Frodo prodded the porridge with his spoon. It squished, but failed to look any more appetizing. No one had ever given him porridge for breakfast in Buckland, which he thought showed admirable good sense on the part of his Brandybuck relations. He was hungry enough, but staring into his bowl was starting to make him lose his appetite.

"Add some honey," Bilbo said unsympathetically. He tucked into his own bowl with gusto. "I don't know what you have against it, it tastes perfectly fine."

It was just Frodo's luck that Bilbo, who was normally as lax a guardian as anyone could wish for, was absolutely stubborn about food. The kitchen was his domain, and all meals were planned, prepared, and distributed by him. Under his watchful eye, Frodo was allowed to assist with certain food-related tasks that did not involve use of fire or anything very sharp. Most of the time, Frodo got asked to do the washing up. But like all hobbits, he was glad for any excuse to be in the kitchen, and Bilbo was a talented cook. Frodo rarely had any reason to do other than eat what he was given. But Bilbo had no patience for finicky eaters. If Frodo didn't like his porridge, he had better eat it just the same.

He poured a generous dollop of honey into his bowl and spent more time than was necessary mixing it into the porridge. He was just about to lift a tentative spoonful to his lips when Thorin took a seat beside him at the table. The wooden chair he had chosen emitted a soft creak. Thorin's long-term residence in Bag End was making it quite clear that hobbit furniture was not built with a dwarf's height or bulk in mind. Thankfully, the late Bungo Baggins had believed that sturdy furniture was a worthwhile investment, and so long as Thorin didn't go about in full battle armor nothing seemed in danger of imminent collapse.

As usual, Thorin started the day by gulping down several cups of black tea, which Bilbo brewed for him to be so strong that one sip of it had made Frodo think his eyes were about to fly right out of their sockets. This tea, he had observed, appeared to be vital to Thorin's ability to speak in complete sentences. Before the third cup, he rarely did more than grunt irritably.

Today, he was giving the pot of porridge a baleful stare that very closely mirrored Frodo's own feelings. Frodo felt suddenly grateful to have an unexpected ally.

Bilbo looked from the porridge to Thorin and back again. Then, some strange emotion flickered behind his eyes. He stood up from the table.

"I'm so sorry," he said. "I wasn't thinking. I'll go make something else. Do you want bacon?" He bustled off into the kitchen.

Frodo gave Thorin a long, considering look.

"Why don't you have to eat it?" he asked. True, Thorin was a lot larger and more frightening than he was, but Bilbo wasn't the type to be intimidated. After all, he had faced down a dragon before. There must be some other reason why Thorin was not subject to the tyranny of the kitchen.

Thorin took another long swallow of tea.

"Did you ever eat something while you were sick, or feel sick after eating something, and then find that later on you could not abide the sight of it?"

"Sure," Frodo said. "Once Merry and I stole a whole bunch of Aunt Esmeralda's pecan pies —well, it was Merry's idea really—and we ate so many of them that I spent the whole night throwing up. And ever since then I haven't been able to eat pecan pie. Merry still can, though. It's really not fair."

Thorin nodded gravely.

"It's something like that, I imagine."

"So you ate porridge while you were sick, and now you can't eat it at all?" Frodo asked.

"Not just porridge," Bilbo said, coming back into the room with a plate of bacon and eggs for Thorin and a single piece of bacon as a pity offering for Frodo. "That winter I stayed in Erebor, we didn't have enough food. It seemed like all we had to eat for months was gruel and terrible stew."

"You don't seem to mind," Frodo pointed out.

Bilbo shrugged. "I wasn't sick at the time. Besides, it takes a lot more than that to put hobbit off his food."

Frodo picked up his spoon and started to eat the porridge. At least he had never had to worry about a food shortage, although he knew that there had been at least one terrible winter in the past hundred years when even the Shire had suffered from a famine. He could manage to eat porridge for one morning, as long as he didn't have to have it every day for months.


Bilbo chuckled inwardly as he watched Thorin sneak Frodo a couple more pieces of bacon. Like most dwarves, he was not particularly gifted at subtlety. Nevertheless, Bilbo pretended not to notice. He didn't care that much what Frodo ate. It seemed that whatever he tried to be strict about with the boy failed miserably, probably because he had no idea when to be strict and when to be lenient. He had realized quickly that Frodo was probably too old to have his cousin telling him to clear his plate, although he could certainly remember his own mother crossing her arms over her chest and telling him that until he was the master of the house he should shut up and eat what he was given. He had been thirty-five at the time.

He hoped he would get the knack of being a guardian eventually.

He was also glad that the bacon seemed to be distracting Frodo from asking too many questions about Thorin's "illness". Frodo knew that Thorin had sustained serious injuries in the past—the dwarf king still had enough of a limp to make that much obvious. But he showed astonishingly little evidence now of how bad it had been. And if Bilbo had any choice in the matter, Frodo would go on forever looking at Thorin as an invincible warrior who had appeared out of the blue to make his life more exciting. He didn't want Frodo to be exposed to the truth of Thorin's world—how much he had lost, and how much he had suffered, to become the king that he was now. Thankfully, Thorin seemed to agree with him about that, and had not chosen to burden Frodo's ears with any of the details. Not that he had ever been given to speaking openly about what he had lost, at least not in a personal sense.

There was a sharp, impatient rap at the door. Buried deep in his own thoughts, it took Bilbo a moment too long to notice it. But he knew that sound.

"Wait!" he shouted. "Don't open it!"

Frodo had already headed off to answer it, abandoning his unwanted porridge with alacrity. At Bilbo's yell, Thorin jumped to his feet, and a small, wicked looking knife appeared in his hand. Now where had he been keeping that?

He shook his head wildly at Thorin, trying to indicate that they were not in actual, physical peril. Then the sound of the door swinging open sent him into a further panic and he did the only thing he could think to do.

He stuck a hand into his waistcoat pocket and slipped on his magic ring.

Thorin stared at the place where Bilbo had been a moment before, shrugged, and followed Frodo to the door. Bilbo trailed after him wringing his hands and having a care to walk silently.

"I'm here to speak with Bilbo!" said a shrill, carrying voice. "Where is he?"

As he had suspected, Lobelia Sackville-Baggins was standing by the front door, loudly making demands. Bilbo felt a twinge of shame at deserting his family in a time of crisis. But it was not a very substantial twinge of shame. Sometimes, his sense of self-preservation was just too strong.

"I'll…just go get him," stammered Frodo, sounding as if Lobelia had clobbered him over the head with her purse.

Thorin stepped up behind him and crossed his arms over his chest.

Lobelia somehow managed to peer down her nose at him, an impressive feat considering that she was a full foot and a half shorter than he.

"Bilbo is not at home," Thorin rumbled. Frodo looked confused.

"Pish-tosh!" exclaimed Lobelia. "I heard his voice just now, I know I did!" She fixed Thorin with her fiercest glare, and reached up to fiddle with her dangerous-looking hairpins, unsure of how to deal with someone who did not immediately get out of the way for her.

"I believe," said Thorin, "That any business you have with Mr. Baggins can be addressed to young Frodo here."

"Oh, what a state this family has descended to!" cried Lobelia, sounding slightly more daunted but no quieter. Bilbo winced, and covered his ears. This could go on for a while. "And all because of him. Running off on adventures! Favoring stray relatives over his lawful heirs! Do you know what they call him behind his back? Mad Baggins, that's what. The head of the family! And we were one of the most respectable families in the Shire, in his father's day."

Thorin took a menacing step closer to her, and she drew back in alarm, stumbling against the door.

"Any business you have with Mr. Baggins," he repeated, "May also be addressed to ME. I will see he receives any message you would care to leave for him. But I will hear no words spoken against him in my presence, and if you have come only to shout abuse in someone else's hallway you had better be on your way."

Lobelia was actually silent for a full fifteen seconds. Her mouth opened, closed, and then opened again. Thorin opened the door behind her and she stepped back out onto the front step.

"Er." she said, in a normal speaking voice this time. "Um. Well. You see, I really came to…to invite him to a tea I am hosting this Thursday. Yes, that is precisely why I am here."

"Is that so?" Thorin said coolly, ignoring Frodo's desperate tug on his sleeve. "Then we will be delighted to attend. Good day." And he shut the door so quickly that the tip of Lobelia's pointy nose was nearly caught in its trajectory. Bilbo watched as she marched off down the road, with her fists clenched, but staggering slightly.

He was impressed in spite of himself. He had certainly never managed to get rid of her so quickly. He tiptoed into the kitchen, removed his ring, and walked back out to rejoin Thorin and Frodo.

"Did I miss anything?" he said. Thorin gave him a look of disgust.

"Bilbo!" Frodo wailed. "Thorin accepted an invitation to tea from Lobelia Sackville-Baggins!"

"Oh dear," said Bilbo, shaking his head in mock alarm. "I suppose I'll have to write and tell her we can't make it."

"You'll do no such thing," said Thorin. "Hospitality is hospitality. It would be dishonorable to decline it. I do hope that no Baggins would be so cowardly as to run from such an invitation."

"No, of course not, " Bilbo said weakly. He had survived much worse things, after all. Trolls. Wargs. Dragons.

Confound the Sackville-Bagginses, though.


On rainy afternoons, Thorin would sometimes bring out his harp and play for them. That day, he did so, at Frodo's request. Frodo listened with shining eyes, and Bilbo allowed his mind to drift off to earlier days, when he had sat around a campfire with thirteen dwarves and a wizard and listened to them make a different kind of music. Thorin had rarely played back then. For him, music had been something solemn and nostalgic. But Fíli and his fiddle had entertained them many an evening. The young dwarf knew a good many tavern songs, some from the Ered Luin where he had been raised, some from the Men he had traveled among, and even a few that reminded Bilbo of tunes from the Shire.

One night, early on their journey, Kíli had tried to sing a bit of something in Khuzdul, and Thorin had cut him off with a fierce look and a glance at Bilbo and Gandalf.

"Not among outsiders. Haven't your mother and I taught you better than that?"

"But Thorin," Fíli said, interceding for his brother as always. "It's not forbidden to speak it around them, just to teach it to them."

"Leave it to me to decide what's forbidden," Thorin snapped. "Our tongue is the only treasure we have left. We should guard it carefully."

"But–"

"Behave yourselves! Do you want me to regret bringing you?"

There had been no more music for several days.

Of course, Thorin had relaxed his attitudes about language as time went on. Bilbo had heard plenty of Khuzdul in Erebor, and even a few songs.

Thorin sang one for them that night. Bilbo had not heard him sing in a long time.

"I was put in mind of this song recently, when I saw Kíli's gift to you" Thorin said. "I believe I heard it in my youth. It's an old song of Erebor, and quite mysterious in its way." As he began to sing, Bilbo felt a chill run down his spine, and he trembled. Thorin's voice was low and quiet, and yet seemed to fill every nook and corner of Bag End. He could not escape it.

Sof lilan na dhazad rûk

Mahal olak sezt chanlukh?

Vezedrûn o vezedrûn,

Na dern lilan hanfun?

Bachar duzgul mendanun,

Tanden zos asof nantukh.

"What does it mean?" Frodo wanted to know, still rapt.

Bilbo shushed him. "It's not polite to ask, my boy."

Thorin shrugged. "I can tell you, although I won't do the poetry much justice, nor can I tell you what it means. Quite literally, it says something like 'The flower that blooms at night beneath the earth, did Mahal put it there? Vezedrun, do you only bloom when he is watching you? You are pale next to the riches of our mines, but point out greater mysteries.'"

Frodo shook his head. "I don't understand it at all. It doesn't sound like proper poetry to me."

"Well, it's poetic enough in Khuzdul, I think. Perhaps your cousin could do it more justice in the common tongue." They turned expectant eyes on Bilbo, who flushed. He seriously doubted his own merits as a poet. But he did love to try.

"If you insist, I'll make a stab at it" he said, and cleared his throat.

A tiny greyling blossom there,

born far away from sky and air,

not so proud and not so fair

as other treasures of our mine,

and lacking gold and mithril's shine,

were you yet a gift divine?

Little stranger, born from stone

and scorning light 'mid earth and bone,

you bloom for Durin's folk alone.

Frodo applauded him, and Thorin favored them with one of his rare smiles.

"I like it," he said simply. "I think it captures the spirit of the original. You certainly do know our ways by now. If I could teach you our tongue, I'm sure you'd make quite the translator."

Bilbo laughed. "Well, it's not my fault you keep your songs to yourselves." In truth, he was not half the linguist that Thorin was. The dwarf might claim that he was no scholar, but Bilbo knew him to speak five or six languages quite fluently.

A few minutes later, Sam arrived to tend to the garden, and Frodo went outside to bother him while he worked. Bilbo approved of what seemed to be a growing friendship between the two boys. Sam might not be as socially appropriate a companion for Frodo as Merry Brandybuck was, but he possessed a far more calming influence.

"I've been meaning to ask you again about going to Erebor," Thorin said suddenly. "I intended to spend the winter here, but I'm beginning to fear that I should not remain away for so long."

"Well," said Bilbo, a bit discomfited, "As long as you don't leave before the Sackville-Baggins tea. I'd never forgive you, you know."

Thorin snorted. "I'll not desert you in your hour of need."

"Are you worried about Kíli?"

"I suppose I am. I do think he is ready for the responsibility, but it sits ill with me to leave for so long."

"But he's not still…" Bilbo couldn't think of a tactful way to put it. "He was doing a lot better by the time I left Erebor, but I was still afraid he'd never be the same."

"He won't be," said Thorin flatly. "But I don't think he's unhappy. He's not in thrall to his grief. You know, sometimes looking your boy reminds me of him a bit, at that age. As he used to be."

The comparison startled Bilbo, but then, he had only known Thorin's nephew as an adult.

"Do you think you can decide in the next few weeks whether you'll make the journey?" Thorin asked.

Bilbo did not want to tell him that he was already fairly sure what the answer must be.

"I'll do my best. Gandalf always did say it was impossible to get me to make up my mind about going anywhere."


On the sixth day after the battle, Gandalf had taken Bilbo from Thorin's bedside for a while to bring him down to the ruins of Dale, where Fíli had been lying in state. Many of the dead had already been buried, but the most important among the fallen warriors were being given a formal seventh day burial. As Thorin's heir, Fíli's ceremony would be the last of the day, and the most grand.

Fíli was clothed in white, and crowned with gold from the hoard. A fine old sword of Erebor lay by his side, and diamonds glittered from his fingers. His beard and hair had been unbraided and combed out. He looked every inch the prince, and not a thing like the cheerful lad Bilbo had known. He would rather have seen Fíli buried wearing his traveling gear and holding his fiddle. But that would not have been proper, by dwarvish standards.

Until he saw the body, the death had not seemed real to Bilbo. He had been too worried about Thorin to think much upon anything else. But now, he realized that Fíli was truly gone, and he wept freely for a moment before collecting himself. He did not have time to give way to his sadness. There would be time later to grieve.

"Are you ready to leave?" Gandalf asked.

"Yes, I should be getting back to Thorin. Balin is with him at the moment, but he has so much work to do. I'm really the only one who can be spared right now…"

"That's not what I mean, Bilbo," Gandalf said gently. "Are you ready to go back to the Shire? I intend to leave tomorrow, after Fíli has been set to sleep among his ancestors."

"I don't know," Bilbo stammered. "This is so sudden."

"I should have thought you would be eager to be on your way, return to your home. I know how much you miss it."

"I do," said Bilbo. "More than anything. But I gave Thorin my word that I would stay here, and I intend to stand by that."

"Your loyalty to the king who cast you out is commendable, but I don't see what use Thorin can have for you now."

Bilbo frowned.

"Perhaps he only wants to make sure I suffer as much as everyone else."

Gandalf shook his head. "I should prefer to see you safely back to the Shire."

"I will go back, Gandalf, but I can't go back now. Do you disapprove so much that I've thrown my lot in with the dwarves? After all, I wouldn't be here without you."

Gandalf ruffled his hair, a gesture that Bilbo would have found infuriating from anyone else among the Big Folk. But Gandalf was so very old, and Bilbo did feel much like a child in his presence. A particularly stubborn child, no doubt.

But he knew he would see the Shire again eventually. And when he got back to Bag End, he would sit himself down among his books and never, ever leave again, no matter what the temptation.

"I don't disapprove, my dear boy. I would just hate to see you come to further grief. That was never my plan for you." Suddenly, the wizard looked tired. "I would stay with you, if I could, but there is other work that I must do, and it is far away from here."

Bilbo nodded. "I should get back to Thorin now."

"Promise me you will think further upon this decision before tomorrow Bilbo. If you stay, it may be a good while before you see your home again."

"I will think about it," Bilbo promised. "But I don't expect my decision will change, whether it's a wise one or a foolish one."

"As to that," Gandalf said, with a smile, "Not even the Wise can always tell the difference in advance."


A/N: Sorry for the attack of fake Khuzdul poetry! (and some rather bad English poetry as well, alas). I hope this chapter wasn't too disjointed! The pace of the story is starting to pick up and there are a lot of plot threads that need to be juggled.

Anyway, thank you for reading, and for all your wonderful reviews thus far! I really appreciate hearing your thoughts.