But a sudden scraping sound at the door jolted chills up her spine. "Wh-what?" She whirled around, eyes wide with fear but her own front door prevented her from seeing what was happening on its other side.
Scraaaaaape all along the wooden plate. Whimpering, the hobbit hurried to the window to attempt to peer out and see the damage being done. In the very corner of the frame, she could spot the very same wizard bending forward and doing something to her poor door! But just as she was attempting to identify it, the wizard suddenly appeared in the window, face-to-face with her, but more like eye-to-eye with how close he had drawn to the glass in such an instant.
Half-gasping and half-shrieking, Bailey shrank back in fear. After a moment of staring inside, Gandalf disappeared back behind the door. Exhaling deeply, the young hobbit rubbed her hands together as though to shake off the most recent memory. Surely he wouldn't come inside and, eventually, he'd go away. "Well...it-it's time for lunch."
The delightful sizzle filled her ears as she sprinkled the last bit of green leaf upon the nearly completely cooked fish. Breathing in the aroma, she couldn't help but feel the perfection of that moment: surely the comforts and treasured luxuries of Hobbiton were unmatched by anything else. Surely this adventure Gandalf had aforementioned could not equal the comforts of Bag End.
Just as Bailey was seating herself at her mahogany dining table, lifting the knife to her cooked fish to slice off the first bite, the moment of delicious silence was interrupted by a loud and untimely knock at her front door. "Oh, now what?" she whined softly, though willing herself to push the moaning back and stand to answer the door.
She immediately noticed the large visitor before her: a head or two taller than her, bald with a large beard, and a stern, purely serious face to greet her with. "Dwalin," he greeted, pausing briefly, almost as though for her to respond.
Mouth hanging open at the very sight of such a being, Bailey instinctively raised both eyebrows as a sign of not comprehending the word spoken and slowly shook her head as though no word came to mind to say back.
"At your service," the apparent Dwalin completed, bowing his head in subtle respect.
"Oh! Oh, that's your name-" Bailey stopped herself, stammering back into etiquette. "Um, and Bailey Baggins at yours."
Stepping in without invitation, the large dwarf made his way past the hobbit and into her home. "So where is it?"
"Uh-uh-where is what?" Bailey asked quickly, hurrying after him. She was still flabbergasted by his stepping in without her say.
"He said there would be a hot meal waiting for us when we arrived," Dwalin replied casually, not even acknowledging that she didn't have a clue what he was talking about.
Bailey's auburn eyes widened in gradual panic. "Who...said?"
The entire meal Bailey had planned to enjoy for the rest of her evening had disappeared to satisfy the hunger of her unexpected visitor within all of five minutes. Munching away at the last of the meat found on the cooked fish bone, Dwalin stared at the skeleton of the fish a moment longer before finally biting the entire head right off as well.
Bailey's jaw dropped in utter shock, nose crinkling at the sickening sight.
"Mm, this is good food," Dwalin finally commented, mopping the remaining juice from the plate with one of her newly baked golden rolls. "Is there any more?" he asked with a full mouth.
Feeling it as good a time as ever to revive her questions, Bailey stood to comply with a plate full of rolls. But making her way toward him struck her with a horrible image: the picture of him dumping them all into the bottomless pit called his stomach and the perfection of the bread being naught but a faint memory. Stunned by the horrible prophecy, she subtly snagged a roll off the top of the pile before completing her journey to the dining table. "Here you are," she replied with her best attempt at polite under the circumstances.
As he reached to grab a few in his stout fingers at a time, Bailey opened her mouth to ask her question.
But, robbing her of the opportunity, there came another similar bang at her front door.
"That would be the door," Dwalin stated; obviously a 'big help'.
"What-?" she began to question it aloud, but her voice trailed off, predicting this Dwalin would offer no information actually useful. Perhaps this other visitor would be a bit more accommodating.
Balin was an older, snowy bearded dwarf, shorter than the last and far friendlier. But he ignored Bailey's questioning just the same and the moment he and Dwalin bashed their heads together as a long-waited, affectionate, brotherly greeting, she gave up on trying getting anything out of them. Even when she insisted they needed to get out and immediately, apologetically as she could, all they verbally acknowledged was the apology that came with it, accepting it most 'graciously'. Then the bell rang again.
Yet again, she cautiously opened the door. With the navy blue sky to their backs, two younger-looking dwarves stood side-by-side. One with dark hair and with one with gold, they stared only a moment before making their introductions. "Fili," the blond offered in a friendly tone. Immediately after, the brunette said his name.
"And Kili." Then, in unison, as though rehearsed for many years, they both went for a brief bow, speaking as twins in accents Bailey thought odd, "At your service."
The moment their faces were shown again, after the bow, Kili was abruptly smiling pleasantly. "You must be Mrs. 'Boggins'!"
Not bothering to point out the incorrect pronunciation, Bailey quickly shook her head amidst a polite returned bow. "No, no, you can't come in – you've got the wrong house, I'm sorry!" Flustered, she tried to close the door, shoving back the guilt for rejecting a visit. Suddenly, a strong arm got in the way of the motion, rendering her unable to completely close it.
"What? Has it been cancelled?" Kili's chocolate eyes widened in shock at her reaction, having stepped in the way to continue the discussion.
"Nobody told us," Fili submitted in soft confusion, glancing between Bailey and his presumed brother.
"Canc—what? No, what are you talking about, nothing's been cancelled!—"
This was enough invitation for the two of them. "That's a relief!" Kili grinned, pushing his way on in, followed by his large brother, who merely paid her a brief glance of confusion.
Bailey dropped her head back to moan, having yet to notice Fili had not yet left her side.
"These," he stated to get her attention as he removed something wrapped about his shoulder.
With a start, she looked toward him, instinctively holding out her arms as he tossed something toward them. "Wh-?"
"I just had 'em sharpened," he explained as though that should especially mean something to her.
"What…are they-?" Weapons. Her realization interrupted her question. Which was good, because Fili seemed to have no inclination to answer her. There was now a large - thankfully sheathed - pair of swords in her arms. Just as panic was striking her face, Kili strutted back into range, right past her but through a different doorway as though he had just given himself an entire tour of her abode.
"It's nice, this place!" he exclaimed, twirling a bit to briefly view the mahogany structure. "Did your father or, brother maybe, do it himself?"
"Uh—no, it," Bailey concentrated on catching whatever else Fili was casually removing from within his fur cloak. "It's been in my family for many generations-!" Her voice raised upon noticing Kili's boot scraping a certain treasured possession in order to clean away muddy footprints. "That's my mother's glory box! Please don't do that!" she gasped to rapidly suck in her angered breaths. She was all but ignored as the twins wandered in search of something. Probably dinner, she bitterly assumed.
As they continued into the warm depths of her home, none of the four offered any explanation as though she ought to know exactly what invitation they seemed to be enjoying, which she supposedly extended to them yet had no recollection of.
"Ah, a well-stocked pantry, hobbit," Balin – the elderly and probably most polite of the four yet to arrive - commented upon her arrival as he loaded up his arms with more plates of pastries and cheeses.
"Ohh," Bailey whimpered, lifting tense fingers up to her head and running them through her disheveled chestnut hair.
"Were the others far behind you, Kili?" Dwalin asked from the other side of the pantry, somehow ducked behind her formerly stocked shelves even in his massive height and width.
"What-others?" Bailey felt a head taller suddenly with how much she'd stiffened at the words. "H-h-how many others are there?" she managed to suppress all but one minimal squeak of horror in her already tired voice.
There was no answer: the dwarves merely continued their pleasant conversation as though she didn't exist.
Breathing deeply through her pursed lips, the young hobbit set her hands on her hips in frustration. That was getting annoying.
Then came another knock at the door.
"Noooo!" Bailey whimpered, dragging her feet to the door. "Nobody is home! Please, just go bother someone else: I have enough dwarves in here as it is!" Even as she verbally denied entrance to whomever had done the knocking, she couldn't stop her friendly hand from opening the door in response to the call. But she had to jump back quickly from them to involuntarily enter the moment the final obstacle was removed. A pile of several dwarves – it felt a dozen from where Bailey stood – came toppling onto her wooden floors before her feet.
Mouth hanging open in utter shock, Bailey found herself speechless. A count of eight more were scrambling to their feet as they mumbled and conversed as though their unrehearsed dog pile had been nothing out of the ordinary.
But at the back, the hobbit spotted a taller visitor: one who looked just the same as when she had seen him that very same morning. "Gandalf," Bailey greeted with a mix of emotions: she was unsure of whether to be terrified of the wizard's unruly behavior, betrayed by his disrespect of her final decision to not go on any adventures, or to be just relieved that someone tall, far less broad, and with a sense of at least some etiquette had finally entered the premises.
"Bailey Baggins," Gandalf greeted with perhaps a sympathetic smile and a polite nod. Ducking in under the round doorway, the wizard entered after the dwarves – upon introducing themselves – hurried inside, she bitterly assumed, to find the food promised before.
The hobbit frantically led the wizard inside and, after being pushed to get him a fine glass of brandy and a comfortable chair, was finally able to blurt out her demands. "Gandalf, please, at least you will afford me some kind of explanation-wh-why do I have a dozen dwarves who have barged in here, expecting a meal, expecting they can just take my wine and-and drink it, and expecting me to just go along with-" Her words trailed off upon being addressed from behind.
"Pardon me, Ms. Baggins?" Ori, a younger one of the group with no beard but a large scarf to cover the bottom half of the face and light red hair braided in some random areas but otherwise straight in both bangs and past the shoulders, lifted an emptied plate to visually explain concern. "Where should we put our plates?"
While the flustered Baggins was still opening her mouth to answer, Kili – a brown-haired warrior who had handed her all of his weapons at the beginning to be put away and was nothing short of expressive in his boisterous personality – approached Ori to answer the question himself. "Here, Ori, give it to me."
With a soft gasp of disagreement, Bailey took a step to prevent the exchange, but – near quick as lightning – Kili had already taken her fine china into his hand and was tossing it down the hallway and out of her line of sight.
At this there was no suppressing the horrified shriek. "Wh-what are you doing? Pleeease do not throw that! That china was passed all the way down from my great-grandmother and it is very, very fragile!" She was dashing around the corner in time to see the target of the toss – one of the other dwarves had caught the plate with ease and was proceeding to toss it down the other half of the hallway to a waiting dwarf.
"What?" Bailey half-whispered in disbelief, her lungs robbed of any remaining oxygen. It was then a rhythmic banging on her mahogany dining table shot her gaze to several dwarves knocking her butter knives and forks downward against the wooden surface then, across from one another, slashing the silver pieces along each other's edges in beats three and four to the tune they drummed. "Oh! No, don't do that! You'll blunt them!"
"Oh-ho," one of the dwarves, with a heavy accent and a massive hat sticking every which way seemed only amused by her anxiety, "Do ya hear that, laddies? She said we'll blunt the knives!"
Laughter erupted as a suspicious plan was hatching in their mischievous minds.
"Blunt the knives, bend the forks," Kili half-sung, low and with a grin of anticipation, the two phrases, striking even more horror – if possible – onto Bailey's wide-eyed face. But he merely chuckled as if no violence or destruction were included in the lyrics.
Bailey exclaimed in fear, hurrying after the singing dwarf. "No, no, not a good idea! Nothing enjoyable whatsoever about-!"
"Smash the bottles, burn the corks!" a few others chimed in, only leaving the poor hobbit to whimper helplessly, rushing her fingers along her hair.
The melody sped up and the horrific words continued. "Chip the glasses, crack the plates," Fili resumed, tossing a few more plates – one after the other – into the alert hands of his brother and soon followed in a practical shout for the last line.
"That's what Bailey Baggins hates!" all continued with raising voices.
Bailey's heart beat a dozen times faster as plates, bowls, glasses, silverware, pots all soared through the air at differing speed, ricocheted by any limb or stomach of the nearest dwarf and into the hands of Dori waiting by the sink.
"That's what Bailey Baggins hates!" By the end of other such tormenting lyrics, the dwarves were laughing, eyes bright and mouths wide with big, half-drunken grins.
It seemed Bailey's fear of the outcome of the song had been the only thing holding her up as she melted onto the nearest possible seat by the end of it: in this particular case, her firm, closed sewing chest. What had she done to deserve such chaos within her comfortable home; such an invasion of unwelcome and quite unwanted, hungry, greedy, messy guests? She just couldn't figure it out.
"Dear Bailey Baggins," Gandalf's voice drew her out of her miserable thoughts. He loomed over her with a peculiar compassion in his eyes yet a tint of confusion as well. "Whatever is the matter?"
"'What is the-?" Bailey's mouth opened before she could manage the words, slowly shaking her head in disbelief up toward the wizard. "What the matter is is the state of my house! I have a dozen dwarves ransacking my pantries, they're-they're-they're trailing mud into the very depths of my fine rugs, I-I won't even start with the state of the kitchen and the bathroom! It isn't that I do not like guests, but I do not even know these dwarves, nor why they are here, and not one of them are even bothering to explain to their hostess the very occasion of this abrupt and untimely party that she is hosting!" She ended with a deep breath, her pink lips pursing together as though to suppress any more irritation that wished to taint her words.
Gandalf smiled slowly. "The Bailey Baggins that I knew at one time...would hardly be more concerned about her rugs..." he paused to lean his forearm against the top of the short wall beside her. "Than she would about what opportunities have come to her by the arrival of these dozen...'dirty dwarves,'" he added the last part with a subtle chuckle though his piercing, cerulean gaze watched her with a genuine, almost intense focus.
"You do not know me-" Bailey quickly reiterated from their morning conversation, shaking her head with her fluffy brown ponytail dancing behind her head in suit. "For I did not know you other than for the fame of your delightful fireworks, so how could you have known me if I did not know you?"
Gandalf shook his head patiently. "You do not know me, but I have known you for many years, Bailey Baggins."
Bailey's thick eyebrows furrowed in confusion, but the wizard merely continued.
"You may have the blood of a Baggins; the desire for a comfortable home and the concern for the pleasantries of maintaining your beloved Bag End – never doing anything unexpected - but you also have the blood of a Took."
The hobbit's teeth gritted, almost regretfully toward the mention of her entwined lineages.
"Your great-great-grandfather on the side of the Tooks had no short amount of courage nor of adventure in his time. He was a hobbit so large he was able to ride a real horse, Bailey Baggins!" Gandalf explained, leaning in slightly closer with his earnest desire to persuade her.
"I-I know, I know..." Bailey attempted to close the discussion quickly, waving it off with her hand and turning her troubled gaze far from the wizard's. "You..." she suddenly caught on to the direction of his words, slowly looking back up at Gandalf in realization. "You speak as though there is a journey ahead of me."
Gandalf's eyes remained fixed on her, but he said nothing.
"But..." Bailey's eyebrow twitched in her fearful tension, "I just know you would not force me into something I do not want to do, Gandalf."
Gandalf continued to stare, yet his resolute eyes softened ever so slightly. "Is it?"
Bailey stared back, unblinking for a long moment as though in a daze, but she finally shook her head, closing her eyelids briefly to awaken from it. "Is what?"
Gandalf offered a subtle smile beneath his bushy, silver beard, leaning in closer and lowering his voice halfway to a gentle whisper. "You spend most of your days reading, reading of the world that is out there and the adventures that such authors have had within it...not an activity for just any, everyday hobbit; tell me, have you never thirsted for adventure yourself, Bailey Baggins? Do you not long to see it for yourself?"
Bailey blinked several times to cover up the vulnerability flickering in her nut brown eyes; the curiosity welling up within her heart as an uncontrollable spring that the everyday activities of Hobbiton could only numb down, but never completely alleviate.
One more abrupt knock at the front door jerked the hobbit back into her surroundings, when she had just found herself miles away. The merriment and chattering in the other room died down at the hollow sound of a gauntleted hand against the plate of wood.
"He is here," Gandalf half-muttered.