Oh my god, you guys are AMAZING! I got a huge amount of feedback for By Its Nature, Deceitful! Thank you all so much!
After that incredibly positive reaction, I knew I couldn't end the story there. Since I already had an idea for an Alternate UniverseHobbit fic in the works, I decided to combine the two of them. So if you've noticed, By Its Nature, Deceitful is now the first part of a series. Please make sure to check out the series synopsis and I hope you enjoy this next part.
As heavily requested, The Pinecone Incident.
Chapter One
"The trick to a good conker-toss is the same as the trick to a good hiding-spot. Knowing where your opponent is, where their conker is, knowing everything surrounding you, means you can use the world around you to aim your conker just right - the same as you can use that knowledge to hide well out of sight. If you're especially good, you can do both at the same time and so become a Conkers Master, but that takes a long road, a good eye, and a lot of practice."
Conkers was a game of skill. What skill, exactly, depended on the actual game being played.
Those Big Folk who were lucky enough (or irritating enough; we're looking at you, Gandalf) to learn a bit about Hobbit culture usually came to the understanding that Conkers was a game named for the horse chestnuts used in the game (themselves called conkers ) and that the object of the game was to break an opponent's conker without breaking your own.
This was likely an opinion gained from having watched faunts (young Hobbit children who had reached the age where they begin to run about like wild things) play with their Conker toys. For children, a horse chestnut was tied to the end of a string and the object of the game was to hit a fellow child's conker and break theirs, while leaving your own intact. It was a great way to train hand-eye coordination and patience, while also keeping children entertained for hours (a difficult task for mothers of any race).
So it was that all Hobbit children learned to play Conkers this way, but as a faunt grew into a tweenager and as their aim better, their skill in controlling their tempers more refined, the strings were removed and the Hobbits began trying to knock conkers off fence posts, out of tree limbs, out of an opponent's hand, and even out of the air mid-throw. Indeed, Conkers was a game of many skills - patience, aim, precision, speed. Some games involved finding the conkers before you might have a go at knocking them, and so slyness and stealth were traits well-trained in those who learned to hide the conkers well. In other forms of the game, silence was key. And in still others, the ability to distract.
Really, Conkers was a magnificent game, fascinating in that it could be altered for numerous uses. Outsiders tended to think the game was named for the horse chestnut, and of course the Hobbits let them believe it. But Conkers had far more uses than simply as a game. When a Hobbit needed to air a grievance that could not be properly explained with a soured lemon pie or a soup that had too much salt being gifted to the one who caused the problem, the aggrieved would turn to Conkers. One good whack with a horse chestnut to the nose (or the conk ) and everyone who witnessed the event (and such grievances were always aired in public) would know that the conk-wielder was mightily irritated. The reason, like any good bit of gossip in the Shire, would make its way to waiting Hobbit ears soon after and the conked (or the one who got whacked in the conk) would have to deal with public reaction to their transgression. This doubled as a way to air grievances as well as a means of keeping Hobbits in line with the general opinions of the Shire - no one liked being conked on the nose and then treated like a pariah by the general public for doing something socially unacceptable. There was a reason some Hobbits chose to leave on "an adventure" and simply not return, rare though they might have been. Better to be absently viewed as an odd duck for running off than staying and being conkered on the nose and generally treated like something that shamed your home.
Conkers trained a Hobbit well from when they are a faunt to an adult, and constant competitions in which the whole of the Shire participated kept everyone sharp. This seemed whimsical to outsiders, of course, and to many Hobbits who did not recognize that "to conk" meant "to faint or sleep," as well as "to die."
Truly, hiding a means of protecting oneself in a game that otherwise charmed children and seemed harmless fit in rather perfectly with a race of innocuous creatures who seemed too fat on seven meals a day and lazy to be of any concern to anyone. If the history of Bandobras Took and his golf-creating, goblin-king-whacking days were to be believed, however, this view of Hobbits as harmless was far from the truth.
Of course, it was no trouble for Hobbits to appear innocent to outsiders, since Hobbits truly did enjoy the peace and quiet of their gardens, their seven meals a day, and the safety of their homes in the Shire. The Brandybucks and the Tooks were wilder than most, to be sure, but their thirst for action was usually spent in defending against the Old Forest and working with the Rangers (whether the Rangers were aware of their small shadows or not).
For the most part, the Brandybucks and the Tooks were accepted as a necessary part of the Shire. After all, the first Thain had been an Oldbuck, and their line only gave it up when they chose to settle across the Brandywine River and change their name to Brandybuck, creating the title of Master at the same time that they named their new home Buckland. After that, it was the Tooks who took up the mantle of Thain and still they kept it, so perhaps it was necessary for the Thain of the Shire and their family to be a little wild. Maybe it was that wild part of their heart that kept the Shire so safe, so no one would say anything about them.
Still, Buckland and Tukborough were different lands from Hobbiton. Hobbiton was a nice, proper part of the Shire and they didn't take kindly to odd Hobbits and those who were wild well past their tweenager years.
Bilbo Baggins didn't think even Gandalf (meddler that he was) knew that he was called Mad Baggins by the rest of Hobbiton, seen as odd and unHobbitish and not overly liked by any but his Took and Brandybuck cousins. His mother had been tolerated, of course, because Bungo Baggins had been a highly respectable Hobbit, even if Belladonna did manage to drag him off to visit Rivendell once and twice, and even if they did occasionally have visits from elves or had Rangers stay with them in their Smial when the nights were especially dark or cold. Belladonna was tolerated because it was well-known that eventually, Bungo Baggins would tame the wildness out of that Took girl and make her a proper Baggins, settle down in Bag End and start a respectably large family.
That wasn't what happened.
Bilbo lost his parents within the same year, one to wounds of the body and the other wounds of the soul, and he was left alone. He had been tempted to put on the mask of respectability, to hide behind proper manners and good Baggins sense so he wouldn't feel so alone in his suddenly-large smial, but the idea of it was choking. It made him think of smoke and spending years hiding in dark tunnels away from the sun, and it had made him think of his mother. Made him think of Belladonna as she was when he was little, and as she was later, perhaps only in a dream, whispering to him to hold on tight to his Tookishness, come what may. So no matter the temptation to conform to his neighbor's designs for him, Bilbo couldn't bring himself to put on a mask that he sensed would later become a misery.
He kept his proper Baggins sense, as his father had taught him, but he balanced it with his mother's natural Tookishness, and if the neighbors called him Mad Baggins, he laughed at the name, and he was elated to find that the Tooks and the Brandybucks laughed with him, and though theyalso called him Mad Baggins, for them it was always in love and jest.
Perhaps if Gandalf had known about Mad Baggins and Hobbiton's gossiping problem, and perhaps if he had visited at all within the last decade, he might have known that Bilbo had been the reigning Conkers champion for three years running. Being the irritating wizard that he was, he might have put it together that the reason the other residents of Hobbiton didn't give Mad Baggins a good old whack on the nose with a conker wasbecause of his reigning championship. After all, if he was as good as the championship proclaimed, then Bilbo would likely avoid any shots aimed at him and then retaliate most severely . Ending up with a publicly conkered nose because you attempted to conker someone else was not something any self-respecting member of Hobbiton wanted to suffer through.
Besides, Bilbo Baggins hardly seemed concerned with public opinion of him already. Dragging public opinion on a Conker to further this point would be like pouring a bucket of water in a river to make it wet.
But it remained true that Bilbo Baggins, mad or not, was a master at Conkers - whichever type of the game you played. He could be silent or sly, sneaky or speedy, patient or pandering or perhaps even puzzling. He could appear aloof or determined or distracted or coy. He was a master of many types and with a conker in hand (and perhaps two in pocket), he was a force to be reckoned with.
Of course, besides Gandalf, some of the Rivendell elves, and a few Rangers, no one knew that Conkers was more than a faunt-game, if they even knew that much. To be sure, few of any other race were aware that Hobbits had skill with anything beyond eating and hiding themselves. Most didn't even know Hobbits existed . Certainly none knew that Bilbo Baggins of the Shire was the reigning Conkers champion, and especially not a group of dwarves and a wizard who hadn't visited for over a decade.
So when a pinecone cracked Thorin Oakenshield squat on the nose, the great uncrowned King Under the Mountain glared at the trees around him and didn't spare a look at the resident Hobbit.
This was fine with Bilbo. He sat astride Myrtle with an air of resignation on his shoulders, his face twisted into something between a scowl and a pout, and tried not to crack a rib holding in his laughter.
It would be interesting to see if Thorin's bad sense of direction included pinecones and where they were coming from.