Summary- Hobbits believe that all things come in equivalents, in order to gain, something of equal value must be lost. Bilbo Baggins is born blind but his gift allows him to see through the vibrations of the ground he walks on. Not that anyone outside of the Shire knew of the gifted ones, which made it all the more confusing at to why Gandalf would want a blind hobbit for a burglar.
Authors Note- Umm, I may have started writing another story without updating my others? Kind of? I'm sorry but this just wouldn't leave me alone. I was baby sitting for my neighbours when the little guy wanted to watch Avatar. As he was watching Toph beat the heck out of some fire nation brats he said the oddest thing: 'If I could bend the earth, I'd make a hobbit hole.' Bam! We get blind Blibo who sees things the way Toph does, only without earth bending.
Chapter One- Feeling but never Seeing
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Hobbits were a secretive race. Hidden among their rolling hills and in their comfy hobbit holes, the hobbits averted their eyes from strangers and kept their distance from any that were not of the hobbit variety. Many reasons were supplied for their behavior. Some believed that the hobbit-kind feared all that was located beyond their green lands, that the foreign people of other races caused tremors to start in their spines. Others thought that Hobbits were mere creatures of habit and disliked outsiders due to the spontaneity they placed on their daily schedules.
Though both theories had merit, they were both incorrect. Rather, hobbits kept quiet about their ways for a more paramount reason. Namely, their gifts. No one knows much about the history of the hobbits, not even by the hobbits themselves. They were an ancient race-though they didn't know when it was exactly they came to be- created by the green lady herself, the earth queen, Yavanna.
Other than this piece of information, notes on the travels of the hobbit race all those ages ago and the more recent history, not much else was known about them, not even their gifts. The hobbits believed in equivalents: in order to gain, something of equal value must be lost. This is the case with all hobbit gifts.
The first Thain of the Shire was Bucca of the Marish, who founded the Oldbuck family who later became the Brandybuck clan when they moved across the Brandywine river and founded Buckland. Bucca of the Marish was crushed under a tree in his youth, and even after healing the injury would later hinder his breathing and spur on the development of his gift. Bucca could breathe perfectly underwater, far better than he could on land. This was the first detailed account of a gift within the hobbit race as opposed to the vague mentioning in old hobbit Chronicles.
When the Oldbucks left, a new chieftain was elected, the Tooks. After becoming Thain the head Took had many children, his youngest daughter was born a mute and on her sixteenth birthday, no more than a hobbit kit with bouncing dark curls, she spoke into the mind of her father for the first time. It became obvious that a hobbits gift- should they have them- were given as compensation, something gained through something lost.
A hobbit whose mind couldn't fathom the written word could speak many languages with perfection, a fauntling who had almost died climbing a tree would develop wall crawling skills, a fully grown hobbits family was attacked by wolves, they would soon be able to communicate with animals. Some hobbits appreciated their gifts, others did not as they often reminded that singular lad or lass what it was exactly they had to lose to gain. But, all the same, each hobbit, gifted or not, kept quiet.
Bilbo Baggins was no different. For you see, Bilbo was born blind and as he grew, so did his gift. The moment Belladonna and Bungo Baggins set eyes on their precious child, newly brought into the world they knew that he would one day develop a gift of his own, and he did. It soon became obvious to his parents that despite Bilbo's lack of eyesight, he could still maneuver perfectly around the gardens of Bag-end and the roads of the Shire.
Bilbo at times would stare into space in one direction for short periods of time before being distracted. Only moments later would some hobbit come walking from the direction in which the young Bilbo had set his sights. Every hobbit was aware of the gifted, so no surprise came from the Shire folk as they watched an unhindered Bilbo as he raced through forests and jumped over fallen logs with other, perfect sighted kits.
Although blind, his gift was of seismic sense; he could feel even the slightest vibrations across the ground- the march of ants, the slapping feet of hobbits, a leaf that had fallen from the tallest trees. He could feel the presence of trees as the wind sailed through their branches and shook the leaves into a vibrating mess, he could sense the presence of building with their -unnoticeable to the lone eye- shaking structures.
Through this heightened sense of touch and hearing he could visualize people's locations, their relative distance from him and their physical build. Unfortunately, his way of seeing never brought him more than that. Bilbo had never known what his parents looked like, many could tell him over and over that Belladonna had eyes like the greenest of forests and that Bungo's hair had been golden much like his own but Bilbo did not know of colors. He didn't know of the sky for his gift only extended along the ground and what touched it.
Bilbo didn't know of the way birds looked like as they flew through the air, or what clouds looked like, nor did he have any sense of them. He felt the sun on his skin but just couldn't picture it, he could hardly fathom the idea of it and if it weren't for voices and physical differences, he would not be able to differ family from stranger. As it were, Bilbo didn't need to hear the voice of the obviously male figure approaching him to tell him that this man was a foreigner.
The strangers steps were not as light as a hobbits and were heavier, making denser vibrations reach the leathery soles of his feet where most of his sight happened. He was taller, far taller and walked with a cane of some sort, or something heavier; a staff. Not many on Middle-Earth walked with a staff, a staff in which they didn't lean on. Bilbo could safely say that a wizard was making his way to Bag-end.
The wizards steps were confident and sure, showing to Bilbo who had fifty years of practice in his art that the wizard had indeed walked the roads of the Shire before. There had only been one such wizard before, a friend of his mother: Belladonna, back before she had been a Baggins and still held her Took name. One Gandalf the Grey.
Bilbo contemplated putting away his pipe and locking himself in his comfy smial and away from the meddlesome old Istari but thought better of it when he realized how rude it would seem. Not to mention how quickly the grey wizard was advancing upon him, he would never make it in without being spotted. With a sigh, Bilbo awaited his fate and to his mild displeasure a shadow soon fall over him, blocking his feel of the sun.
"Good morning." Bilbo greeted when the wizard did not speak.
"What do you mean?" Gandalf asked, though Bilbo found it hard to believe anyone could not grasp the concept of a greeting for the late morn. "Do you wish me a good morning or do you mean it is a good morning whether I want it or not?"
Bilbo opened his mouth to respond but was cut off, "Or perhaps you mean to say that you feel good on this particular morning? Or are you simply stating that this is a morning to be good on? Hm?"
At this Yavanna given moment, none of those. "Let's just keep it a simple greeting," Came Bilbo's unimpressed reply after a moment of quiet.
A deliberate silence ensued as the hobbit could feel eyes rove over his sitting form making him shudder lightly. Bilbo often wondered if this is what it felt like when his own sea foam green eyes landed on anyone, if his glazed over orbs unseeing would cause the same feeling. He, himself did not like the odd prickling on his skin that he felt when someone looked upon his form in silence and made a conscious effort to not direct his face to a conversation partner while talking. Instead he would turn his neck slightly to the left so that no one would have the misfortune of experiencing that unnerving sensation.
"Can I help you?" He asked, if not to be polite but to subtly hint that he was feeling uncomfortable.
The wizard was apparently oblivious to basic social ques as he only hummed thoughtfully, his eyes still lingering on the deliberately relaxed looking hobbit. "That remains to be seen. I'm looking for someone to share in an adventure." He stated as Bilbo felt him shift to lean on his staff and heard the rustling of fabric as it moved.
Bilbo couldn't help it, in a rare display of thoughtlessness he spoke without thinking, "And you came to a blind hobbit? Is there something wrong with you?" He asked incredulously.
"Do you see your lack of eyesight as a hindrance?" Gandalf asked with little tact.
Bilbo scoffed, "I do not see anything." He felt, he visualized, he painted pictures in his mind that he was quite sure would look nothing like reality if his eyes were to ever work but he never saw. "And no, I don't." He added with a surprising calm born from endless patience when it came time to explain to hobbit kits why it was that he sometimes kept his eyes closed while walking, only with less warmth.
The wizard asked, "If you don't Master hobbit, then why should I?"
Bilbo sniffed, somewhat offended. "You shouldn't." He reprimanded lightly.
He chuckled and to Bilbo's annoyance the sound was soothing and grandfatherly to his ears, easing his impatience. He could hear the genuine warmth in the baritone and it wasn't hard to believe that the wizard meant no harm. It was hard to lie to someone who could hear the tell tale hitches in your voice to signal lies, his senses more delicate since his sight did not develop.
"And I don't. Which is why I am here to invite you on an adventure." His tone now holding no little amount of mirth and all too smug.
Bilbo huffed despite his twitching lips, it was a good play, he had to admit but still, "Then I, with all due respect, must decline but not without thanking you for the offer."
Bilbo stood, walking on the stone front of his garden it was easy to feel everything around him. Rock and solid ground was the easiest to feel on, anything unstable rendered him blind. Truely blind, a feeling he did not like. Grassy plains were not the easiest either, while he could still feel everything around him, the grass served as a buffer for the more solid ground beneath it and often painted a rather murky visual of where everything was located.
With perfect ease he walked to where he felt the post of his letter box stood, rooted within the earth. Through memory and a visualized version of the height of the letter box, he was able to open it swiftly and take out its contents where he would later have his faithful gardener, Gaffer Gamgee or his kind wife, Bell, read them to him.
Shutting the small flap Bilbo turned to the wizard, "I'm sure those in Buckland would be more suited towards your needs." And with a final good morning, Bilbo turned to walk the stairs of his home and return to his seed cake that lay freshly baked on his kitchen table.
"To think," The wizard started gruffly, "That I should have lived to be 'good morninged' by Belladonna Took's son as if I were selling buttons at the door."
Bilbo's shoulders tensed, rising with swirling emotion before they fell and with his back still turned he stopped for a moment in his small climb to his home, his parents home, to whisper, "My mother is dead, Gandalf the Grey and unless you have merry stories to tell, I would ask you to not speak of her."
There was quiet as no one spoke for a moment before, "So you knew who I was."
The hobbits head turned to face the wizard, if only to show the small upward quirk of his lips. "I never forget a voice." His voice was tinged with mirth, his words hiding a jest at the wizards expense, "Even one I haven't heard since I was a babe. That is not to mention the many stories that accompany your name."
"Oh?" Gandalf asked, "And what stories may those be?"
The hobbit pursed his lips, taking a moment to appear thoughtful as if conjuring one anecdote from the recesses of his memory. "The ones where you visit the Shire and take some poor unsuspecting, entirely respectable hobbit on an adventure."
Gandalf cleared his throat, "And how do these stories end?"
Bilbo smiled pleasantly, containing the large grin that wished to spread over his features. "With a good morning and a certain wizard walking away." Bilbo continued walking up the stairs to his smial and threw over his shoulder a quick and hopefully last, "Good morning!"
As if the world had nothing better than to grace him with time, Bilbo with complete nonchalance entered his home and shut the large round door only to hastily lock it when he was sure he was out of sight. He fumbled slightly with the lock and sighed in relief when the quiet click of metal signaled it had been done properly. With his back against the wood of the door he listen with keen ears, ignoring the sound of his loudly palpitating heart and quick breaths.
"Well that does it, it shall be good for him and amusing for me."
Bilbo wanted to groan when he recognized the sound of metal carving into his newly painted door. He could hear the the scraping and breaking of the paint as it's newly dried coat splintered and cracked to make way for what might have been a nail. He could hear the pauses in between, he counted the strokes, all three of them before the dratted wizard left humming a happy tune much to Bilbo's ire.
He felt the happy stomps of the half skipping wizard along the wooden floors of his home on his sensitive feet and when the minute vibrations became less, a sign that the wizard was now at the bottom of the road, Bilbo unlocked the hatch and stepped outside to place his hands on his poor defaced home. While his hands were not nearly as thorough as his feet, Bilbo could still feel seismic happenings with them and would often place them on buildings or fixtures, palms flat to produce a clearer picture of a structures layout in his mind.
In this case, Bilbo already knew the ins and outs of his home and instead felt along the rough- to his sensitive fingertips- wood door until he felt the dips in its surface, courtesy of one grey wizard. He followed it's path, end till end and made a mental drawing in his mind. Somewhere, recognition hit. In one book or another he had felt this symbol before but his memory for touch was not as great as his memory for sounds.
Once more entering his hobbit hole, Bilbo made his way to his small library, the cold sting of his wooden floors feeling rather refreshing after his mildly traumatic encounter with the hobbit snatcher. Though the Baggins could not read in the more traditional sense, Bilbo's parents had been adamant that their child should not miss out on this basic necessity of education and had translations of books made especially for him.
At the start of the fourth row on his book shelf, Bilbo lightly ran his fingertips over the spins, counting them until he reached the sixth one along. Blue, his mother one told him, like the silks of royalty. It was hard to imagine the color blue being anything like silk as he felt the aged texture of his mothers chronicled adventures under his soft hands.
In his grip, the text was a revered relic, one of the few books his mother had left him and no one but he could know its contents. It had been written specifically for him, with recounts of Belladonna Took's different adventures and the knowledge she had come across. Everything of more practical knowledge had been described in sounds, of what they might feel like instead of colors and physical appearances- which was useless information to the blind hobbit.
With practiced hands, Bilbo opened the cover of the tome to flip the pages until he came to the one he knew would have the answers he needed. He ran his pointer finger along the raised dot formations that represented certain characters, until, finally, he found what he was looking for; a detailed account of the symbols his mother had come across in her time out of the Shire.
As his finger moved from left to right, Bilbo's face steadily grew more annoyed until he had finally had enough and shut the blue tome closed with more force than necessary. Letting out a tired sigh, his glazed, pupil-less eyes turned skyward.
"I had better prepare for company then." He murmured to himself, his chin almost touching his chest. The wizard had left an open invitation on his door, signed with the letter G.
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Dwalin was more than used to the long journeys that had since plagued life since the great fires of Smaug, still, he was not one to deny that they still brought exhaustion. It was fair to say he was in no mood to expect surprises. In the shadows of the night, Dwalin climbed the spiraling roads of the small folk homeland and with warriors eyes caught the faintly glowing mark of the grey pilgrim, Tharkun, long before he set foot on the oddly shaped home of the burglar to be.
Its round door was so vastly different from the sharp and strong structures his kin favored, as was the green it had been newly painted. With a grunt, the dwarf raised his fist to deliver a solid rap against the wood but before he could so much as touch the surface, the door sung open to reveal what appeared to be some breed of fae, born from stories told to younglings before sleep.
Not much was known about the hobbits of the Shire, halflings or the small folk as they were named. As it were Dwalin had only heard the name in passing along with rumors of fairies, nymphs and sprites. It wasn't hard to see why such things could be whispered. The hobbit that stood before him was a bonny thing, it was no wonder why some would call these hobbits relations of the fair folk.
The hobbits hair was a pleasing mess of golden curls. Not blonde or fair haired, golden like the veins amid the mines of ole' ages passed, the tips of the bouncing ringlets reaching a shockingly short length as they brushed against lightly pointed ears. Small was the hobbit, only reaching Dwalin's shoulders and soft looking with its rounded features, dressed in a deep green, velvet waist coat and brown cotton pants with golden buttons, leaving only large feet with golden tufts of hair exposed to the night air.
However, the most alarming thing perhaps, about this hobbit was its eyes. In them he saw the swell of waves crashing against sand, such was the light green that appeared in the halfling's eyes. These eyes that held no pupil and glazed over with no sight, this hobbit, was blind.
Though not the most social or genteel of creatures, Dwalin was not so callous as to openly comment upon them. He cleared his throat, "I apologize, it seems I have the wrong home." And yet, there on the door lay the symbol of the wandering wizard.
An amused smile graced the lips of the hobbit. "Company of one Gandalf the Grey wizard?"
Dwalin gave a nod of his head and to his embarrassment the hobbit laughed as he spoke, "I assume you just nodded." His tone full of mirth as his smile stretched that smallest bit wider.
An apology, the second of the night about to spill from his lips was stopped as the hobbit threw up his hands. "I take no offense, any mistakes made are already forgiven."
Dwalin stood in silence, a blind burglar. After a fleeting moment of raging denial, he quickly accepted it. Had he not seen one legged dwarrow wield twin blades with the fierceness of a hammer against steel? Who was not to say this hobbit with sightless eyes was perhaps a burglar of great prowess? It wasn't in his right to so judge before he had seen anything of the slight creature.
Bilbo was more than just amused at what seemed to be a socially inept, bear of a man. He could feel the weight from the vibrations, the height along with it. He could hear the slight clinking of metal as his guest had shuffled in his spot, weapons. Who exactly did Gandalf have entering his home? But most of all he could hear the hesitancy in his voice, the gurgling in his stomach. He could smell the scent of dirt and sweat layering his skin and decided a good feed, bath and rest was something he could offer.
With one fist pressed over his heart Dwalin bowed, despite the fact the hobbit would not see the motion, it was the principle of it all that counted. "Dwalin son of Fundin, at your service."
Bilbo sensed the motion happening, as well as the gentle breeze against his skin the action had created. Bilbo returned the gesture, hoping his guest would think nothing of it, "Bilbo Baggins at yours. Please," He waved a hand to the inside of his home, silently stepping to the left to let Dwalin in.
When he entered with a nod, one Bilbo did not point out, Bilbo halted his guest as soon as he had shut the door. "If you could please leave your more heavier weapons out here, it would be greatly appreciated."
Astonished and the slightest bit suspicious, Dwalin cast his eyes back on the hobbit, "How did you know I am armed?" The words 'if you cannot see' were left unsaid but it was obvious to the dwarf that his host heard them anyway.
With a casual shrug Bilbo inclined his head slightly to make his ears more obvious, "I heard them," Was his simple answer.
Not waiting for him, the hobbit walked through the round openings to where Dwalin could only assume the food resided. With a huff, but remaining respectful to his hosts wishes, he removed the large axe from his back, leaving him feeling slightly naked but comforted by the press of cold steel against his thigh where one of his daggers lay hidden. Placing his other weapons on a low rise table, Dwalin followed the path Bilbo had taken and entered the dining room, only to freeze at the sight.
It was a dream, a memory of another time, when feasts were a staple in his life, when lords and ladies of every mountain would gather to eat and drink. These feasts were for fifty dwarrow and yet, here on this long table was its equal. Not a single space remained on its surface so full of meats and dishes as it were. Dwalin was vaguely aware of an almost longing sigh pass through his lips, something Bilbo, a master at determining tones, did not miss.
The dwarf looked to the hobbit whose sightless gaze was turned slightly to the left. "I hope it's enough. Gandalf did not tell me much of my guests." The hobbit spoke lightly, casually, as if it were normal to prepare such a delightful spread for strangers that could have only been two or three in number.
Bilbo for his part decided not to slander the wizards name by telling his guest how terribly rude he had been, if only for the pleasant laugh he had. Dwalin's voice snapped him out of his silent musings as he spoke, "It is more than enough Master Baggins."
"Then please," He implored, "Sit, eat, drink and tell me of who I am to be hosting."
And Dwalin, son of Fundin, gladly did.