Bilbo's ears are filled. He registers the early morning Shire birds twittering now, but his ears still insist that he was just listening to the hoarse calls of seagulls, and sandwiched somewhere between the two is the small, curious feeling that he heard something that ought not be forgotten.
The sheets slide against his skin in an impossible soft way as he sits up. Strange. The last time he'd slept here, these sheets had been considerably coarser, made so by the march of age; where was the deep fraying from Frodo, just a faunt then, diving frantically into Bilbo's bed after a particularly vicious nightmare?
Much of his bedroom is different from the last he saw it, in fact. Did Frodo do some rearranging before-?
Oh.
Bilbo shoves the heels of his hands sharply into his eyes; the force brings colors to sprout against the black of closed lids. Oh, Frodo's beloved eyes, so blue and piercing and haunted. His pale complexion, the wince and clutch at his shoulder.
That thrice-damned ring.
Looking back beyond that ship is rather like peering into a well; everything seems to waver and ripple at random, and searching too eagerly leads to a shadow obscuring just where you want to see most. Living in that time, if he remembers correctly, is much worse than that. Things meandered up to him rather than rushing forward, and he couldn't get a full grasp on them anyway. He hadn't fully understood, then, the connection between that dreadful heirloom and Frodo's too-often vacant gaze. He hadn't even had the presence of mind to remember that it was dreadful. Bilbo cringes when he thinks of the wagon ride when he asked Frodo about the damned thing. He rejects the memory of a sunny day in Rivendell with enough force to send a troll stumbling.
"Oh, my dear boy," Bilbo mutters, then pauses at the sound of a voice that croaked only with the heaviness of sleep, not the rust of age.
Pieces are beginning to click together, and though Bilbo's always been good at predicting the outcomes of puzzles, he can't make heads nor tails of it. He's not even sure he wants to.
Bilbo clambers out of bed, and one thing's for sure: he's young again. He feels it in his knees, troublesome things they once were, which don't so much as crack with the movement. He feels it in his shoulders, strong as they ever were, and his straight posture. He sees it in his hands, skin smooth and unpatterned by liver spots or pockmarks.
"So, is this some magic of Valinor? To be returned your vigor, to be placed in a beloved spot?" Bilbo says aloud, rather expecting Gandalf to round the corner and deliver the affirmative in that amused way of his, or, more realistically, to simply smile enigmatically.
But the hobbit does not need a wizard to know how overwhelmingly unlikely this scenario is; for surely Frodo would be with him, and besides, even an eleventy-and-two year old hobbit could not sleep through an entire ocean, as well as stay asleep while carried through the Undying Lands.
And miss multiple meals apparently, Bilbo thinks, as his stomach begins to gnaw on his inner walls.
Perplexion is no reason to skimp out on breakfast.
Bilbo throws on a patchwork robe - another beloved relic - and moves to the kitchen, fingers tracing lightly along the well-known walls. Amazing how accurate this was, right down to the small dent Meriadoc had been so kind as to provide (the first and last time he agreed to let the boys practice juggling inside Bad End) in the dining room wall.
It is as he walks past a window that the second possibility approaches him.
He can see Samwise Gamgee walking down Bag Shot Row. Whistling, a hoe slung over his shoulder, he looks a fair sight better than he did at the docks, crying and embracing Frodo. Bidding Frodo farewell. Standing on the docks with Meriadoc and Peregrin, growing smaller as the ship moved away.
Samwise Gamgee would not possibly be in Valinor.
Bilbo doesn't even know how to feel about being sent back as a spirit (outrage, disappointment, panic), before Samwise notices him frozen in the frame of the window.
"Good mornin', Master Bilbo!" He bellows, waving his free hand over his head. His sleeve slides along his arm a bit, baring a pink scar tapering off halfway down his forearm.
Oh, havens above, it's Hamfast Gamgee.
"Ronkin's wife, she's started her labor pains!" Hamfast continues, grinning excitedly, "My own is headin' over to their hole as we speak, and Ronkin's asked me to look after his cabbages for today! Oh, we're all in an uproar!"
Ronkin Proudfoot, father of Carrin Proudfoot, a persnickety little fellow born a fortnight before Bilbo had the exclusive privilege of hosting 13 dwarves and one overbearing wizard.
Bilbo had forgotten how he would faint at the drop of a hat in his younger years.
