A/N: I'm sorry. It was either this or "The Sacred Rubber Ducky of Thrain."

"Only a pink arrow, fired from a windlance, could've pierced the dragon's hide." Bard drew himself up proudly, nodding toward the windlance on its platform above the rooftops of Laketown.

"A pink arrow?" Thorin cried incredulously. "That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard."

"How dare you insult my ancestor, Girion!" Bard roared, turning an indignant glare upon the dwarf. "But for that pink arrow you mock, the dragon's scale would not have been loosened, and your quest would be in vain."

"That's unbelievably stupid," Thorin continued, rolling his eyes. "And how would you know if a scale were loosened anyway? At that distance, Girion would have been lucky to see the dragon at all, let alone a scale coming loose."

"Well," Bard tugged at the collar of his kangaroo leather coat, "a, erm... well, a, uh... A bird told him."

A lengthy silence ensued.

"A bird told him?" said Thorin at last.

"Yeah," said Bard. "And then Girion whispered this information to his second-in-command before he charged back into the fray and was incinerated by the beast."

"I'd probably get myself incinerated, too, if I'd just begun hearing birds talking."

Bard, who'd turned to inspect something terribly interesting on the wall behind him, rounded on Thorin. "It's a family thing! I wouldn't expect you to know about it. Birds... speak to us."

"Well, I've heard enough," said Dwalin, looking disturbed. "Let's get out of here before this lunatic starts hearing birds telling him to kill us in our sleep."

"Brother," Balin laid a hand on his brother's shoulder, "let's not be hasty."

"What are you, an ent?"

"We're not supposed to know about ents, Dwal."

"Oh."

"I'm not a lunatic!" Bard wailed, tearing up. At least a dozen hands shot out, proffering hankies.

"Now, now, don't let's make a scene," said Balin. "He didn't mean it."

"Yes, I did."

"No, you didn't, brother, so shut up." Balin glared at Dwalin and made a rude gesture, which elicited a snicker from Nori.

Bard gratefully accepted one of the hankies and proceeded to loudly blow his nose into it.

"Now," said Bilbo, pulling his blue coat more tightly about himself, "about that scale that got knocked loose..."

"Oh, don't bring that up again," muttered Thorin.

Bilbo ignored him. "Where, exactly, was the scale?"

Bard sniffled, wiping his eyes with the hankie. "Well, they found it in the lake."

"No, no, I mean... where did it come from?"

"From the dragon! I thought I'd just-"

Bilbo waved a hand, shaking his head quickly. "No, I meant, what part of the dragon did it come from?"

"Oh. You might have said." Bard pocketed the hankie. "Under the left wing. So the bird told Girion. Here, I'll show you the pretty thing."

Bard retrieved an ornately carved wooden box from beneath his bed, set it on the table, and opened it reverently. "Behold!" he said grandly. "The loosened scale of Smaug himself, passed from father to son since the days of Girion, kept safe until such a time as the Mountain's reclaiming could be achieved."

Thorin took a quick look at the scale and sighed, blinking several times. "Bard, that's an oyster shell painted red."

Bard turned an appalled look on Thorin. "Did I hear you correctly, Master Dwarf? You would dare cast doubt upon the sacred relic passed down to me from Lord Girion of Dale?!"

Fili and Kili snickered into their sleeves, and Bard whirled around to glare at them. "What's this? You, too, doubt the authenticity of this sacred relic of my lordly house?!"

Thorin started to comment, but Balin shot him a warning look. "It's alright, Bard," said the old dwarf in what he hoped was a mollifying way. "I'm sure it's very special to you. It's a very nice - very old-"

"Oyster shell," Dwalin interjected, and Balin elbowed him in the gut.

"Dragon scale," he said quickly, "but right now, what we need are weapons. Can you get them for us?"

"No!" cried Bard, his face reddening again. "I won't give a thing to these unbelievers! Oh, the insult they offer me! Don't they know sacred relics when they see them?"

"I do," said Thorin. "Here, let me have a closer look at it." Bard reluctantly handed the 'scale' over.

Thorin made a great show of examining it. Then, without warning, he snapped the brittle shell in half.

"Nooooooooooo!" shrieked Bard, lunging for the dwarf, mad with horror.

It would be nice to say the encounter ended without a fistfight, and without descendants of Dale sobbing into a pile of handkerchiefs, and without multiple people contemplating jumping out of windows, and without the Master of Laketown's guards hearing the ruckus and showing up, and without a certain Dwarven Company being marched off to jail. Unfortunately, saying thus would be decidedly untrue.

The days that followed saw Bard cradling his precious pink arrow to him at night while he slept, the two broken pieces of the 'dragon scale' clutched in one hand. In his dreams, birds would come to him and whisper secrets in his ears, knowledge no one else in the world knew. This gave Bard a feeling of existential significance, and got him through that rough time when his little, barge-steering world was turned upside down.

The dwarves, however, were eventually freed, and when the business with the dragon was over, and Bard had, indeed, slain the beast with his precious pink arrow, Thorin was forced to concede that - whether Bard was nuts or not - he deserved some recognition. So Thorin decreed that a massive golden replica of Bard's 'dragon scale' be forged, and given to the bargeman, accompanied by great pomp and circumstance.

And Bard, his children, his golden replica, and his legion of imaginary talking birds lived happily ever after.

The End