/Planes, Trains, and Automobiles\\\

Fíli rubbed glue on the paper plate and slammed it onto the side of his cardboard box.

"Fíli," Uncle Thorin said, looking uncomfortable as he sat cross-legged on the floor between his two nephews.

"Yes, Uncle?" Fíli asked, peeling stickers from a roll to put on the middle of the paper plate tyres.

Thorin looked down at him and Fíli smiled up at his uncle.

"You need to think about what you want the car to look like at the end," Thorin said, grabbing the glitter glue out of Kíli's hand.

"Like this," Fíli said, turning the box and gluing another paper plate on the other side.

Fíli watched Kíli grab the scissors while he was distracting their uncle and smiled up at Uncle Thorin. Thorin immediately turned to look at Kíli and grabbed the scissors out of his hand.

"How are you two going?" Fíli looked up at Master Baggins and knew his Uncle Thorin would stop paying attention to them for a few minutes.

Uncle Thorin turned to look at Bilbo and got a strange look on his face that Fíli had never seen before.

"Bilbo," Uncle Thorin said.

"Such wonderful cars," Bilbo said, smiling brightly at Fíli.

"It's a tractor," Fíli corrected.

"Then it is a wonderful tractor," Bilbo said, smiling down at him and dropping down to his knees. "What else are you going to put on the front?"

Fíli held up the corrugated cardboard and then looked up at his uncle. "Uncle Thorin…"

Bilbo turned to look at the dwarf and Fíli nudged his brother and made a face to tell the younger dwarf to get on with it before their uncle tried to 'help' them again. Kíli nodded and returned to cutting up pieces of glitter paper to stick on his car. Fíli had no idea why Kíli loved glitter so much – it was cool sometimes, he supposed, but it made no sense to him how much his brother loved it. If Kíli wanted it though, he would help stick it on his car anyway.

"This is an interesting craft," Uncle Thorin told Bilbo awkwardly. Fíli truly wondered how his uncle had any friends at all when he was so bad at talking to people and Fíli knew that his uncle loved talking to the hobbit.

"We had a large number of boxes from a recent delivery and this is fun. The kids get to sit in their creations while we read the stories. It's wonderful, isn't it?"

Fíli looked up to watch Uncle Thorin nod slowly.

Bilbo smiled and laughed.

"You seem very happy today, Bilbo," Uncle Thorin said, shifting awkwardly.

Bilbo nodded. "My cousin, Drogo, informed me that he and his wife are expecting a hobbitling. It is very happy news."

"Blessings be to Mahal for such wondrous news," Thorin told him solemnly.

"Mahal?"

"Aulë," Uncle Thorin corrected. "That is the Elfish name for Mahal."

"Ah yes," Master Baggins said and Fíli noticed his eyes flick over to where Kíli was using the abandoned glitter glue to decorate his car. The hobbit did not try to stop Kíli and Fíli liked him even better for it. "Mahal made the dwarves."

"He did, he made the first of our line – Durin the Deathless."

"What a happy name," Bilbo said with a smile and then continued at a bit of a rush. "You appear to have healed from your recent campaign."

"I am well."

Bilbo's eyes darted around the area and then fell on Uncle Thorin again. Fíli did not understand why the hobbit did not just ask his uncle to play a game so that they could become better friends. Sometimes he did not understand adults at all.

Kíli was looking at his car happily even if he was adding brightly coloured bits of paper to his tyres. Fíli stopped paying attention to what his uncle and the hobbit were doing so that he could finish his tractor now that Kíli was happy.

/