort of signal, for in almost an instant all the apprentices have stacked their cups next to the sink and filed out. Bilbo stays behind, a quirked-up-at-the-corners smile on his face.

“Back to work are they?” Kíli asks him.

Bilbo nods. “Yes, I’ve been trying to be a tad more strict with our time. Dwarves appreciate structure, and, well. The only time hobbits are strict with are our meal times, as you know.”

Kíli laughs. “Well, it’s good to see you’re managing a balance of dwarvish and hobbitish habits,” he says, waving at the tea set. It’s got an odd sort of style, a thinness and delicacy to it that decries the firmness of it in Kíli’s hand. Around the rim of each cup twirls one of three patterns; soft green vines, small blue birds, or blossoming red flowers, all interspersed with Khuzdul runes denoting health and warmth. And the teapot itself boasts all three, winding round and round its porcelain frame until they join upon the spout. The entire set is simple but elegant, the gentleness of their material juxtaposed to their solid shape – not quite square and not quite round, the bottom bounded with dark wood and the inside of the cups bottomed with gold. It’s the first positive sign Kíli has seen in a while.

Bilbo smiles, and pours Kíli a second cup. “It was Haruna’s idea. She knows how much I love tea, so we drew up some plans, and Ase found someone willing to make them, and we took an awful long time to agree on acceptable varieties of tea – though that was to be expected really. But it’s all for the good. Biscuit?”

“Please.” Bilbo potters off to a cupboard and emerges with a biscuit tin, and Kíli considers if he shall have another chance any time soon. “I’m sorry,” he says just as Bilbo places the tin down on the small kitchen table.

Bilbo’s face flashes through emotions quick as an autumn storm, then settles into poorly feigned confusion. “For what?”

“For – well, where to start?”

The hobbit sighs, waving at Kíli to take a seat. “Start with something small, Kíli, and we’ll go from there.”

Something small. Right. “I’m sorry I scraped my boots on your mother’s glory box.”

That is evidently not what Bilbo was expecting. To be fair Kíli wasn’t expecting it either.

“I’m also sorry about that thing with the trolls – we were really stupid – and for calling you ‘halfling’ for so long, and for that time I ate your share of dinner.”

“I – well, some of those were an awful long time ago Kíli.”

“I’m still sorry. I wasn’t the best of travelling companions.”

“While that was true at times, you are forgiven all the same. Now, if you please, we both know those were not what you were planning on apologising for.”

No. That’s true. “I’m sorry about the dinner.” After that his teeth click shut, and he can’t think of anything else to say.

“Is that –” Bilbo laughs quietly, “is that what the deer is for? An apology?”

Kíli nods.

“I suppose it’s rather a nice one. Venison is rather choice, after all. Though really, Kíli, you don’t need to apologise for the dinner. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I’m apologising for my family. It would be terrible not to.”

Across from him, Bilbo takes a fortifying gulp of tea. “Of course, of course, I’d forgotten that particular societal nicety. Group responsibility.”

“Right. Exactly.”

“But still...it’s not...I’m grateful for the apology Kíli, I truly am, but I cannot say I will be able to put such a mess behind me.”

“I can probably persuade my uncle to apologise for it if you need him to –”

“No, no, lad, it’s not just the dinner. It’s all of it.”

Oh. Kíli has to put his teacup down rather quickly lest he drop it. “He’s sorry for all that to. He is.”

Bilbo cringes and avoids his gaze – it’s so like those first weeks after the battle that Kíli feels sick – and puts his head in his hand, turned to one side so Kíli is staring at his profile. “No, Kíli, you’re not understanding.”

What would Fíli do? She’d get up, so that’s what Kíli does, and then moves around the table so he can take the seat right next to Bilbo, where he can grip a tense shoulder and will the hobbit to lift his head. “Help me. Please.”

Auburn curls bob as Bilbo shakes his head. “It’s not all his fault.”

Kíli waits, just like Fíli would. Silence can be better than words.

“We both – we are both players in that calamity, and perhaps I am even the worst villain, for all my good intentions. Perhaps those that sneer at me as I pass are right.”

Kíli squeezes the shoulder he’s holding. “They’re not.”

“Kíli,” and Bilbo looks at him again now, eyes red, “I stole the heart of the mountain, greedy as any outside the gate, and then I used it to pull the rug out from under all your feet. Bared his vulnerabilities for his foes just because I wanted to go home. And then your uncle tried to kill me. And then, worse still, he forgave me.”

Kíli doesn’t understand. “He’s...he’s trying to make up for things.”

“I know. Make things up to a thief. What a mess.”

A bitter thought enters Kíli’s mind. “Do you hate him?”

Bilbo doesn’t answer, just shakes his head again. “I wish he’d just leave me be.”

“Oh.”

His voice must sound awful, because Bilbo looks at him with a wan smile and takes hold of his free hand. “It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s, in particular. As much as it pains me to say, not everything can be fixed with food. Some things...some things can’t be fixed at all.”

Of course. Ash can’t be saved from the flame’s heat. Some things are too far broken.

“Of course,” Kíli says, “of course.”

Chapter Text

Tilda likes Mr. Baggins. Grand Master Gardener, Bain says she should call him now.

Mr. Baggins laughs when she tells him. “Just call me Bilbo,” he says.

“You call me Tilda then,” she says, “no Princess.”

They shake on it. It’s the first time they meet officially, after everything. Tilda decides she likes him. Her opinion doesn’t change later, which doesn’t surprise her. She won’t often change her mind about people.

“You have a way with the earth,” she says when they’re sitting in a small garden attached to the royal manse of Dale. The manse is bigger than any house she has ever known, even the Master’s back in Laketown. She loves the balconies best when she’s on her own, catching the wind and its secrets, walking barefoot over cool peach stone, watching the kites as they turn above her. But when Bilbo is here, she prefers the gardens. He looks like he belongs, even besides the deepening brown of his skin that speaks of days spent bent over shoots and fingernails dirty with earth. There’s something about how he knows the soil that’s amazing to be part of.

Bilbo smiles at her. “Do I now?”

“Yes. Do all hobbits? Are they all like you?”

He nods, humming contentedly. “Peace, and good green growing things. That’s what hobbits are best at.”

“Not all humans are like me, I think.”

“Oh?”

“Hm. I’ve never met someone else who could – you know.”

Bilbo’s grin can’t seem to contain itself. “We are unique, it seems.”

“It more ways than one.”

They laugh, and Tilda watches Bilbo coax a tulip to brightness.

“One of my gardeners, you know,” he says after a while, “zir like us.”

“Zir?” Tilda tries the word on her tongue.

“Yes, zir. Ze is neither male nor female. I’m told there’s a dwarven term, you know, how your folk have ‘man’ and ‘woman’. They have an awful lot more apparently. Which might sound very confusing at first but you soon get used to. Gender is rather different for dwarves than it is for humans, or even hobbits. Would that I had known that sooner. It would have made things a lot easier.”

Tilda sniggers. “Like going to the loo.”

“And talking about babies,” Bilbo adds, joining in the game.

“And husbands and wives – oh, what would your gardener call zir – wait, how would I say, um, self?”

“Zirself. You know, I’m not sure. I shall ask. Maybe partner.”

Partner. Dwarves think of everything. “It was funny, talking to a dwarf. Ma and da took years to get it. But the first dwarf I said it to, you know what they said?”

“What?”

“They said – they said ‘oh yes, we’ve got all sorts of words for that’. Ma and da didn’t have any words.”

“In the Shire,” Bilbo says just as the tulip quivers in his hands, “we still have a lot of words left over from our Wandering Years, but with the Big Folk we just say man or woman. They don’t much get it, you know. Some of the Bree folk aren’t so bad. But most can’t deal with how our bodies are. But for ourselves, well, we don’t much bother about it.”

“That seems sensible. Huh.”

Bilbo finishes with the tulip, and the rest of the garden flutters for his attention. Tilda pulls a wind down to rustle through the plants, wondering what it’s like to feel all the roots and the leaves they way she feels air.

“What do hobbits call this?” She asks, gesturing to where Bilbo is digging a finger into the soil around a lavender bush.

Bilbo shrugs. “We usually just say ‘green fingers’. ‘Earth-sense’ too, now I think on it.”

“We’d say magic. At least, that’s what ma says about my stuff.”

“Magic works too, yes. Though we associate that more with fairies and folk tales than actual living people.”

The rest of the day is spent thusly: Tilda following Bilbo around the garden as he coaxes the plants to their best and she pulls in the occasional stray breeze. The garden flourishes in his company. Tilda thinks he wouldn’t even need to do anything to make a change, just sit there and be. The plants drink up his presence. She remembers, after a long and difficult talk with her da and the dwarven King, Bilbo asking her to lead him somewhere green. He’d been so angry that the first footstep onto soil had made the plants cringe back. She’d never seen the like. She’d asked a servant to bring some very strong tea – Bilbo liked tea, she knew without asking – and had encouraged him to drink it while they walked around the garden’s edge, the flora shaking as they passed.

“Infuriating, infuriating man!” Bilbo had almost tossed his tea several times, insensible to what his hands were doing. Tilda was dancing about in anticipation of it flying her way.

“He was trying to help, wasn’t he?” She was certain she knew who they were talking about – it leaked from Bilbo’s skin like water through a sieve – but she was less sure why.

“Help! He’s obstructing me at every turn.” Finally he stilled, coming round to face her and taking a furious sip from his cup. “Don’t worry about it, it’s – it’s nothing, really.”

“But it’s not.” She liked Bilbo. She didn’t want him to be upset.

“Well, yes, fine. But it’s not for young ears.”

“My ears aren’t young!” She was nearly twelve, thank you.

“Young enough, little lady.”

“Fine. Go talk to an adult then. To my ma. She’ll listen”

Bilbo shuffled. “No, no. It would make things terribly awkward. She’s the Queen. She shouldn’t take sides.”

“She wouldn’t be Queen. She’d just be my ma.”

Bilbo resisted, but eventually, after spending an hour or more in the garden, he went to see her ma. She came to Tilda later, just before Tilda was going to bed.

“That was a good thing you did, darling.” Her ma smiled softly, tucking the covers gently around her.

“Yeah?”

“Yes. It is good, to unburden things. I am glad you sent the Grand Master to me.”

“He was sad,” she said, “I don’t want him to be sad. It hurts him.” She knew she wasn’t old enough for a lot of things, but the was Bilbo ached, the way the air down from the mountain’s terraces spoke of loneliness and pain and wounding conversations was enough for her to know something was very wrong.

Her ma sat on the edge of her bed and stroked her hair. “I know. But...darling, I know your heart. So big and loving. But do not try to fix this by yourself.”

“But he needs help. I want to help.”

“I know, Tilda. But sometimes we cannot fix things as we would wish. You cannot do all that you wish for people, as hard as it is to bear. Be a friend. But leave time and space to be his healers.”

She knew, and still knows, that her mother was right. She also knows Bilbo doesn’t have time or space. Not enough to heal. She knows of nothing that might help him, really. Save the gardens.

So she sits with him. Let’s the plants brighten him just as he brightens them.

“Bilbo,” she says, remembering what she’d hoped to share today, “there’s something I wanted to show you!”

Bilbo nods kindly, and stops his work on the lavender bush to look at her. She waves him over to a good spot, somewhere where the sun is shining best and he’ll be able to see.

“I’ve been learning earthy things,” she tells him. “Just a few. I’m not very good at it.”

“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” he says.

They’re kneeling in front of a small wildflower bush, leaves a soft green-grey and the flowers petite and blue. She’s practised with others like it the most, so she’s more confident her spell will work now with this plant than any other.

“Use your, um, earth-sense,” she says, “don’t do anything, just feel.”

Bilbo does as she bids, looking quite amused. “Okay, now what?”

“Have you felt it? The plant?”

“Yes.”

“Ok, then stop. I’m gonna do my bit now.”

He removes his fingers from the surrounding soil. Tilda pushes herself up onto her knees and lets the wind calm her for a second. She’s been practicing this for a while, during her midday break from tutors when her ma allows her to bring her lunch outside into the garden. Tauriel has given her a few pointers, broken down what she knows of Mirkwood’s own earth magics. It’s different, Tilda thinks, from what Bilbo does. But it’s very useful. Maybe she should bring Tauriel to the gardens with Bilbo, one day. It would be fun.

She tunes out the wind. Instead she tries to listen to the leaves and stems and roots of the plant. The plant doesn’t move for her like it does for Bilbo, but she thinks maybe she can hear it: a faint singing, or humming, she’s not sure. Maybe it’s just an echo. But it’s enough. Her hands settle either side of the bush, like a barrier.

She holds the word in her mind. Bronia.

She holds it on the tip of her tongue. Bronia.

She speaks it aloud. “Bronia.”

Instantly she feels a connection with the plant, feels the word touch it and change it, strengthen it. A shadow uncurls in her mind of roots stretching down and leaves uncurling thicker than before.

“I did it I did it I did it!” Practically squealing with delight, she leaps up to run about the garden to the sound of her own laughter. Bilbo chuckles as he watches her, and catches her deftly when she throws herself at him.

“I can’t believe it worked,” she says, sitting herself down again. “Check it! Check what I did.”

Bilbo does, digging his fingers into the soil once more. Tilda bobs in place, watching. She calls the wind back to her, giggling in its embrace.

“Good gracious,” Bilbo says, “good gracious me. What did you do?”

“Tauriel helped me. It’s something they use in Mirkwood, to help.”

“Bronia, you said? Is that a Sindarin word?”

“Yep,” she says, bouncing onto her knees, “it makes it last better. Endure, Bain said it meant.”

Bilbo laughs, and it turns hollow somewhere along the way. “Oh, if that isn’t my word of the moment. Maybe you should put that spell on me! I have been doing a lot of enduring lately.”

Tilda isn’t sure what he means. “It...doesn’t work on people.”

He touches a gentle hand to the bush, the other still in the surrounding soil. “I know. But a silly old hobbit is allowed to hope. Very well done, Tilda. Very well done indeed.”

“You could stay here, you know,” she says, and she hadn’t meant to say it, but now it’s out of her mouth she is determined that Bilbo knows it’s true. “You wouldn’t have to endure so much here. You could have a holiday from enduring.”

He looks at her, eyes wide. His mouth opens and shuts a few times. “That’s not a thing a child can promise,” he says eventually.

“Ask Bain, he’ll tell you,” she says, and before Bilbo can get a word in she’s pulling him up, her elation at the spell forgotten. “Come on, Bain will tell you I’m right.”

“I don’t think Bain can promise that either.” And does Bilbo ever look regretful of the fact.

“Could my ma?”

“Yes, I suppose. But I don’t think –”

“Come on,” she says, not really paying attention to his protests, “let’s go.” She pulls him around the manse until she finds her mother, sitting in her solar with Bain and some of their servants. Tilda doesn’t really think they’re normal servants – they’re much too sneaky, the winds tell her. She waits until they’ve sat her and Bilbo down and served them tea, her legs swinging impatiently all the while, before asking for some privacy. Only once the last servant has left does she answer her ma’s confused look. Twice. She may have tumbled over her words the first time.

“Tilda is right,” her ma says once Tilda’s talked herself dry. “And I know my husband is in agreement with me. You shall always have a room in this house.”

“Always,” Tilda says.

Bain gets Bilbo a tissue as he starts to cry.

It’s a week later – a Tuesday, and she’s been up since the first suggestions of dawn, careening around the balconies and generally worrying her servants silly – when Tauriel shows up in the manse griping about spiders and border patrols and spiders and how she’s desperate for a few fingers of whiskey.

“I know where we keep some,” Tilda says, hanging off the back of Tauriel’s shoulders, “do you want me to show you?”

Tauriel frowns, swirling Tilda about to make her giggle. “Are you not a little bit young to know such things, mellon? It is hard to tell age with the younger races.”

“I suppose, but it’s not like I drink it. Though I could. I’m nearly twelve.”

Tauriel mutters to herself. “Twelve!”

“That’s very old among humans. Honest.”

“No it isn’t,” Sigrid says, appearing in Tilda’s vision. She’s gone for dwarven fashions again today; thick boots up to her knees and light burgundy trousers, a grey coat buttoned close to her skin down to her waist, where it flutters outward, skimming her hips and stopping at her thighs. It’s a style she usually chooses when she wants to practise her spear work, and contrasts bluntly with Tilda’s yellow and rose coloured dress.

“Is.” Tilda retorts.

“Isn’t.”

“Is.”

“Isn’t.”

“Is is is and forever. I win.”

Sigrid rolls her eyes.

“After whiskey, can we go and see Bilbo?” Tilda asks. “I really want you to see his gardens. I want to see his gardens.”

Tauriel swings her once more, then places her down. “Have you not yet seen them? I confess myself surprised.”

“I’m allowed, anytime I want. But Bilbo’s just always come here instead.”

Tauriel thinks on it for a while, and in the meantime they wander towards the kitchens so she can get a drink – water, in the end, not whiskey – Sigrid two steps behind them. Tilda’s trying not to be pushy, but she really wants to see some of Bilbo’s terraces. To see his plants and his apprentices, to look at the hedges he has round the borders, to note the differences between his herb terraces and his vegetable ones, to find out what colours he’s conjured. But she also wants to see if what the winds tell her is true. If the soil tells the same story.

She’s worried it will.

Tauriel agrees, but insists that Tilda eats breakfast first and ask her parents. Ma and da are happy enough, though they are adamant that they send Sigrid too.

“I want to join the practise in the yard,” Sigrid objects.

Da frowns heavily in a way Tilda knows means he’s thought about this carefully. “You mean as you have been doing for the past five days?” He says.

Sigrid says nothing, but juts up her chin.

“What is it your weapons master says?”

“She says a lot of things, da.”

“Aye, and one of them, if I’m not mistaken, is that being a warrior is about more than swinging your weapon all clever like –”

Sigrid releases a blustery breath. “About more than the precision of your weapon, da, honestly.”

Her da grins. “Right, right, and what’s the rest of it?”

“It’s also about learning what you can from other spheres of knowledge,” she says, slowing her speech. She knows she’s been beaten. “It helps you appreciate what you’re fighting for.”

Her da raises a questioning brow.

“Fine, fine.” Sigrid says.

Tilda cheers. All to the good as far as she’s concerned.

When they arrive in the Gardener’s Halls, Tilda almost regrets knocking. The door is a breathtaking bit of art.

“Remind me,” she says to Sigrid, poking her, “to bring Bain and ma here.”

Sigrid grunts.

A dwarf who introduces herself as Gróa ushers them in and tries to announce them. Tries, because Tilda flings herself heedlessly out into the garden and barrels into Bilbo. Sigrid scolds her, but Tilda just blows a raspberry in retaliation. Bilbo chuckles.

“Welcome, welcome,” he says.

Tauriel is immediately interested in the hedging they are using to protect the gardens from the wind, as Tilda thought she would be. Sigrid predictably spends the entire time staring out over the garden and beyond. Tilda, though, spends her time much more productively.

“Is your apprentice here? You know the one. I want to meet – to meet zir, if that’s alright.”

Bilbo sighs in mock-suffering. “I suppose,” he says, grinning. “Halli! There’s someone here you should meet.”

 It’s as good as Tilda hoped it would be. Halli is very interesting, knowing a lot about how to treat vegetables right and the various moods of trees. Then they get talking in earnest about, well.

“Ma and da say I was always trying on Sigrid’s dresses,” Tilda says. “I don’t know if I ever really thought I was a boy.”

“The moment you could speak,” Sigrid adds in, still staring out into the blue, “you were demanding I brush and braid your hair. Wouldn’t let da cut it neither.”

Tilda nods. That sounds right. She nudges Halli a bit. She likes Halli.

“What clothing do you like best?” She asks.

“Well now,” Halli murmurs, scratching zir chin, “it changes on the day most times. Dwarves ain’t got much truck with making woman wear one thing and men another and then ignoring the rest – ‘the rest’, bah, I wish this tongue had the proper words. We let each to their own, so to speak. Don’t make no mind to one person what another wears, does it? Shouldn’t leastways.”

“So you wear whatever you want.”

“Course. Now there’s fashions and such, and you still get rich folk wearing things the rest of us can’t hope to buy, and some of the Guilds and families get very protective over certain motifs and braid patterns. But Mahal didn’t want us fussing over gender the way you humans do, beyond making sure you know what people want to be called and what-not.”

“I think,” Tilda says, thoughts whirling about her mind, “I’m going to have to get someone to write this all down. This is the kind of thing we should know.”

“You could make a book about it,” Bilbo says.

“Only if you tell me about hobbits too. About you. You could start now.”

“Right, well.” Bilbo squints into the sunlight a little and laughs. “Hobbits all look the same when we’re born, or near enough, and most only settle on their gender around thirty-three, which is when we come of age. I wore dresses for many years. They were pretty.”

Tilda nods, patting her own dress happily.

Sigrid snorts. “Dresses don’t make you a girl.”

“I never said they did. I just liked them. It’s only humans who think one kind of clothing makes you one kind of person, which is why I said it. Hobbits wear whatever is easiest, or nicest, or most comfortable. Course, when I was old enough to run about with my mother trousers were easier. It stuck. The Bounders, now, they all wear trousers when on duty, of course, but that’s more a job related matter.”

“What are Bounders?” Tilda says.

Bilbo describes hobbits tough as old briar with calloused hands and sharp eyes, who keep the peace of their little green corner of the world.

“We say they ‘beat the bounds’,” he tells them. Sigrid has sat with them now, curious about warriors among a people so peaceful.

“They sound like the guards,” she says.

Bilbo nods. “They are rather like that, though a bit less formal and a mite friendlier to their own, let me tell you.”

Sigrid asks a few more questions about the Bounders, and the Shirrifs, and the Mayor, and on and on until Tilda has almost stopped paying attention.

“We should write a book about that as well,” she mutters to herself. “We’ll need a lot of books.”

Twilight has come upon them by the time Tilda gets to really try and listen to the earth and plants on the terrace. She curls around a few flowers, breathing in their air and pushing the tips of her fingers into the ground around them. She lies there for what feels like forever as whispers and echoes come to her. By the time she reawakens to the rest of the world, she finds herself alone save Bilbo.

“Where is everyone?” Her mouth feels heavy.

Bilbo just smiles at her, making no move to get her up or usher her inside. “They went to get some tea. I thought I’d best wait.”

“Ta.”

“It’s no problem. What did you learn about my terrace then?”

She breathes deeply for a moment, and wonders what to tell him. It’s as the winds said. The rest of his terraces are probably much the same.

“I think the soil is tough,” she says eventually, “but sad.” It’s more than that, in truth, but by Bilbo’s face he knows. The very ground aches. It’s like it’s caught a hundred tears and stored them up to mourn over. “Your pain goes into it,” she says, “don’t ask me how.”

“It seems I poison all I touch,” he mutters.

Her heart pangs for him. She pulls herself up and presses herself to his side. “It’s not your fault you’re sad.”

“But I know not how to stop being sad.” She angles her face upward to look at him, to see his features slowly falling.

“Well, get away from the thing that’s making you sad.” It’s what her mother might say, she thinks. “Go to something that makes you happy.”

Bilbo’s face is an open wound. “Were it so easy. My happiness...I thought it would be here. It seems it lies back west instead.”

“You know,” she says, “I’m not so good with maps, but Bain told me the other day that it’s getting easier to go west every day.”

Bilbo does not look so certain.

“There are elven barges,” she tells him, “and caravans of people going to Bree.”

“Bree,” Bilbo says, something broken and wistful in his voice.

“You can go, Bilbo, if you want.”

He stares at her. A light grows upon his face.

“Go.”

The plants rustle without a breeze.

Her brother sits before the fireplace, collapsed in on himself as a sail with no air. Pitiful. Three times she has tried to move him today, and three times he has plodded around behind her for nary ten minutes before retreating back to his misery and his high backed chair. She is tempted to give up on him for today, but she knows if she does that she will have to watch as he declines and finally explodes, which shall not be of benefit to anyone. Least of all Thorin.

Dalla sweeps in through the front door, decadent in her blue tunic. She’s been doing her best to find out everything she can about her son’s beloved hobbit, and Dís hopes beyond hope she’s found something useful. She calls her mother over, and they confer in the corner of the room. A tapestry of Gimizhbuznâl rises behind them.

Dalla sighs. “Still no movement?”

“Little. He is determined to mope. I can get nothing from him save lamentations over his failed romance.”

Bright brown eyes fix her with a gaze of steel. “I hope you have been sympathetic.”

Dís says nothing. Her mother sighs again.

“Nothing is as we planned it, it seems.”

She is more right than Dís wishes. Nothing is as they had hoped. The mountain is but an echo of what they remember. All she knows of it, all the images in her head, are seen through rose tinted glasses. A golden era that, if it ever was a thing in truth, has long passed. Now she must see things as they are.

“I should have come along,” she whispers without intent.

Her mother stares at her. “Come along?”

“On the journey east.”

“What would that have changed?”

Her children flitter past her mind’s eye, changed beyond going back, for better and worse – sterner, wiser, more cynical. “Perhaps there would be some who remained the same.”

“No my child, do not put that burden on yourself.”

“If I had come –”

“They would still be as they are now. Bereft of childhood’s romance, heavy under the mountain’s weight. You could not have prevented that. It was always going to pass.”

“Maybe I could have softened it.”

Dalla places a hand upon her cheek, an immovable and grounding force. Dís’ breath is a prelude to a sob she hopes never to voice.

“Maybe I could have saved them from these people they have become.”

Dalla shakes her head. “Maybe we could save all of Erebor, hm? Save the heart-weary and the battle-burnt and all those Erebor has hurt, whether she willed it or not.”

“I would try.”

“You would fail. And it would consume you.”

In her heart she knows the truth of her mother’s words, but she is loath to accept them. Erebor toddles on unsteady feet, and as she tilts she throws her people around like pebbles down a scree hill. Dwarves come who never knew the halls, and crowd it with their dreams and desires beyond what the mountain can fulfil. Worse perhaps are those that did know the mountain, for as with her their hopes are as a dream, dim morning mist that dissipates in the heat of the sun. Fleeing shadows take away all she thought she knew in the visions of her past.

Thorin never had any dreams, save that Erebor would be restored to them. He believed, utterly, with a resignation that terrifies Dís even now, that the revival of the mountain would require his life. No soft-powder thoughts slipped through Thorin’s mind, no ideas of love or life, of days spent in the star sheen of the diamond mines, of moments upon a green terrace in the sun off the northern snows. The sum of his life extended as far as he believed his people needed him, and no further.

But something had happened between the Blue Mountains and this lone summit. A small khuhund had, somehow, been a catalyst to bring forth a version of Thorin Dís has not seen since their brother died and the shadow of the crown fell upon Thorin’s head. It is a feat that only her children have hinted at achieving.

Thorin now perceives the plethora of possibilities laid before him. His future did not fall shut. He did not pay for Erebor with a surfeit of blood. And he does not know what to do with that.

Her mother sniffs, and brushes invisible dust from Dís’ arms. “Come. We must see to him.”

It is a strange world when Dís is the one having to look after Thorin. Rarely has she had to do it. They approach him as a unit, and Dís stands to the chair’s side as Dalla goes and stands in front of it, her harsh edges softening as she regards her son.

“My child, come, it is time for you to move.”

Thorin grumbles and mutters, but makes no indication that he is going to do as she bids.

“If you come with me to the kitchen I shall make you some nettle tea.”

That perks his interest. Nettle tea is a favourite of his. Often it was the only flavoured drink they could make, when merchants sneered at them and the climate forbade anything else. How like Thorin, to fall in love with a thing born of necessity.

Her brother rises slowly and follows them, his slow steps reminiscent of Kíli as a child, doe eyed and hanging onto his mother’s trousers with one sticky hand. Looking at the same dark hair, Dís slips her hand into Thorin’s own, and they become a pair, shuffling behind Dalla’s regal tread. They wait idly while Dalla prepares the tea, swaying side to side, bumping gently from shoulder to shin. Dís only lets his hand go when they have to sit at the small table in the centre of the kitchen, their hands now occupied with the business of clasping small bone teacups. They sit in the low seats in silence for a while, the stillness of the air only disturbed by rising steam.

Thorin sighs over the rim of his teacup, empty now. “Thank you.”

Dalla smiles, and presses down on his forearm so he lowers his teacup. With a delicacy Dís sees her use in few other places she pours her son some more tea, lifting and dipping the pot to air the liquid, not a drop escaping onto the table’s top. “You are in dire need of it, my child.”

Thorin’s face pinches.

Dís ventures a measured statement. “You have had a trying few days.”

Thorin scowls. “Trying. Say it as it is, sister, or say it not at all.”

“Very well. You have had a near catastrophic few days, marked by awkwardness, rejection and doubt. Does that more closely hit the truth?”

“I do not know whether to be grateful or distraught at the way your honesty always seems to hurt.”

“If you did not want my opinion you shouldn’t have asked –”

“My children.” Dalla’s tone forbids a decent into pointless bickering. “Peace, or I shall hold you both by your ears until they are sore.”

How is it at one hundred and eighty two she is still able to be cowed by such a threat? “Ma, we are not children.”

“Then don’t act like bairns of barely thirty.”

“And here I was,” Thorin says, “anticipating a peaceful moment with family.”

Before Dís can start the argument all over again, a voice behind her cuts her off. It’s full of laughter and confusion, and puts Dís immediately at ease.

“What are you all squabbling about?” Fíli asks.

Dís turns to beckon her daughter to the table, and she takes the low chair on Dís’ left, her golden braids swaying with the movement. “We’re bickering about the last few days, and having nettle tea while we’re about it.”

Fíli laughs outright, but it sounds a bit cracked. “I’ll have one but not the other, if you please.”

If you please. It strikes Dís at that moment how much influence the khuhund has had on her kin. She does not think Fíli ever uttered such a phrase in her life until she met Bilbo Baggins. It is so utterly... khuhundul. Hobbitish.

“Presumably you mean to have the nettle tea,” Dís says, and Fíli dashes to get another teacup. She waits patiently by her grandmother’s shoulder while it is filled.

Dís waits until Fíli is seated again before she speaks. “We do need to speak of the other.”

Thorin, predictably, groans, downs his tea with aplomb and makes to escape his chair. Dís secures him with a firm grip on his arm.

“We must.” She tells him.

Her brother leans so his hair falls about his face. “It is done, and I am done with it. Leave me be.”

“Uncle, she has a point.”

“What point?”

She must say it now, or she shall perhaps never say it at all. “It was never going to work.”

“Thank you, dear sister, for your input. Your words always cheer me.”

“You are too different! And too divided. How could he have looked upon you with love when you are so strange to him, and he to you?”

He snarls at her now, her words stinging. She snarls right back. Dalla rolls her eyes and retrieves their teacups to prevent their damage.

“I gave him the necklace, did I not?” Thorin’s words bite through the air like steel. “I made my intentions clear.”

Fíli shakes her head. “Hobbits do things differently, uncle. Bilbo may not even have known what the necklace meant.”

“Nonsense. He accepted it gladly – for a moment, he was glad of it. Of me.”

“I’ve half a mind to get Ser Amina in here and see if she verifies your tale.” Dís says.

“Don’t bother.” Fíli shrugs when Dís looks at her. “I know for a fact that Amina was too smitten with one of Bilbo’s apprentices to pay much attention beyond her duty. Haruna.”

There is a thud as Thorin’s fist strikes the table, and all the cups and saucers tremble. “Do not say that name to me. I will suffer his choice, but I will not suffer her name.”

Dalla waves to Fíli, who begins to collect the rest of the bone crockery with a wary eye on her uncle. Dalla’s eyes swivel slowly to rest on Thorin, who looks suitably abashed.

“It is not her fault,” Dalla says quietly, “you would do well to recall that in your pain.”

“I know, mother, and I hold her no ill will, but her name burns in my ears.”

“Does his?”

Thorin’s hand tightens until his knuckles are white. “Aye. And it sings. Like staring overlong at the sun.”

Dís remembers golden hair, laughter like a bubbling brook, a hand of flesh and a hand of brass. She remembers gentle eyes and the way their gaze burnt upon her in such exquisite agony. These are all things she shall know again one day, in their Maker’s halls. But for now she sighs, bereft, and her mother sighs with her, and they let Thorin’s words hit their own memories with a painful precision.

“Mahal be blessed,” Fíli mutters, “listen to you all. If I should ever fall in love, someone hit me until I stop.”

She swipes gently at her daughter, cuffing her about the back of the head. “If you should ever fall in love I hope others are a great deal more sympathetic than you are currently being.”

“Yes yes, ‘have some thought for the poor afflicted’, I know.” Fíli shrugs and ducks a second swipe with a grin just this side of caustic. “You all just seem to be making mountains out of molehills is all –”

“What an odd turn of phrase,” Dalla says, and Fíli scowls at the interruption.

“Khuhundul,” Dís tells her.

“Ah.”

“If you would just talk to him,” Fíli says, loudly, “instead of all sitting in here like conspirators –”

Next to Dís, her brother scowls. “I resent that.”

“You mean you resemble it,” Dís tells him, and his scowl deepens.

Fíli has her hands flat on the table, head thrown back and eyes closed in a picture of great strain. “Sometimes I wonder where Kíli gets it from, you know, and then moments like this occur and I wonder why I ever wondered at all.”

They bicker for a while longer, Fíli and Thorin both frowning in remarkably similar fashions across the table. Dalla twice has to strategically intervene so that her son and granddaughter don’t reach across the table to start a true brawl, and once kicks Dís very pointedly in the shins when Dís is thinking of putting her brother in a headlock and holding him there until she feels better. Dís obviously needs to work on not broadcasting her emotions. Her mother is far too astute.

“Look,” Fíli says, half her body suspended above the table by one clenched fist pressed into its top, “forget everything else – no, shut up Thorin, I’m serious – forget the bloody dinner, forget the bloody dance, forget it. Did he ever actually, verbally, clearly, turn you down?”

It’s only the fury in Dalla’s eyes and her quick hand that stalls Thorin’s attempt to kick his chair behind him. Those chairs are from Dale, and their mother is possessive. Instead he stands up and shouts wordlessly, twists out of his mother’s grip and paces back and forth between the table and the pantry.

Fíli isn’t letting this go. “Thorin. Did he?”

Thorin’s shoulders are drawn up high, like a ram backed into a corner that’s thinking about running. “He kissed her. Haruna. He kissed her and gave her the necklace, and she placed it about her neck. They laughed and drank and did not spare me a glance.”

Dís’ teeth ache. If Amundi had done that, when she had courted him over a century ago...if her love had done that...Mahal be good. She would have disappeared into the wilds and not returned till her heart had scabbed over and she could no longer feel the pull of the scar when she breathed. No wonder Thorin is holed away in their mother’s rooms. A King cannot disappear, but he can hide as well as any other.

Fíli’s face settles into a careful neutrality. “And?”

Thorin is not alone in his shock. Dís stares at her own daughter in a strange state of horror.

“He kissed her,” she says, and Fíli shrugs. “Fíli, I know you are not over fond of romance, but even you know what that means.”

“To us,” Fíli says. “To us, ma, but not to him I’d wager.”

Thorin is shaking, like light caught in a multifaceted gem. Dís stands and gently ushers him back to his seat. Her daughter’s words are dust to her, without meaning. “Fíli –”

Fíli interrupts her recklessly. “The necklace is the same. I’ll bet my viola he took the thing off on the first day, put it on a side table as he went to bed.” Mahal, such blasphemy. “And even if he didn’t, he certainly isn’t wearing it now, but what you all seem to be ignoring is that we don’t know why.”

“We know why,” Dís says quietly, her hands firm upon her brother’s shoulders.

Fíli shakes her head. “No, we don’t. You’re assuming you know, but all you have is half-cooked ideas based on the few glimpses we got at a feast and Thorin’s own already worrisome interactions.”

Dalla shifts her glance from her children to her granddaughter. “Worrisome?”

Dís feels Thorin curl up all over again, and digs her fingers into his muscle in the only show of solidarity she can manage right now. She cannot quiet Fíli. Fíli’s eyes are the sharpest, her mind the clearest, and they need her insight more than they want her silence.

Fíli looks at her uncle, her eyes like flint. “Did either of you ever make reparations? One word of sorrow, one word of regret?”

She has heard the accounts of what happened that day at Erebor’s gate. Already their sages have begun to immortalise those chaotic weeks and months that her kith and kin went east, in song and chronicle and cultural memory. But upon the topic of that singular, blasphemous theft they have so far remained silent. What are they to say, when even those who were there cannot give clear telling? When the thief is now the Grand Master of a trade? When he was not given punishment? When he is beloved of the King? Dís has more advantage than most, having ample opportunity to interrogate all of the company who will sit still long enough for her to talk to them. But still she does not understand what happened, that day or after. She is not sure Thorin understands either.

Thorin seems to shift downward, grow smaller as if this tale physically alters him.

“Thorin,” Dalla says, “speak.”

Her son sighs, and obeys. “I was going to kill him.” He stops, and Dís increases her grip. “Everything in me was bent in fury and greed towards all our people’s treasures and towards him, and in one fell swoop I lost both. Or so it felt in my fevered mind.”

Dalla places a hand on her son’s arm. “You are not to blame for your mind’s concoctions.”

“No, perhaps not. But that does not stop it from weighing heavily upon me. It does not erase my grip about his neck. Can my illness excuse my violence? Could my anger have excused his death?”

“No. It could not. But such things have the potential to be reconciled. Did you try?”

“We exchanged words...we said sorry, while I was lying in a tent thinking I was going to die. We did not speak of it again. It seemed enough.”

“Well,” Fíli says, “you thought you were dying.”

Dalla nods, as if in agreement. “A first step is not a completion. It was not enough, my child, though it may pain you to hear. These things take time and effort beyond the blown air of a few words.”

“A dwarf is their word,” Thorin says, a proverb he has always tried to follow.

Dalla answers with a proverb of her own. “But words cannot change ones feelings, as a dam changes a river.”

“Feelings should not rule a soul.”

“One should master their own emotions, aye, but that mastery does not come in a single moment of will, but in a slow process of seeking truth and calm. A hasty, blood drenched exchange upon the remains of a battlefield is not seeking truth and calm. It is to make things as right as you can before you part forever. But you did not part, and so you are now stuck with the consequences of your inadequate reconciliation.”

A breath rattles out of Thorin in a way that tells Dís he is trying not to weep. “I should not hate him. I love him.”

“Let us not bandy about should not. As if emotions are so cheap.”

“Uncle,” Fíli says, “you need to do something. What are you going to do?”

They wait. Thorin is long in giving an answer. So long that Dís retakes her seat, desiring to parse her brother’s emotion from the features of his face. Eventually he clears his throat.

“I...am going to do...nothing?”

There is a beat of incredulous silence, and then a harsh scrape of wood on stone as Dalla rises with abrupt haste out of her chair.

“I am overfull, over full with many things,” she says, pacing in an unwitting mimic of her son, “not least my children’s love lives. You shall think on this Thorin, on this – this calamity, and then you shall talk to young Master Baggins or Mahal strengthen me, I shall talk to him.”

The room is full of quiet again, save the thud-thud-thud of Dalla’s pacing. Thorin’s face is swinging between horror and hope.

“Very well,” he says at last, “I will talk to him.”

“Good,” says Fíli, suddenly bright, “you can start by digging through what you want  to be versus what actually is, and then move on to telling Bilbo that you asked him to marry you without actually using the words you or marry –”

“Would it not be best to start with a nice cluster of diamonds?” Thorin says.

Dís shakes her head. “No, he would prefer rubies, surely? His Gardeners are always wearing those red coats, you could find some to match –”

“NO,” Dalla shouts, and Fíli groans and gets up to make some more tea.

Thorin turns to look at her. “Do you think another jewel would be more appropriate?”

“I think, my son, that talking to him would be more appropriate.”

“But –”

“No. No diamonds, not rubies, no gifts of any kind. You will speak. You will stop hiding behind things to avoid your fears.”

“If wishes were pennies,” Fíli mutters, setting a new pot above the fire to boil, and Dís is sure that’s another khuhundul phrase –

There is a squawk, and if Dís were given to interpreting squawks she would mark this one as worried. The noise resolves itself into a raven, which comes down out of a skyshaft and lands apologetically on the tabletop.

“Message for His Majesty?” The raven does not sound sure that there should be a message at all.

Thorin frowns to hide a brief and guilty smile. “Who bears it?”

“Shorëc, daughter of Korëc.”

“And whom is it from?”

“Grand Master Baggins, in the Gardener’s Halls, with top priority level –”

“Yes, yes,” Thorin says, earlier apathy usurped by impatience, “you may recite it.”

The raven hesitates, and begins to speak.

He sits on their highest terrace, the one reserved for root vegetables and winter berries. His apprentices are scattered about on the others. They can feel something is off, and have left him to himself. So he sits in the quiet of the morning, breathing deep of the cool air and absorbing the piercing sun as it slides around the clouds and bounces off the snow. He sits, and tries not to cry.

He loves Erebor as much as he has ever loved the Shire. Its high walkways, the careful geometry of everything, the layer upon layer upon layer of cloth and stone and paint that make up its beauty. The people – who ever thought he’d grow to love dwarves, rough and rude as he once thought them? Even come to call them family? But here he is, consumed with love for his apprentices, for the Company, for dozens upon dozens of others, for...for...

He wakes with a happy expectation each morning for what he’s going to do on the terraces that day, takes delight in the progress of his apprentices, the joy they find in the earth. The cool mountain wind vitalises him. His work fulfils him. But Tilda is right.

The mountain is also suffocating him.

The air is not enough, not enough, a sob is pushing its way brutally up his throat and he can’t breathe. He throws himself up with a cry and flings himself toward the curtain wall, to the hedge, swatting at it as it parts before him with tremulous fluttering. He only stops when the wall pulls him up short. It presses at his waist and thighs, while the hedge pushes gently at his back. But now he can see west.

West.

Spirits, but he is a broken man.

The wind pulls at his hair, and he hears a quiet call from the terrace entrance behind him. He takes one last breath – one last look west – and turns back through the hedge to see to the caller.

It’s Haruna. “Master,” she says, “I – tea?”

She sounds so uncertain. “Tea?”

“Yes, tea. Terraces down – down –”

“The lower terraces?”

“Yes, lower terraces are...” and she stops, eyeing the hedge and the berry bushes warily.

Oh dear. “The lower terraces are what, Haruna?”

“Are...not good. Shaking, like storm is here. But sky – no storm in sky.”

“Oh.” When he looks at himself, he notes his own tremors. And when he listens he can hear an unnatural susurrus. A glance about him shows every bit of greenery above the soil is rustling without a breeze. He suspects if they dug downward they’d find it extends through every bulb and root.

“No,” he says, “there is no storm in the sky.”

Haruna is silent. She looks around the terrace and shakes her head.

West. West. It’s getting easier to go west every day.

He’s made up his mind. “Haruna.”

“Yes, master?”

“Down in my room, in my study, on my desk – and in it, mind, and all about it as well, I’m not the most terribly organised person – my desk, has all you’ll need to see these terraces blossom. Schematics and plans and crop rotations and lists of materials and thoughts, goodness, whole pages of thoughts on what to plant where when. And not a few very stern letters about that stupid glass roof on the southward terrace. The one we were on when Kíli visited.”

“Master?”

“And of course there’s the outstanding bills and orders and such with Dale, you’ll need to deal with those. No helping that. Get Ase to aid you. And I’ll need to edit the royal mandate, put your name on it instead of mine, but that can be done easily enough. Fíli will make sure it gets through all the blasted bureaucracy.”

“Master.”

“And you can have my rooms, of course. And probably a good lot of my other things. I’ll not be able to take much, though I suppose I can get some things sent after me –”

“Master! Please, be stopping. Please. I do not understand. Master I do not –” she pauses to draw in a breath, and for the first time since he started babbling Bilbo looks at her, and sees that she is crying, “– I do not – you go? Why say – why say this if you not go? Go where?”

“West,” he says, and can say no more.

He is sat on a low bench at the edge of the terrace when she returns a few minutes later, a tray of tea held delicately in her hands, tears still drying on her face. The tray is put slowly on a small table next to the bench, the wood clacking softly against the table’s glass top. Haruna pours two cups, one with red flowers and one with blue birds. A cube of sugar in one, a slice of lemon in the other. Bilbo takes the one with sugar, the red flowers matching his waistcoat nicely. She sits beside him, and for a while there is nothing but the glint of sun off snow, the steam of hot tea, the smell of soil.

At last, as she cradles her empty cup, Haruna speaks. “You are going back to Shire.” She cannot quite look at him.

“Yes,” he says, but that is wholly insufficient, “the storm, Haruna, the storm.”

“There is no storm.”

“Yes there is. It is me. It is Erebor. It is...Thorin Oakenshield, son of Thrain. Thorin Oakenshield, King under the Mountain. Thorin.”

She looks up at him now. “The King.”

He laughs, bitter. “Yes, Thorin. My King, and isn’t that a joke.” Albeit not a very funny one.

Haruna then decides to set off on what seems a complete tangent. “I was, this morn, before plants are shake and air is tight, I was to ask Master of love.”

“Love?” He stares at her and feels his face crumple. “You were going to ask me of love?”

“Yes –”

“What on this good green earth do you think I know of love?”

“Much. Much, Master.”

The pain in the soil, the tense feasts, his foolish, foolish plan with the Arkenstone...

“No. I know nothing. Nothing worth the telling.” Haruna looks set to speak again, perhaps to explain what she thinks love has to do with the current conversation, but Bilbo has other things that need doing. “Go and get the others,” he tells her, and her mouth snaps shut, “go and get all of them and bring them up here. And bring something to drink with a bit of a kick, if you please.”

She does, without complaint. His apprentices find him – bench abandoned, tea carelessly left half finished – sat in amongst a collection of berry bushes. He’s cross-legged, facing west, with his face lifted to catch the breeze and his fingers buried in the soil.

“Sit,” he says. They arrange themselves so they make a perfect circle. To his left, Haruna holds another tray. This one bears seven small clear glasses, and a pitcher of strong rice wine. She places it down on the earth and waits. All of them look to him.

“Hobbits are terrible at big goodbyes,” he says, and says no more until the panicked whispering that it generates has died down, from plants and dwarves both. “Terrible at them. Mainly because we never get practice; when you all live just a day or so walk away from everyone you care about, goodbye is generally only a temporary, casual thing. We make a big fuss of it, of course, because as you know hobbits are good at making fusses of things. But we know that in a little while we shall see each other again. For tea, or a walk, or someone’s birthday. So we’re rather bad at big goodbyes. So I’m rather bad at them.”

“Grand Master,” Ase says, but Bilbo hushes her.

“Give me a moment,” he says, “just a moment, to work things out, and then you can speak.” Pushing himself to his feet is harder than normal, because he’s still shaking, and he has to take hold of Haruna’s shoulder to stabilise himself. Her face is crumpled, and she can’t meet his eye.

I was to ask Master of love.

He takes a breath. “I love you all, very dearly. More than I can express, in truth, and if I say so myself I’m usually not half bad at expressing things.” Sólveig laughs quietly. “You are, without peer, the best bunch of green-fingered fellows I’ve ever had the joy of working with. Teaching you has been the utmost pleasure, and privilege, and, well...” He shuffles, and clears his throat. “This mountain has not been an easy place to be, for reasons you all know – and it’s for those reasons, and more, that you’ve probably all guessed because you’re a bunch of gossipy busy-bodies, bless your souls, that I’m leaving – but despite those hardships, the time this mountain has given me with you is something I’d not wish trade for all the peace the Shire has to offer. And that’s a great deal of peace, I’ll have you know.”

Ebbe, sat to his right, presses a rough palm to his hip. “You’re leaving us.”

Bilbo swallows, and opens his mouth, and closes it, and has to force the words out through a barricade of tears. “Yes. You are all a blessing, you are all – good gracious I am so very proud of all of you. But Erebor is hollowing me out. So I must sacrifice this joy for some peace, or I do not know what shall be left of me.”

The hand he still has on Haruna’s shoulder is covered by her own. “You must go west.”

“You all mean the world to me,” he says, “but I cannot stay.”

Quietly, Halli starts to cry.

In the end, once their grief has settled, he is sent off with a blessing and a glass of rice wine.

“May Mahal and Gimizhbuznâl watch your path.” Halli says, lifting zir own glass to the sky in salutation. “May your garden never wither, may your hearth never grow cold.”

There is a chorus of soft, heartfelt ‘aye’s. The terrace seems to dim as he steps off of soil onto stone.

They help him pack; two bags, small and easy to carry. Other things are set aside to be sent by the slow and safe caravans that head south through Rohan. Everything else, he leaves to them.

“Haruna is your Grand Master now,” he tells them as his last shirt is folded away. “But you must all help each other. Get some tips from those Gardeners in the Iron Hills and beyond, if you can, and make sure you bully the other guilds enough that they pay you heed.”

Ase laughs and shakes her head. “We’ll be fine, Grand Master.”

“None of that now. I’m just Bilbo.”

“Bilbo. We’ll be fine.”

Looking at them all, he knows she’s right. He’s trained them well. They are ready.

“Just...make sure Fíli gets the relevant paperwork, alright? I’d hate for a bit of bureaucratic nonsense to be what I leave you with.”

There’s a shout, and the two of them turn to see Sólveig waving hairbrushes about and Ebbe scowling at her. Halli is in a corner, debating the merits of moving a cabinet, and Gróa is making a valiant effort at finding his handkerchief. Haruna is at the window, thumbs tucked in the pockets of her waistcoat.

“No,” says Ase, “this is what you leave us with.”

“Chaos?”

The look she gives him dismisses his attempt at humour with a gentle grace. She can see right through him. “Family.”

Family. Isn’t that a thought.

“Well,” he says, “well. Gather round everyone! Come on now, gather round! There’s one last thing this old hobbit has to teach you before he goes a-wandering on the road.”

They come, each of them in their red waistcoats, hidden under work robes and muddy shawls and braided hair.

He hasn’t got any notion of what he’s going to tell them until he opens his mouth. “Love,” he begins, “is a strange thing. It comes in all kinds of forms, and in all kind of packages. It hurts, because there are people involved, and people are notoriously dangerous for one’s emotional state. And sometimes it’s not healthy, not healthy at all. But if it’s a good love, if it’s joyful and trusting and it builds you up, then it’s worth hanging on to. Hear me, all of you? Good love is worth hanging on to.”

Across from him, Haruna’s eyes focus, and she nods like he has just said something very wise. He hopes he has.

He clears his throat. “Right, that raven sent off? Good. Who wants to see me down to Dale?”

They all do, and he parts with them, finally, painfully, in a side room of the royal manse. He watches them walk away down winding stairs until he can’t bear it anymore. Satomi holds him as he cries, and Bard sends the servants away, and Tilda whispers so a warm breeze curls around him.

“After the rain, earth hardens,” Satomi says to him, her words soothing him as he hiccups into her sleeve. “So shall you grow taller, Bilbo of the Shire.”

He feels the peace of it upon him, and knows it for what it is; a blessing, a hope. Pulling himself from the safety of her hold is not so hard with those words in his ears. It is made easier by catching glimpses of all their faces, worried and calm and glad.

“We’ll see you again,” Tilda says, “with your roots down deep.” The wind picks up speed.

Satomi smiles, and wipes his face with a cotton cloth. “And when we do, your welcome here will be undiminished.”

They all take a boat down the canals to Laketown, Bard keeping up an amicable chatter with the boaters and fishers and everyone else who will listen to him. Tilda stays pressed to Bilbo’s side. When Satomi starts her haggling in the harbour with a tall elven barge captain, Tilda digs into her pockets and presses something into Bilbo’s hand. Upon inspection Bilbo finds that it’s a sunflower seed, small and striped.

“They grow tall,” she says, “like you will, one day. Maybe not today or tomorrow, and maybe never as tall as you think you should be. But you’ll grow. You’ll be ok.”

He can’t help but stare at her.

“It’s a story,” she says at his look, “I don’t mean you’re actually going to grow.”

“I know,” he whispers, “I know. I’m just...touched is all.”

Tilda blinks. “Oh. Good.”

Satomi secures him a place on a trading barge to take him through the woodland waterways, and a caravan to take him onward to Rivendell once the barge can go no further. After Rivendell he shall have to find his own way, but that shall not be so hard. Lord Elrond shall no doubt know of safe ways to get to Bree, and then the Shire, and then...and then, upon the eastern borders of Buckland, he shall be able to find his way home with his eyes closed and his hands tied fast together.

Once negotiations are finished he is gifted with five kisses and five hugs, and he leaves the last of his friends behind in the harbour. They turn north, for home, and he contents himself with seeking out a quiet inn to await the morning. It is only midafternoon, just over half a day from his goodbye on the terrace. It feels like a lifetime ago.

The inn he finds is small and out of the way. Cheap and cheerful. He arranges things with the landlady and sets his bags in his room, and then settles himself on a solitary bench a few feet from the front door, high up above the walkways of Laketown on a small porch before the inn’s entrance. It allows him a breeze and a moment of quiet. Fire catches slowly in his pipe as he lights it, and the smoke winds gently up above the rooftops. He sighs, and smokes, and sets himself to wait the hours out.

Just as he has at last tricked himself into a modicum of calm, a raven arrives. They perch on the end of the bench, looking rather worse for wear; feathers are bent out of alignment, dust caught on several of them, and the poor creature cannot seem to stop shifting from foot to foot.

“Mister Baggins?” They ask.

Bilbo is hesitant to answer, but it’s not like being the only hobbit in the whole of Rhovanion isn’t a giveaway. “Yes, that’s me.”

“Brön daughter of Crön. A message.” Brön clears her throat. “‘Baggins, come back right now. Your Halls are a calamity. Your apprentices are a wreck. What are you doing? Come back right now.’” It must be from Dís, he can tell. She always is rather blunt.

Before Bilbo can even formulate a word of reply a second raven comes careening in, crashing into the first and sending them both flying and squawking indignantly. They circle each other before settling beside each other. Bilbo looks at them and feels a pool of dread grow in his belly.

The second raven looks at him. “Eärn, child of Bërna, with a message from her royal Highness Princess Fíli for Grand Master Baggins.”

“It’s not Grand Master anymore. I quit.”

The protest only makes the raven look uncomfortable before they continue. “‘I’m so sorry Bilbo, I am. Please don’t leave like this. Let us heal things before you go home.’”

The dread swells into a dull kind of fury as more ravens appear, in pairs and alone, all fluttering about him and one another in a contained calamity. So this is to be his goodbye. Any pretence he had has vanished. Now he feels reduced to the thief he once was in truth, disappearing in the night. Perhaps he shall always be a thief. Perhaps the ending shall always be in chaos.

“‘We shake off the dust and clasp hands again,’” one from Dalla recites to him, and with that he stands and flees inside, leaving a cacophony of ravens and the landlady’s bewilderment in his wake.

The door to his room bolts closed with a satisfying thunk, and he secures a chair under it for good measure. The window is a bit more of a problem, but in the end he ties it shut with his neckerchief. The cawing of the half-dozen ravens outside continues for a good while, but eventually the sounds fade and Bilbo hopes they’ve gone away. He crawls beneath the covers of his low bed and hopes his journey tomorrow shall not have to become another escape.

In the morning he settles the breakfast bill with the landlady and tries to ignore her suspicious looks, covering himself with his cloak and hurrying out the door. A glance upward and about reveals an utter lack of ravens. Thank goodness. The walkway towards the southern docks is crowded with humans and a few elves but no dwarves, and with such auspicious tidings he sets off. Once he is in Rivendell perhaps he shall write a letter to Haruna to see what on earth happened with the line of Durin, but for now he is merely happy to be on his way. The tall press of bodies makes him near invisible, and he takes comfort in it. Salty fishers and dock workers pass by, laugher load, exchanging the morning’s gossip.

“Something a bit off about it all, is all I’m saying.” Says one rough looking woman.

“What would you know about it eh?”

“I’ve been involved in a few barneys down that end of the harbour. Know the feel of them. And this group was on the brink, I tell ya.”

“I don’t know...”

The rest is lost to the growing crowd, and Bilbo tries to ignore what little he heard. It won’t be his end of the harbour. A well seasoned traveller like the captain wouldn’t be within a mile of it. Satomi knows her people well.

All his attempts at diverting his fear are abandoned when he spots Haruna and Sigrid hovering about the dock entrance. Their gazes are scanning the crowds, and with her height Sigrid spots him first, her eyes widening and her lips moving around a word Bilbo can’t catch. Haruna turns, and they move, two red figures pushing through the crowd towards him.

“What’s gone wrong?” He says as they reach him. There’s no other reason they would be here. They’ve said their goodbyes; to loiter would only drag out the pain.

“Perhaps you should –”

“Come back master –”

Bilbo cuts them off with a slash of his hand, and moves past them onward to the docks. Maybe they realise their folly, as they follow him in silence along wooden walkways and into the open space beyond. Masts fill the air like skinny trees in winter, sails snapping in the wind and wood creaking. It stinks more than the rest of the town, if that’s possible; fish and oil and dried water weeds. As they move towards the end of the dock where Bilbo’s ride waits, a hobbit and his two taller tails, Bilbo begins to hear the echoes of shouts.

“I knew I wasn’t going to be able to leave in peace,” Bilbo mutters.

Haruna sighs behind him. “Maybe we go back little bit –”

“No. I’ve come this far, I’ll not be turned back by some – some soft-footed dwarf, some fool, some – oh dear.”

They turn a corner and emerge into a scene that would not look out of place in a comedic play, or a hobbit’s extended family dinner. The rest of the Dalish royal family has come down again, as well as the Company, and the Ereborean royal family, and his very own Gardeners. Kíli is off to one side, chewing on his fingernails and talking to Bofur and Ebbe, who for some reason has decided that bringing a spade to an occasion like this is an absolute must. Satomi is trying to keep dwarves off of the elven captain’s boat, and Dís is trying to get them on, and Dalla, for all Bilbo knows, is keeping score. Tilda has found a perch on Dwalin’s shoulders, Fíli is consulting what is presumably a map of Laketown, Halli is leading the rest of the Gardeners in distracting the dwarven guards from the elven boaters, and Ori is, typically, chronicling the entire thing.

Ase, Bard and Thorin are arguing. Loudly. Bard looks painfully comical, glaring down at two dwarves near half his height but with enough strength between them to throw him a good way out into the lake. Ase has a large handful of paper and is almost hitting Thorin with it, shouting about procedure and ethics and common cross-cultural practices.

“They haven’t seen us yet,” Sigrid says after a moment, “we can still leave.”

Bilbo sighs. And then, with a deep reluctance, steps forward and tries to catch someone’s attention. His wave is a small thing, half-hearted and feeble, but Tilda’s eyes swivel to fix upon him. Her hands flap and she makes Dwalin turn and come towards him. The dwarf’s eyes grow large in his face, and once they are clear of the crowd he shouts, wordless. Tilda slides off of him and rushes forward. She barrels into Bilbo, burying her face in the sleeve of his travelling jacket.

“Bilbo, Bilbo,” she says into rough cloth, “if the mountain could shake, it would be.”

It’s an utterly opaque statement, but before Bilbo can think of anything to reply with, let along voice it, they are overrun by dwarves and humans and the shadows of irate elves. Bilbo pulls in a deep breath, and sets his eyes on the dwarven king.

Thorin looks wretched, and the first thing out of his mouth, before Bilbo can even begin yelling at him, is “I will not stop you from going, but I beg for leave to speak before you do.”

Bilbo’s teeth click shut around the beginning of a broken sound, and he nods at Thorin in lieu of speaking.

“I’m sorry,” Thorin says, and bows forwards like he has been struck, his greying hair falling about his face.

Bilbo blinks, and processes the words, and decides this is not at all what he thought was going to happen. “Sorry for what?”

“Everything.”

Bilbo clears his throat. “Well, that’s...that’s not very clear at all –”

“If my ancestors could see me, khathuzmi e, they would be ashamed.”

Bilbo is shocked, for dwarves do not often, even now, speak their cradle tongue about him. His words are stolen from him, and all he can do is stare at the sway of Thorin’s braids in the winds off the lake. Bard takes the opportunity the silence provides to suggest a relocation from the dock to a private garden nearby, lest they become ‘gossip for fishers and bargefolk from Rivendell to Rhun’, and with little objection they all comply. Haruna finds him, and her hand slips into his, and the rest of his Gardeners form a circle around him as they move. It grants him some time to think, but he finds it wasted; his mind is fixed on Thorin saying ‘I’m sorry’, impossible, incongruous, and against everything he expected. So he finds himself, no greater in thought, sat upon a wooden bench enclosed within high red wooden fences, amidst a garden full of overflowing greenery that twists and turns as it will. Even if it doesn’t grant actual privacy – those fences may be high but they are also thin – at least it grants the pretence of such. Bilbo accepts a cup of cool water. Haruna moves to him as he stands, but he waves off all of the Gardeners as he makes his way over to Thorin. The dwarf sits in a wicker chair, one of a pair, each a reasonable distance from the other. Thorin holds his own cup and naught else. At his signal his own folk move away, Fíli and Dís and Dalla ushering them off.

Perhaps there is some kind of sensitivity to this, and not a mere panic. Bilbo sits down in the second chair and waits. All others drift off, hidden behind foliage and short wooden dividers, until if Bilbo focuses himself on these two wicker chairs he can fool himself that they are the only two people for miles.

“I am sorry,” Thorin says finally, and Bilbo makes himself keep waiting, because he does not know what this is. “I am sorry, for I was a fool. I thought things were clear between us –” Thorin cuts himself off, murmuring and shaking his head, “no, I pretended things were clear, because to think otherwise was to admit to a depth of complication I did not wish to delve into.”

Bilbo thinks carefully about his breathing, about how he’s holding his glass of water. “What did you think was between us that was so clear?”

Two blue eyes rise to meet his gaze, and then flick away. “If I say it I will seem a fool.”

“Then say it, and be a fool. We are already here.”

“I had thought us in love.” His voice catches, and Bilbo looks in wonder as the dwarf opposite him must compose himself.

Love. Love? Can it be so? But it must be, because Thorin is not given to lying, and is terrible at it besides. Air leaves Bilbo’s lungs in a great gust. “I thought the same. But then...”

There is quiet about them, only the wind through leaves and the creak of their chairs.

“Then I tried to kill you,” Thorin says.

Bilbo well remembers the feel of the Arkenstone in his palm, in his pocket, nestled next to his ring and his heart. He remembers the vice of a strong hand about his neck, and the coolness of the air beneath his feet. Death had found him, he had thought, in the arms of a man he had killed for.

“I hated you,” Thorin says, “in that moment I hated you. Your betrayal had torn me asunder, and in my rage I though...I could not see any other options.”

“You were ill,” Bilbo makes himself say, because it’s true.

Thorin jerks upwards, his eyes wet and his lips thin. “That does not excuse me. My mind was a fog, but it does not excuse me.”

That loosens something in Bilbo, and in a rush he releases long held thoughts to Thorin. “I was so afraid. I thought I was going to die. I thought you were going to throw me. I’d been so stupid, thinking I was helping, I had no notion of what I had given away. Of what the Arkenstone truly was. I thought it a bauble.”

“I know.”

“A bauble. But it is the mountains heart, and I’d given it away like a common jewel. And going down that wall, with your eyes upon my back – I thought I was going to be sick while still climbing down. And in the tent! I’d wanted – I’d wanted to scream, to tear at you. I hated you so.”

Thorin nods, utterly understanding.

Bilbo laughs. “I was a fool. I would undo it all.”

“As would I.”

“Why did you keep me around? After all I did, I thought myself merely a placeholder, someone to get you all on your feet until a dwarven Gardener was willing to come from the Iron Hills.”

Thorin nods again, then shakes his head, then aborts a motion to place his hand over Bilbo’s own. “No, that is not so. I love you, and I wanted you near, and you were – are – thoroughly qualified for the position of Grand Master Gardener. You were not a tool. You were...” He stops, and cannot seem to go on.

They watch as a leaf comes away from its branch and drifts down to rest on the loam. Bilbo finishes his water, and looks at Thorin out of his periphery.

“Why did we not say any of this before?” He wonders.

With a clink Thorin sets his cup down on a wooden table beside him. “Because – for my part at least – I desired to think dwarves and hobbits similar in all things, and so ignored all differences. If I had not, perhaps I would have looked also at our own, personal differences.”

“I don’t know,” Bilbo chuckles, “I thought you all terribly different, but I paid no more attention to these details than you.” Thorin winces, and when Bilbo frowns at him he shifts uncomfortably in his chair.

“I proposed to you.”

Bilbo blinks. “When?”

“A week past, just before the dinner. The necklace.”

“You didn’t say anything! You can’t just give a fellow a necklace. I mean, hobbits just use ribbon, but we hardly wear it all the time.”

“Yes, one of those...cultural differences. Fíli had much your reaction.”

“Trust Fíli to be the only one of us to think things through.” Wait. “I took the necklace off. Did that mean something?”

Thorin winces again. “Aye, that and the kiss, with your apprentice.” Haruna, he must mean. “They were a rejection of my affections and an acceptance of hers.”

Bilbo can do naught but stare at him for a while. The height of their own folly rears before him. “You do know she is utterly smitten with one of your personal guards?”

“Fíli made mention of that as well.”

There is a pause, and then Bilbo says, slowly. “Thorin, I cannot accept your proposal. I would not have accepted it then.”

His face does not fall, nor his shoulders slump, but Bilbo suspects that is because he is prepared rather than unaffected. “I know.”

“I am sorry. For this. For everything.”

“As I am. We have each done the other much wrong.”

More, Bilbo realises, than can be fixed within half an hour in a secluded garden. They cannot finish this now – it would be as much a lie as their earlier, false reconciliations were. They must take time. They must still part.

“We need more time than this.” He says.

A laugh, high and sweet, comes from among the greenery. Thorin looks for it briefly, then looks at Bilbo, and sighs. Bilbo drains the last of his water, now made too warm by his hands.

“If you go,” Thorin says, voice quiet and reserved, “I would ask that you allow me to write to you. Words on paper are naught compared to words aloud to a hobbit perhaps, but for a dwarf...” his words fade.

“I know. I remember the contract. Words have power. And, yes, you may write me. And yes, I am going. I cannot – we are too close here.”

Thorin nods. “The mountain did tangle us up together. Needs must we have space to breath. To heal.”

“Yes, exactly.”

“Will you come back?”

It’s a valid question. Bilbo had though he was leaving forever, that he would only ever see dwarves again in the gentle confines of the Shire. But now?

“Perhaps. To Dale, I think. Not to the mountain. Maybe. Probably. I cannot say. But to Dale, I will. I have the promise of a room in the royal manse.”

They murmur to each other for a while longer, and Bilbo tentatively reaches out to brush Thorin’s fingers with his own, and it is enough. For now. Perhaps one day he shall need, and shall have, more. Or perhaps not. But here, there is a peace growing between them, and he is content.

When she returns, alone but with the shadows of the others not far behind her, Haruna gives Bilbo his necklace. Thorin shows them both the minute Khuzdul inscribed on the fine links, and then, gently, Bilbo places it back in Thorin’s hands. Haruna retreats again with a sad smile upon her face.

“I don’t know what you would normally do with something like this, or if this is even a thing that normally happens, but if you can, if you will, I would like you to keep it,” he says to Thorin. “It is not a promise, for I think neither of us can safely make those anymore. But it is a hope.”

“Hope,” Thorin says, smiling and clinging to the chain, “is more than enough.”

“I – hah – I hope so. I hope we can endure this.”

“We will not endure, Bilbo. We will heal.”

And Bilbo thinks they just might, at that.

When at last they return to the dock, their goodbyes have to be repeated all over again. Save this time he is able to say goodbye to the line of Durin with more than a bureaucratic letter. It is better than he wished. Upon the deck of the slow moving boat, the captain gives him permission to stand by the rail nearest the dock while they push off. Bilbo lifts his voice in a song of home and rest, a hobbitish kind of blessing. Haruna and Amina are stood together, all the apprentices about them. Thorin’s company shouts and waves and weeps by turns, and Fíli runs along the pier with laughter in her mouth, following the barge for a ways. And Thorin – Thorin smiles, and grips his sister’s hand. Dís nods at Bilbo. Then she raises her voice with his in the chorus, and Bilbo didn’t know she’d ever learnt the song, but she sings perfectly. Quieter voices join her – Óin and Halli and Fíli carry them, and the rest follow in their own way. And as the barge drifts into some fog and the docks slips out of sight, Bilbo is suddenly struck again by how much he loves all these folk. How much they have changed one another. He is leaving family behind. Temporarily, he hopes. They are not so far away, even if it’s more than a day’s walk.

The fog shifts for an instant, and he is blessed with a last view of the crowd on the docks.

“May your roots grow deep!” He calls, a benediction both hobbits and dwarves can understand, and he fancies he can see them all smile.