Evening came, slow and languid as summer herself. The flames sank low in the logs as the hours ticked by. Bilbo had pulled his chair in close to the fire, for Bag End remained cool on summer days and self-sufficiently warm in winter, a humble feat of engineering that many a Dwarf had once commented upon with admiration. The Hobbit was plumper than at the most recent instance Gandalf had seen him, and the dark circles beneath his eyes had faded. The pinched, weary look of their last parting had left his face.
It had been late in the afternoon when Gandalf swept into Bag End as he had done all those many months ago.
"My dearest Hobbit, you marvel of creatures! You have neither written nor sent word since last I laid eyes on you – and here I find you having tea, calm as you please, as if the previous twenty-eight and a half months had been but a dream."
Of course, Bilbo quite nearly dropped his plate in shock. He hurried over to give him a tight squeeze, his short stature in no way an impediment to the strength of his embrace. "Gandalf! But – what news? How good to see you!"
As it turned out, there hadn't been plans, and even if there had been, Bilbo promptly put out a sign that said "NO visitors!" Next he carried out a decanter of good Southfarthing red wine, which was said, Bilbo told him, to be nearly as good as Laketown wine. Then followed a cheese plate, with a large variety of blue cheese and Shire farmhouse cheddar and even a small round of Rohirrim draft-horse milk. While Gandalf was nibbling on a wedge of the last item, Bilbo brought in two brown loaves of seedcake and a small platter of butter, all the while chattering with nary a pause for breath.
Oh, there were so many things to talk about! All about Bag End and the state he'd found it upon his return (a good thirty minutes were spent on Lobelia) and the multitude of small changes in the Shire, and the books he was currently reading and the ones he hoped to read. Gandalf heard all about the manuscript on historical Elvish-Hobbit friendships that was currently halfway throughout its first draft, and most especially Bilbo's plans to visit Rivendell in the coming autumn to seek out their library. He was most looking forward to the journey and had already begun packing provisions.
So though it was true that Bilbo had not written, Gandalf got a good idea of what his friend had been up to in all that time.
"You are unchanged, my good fellow," he said to Bilbo, who paused, wearing an expression that said he was not sure whether he was being complimented or insulted (as was often the case when conversing with Gandalf). "And yet, you are wholly altered."
Bilbo laughed at this, grasping his meaning immediately. His eyes were perhaps a little misty, but he said, with a touch of his customary smartness, "And you, my friend, have not aged a single day! I swear, that green stain there – yes, there – was present in that exact shade and configuration the last time your tall head darkened my halls."
"I am a Wizard!" said Gandalf with a dismissive wave of his hand. "I do not concern myself with matters of laundry."
Bilbo then beseeched Gandalf for news of his travels. For many hours they talked and laughed, as they had done on several long nights whilst journeying to Erebor, when the foundation of their friendship had first been laid. Bilbo cheered when he heard about Elrond's hunting party routing out the last of the Goblin folk, scattering the broken horde to deep dark places ("Good riddance! It was their own downfall that they have become too used to terrorizing innocents."), and he laughed with joy at the news that Beorn had found himself a wife, a woman of the hardy Northern tribes of Men ("I hope he will have many little Bear babies of his own!"). He smiled at the news of Dale's reconstruction, and Bard's coronation, and the summit of the three kings last autumn: Bard, Dain, and Thranduil, who had between the three of them managed to broker a trade agreement that would be equally profitable for all. Evidently he knew a little about it, from the Dwarven side of things, for it was a fact that Balin wrote him every season.
Bilbo was shaking his head slowly and smiling. "I have been at home for many moons, sorting out and settling all the affairs that were left behind on my journey, and I am only now at the tail end of that! So many things have passed out there in the wide world, but here in the the Shire, all seems to remain timeless."
"That has always been one of its best qualities," said Gandalf.
"Yes, but I'm developing quite a name as a trouble-maker," Bilbo retorted, eyes crinkled with quiet laughter. "I must not take all the credit for myself, however."
Gandalf had looked innocently at him, protesting with a puff of his pipe, "Why, I don't know what you could possibly mean…!"
At any rate, the night was late. The two of them nursed flasks of spiced wine. All in all, it had been a quiet evening. This was not, as Bilbo told him, a usual state of affairs. Despite his strange new reputation (as he'd recounted with no small amount of glee), his house beneath the hill had seen no shortage of visitors, whether it was neighbours popping in out of curiosity, distant relatives sniffing out this long-lost-now-found relation, or the neighbourhood children looking for a story and a handful of candied plums.
"You look well, my friend," said Gandalf presently. The Hobbit stirred, and said:
"Yes, I am." And then he amended: "Or at least, I will be."
"Good," said Gandalf. And he saw without seeming to watch as secret musings flickered upon the other's face.
Bilbo started a sentence, interrupted himself, and then said: "Can I tell you something?"
"Of course."
"I find myself thinking of Rivendell often, of late. When I was there in the last leg of my journey home from Erebor… it was like falling into a pool of clear water after a long race in the desert. I ate, and slept, and read, and during my spare time I walked in the star light of that wondrous place. And on those nights when the moon shone like a white jewel in the night, I found that my host shared my habits."
Little had Gandalf ever wondered at Elrond's fondness for Bilbo. Despite appearances, they were alike in nature.
"He'd had a hundred more lifetimes than I; and will have a hundred more. Eventually I found myself asking him about death. Did he believe that we continue on after life? That death is not the end of whatever it is we are?" Bilbo laughed a little, and said, as if aware of the now sombre mood of the conversation, "It's hardly a question you can ask at Aunt Myrtle's Sunday morning garden party!"
Gandalf raised his eyebrows. "Do Shire-folk not have your own tales of the afterlife?"
"Oh, we have ghost stories and the like. And everyone repents of something on their deathbed, that is no joke! But Hobbits are simple folk. This life is the only one we have, and all the more precious for it. Or so I have believed all my life."
That was reasonable enough; Gandalf nodded.
"In any case, I pressed him: You are wise, Master Elrond. You have traveled far, done many things, seen many more. I have heard sung the tale of Eru and Aulë. I have read a little on Valinor and the Hall of Mandos. I am asking for your opinion."
Gandalf saw him as he must have appeared to Elrond, his brave young friend with the bright eyes and resolute mouth. For fresh grief must have beat in his heart like a wounded thrush, and he would not be deterred even before one of the High Lords of the Land.
"He gave me the answer," said Bilbo, "which you no doubt know as well. I think he had foreseen my question to some extent. Elros, his twin, had chosen mortality. And when Lord Elrond spoke of him there was still sorrow there, although the magnitude of time since his passing is beyond my conception. But to him… he remembered his brother's voice, and their childhood games, and the love between them, as if but a day had passed."
For a moment a shadow of grief passed across Bilbo's face. Gandalf guessed at its meaning easily enough, but could find little to say that he was sure Bilbo had not already heard. It had been a grand funeral, after all, fit for a King, and many moving speeches spoken by better orators than him. A neat little bookend to a story that was already becoming a legend.
Gandalf said: "And there was your other answer."
"Yes, well. That cannot be helped. So it is with life," said Bilbo, and he sighed, and looked into the fire. He puffed on his pipe a little, and absently sent a little smoke ring into the fire.
Gandalf, watching him, waited. Slowly life crept back into Bilbo's eyes, and a small smile curved his lips.
"I'm glad to see you, and to have spoken to you! I'm sorry I haven't written, Gandalf! There are many things I wanted to tell you, but none of them seemed important enough to put in a letter. Little things, foolish things that have made me want to laugh or cry or think, how strange. Things that are easily forgotten when the moment has passed, but which a friend might remember. But you see, I'm trying to curb my tendency to chatter, whether in spoken or written form."
Bilbo's words were mischievous, but the tone of his voice was more thoughtful than not, and his eyes were bright. Gandalf, who had glimpsed beyond the flat planes of the earthly world and watched empires born and die, who had traveled to the four corners of the known world and beyond, was once again surprised at the beauty and brilliance of mortality, the fast flitting flashes in which they lived, these light-filled souls humming with love and pride and joy and loss.
He raised an eyebrow, mock stern, to all the world just an old man with a hat and a walking stick. "Is that a fact?"
"Believe it or not. I am resolved to not be so foolish in my old age."
"Ha!" snorted Gandalf, but it was without heat. "Silence is not in your nature, my dear friend! And neither is misery."
"Were it not for you, I believe, I would not lack for either."
The room was very dark now, for the coals themselves were dimming, but Gandalf read the smile on Bilbo's face and felt a measure of reassurance. His Burglar was not the same Hobbit he had once been. But there was no doubt he would be, as he had said himself, quite alright.
That night, Bilbo dreamt of other lives. In his goose-down bed in the far bedroom of Bag End he felt the lights of other worlds, other suns and moons and stars passing over his eyes, marking the years.
He lived a life where the King Under the Mountain and his kin did not fall after all. Defeated was his foe, and this time he prevailed against his injuries, and thus lived to see his kingdom restored. They would have had, the two of them, a lifetime of steady friendship, as solid as the rock from which the Dwarven race are hewn. He dreamt of visits to the Mountain where no green things took hold, only precious rocks and cold metal, where a pair of blue eyes smiled, and a strong hand gripped his shoulder, and laughter, free and unfettered by grief, rang out again in stone halls. It would have been a good life, a happy one.
There were other lives.
One where the fell dragon was never outwitted, in which the Company returned home empty-handed but still thirteen in number. Whole of spirit if not in wealth. Thorin would remain in exile, but there was honour in honest work. And slowly the fortunes of his people would have recovered, would have prospered and carved out a new power in the West, and a weighty burden might have lifted from his King's heart. Perhaps the two of them would have grown closer over time, or perhaps the long distance between them and the cares of their years would have dimmed the earlier promise of their friendship. But it would have been enough.
It is impossible not to picture that last, other future, the forbidden one, as taking place in sunlit gardens and dappled forests and before the crackling fires of home; as being full of small hushed moments amidst noble quests and great battles; as a boundless, sweeping love unfurling from a friendship so fierce and constant it would abide with them even into death, and through whatever lay beyond.
There were many lives Bilbo had known. And in all of them but one, lived Thorin Oakenshield.