Hello again friends! I've finally started working on a sequel to Keep Your Feet, I just couldn't wait until the next movie came out so this will be following the book/my imagination. Here's the URL of my first story, sorry I couldn't figure out how to link it! s/8847545/1/Keep-Your-Feet
Just as a refresher, it's a slightly gender-bent story to include more women into Tolkien's world. Bilbo (Bonnie), Dwalin, Kili, Nori, and Bofur are all female now, and I didn't change the dwarves' names because they're pretty unisex already. And "Dwalina" just didn't sound very good. There's also gooey fluffy romance in it because I love Thilbo. All credit to The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien. Enjoy!
Beyond a stream, and following several well-worn stone steps leading up from it, there was a cozy sort of cave that was filled to the brim with dwarves.
This was no ordinary pack of roving dwarves. These dwarves were on a mission, and they had brought with them a wandering wizard and a very small hobbit. The day before, they had been dropped off nearby by some large eagles who owed a debt to the wizard, and even before that they had escaped from the clutches of the Goblin King and then the Pale Orc. These were no small feats, but the group was lead by a dwarf prince, and the hobbit was carrying a very powerful secret.
Not that she was even aware of this. The hobbit, Bonnabell Baggins, was carrying a gold ring in her pocket that, as far as she knew, merely turned the wearer invisible. She had not told the rest of the company about it, though the wizard Gandalf had guessed by now that she was hiding something. When the group had gotten all settled for the night, they had begged Bonnie to tell them how she had escaped the tunnels of the Misty Mountains.
She recounted her tale as accurately as she could, while leaving out the bit where she found the ring. Bonnie wasn't sure why she didn't tell them, but there was something about the ring that she wanted to keep to herself and never share with anyone. So she told them that she encountered Gollum, and when he had grown angry and chased her she simply hid from him and escaped. Gandalf had been particularly curious as to how she had managed it, but she merely talked up her sneaking and burgling skills and that was the end of it.
Bonnie also had another, less-secret, secret. She was having an affair with Thorin Oakenshield.
Well, perhaps the word affair was a bit strong. The night before, he had kissed her and said lovely things about being with her. But nothing had happened since, and Bonnie was much too nervous to bring it up again. She had never done anything quite like this with anyone before. In the Shire, she was one of the prettier hobbits and had had a few suitors, but not nearly as many as the beautiful Lily Brown. Lily was very tall for a hobbit-lady, and she was looked upon as exotic, and a novelty by the hobbit lads. She had beautiful golden ringlets like Bonnie, but she grew them out and wore them in pigtails and flirted an astounding amount. Bonnie had been more shy, and was too blushing and stammering to do anything but shut her door on the lads.
And just thinking of Thorin now made her blush and stammer a terrible amount. She was sure that the only reason things had even progressed this far was because Thorin was almost the exact opposite of a little hobbit fellow from across the Water. He was an exiled prince who had seen more battles than Bonnie wanted to imagine, and he took what he wanted, unlike those daft hobbit-boys. Her head spun when she thought about someone like him wanting someone like her. At first she felt ashamed to think what the Shirefolk would ever say if they knew, but then she simply laughed. What a sight they would make, strolling through the market on a sunny day with huge hammers strapped to their backs, armor shining in the sunlight and buying some nice tomatoes from Farmer Cotton.
But of course he would never go to the Shire again, she thought, rousing herself from the daydream. The entire point of the mission was to regain his throne in Erebor, and he really didn't belong anywhere else. This would have made her sad at the beginning of the journey, because she didn't belong anywhere else but Bag End. But now she felt oddly excited thinking about the journey ahead, and seeing Erebor. She hadn't longed for her home and her books and tea in quite some time, and she was proud of that.
Thorin hadn't spoken to her about what had happened the night before. After she had told the group her story of escaping, she wasn't sure what else to do but go back to sleeping by Fili and Kili. Thorin needed to get his rest anyway, she thought, so that he might heal quicker.
They spent the morning in the cave, eating a stew that Oin had managed to cook with their sparse ingredients. Luckily Bombur was proving to be very good at foraging, and Fili and Kili had gone out early and shot a few rabbits.
"I always meant to see you safely through the mountains, and now by good luck and management I have done it," Gandalf said, accepting a bowl from Ori. "We are a great deal further east than I had meant to come with you, for after all I have business elsewhere. I may look in on you again before it is over, but I have some pressing matters to attend to."
The dwarves groaned and were most distressed, and Bonnie wept. She had not known at all that Gandalf had been planning on leaving. It distressed her most of all, because at times she felt like Gandalf had been the only adult in their company and they were just a bunch of hapless children being herded east under his watchful eyes.
"I can stay with you perhaps a day or two more, and help with your current condition," he continued. "You have no provisions or ponies and you don't know where you are. Now, I can help you there. You are a few miles north of the path we meant to take, and very few people live in these parts. But I know somebody who lives not far from here that we must go and find."
After that they stopped pleading with him to stay. They all rested through the afternoon, and had gone out to bathe in the shallow river outside the cave. Bonnie pleaded that the ladies go wash around a bend so that they would be out of sight of the others. Dwalin grumbled and rolled her eyes but they all went with her. Even in their company Bonnie felt exposed and embarrassed, and she was surely the chubbiest and palest of them all. But she was gratified to see that she was the smoothest, as the dwarf-ladies had crisscrossing scars and obscene amounts of hair in surprising places.
When they came back, Bonnie found out that dwarf-men are not at all embarrassed about how naked they may or may not be. She quickly covered her eyes and scurried into the cave, leaving the rest of the dwarves laughing raucously behind her.
She nearly ran headlong into Thorin, who had just returned from the river. He was still shirtless, making Bonnie even more flustered than she had been before. His barrel chest was still covered in bandages. "Don't hurt yourself," he said, smirking and steadying her.
She lowered her eyes. "You should be the one worrying about that," she mumbled. "H-how are your wounds faring? Do you feel any better?"
He stretched, and Bonnie had to drag her eyes back up to his face. "Yes, thank you. That salve seems to have done the trick, it should be healed up before long." Before they could say anything else, the rest of the dwarves came into the cave. They stepped quickly away from each other, Bonnie's face glowing red.