Oin had been suspicious of both burglar and scribe from the very start. Neither of them moved like men, having a certain sway to their steps that came with a woman's wider pelvis; Oin should know, she'd spent decades learning how to move like a male, herself. It'd gotten easier once Gloin had been born, so she'd had someone closer to her age to mimic the mannerism of, as she'd been certain that she didn't want to live the sheltered existence of an openly female dwarven woman.
At over two hundred and fifty, she was so successful at hiding her gender, that not even Balin, her closest friend, and the man she'd been pining for, since they both came of age, knew that she was a woman. There had been times where she was certain he was about to ask her, the first, embarrassingly necessary, part of dwarven courtship, but something had always happened.
So it was, when two weeks into the journey that both Ori and Bilbo became snappish, and rode with concealed grimaces, and hands pressed to their sides when they thought no one was looking, that Oin found herself approaching them, with two mugs of herbal tea.
" 'Ere ye go, lasses, it'll 'elp with the cramping, and even out yer tempers." the old Healer sighed. "'M glad I don't 'ave to deal with that nonsense anymore." She'd expected a bit of surprise at her admission, as she thought even Gloin forgot her real gender much of the time. Oin didn't expect the hobbit to turn to Ori, and say;
"I told you so." Oin frowned, had she really heard that? her hearing wasn't nearly as bad as she pretended, but it was fun to mess with people's words. Especially Thorin, he was too full of himself much of the time.
"Wha-?" Was all the Healer managed.
"Hobbit's are connected to the earth, the plants and animals aspect of it, as dwarves are to the metal and stone. Bilbo sensed that you and I were female, from the start." Ori said shyly, grimacing as she downed the foul-tasting tea.
"Hmm, chamomile would help the taste, and not affect any of the herbs," Bilbo said absently, "The similarities between our races make sense, Ori, if you think about it" she said, evidently continuing the conversation Oin had interrupted. "After all, our Makers are married."
"What do ye mean?" Oin asked, abruptly far more interested, as she was a Stone-Singer, a soothsayer, or fortune-teller to any other race.
"Well, hobbits are the children of Yavannah, and dwarves the children of Aule, or Mahal as you call him. It would make perfect sense for there to be similarities, wouldn't it?" The hobbit said matter-of-factly, cocking her head.
"Hobbits are the children of Yavannah? How? Eru was furious with Mahal for making the dwarves." Kili said, trailing Fili, popping up abruptly enough to startle Ori and Oin, but explaining the sudden topic-change. Oin had noticed that the hobbit's hearing was sharper than that of anyone else in the group, even Kili and the wizard. From the faint look of disappointment on the Princes' faces, she was willing to bet that they were still trying to sneak up on the hobbit, without success.
"Our legends say that Yavannah, unlike her husband, actually asked permission first. Her charges the Ents had forgotten that they were to tend all the plants, and not just the trees, the Entwives fading, and settling in the lands that would become the Shire, out of sorrow. Yavannah asked the Creator for permission to create a folk that would love and tends to even the littlest plants and animals. She received it, and made the hobbits in her own image, a small, fertile people, with large feet to enhance our connection with the earth. The first hobbits woke in the shadow of one of Aule's mountains, near the Anduin, where they lived until a Necromancer drove them forth. Over a thousand years of the Great Wandering, we found our home in the Shire, blessed with the grace of the last of the entwives, and there we have stayed ever since."
Bilbo forgot to be nervous or shy when storytelling, Oin noted, and the hobbit's face lit up with passion and life that was most becoming. Given Fili's adoring gaze fastened on the little woman's face, not that the rather oblivious young prince realized Bilbo's gender, the elder Durin prince found her more than merely 'becoming', and unlike his little brother, Fili was not one to fall in or out of love or infatuation quickly or easily.
Well, then. Things would become...interesting...to say the least, when Thorin realized where his nephew's interest lay.