Misadventure
Summary: Bilbo Baggins gets lost when he's six. He is rescued and then adopted by giant Eagles, a bear shapeshifter, and a wizard who loves animals. But even though he loves his new family very much, there is a still part of him inside that wants to find his lost home. Eventually he discovers that the dwarves are probably both the best and worst chance he has of finding it again.
Tags: Adoption, finding family, family bonding, survival skills, BAMF Bilbo, Bilbo Baggins was raised by the Eagles of Manwë, Bilbo is everyone's smol son, Everyone loves Bilbo.
Warnings: Mentions of kidnapping, mentions of abuse, lost child, briefly sold to slavers, angst with a happy ending.
Disclaimer: I do not own The Hobbit, LOTR, Toliekn's works, or any of his characters. This story is purely for entertainment purposes only, I am not making any money from this fanwork.
A/N: Welcome to the thing I started because Child Of The Earth And Sky went and gave me some ideas. Rather angsty ideas, because this is me we are talking about after all. But it will all have a happy ending eventually. Unfortunately the original author orphaned the work and seems to have left the fandom, so I can't really dedicate this work to them as well, and I doubt that they will ever see it, but if they do wander this way I hope they know they have inspired others, and I am eternally grateful that they were generous enough to leave their work up for the rest of us to read and enjoy.
Dedicated with eternal luv to Uvecheri, without whom most of my ideas would likely never take off.
.
.
.
Some of Bilbo's earliest memories were of fear and pain. He and his parents had been traveling through the mountains and had been attacked by bandits on the road. They hadn't had more than a few coins, and nothing of any value. Bungo had hoped that would mean they'd leave his family alone, but they didn't. Instead they had beaten Bungo and left him for dead on the side of the road. Belladonna and Bilbo were taken captive, bound and handed over to slavers for a price, then shoved into the back of a filthy wagon with a cage over the top of it that had four other prisoners inside, all of them Men.
The slavers hurt his mother constantly, he'd been too young to truly understand it at the time, but he had always been angry about it. Later when he was old enough, he'd wanted to commit murder, but by then it was far too late. They had sold his mother in a human town somewhere in those horrible lands, they'd had to chain her in irons to try and keep her separated from her son. Bilbo had fought valiantly, but he'd been too young, too small, too weak to do anything more than scream and cry and try to reach through the bars for her. His mother had begged and pleaded for them to stay together, she'd do anything, but the one who had bought her had ignored her as if she wasn't even there. Bilbo had never felt so useless.
The slave wagon had moved on, now just him and two others, who ignored him and took no pity on him or his poor mother. He hated men. He counted the towns they had passed on the road, hoping to remember how far back his mother was. The cart had rumbled through the mountains dangerously close to the edge, and Bilbo tried his hardest to stay hunkered down and away from the drop. It was cold too, and they didn't give them more than one blanket, and the other two weren't willing to share it with him. For two weeks all he can remember is the fear and the cold. He lost his appetite even though they were barely fed, and he grew wan and sick. He had heard his captors saying how he wasn't going to make it, that they should just toss him over the cliff and be done with it. Bilbo had been too ill to care.
But that night, more bad things happened, but in a way, it was good luck for him. One of the captors had wanted to make camp, another had a bad feeling and wished to press on. They fought about it, and finally one of them stabbed the other. This turned out to be a bad move, because something caught the smell of blood on the wind. Then there were howls in all directions, howls that sank through his skin and chilled his bones far more than the cold mountain wind did. Giant dog monsters had attacked the camp, he couldn't really be sure, but they were huge and terrifying. They killed the horses and all four of the remaining men, rent them to pieces, and what's worse, some of the monsters had other monsters riding them, ones with weapons and who walked and spoke as if they were people. Bilbo had been truly terrified, because they had come to the wagon as well, and set their huge paws on the bars, pushing and shaking and tearing at the wooden bottom trying to get to their dinner.
By chance, utter chance, when the wagon tipped over he had been covered by the one blanket they had been given and he tucked himself into the smallest ball he could and did what his mother had always told him to do when he was scared and no one was looking at him, to make himself invisible by thinking with all his might: 'I'm not here, you don't see me, you won't find me, smell me, or notice me at all. I am a bit of shadow, a rock, a log, of absolutely no importance to you or anyone.' over and over again and staying as small, still, and quiet as he could, clenching his teeth until they hurt so he wouldn't scream. It wasn't easy with the monsters tearing through the wagon, grabbing the two shouting people and hearing the screams and the death and everyone getting eaten, but it was better than being eaten himself, and he must have managed to be invisible because no one paid the little lump of blanket in the corner of the overturned wagon any mind at all.
Once the monsters had feasted their fill, it grew very quiet, but Bilbo didn't know if that meant they had gone or were just waiting for him to come out of hiding. He couldn't see the camp, and he wasn't about to let them trick him after what they had done to the others. He stayed small, silent, and invisible right where he was. Eventually, even though he was so very scared, he was still ill and the quiet camp and the warmth of the thick blanket lulled him to sleep. Perhaps he'd only slept one night, or he could have slept several days, he didn't know. But when he woke up it was to weak daylight. He crawled out of the wrecked wagon, there was a light coating of snow over the whole camp, he was shivering, and there wasn't a track in sight.
There wasn't much left of the bodies, mostly torn and bloody clothes, and bones that had been stripped all but bare. There was still a bag of food, and a pack of the men's clothes. He was only six, but he knew enough to get warm when he was cold and to eat when he was hungry. He folded the legs of the pants up and down so it was three layers thick and fit his legs, and stitched them into place with a needle and thread he'd found in the debris of the camp. They were far too big around the waist, so he tied them there with a piece of rope. He did the same with the sleeves of a jacket, and sewed the bottom half under all the way to the arms and stitched it there as best he could, then took a belt that was only slightly chewed and belted the lot around himself tightly twice. It was immediately warmer.
His toes were dreadfully cold, so he tried to wrap his feet with torn cloth and sturdy leather that was too thick for him to cut properly, so it bunched weird, but they wouldn't stay on right. Then he saw the men's boots. He was still little, so his feet weren't very broad yet, and he tried all of their shoes, hoping one pair would fit. The one who had the smallest feet were still far too big for him, and were shoes instead of the nice warm fur lined boots one of the men had owned, but with his toes wrapped in layers of cloth they stayed on well enough, and then he could wear the boots if he slipped the shoes inside them and rolled the top of the boots down so the tops weren't over his knees. Walking in shoes was hard to get used to, especially with the toes of the boots being so much longer than his own. They made him slower and more clumsy, but his feet were warm at least.
There was a thick cloak with a hood that had been torn by the dog monsters at the bottom half of it, but when he cut off the bad parts it was just the right length for him, even if it could have wrapped around him twice. he put the blanket from the wagon on over that, and he stitched the big pieces from what he'd cut off of the cloak into sorta mittens so his fingers didn't freeze. He took everything he could carry. All of the food and a waterskin that was full but halfway frozen, he carried those in a side satchel. Rope, a wooden bowl, mug, utensils, another thick wool blanket, the needle and thread, an empty waterskin, and the fire starter went into a little pack that he could wear on his back under the cloak.
There were two big knives that he didn't know how to use, but figured they were better than nothing if the monsters came then collected every single coin from the camp; gold, silver, copper, brass, and tin alike, and put them in different places like he'd seen the men doing so no one could take all of it. He didn't know much about money, but he knew that gold was the most valuable, and silver after that, so that's what he hid piece by piece in his clothes, sewing small pouches into place in his layers to hold and hide them so they couldn't be lost or easily taken. There were a lot of coins because they had sold a lot of people, but the monsters hadn't been interested in money. He knew he would need it if he found a town though, so it was worth taking. The copper coins he put in a little pouch and hid in his inside jacket pocket. The brass and tin he tied on his belt and hidden by his cloak. Men were not to be trusted, even the slave traders had known that.
He wanted to take more, but he was too little to carry it, and he was already slowed down a lot by the big boots, the thickly folded cloth, the full packs, and the heavy coins. He headed back the way they had come from, there had been a town at the bottom of the mountain, and if he could just get there, he could buy a pony and a map and go get his mother who was six towns away. He'd give the man all of his coins, which was a lot more than he had paid for her, and he'd let her go, because men were greedy and liked money more than people. And if he wouldn't let her go, then Bilbo would stick his knife into him and rescue his mother and they could try and find his dad together before going home to the Shire and never leaving it again. At least that had been the plan.
The sky was so thick with dark grey clouds that he cast no shadow and had no idea what time it was, he couldn't even see the outline of the sun, and he didn't know how long he walked. At first nothing much happened, but he knew he wasn't making very good time. Bilbo was very hungry, and still sick, but stopping wasn't a good idea either, and eating too much would make him ill, and he couldn't buy more food until he got to the bottom of the mountain, so it wouldn't do to waste it. So he took a big thick chunk of dried meat, and he stuck it in his mouth like a toffee, and just sucked on it and chewed it like candy for as long as he could until the hunger pains and nausea went away, and he wasn't worried about getting sick and accidentally wasting his food anymore. He chewed a couple more small pieces of meat on the way until he was feeling much better. It was lonely and very quiet on the road aside from the clump of his feet, and the crunch of the snow, and the occasional bird or whisper of wind. If his parents were there they would have been singing a traveling song or a walking song, but they weren't there, Bilbo had to rescue them, and the dog monsters and the other monsters might still be nearby, so he had to be quiet. And he tried, he really did, but he wasn't quiet enough.
Either the clouds were getting thicker or it was starting to get dark when he heard the howling dog monsters again, and he ducked to the side of the cliff and over the side onto a tiny ledge and wedged himself as far down between some rocks and the side as he could and covered himself with the hood and made himself small and tried with all his might to be invisible, and prayed that they would go away and pass him by.
He wasn't as lucky this time, mostly because he had forgotten to do one simple thing that his mother had always done while they traveled through snow, to brush away their tracks with a branch. He was hauled back over the side by one of the people shaped monsters, who were laughing and probably deciding on the best way to kill him and eat him, when suddenly there was a piercing shriek, followed by another, and another. It sounded like the hawks and eagles that lived around the Shire, but a thousand times louder and bigger. Giant wings filled the air, they swooped and dove for the monsters, ripping them apart, tossing them over the cliff, gouging into flesh with talons as big as he was and beaks that could have swallowed him whole. He screamed in fright as the monsters dropped him and he ran as best he could, which wasn't anywhere near good enough because one of the birds grabbed him in it's claws and took off up into the sky. He was scared to death of being eaten, and scared of falling, and just terrified in general, and begging the giant bird not to kill him please, he just wanted to go home, he just wanted his mother, he wouldn't even make a mouthful, and to just please let him go.
But the eagle didn't understand him, they flew onwards into what was now most definitely night, and to a sheer cliff face that was so high up that the river in the valley below looked like a thread, and they were only halfway up the side. He was let go into a giant nest with two smaller birds inside it, not fully balls of fluff, but still not fully grown, and they were still huge compared to him. He was terrified that he was to be dinner for the monster bird's babies, but then a second eagle, dark brownish red throughout, landed and dropped a dead deer into the nest, that the chicks tore into with obvious delight. The parent eagle that had brought him here, brownish grey with a white breast and dark speckles on it, tore off a deer leg and offered it to him, and he tried to explain that he needed fire, but it didn't seem to understand him. Eventually he gave the leg to one of the other chicks and ate a turnip and an apple from his satchel.
The chicks then hedged him in on either side and settled down to sleep and one of the eagles, their mother he thought, the one who had brought him here, settled into the nest and tucked the three of them under her wing, the other eagle settled in beside her, protecting them on both sides. It was warm, nearly stifling with all of the layers he already had on, and there was still blood on the branches not too far away, and the nest was quite pokey in a lot of places, but the chicks were soft, and the chirruping sound the birds made was quite soothing now that he was mostly sure they didn't want to eat him, and he was much too high and far away for the monster dogs and the other monsters to get him, and so he once more fell asleep.
It was a good thing he was in the nest, poking and bloodied branches aside, because when he woke up and looked out of the nest, there was nothing but howling white as far as the eye could see, which was about a handspan away from his face really. The blizzard was so thick and fast that the wind almost sounded like it was howling, and the snow seemed to be coming in sideways and whipped the snow into his face so hard that it stung. The mama eagle nudged him back under her wing with her beak, and it was then he came to the conclusion that the bird has decided he was a chick and had adopted him. Even though it was nice to be rescued, he didn't want to be a bird. He wanted his mother, his real mother who was still being held prisoner by those dreadful men.
Bilbo curled into the big mama eagles' side and he just cried and sobbed and cried even more, it didn't matter if he was loud now, the wind stole all of the sounds anyway. The eagle chirruped at him and he told her the whole story of what had happened even though she most likely couldn't understand him. But she nudged him with her beak and pulled him close beside her, and he didn't protest it even though his face was all hot and his eyes were itchy and puffy now. He stayed there all day and sang traveling songs to the chicks, who chirruped at him and played a strange nudging game that he couldn't quite work out the rules to.
About mid day the winds and the snows stopped for awhile and the sun broke through the clouds. The bigger eagle who he thought was the papa, screeched at him and held out a wing. Bilbo didn't understand, and the eagle screeched again, and the mother eagle nudged him forward with her beak and Bilbo kind of got the idea he was supposed to climb on, but Bilbo ducked as far as he could under the mother bird. This didn't help him when the papa eagle merely grabbed him in one foot and then dove off the side of the nest instead. They were plummeting down, down, down to his certain death, and then they were flying again, but Bilbo was still screaming regardless.
The Eagle landed him on the bank of the river, and Bilbo thought he might be letting him go, but the eagle was directly behind him, and he couldn't go anywhere but to the water. Drowning him was rather pointless, so Bilbo figured he was there for a drink maybe. He filled up his waterskins and even though it was freezing cold, he stripped down and washed his bottom layer out fully, because his mother would scold him to no end if he went about smelling like he did right now. He soaked them well and then set them out in the snow to freeze. In the winter, letting wet things freeze for awhile was the best way to make them stop smelling if you didn't have any soap with you. Let it freeze, then beat off the ice, soak again and repeat. That's what his father had taught him.
Since he was already bare he scrubbed himself as best he could with coarse sand and river rocks until he didn't feel quite so icky. The cold water actually felt a bit refreshing now that his fever was gone. Afterwards Bilbo dried off with his blanket and just put the mens' clothing back on, though it too could use a good washing. Afterwards he beat his now frozen things against a rock until they were pliable again and wrapped them up in the blanket, hoping he could lay them out in the nest and they would dry the rest of the way.
The Eagle once more lay down and extended a wing to Bilbo to help him climb up, and though Bilbo was scared of falling off, he really didn't want to be grabbed in those scary looking talons again. He apologized if he accidentally pulled any feathers, and then he was holding on for dear life as the eagle took off and swooped them up into the sky again. Some of the other eagles on the cliff face were taking the lull in the storm to stretch their wings too. They circled the valley up up up until even they were tiny dots against the clouds. Bilbo was scared at first but somehow he knew the eagle wasn't going to let him fall. The view was beautiful, if scary, and as he looked across the huge mountains, he wondered just how far away had they flown, and where his mother was now. He hoped she was warm, and had enough food, and that someone nice had found his father and even now he was trying to find them.
There was another deer waiting for them when they got back, and the mother eagle had already torn off a hind leg for him. But now, on the ledge away from the nest, against the cliff wall, was an empty half ring of rocks, a pile of sticks and branches, and two half rotted tree trunks that had been set there in a 'v' shape to protect a fire from the winds, or from spreading. Bilbo smiled and thanked her, she'd understood his need for fire even though they didn't speak the same language. He'd never built a fire on his own before, but he'd watched his parents do it enough times that he was certain he could. He took a handful of downy fluff and grass from the bottom of the nest and used a small chunk of oil soaked sawdust cake that had been packed in the firestarter kit, and worked out how to use the flint and steel, and while getting it to spark was harder than it looked, once he did the sparks soon caught and he got a little flame going.
Bilbo spent the afternoon roasting a venison leg, and drying out strips of it to save for later. His clothes he laid out on the stone nearest the fire to dry them out. An eagle from another nest brought him a shiny helmet with a visor that had been made for one of the big folk. He washed it out, threaded a branch through the chin guard and made it into a cooking pot. Other eagles brought him 'useful things' they had found and collected over the years, or more dry wood, or small rocks throughout the afternoon, until he had a proper fire pit tucked in the lee of the cliff wall, as well as a seating area and wind breaker made of the two logs, a proper venison stew cooking, complete with vegetables even if he didn't have any seasonings, and what meat he couldn't eat right then drying on skewers beside the fire. He felt accomplished, and he knew his parents would have been proud of him.
The chicks were quite curious as to what all he was doing, and he offered them the leftovers of the stew, but they didn't seem to care for it. The hours passed and the fire banked and he remembered how his father used to bury a fire or use an ember pot so he could start it again easier later on. He didn't have anything to do that with now since his repurposed helmet pot didn't have a lid. He piled the embers up as high as he could, scraping them together with a spear one of the eagles had given him, and hoped that the middle would stay hot until tomorrow, then came back to the nest when the mother eagle chirruped at him, as a sharp cry rang out across the cliffside. He tucked in for the night among the two chicks who he was beginning to call Maple and Larkspur, since he didn't know what else to call them, and didn't even know if they were girls or boys, but those names could be used for either.
The storm came back that night, and it didn't let up for two whole days. Bilbo huddled in the nest warm but rather bored unless he had to crawl out to relieve himself, and he missed his mother's singing, and his father's stories, and pies, and seven meals a day, and his soft bed. But he wasn't ungrateful because the eagles had saved him and sheltered him from the storms and fed him and even had a way to give him fire, so he was nothing but thankful to them, but he was also homesick and scared at what was to become of him, and worried for his parents, and he missed talking to people.
When the blizzard finally died out their whole ledge was covered in snow deeper than Bilbo was tall. His fire was long cold, and the meat had frozen halfway through drying, but hadn't spoiled. The eagles brushed most of the snow off the ledge with their wings, the papa eagle even held tight to the ledge and beat his wings fiercely to blow it out of the area where Bilbo's fire pit was. The wood was wet on the tops, but the middle wood was dry enough to burn. And when the papa eagle took him, his water skins, cooking pot, and his dirty dishes down to clean up, get more water, and to let him stretch as best he could, he saw that a group of fish had been frozen in the ice of the river, and the eagle had no trouble breaking them out for him in one big block of ice that he carried back up to the nest in his claws. Bilbo loved fish and his papa had taught him how to prepare them when he was barely big enough to walk. He used one of the big knives to chip the ice away from the fish. He only took out one so he didn't have to worry about the rest spoiling if the sun decided to start shining again, and he cleaned it and cooked it on a stick over the fire. This time the chicks were more than willing to help him clean up whatever he was discarding. Bilbo figured it had taken him awhile to like vegetables too, and they'd know better when they were older.
It was a week later and he was thawing his latest batch of cleaned clothes, getting them toasty warm before putting them back on, when one of the eagles that he hadn't seen before, pale brown that was nearly golden and white under his wings, but could tell by his size was quite young, brought him something that scared him at first. It was a skeleton, or at least, the top half of one, that was still dressed in dirty clothes, covered with dried mud, and the pockets and seams had a bunch of dirt and gravel wedged and stuffed in them, but then he realized, it was the huge traveling pack strapped to the skeleton the eagle was trying to give him, not the skeleton itself. They just hadn't been able to get all the bones off since it had been strapped in so well.
The pack was much bigger than he was, and weighed even more. It was covered in dried mud too, but the inside was still good, and this pack was much better stocked than the one he had packed after the monster attack, and he thanked the eagle who had brought it to him quite sincerely and even hugged him as close to the eagle's middle as he could reach, which was his leg really. But the eagle seemed to understand and bumped him lightly with his beak, before turning and taking off again.
This pack had a nice thick bedroll stuffed with padding and a lanolin treated canvas bottom. Wrapped inside of it to keep it dry was an oilskin cloak wrapped around a blanket, a pair of long woolen underwear, trousers, and a shirt that were much closer to his size, well, his parents' size really, but still far closer than a man's size was, a beaver hat with ear covers that was too big but kept his ears warm, and a good sturdy pair of fur lined boots stuffed with two pairs of thick woolen socks, a pair of gloves, a knitted cap, a scarf, and a fleece lined pair of leather mittens. Bilbo was thrilled that they fit so much better than the ones he was currently wearing. Strapped to the outside was a bunch of rope and hooks, a shovel, a pick, two axes, a really good hunting knife, and a small cast iron cook pot with a hinged lid that hooked shut. Inside the pot was a tiny cast iron frying pan with a detachable handle, an ember box, wooden spoons, round cutting board, bowl and mug, a set of cooking knives, and a set of metal utensils.
Inside of the pack there was a smaller pack filled with a lot of food. Easily enough to last him a month or two. Two types of cram, little sacks of beans, rice, lentils, nuts, oats, and spelt that were still good, dried meat and fish, cooked sausages packed in lard, a large tin with three kinds of portable soup, small cheeses dipped in wax, slices of potatoes, beets, carrots, turnips, parsnips, and mushrooms that had all been carefully dried and packed in salt. There were packages of dried fruit slices: oranges, lemons, limes, apples, plantains, apricots, pears, raisins, and dates, even fruit leather, crystalized honey, and rock sugar. There was even a tin of salt, a few boxes of herbs, spices, and mixed seasonings, and a large tin of real tea with a little pouch of muslin to steep it with.
Once he got past the pack of food he saw some inside pockets which had a pipe that was broken into pieces now, a pouch of pipeweed, and a little glazed clay jug of something alcoholic that he couldn't use, and his mother would have paddled his bottom purple if he ever even thought about trying at his age, so he set them aside to get rid of, but vowed to keep the jug after he washed it out, he could use it to steep the tea. He found three bars of soap, a whetstone and oil, a set of carving tools, firestarter sticks, a tinderbox, flint and steel, a pack of playing cards, a large pouch of coins, and another of gems, and then there were three pouches of rocks tucked into a wooden tube.
That Bilbo just didn't understand, why would the person have been keeping rocks? Though one pack of the stones was really pretty, they had lines of something smooth and shiny silverish white in it, and were much lighter than he thought it would be. The rest of the pack had a book filled with pictures including a few people, but the written symbols he didn't understand, and a bunch of parchments with maps and more drawings and strange words were rolled up and packed into another wooden tube. There's a second book that only had a few pages filled, and he wants to write down his story in it, even though he doesn't really know how to write very well yet. And at the bottom of the pack were three wooden boxes.
The first was rather thin, and filled with parchment on top, then tucked into a little compartment below it were charcoal sticks, a brass dip pen, and a brass pot of powdered ink, wax sticks, and seal. The second box was far more fancy, made of dark walnut, with metal tapped on the corners to protect them, and inlayed into a strange seal on the top. There's a small square mirror set into the inside of the lid, and it had small scissors, a brush, comb, and a little bottle of sweet smelling oil packed carefully into their own padded spots, and a compartment with a lid on the right hand side that had a pouch with many different beads in it.
The last box was the biggest of the three and was actually three boxes stacked and tied together. It was also the only one that seemed to have any damage to it, the side corner was bashed in pretty well, and the bottom looked like it would have fallen apart completely if it hadn't been tied together. The top layer had dried herbs bundled in individual pouches and little pots of ointments, but he couldn't understand the symbols written on the outside of them. There was a small stone mortar and pestle packed in the middle of them. The second layer was filled with tiny glass bottles standing upright in their own padded slots, and only one of them had been broken, but again, he couldn't read the writing on them. And the third layer finally let him figure out what the box was. There was a bunch of rolled bandages, cotton wool, three curved needles sitting in a stoppered phial of something clear, a roll of stiff stitching thread, little knives, and a small saw. It was a medical kit, which would have done him a lot more good if he could tell what the medicines were or knew what they were for, but all in all he had really lucked out, he would be much more comfortable now and definitely less hungry.
The skeleton still had a bit of skin on him, and there was a dark brownish black beard and a bunch of smaller braids woven back and down, ending in a thick braid of hair on the skull's head. It was the only part of the skeleton he could spare once the chicks began playing with the bones and pulled it all apart. The head was the more interesting thing anyway, there were a bunch of shiny beads in the beard and braid, and the hair was thick and coarse like straw, even if it was all caked in dried mud and stones. His mama would have never let him have his hair like that, so the next day he took the skull and the brush and the dirty clothes down to clean them up, and a bar of soap for himself. He undid the braids and carefully took out all of the beads, and clasps, which there were quite a few, and put them in a pouch of their own. Then he washed off the mud, and brushed it all out and the hair was really long, so it took awhile to dry, especially with it being cold.
He kept the skull so he could brush the hair the way his mama had used to do for him, and as curious as the chicks were, they didn't ever try and take the skull from him. He practiced braiding, just for something to do, but he wasn't very good at it at first, and the weather didn't do the skull any favors. The hair all came off the skull one day in one big piece, but he liked it so much he didn't want to waste it, so he took the scissors and cut off the bits that had the skin on them, then wove it and braided it exactly the way his mother had made straw and corn dollies. It took him a few tries to get it right, but he really didn't have anything else to do, and he also figured out how to give it an extra big braid in the back as actual hair. He made it a little jacket and trousers from a few scraps of cloth and sewed two tiny round silver beads onto it for eyes, and unraveled a bit of thread from a spare red scrap that he stitched into a mouth. It looked just like his mama in her traveling clothes. He made a rag doll for his papa since he was out of hair, and he stuffed it with scraps and found that some of the down in the nest was the same golden color as his papa's hair, and it took him a long time to figure out how to get the feathers to stay the way he wanted them to. Having dolls of his parents was comforting, but it made him miss them very much too.
What he could clean of the muddied shirt and coat wasn't much use as clothes any more once he was done washing them, so he closed the holes and made them into a cushion to protect him from the poking branches of the nest, and filled it with the scraps he couldn't use any more, and soft eagle down from around the nest. It wasn't the prettiest cushion, but it did the trick.
He'd been with the eagles almost a month, as his stick with the marks on it told him, when one morning there was a lot of screeching and calling and many eagles circling round and round. A huge eagle twice the size of any other eagle he had seen, with dark brown, nearly black feathers, alighted on the ledge and stared at him critically in that one eyed sideways way that eagles have.
"Hello little one, I am Gwaihir, Lord of this nesting ground. Who are you?" The giant eagle chirruped and screeched and came close as though to sniff him.
Bilbo was more than a bit startled that an eagle could speak like a person, but he was also very grateful for it. "I-I'm B-Bilbo Baggins, Sir. We were traveling, and men beat my papa, and they hurt my mama and sold her in some awful town six towns back from where you found me, and the giant dogs and monsters tried to eat me, so I'm really glad you saved me, but I need to save her!"
"I'm afraid that it will have to wait until the spring thaw Bilbo Baggins. The snows will be thick and the winter storms are going to be too rough to travel very far away from our valley this year. What manner of creature are you? A Man, an Elf, or a Dwarf?"
"I'm not a man! I hate men, they hurt my mama and papa! I'm a Hobbit, from the Shire!"
"Men can indeed be treacherous and cruel. It's good you are not a man, we are not well fond of most of them either. I've never heard of a hobbit, or the Shire, and I have lived on this earth for more years than I can count. Your ears are like an elf, but you are small like a dwarf. Do hobbits perhaps have one of each parent then?"
"No? Both of my parents are hobbits."
"Hmmm do you live forever?"
"No, not that I know of."
"Do you prefer the ground, the water, or the trees to live in?"
"Hobbits like to live in the ground, and most of us are scared of deep water, never heard of a hobbit living in a tree, though until me, I don't think we lived on cliffs either."
"Hmm. Then you are a dwarf young one."
"No, dwarves are very different from hobbits. They wear shoes and are very hairy and know nothing about gardens. I'm not a dwarf, I'm a hobbit."
"Well unless there is some other name that your race is known by, I'm afraid the only ground dwellers I know of are Dwarves."
"People sometimes call us Halflings, but my mother didn't like it much, says we aren't half of anything."
"Ahhh, now Halflings I have heard of, though it was very long ago, when they dwelled in the lands south of here. But your people left this part of the world more than an age ago. Where they have gone no one now knows, their magic keeps them and their lands well hidden from prying eyes. I doubt I could help you find it, unless of course, you know exactly where it is?"
Bilbo shook his head and tried to blink back tears. He didn't even know where he was NOW let alone where the Shire might be, they had been traveling for two years, the Shire could be anywhere, he'd never seen a map, his parents had known where they were going, he didn't.
"Well then the dwarves would be your closest kin, since they also live under the earth. Once the spring thaw comes we shall take you to them, and they should be able to help you find your family and aid them, Dwarves range all over Arda, one of them is bound to know where your Shire home is. Until then you will stay with us and we will care for you as best we can. Your Nest Father is known as Meneldor, and your Nest Mother is his mate Aduialhwest, your Nest Sister is Nimsûl, and your Nest Brother is Rhîwroval."
Each of the birds bowed their heads a bit in turn. And Bilbo smiled and bowed back, he knew his manners, and the eagles had been quite kind to him.
"What does your name mean little one, so that I may translate it to my kin properly?"
"I-I don't know, but my mum always said she hoped I would grow to be as sharp and keen as my name."
"That won't do. I will think of a proper name for you and we shall call you that. One must have a proper name with meaning after all. I will consult the winds and the stars and see what suits you best." and without another word the eagle flew away.
Bilbo was confused, but didn't wish to argue the point, and it wasn't worth arguing about anyway. He spent the rest of the afternoon practicing how to pronounce his adopted family's names, and had the most success with his nest siblings. Gwaihir returned two days later and declared Bilbo was now Galadhên, or Sunlight Child, and Bilbo thought it sounded rather nice.
He spent the winter with the eagles, and discovered that Landroval, (Gwaihir's younger brother, colored with feathers that were a dark brown that shone like burned copper in the sunlight, and a white breast), who visited the day after Bilbo had been dubbed Galadhên, also spoke Westeron, and was far more willing to visit for extended periods of time with a young hobbit who had many questions but nearly no answers. Bilbo was quite willing to fly with Meneldor for the essential things like bathing, laundry, food collecting, and dishes, but Meneldor never went further than the valley below unless he was hunting for his family. Landroval on the other hand, flew for the sheer joy of it. He did not have a mate or a nest with eggs or chicks to tend, and like his Brother, his wingspan was so great that the strong winter winds did not bother him like it could many of the others, so he began coming by almost daily to talk to Bilbo and play with him. And unlike the king, he understood Bilbo's desperate need to find and help his family. On clear days they flew away from the Eyrie entirely, back towards where Bilbo had been found. They tried to trace six towns back from it, but the path split first in two then in thirds, and each of those split again at least once. There was a whole bunch of places his mother could have been taken to, and Bilbo couldn't remember what turns they had taken because he had been too sick and scared, and feared he would need to search each one in order to find her.
A few times Landroval even dropped Bilbo off close to a little town right near dawn with a couple of his coins in hand and one of his empty packs so he could go to a shop for something he needed, more thread and cloth, a thick warg skin pelt once the snows turned into sleet and ice and he needed to stay warmer, or to buy food beyond the meat the eagles regularly provided. They never went to the same place twice, so that people wouldn't remember him, and ask the wrong sorts of questions if they continually saw him without any hint of an adult nearby. He was much too small to be considered able to manage on his own if people thought him a human child, and a dwarf child out on their own was just plain unheard of, so Bilbo learned quite quickly that if he acted younger than he was, and like his mother was just a stall or two down, and he was getting to act older by helping to buy a couple of things 'on his own', most of the shopkeepers found it adorable. Especially if he told them "Mama said to get..." while holding up a very small coin or two. A few of them even slipped him a sweet or a treat for being such a good helper.
It was just at the end of one such trip, the last one that Landroval said they would be able to make because the storms were going to set in in earnest, so he had brought every pack to fill as much as he could and they stopped in five separate towns so he wouldn't raise suspicion. In the last one he had loaded the last pack with oats, cornmeal, honey, bacon, apples, oranges, potatoes, onions, garlic, tea, and more herbs and spices, and had bought himself four meat pies as a treat, when he ran into a pair of rangers.
"And where is a little thing like you off to with so much food all by yourself? Where are your parents?"
"My mama told me not to talk to strangers, I'm bigger than I look, and I'm going home now. Excuse me."
"Wait a minute we've been patrolling this town for ten years now, and I have never seen you, you can't possibly live around here without us knowing who your family is. Where are your parents, who are you staying with?"
By now Bilbo was getting very scared. He didn't trust these men, and they kept asking things that were none of their business. "I came from another town and I'm staying with my other family for the winter, and I really need to go now."
"Kid, just tell us their name, you shouldn't be wandering alone out here on your own, it's not safe."
"No. I don't have to tell you anything about me. I don't know you, and it's none of your business anyway. I'm not hurt, I'm not in trouble, I am NOT alone, and I felt perfectly safe until YOU showed up. I don't like Men who try to bully people into doing things just because they're bigger than them. Leave me alone!"
"Now look here dwarf-" but Bilbo was done listening to anything they had to say. He bolted for the small patch of woods where Landroval was waiting, but he was slowed down considerably by his heavily laden pack. The rangers had given chase and one had just grabbed his pack and hauled him backwards right off his feet, and that fear that he had been trying so hard to fight back swallowed him up whole and he screamed. "LANDROVAL!"
Not even two seconds later the shrill, blood chilling cry of an angered predator pierced through the nearby patch of woods, and Landroval charged out, wings flaring, eyes narrowed, beak open and hungry for the flesh of those who would dare to harm his charge. The Rangers screamed and toppled over one another in their haste to get away, while Bilbo was bolting towards his winged protector as fast as his legs could carry him. Landroval stepped between Bilbo and the rangers and screamed at them again to make sure they stayed back, while Bilbo put a few spilled things back in his pack. Once he knew the Men would stay back, Landroval gently nudged Bilbo with his beak before lowering one wing so Bilbo could climb on. They were airborne only seconds later and winging back towards the Eyrie.
"Why do you fear them so much Galadhên?" Landroval queried, trying to calm Bilbo's trembling by winging in lazy circles so he could calm down.
"They're Men. Men hurt my parents, Men sold my mama. Hobbits and Elves and Dwarves would never do that. Men are not to be trusted. I'm sorry you had to save me."
"It's no matter, adults are supposed to protect children, even if they are not their own. It was for the human's sake I stayed hidden, not my own, but it doesn't matter if they know I am there or not, it would take skill most do not possess to take me down."
As his nest mates became a second family, so Landroval became his friend. The winter was very harsh, just as Gwaihir had said it would be, and they couldn't leave further than the valley below for the rest of Blotmath and halfway through Foreyule. In that time he occasionally met other eagles who could speak. Apparently all of them could understand Westeron, but very few had found reason to learn to speak it.
The winter's grip was very tight, the storms raged all the way through Rethe and at one point he was worried about running out of wood so that he could melt more snow for water. It was a very harsh time, and Bilbo learned how to ration his food to the limit. The Eagles didn't celebrate Yule anymore than any other day of the year, so Bilbo didn't feel too badly about not making them presents, and what gift would be useful to an eagle anyway? He spent his time in the nest curled in warm feathers, and trying to teach his nest siblings all the words he could think of, but they only managed one or two. From them he learned five words of the Eagles' language through trial and error: greetings, food, water, hide, and safe. His name in the Eagle's tongue was a chirpy whistling thing that he couldn't manage for months, but he managed Meneldor and Nimsûl right before Yule, Rhîwroval three days later, and Aduialhwest his tongue mangled to pieces for at least another week. He was grateful they never lost patience with him.
When spring finally came however, there were no dwarves in any of the towns no matter how long they searched. The eagles knew of a few Dwarven strongholds, they were closest to Moria, which had long been abandoned, there was Erebor directly to the East, and the Iron hills further than that, but they were too far away for a short trip and it wasn't safe to rest anywhere over the Greenwood these days. There were the Broadbeam lands much too far to the South, and they didn't exactly know where to the south they even were, and Gwaihir remembered that there were once rumors of some sort of settlement of dwarves to the north hidden in small groups up in the hills, but he didn't know if they were true.
"Well young Galadhên, it seems you will just have to wait until we can find some dwarves in the towns who know where your Shire is, since you do not wish to live among Men, though we could carry you to the Elves as well, though Lorien in not hugely welcome to outsiders, you are small enough they would know you are no threat."
While at one point Bilbo would have delighted to have a chance to see elves up close, he'd had his fill of the Big Folk for a while and declined.
And so it was that Bilbo was still with his adopted family when he saw his first courtship flight. Two young eagles were the only ones to take wing, and soar up higher and higher into the sky. They swooped around each other fast, and as close as they could, pinion feathers nearly touching. They dipped and dove and swung tight circles through the air, until they were matching each other move for move, a graceful and elegant dance that had Bilbo holding his breath. They dove towards the ground together, then pulled up, banking hard back up into the clouds. And finally circling tighter and tighter together, they grabbed each others' talons, and they plummeted towards the ground like a stone, twirling and spinning, cartwheeling out of control, and Bilbo was absolutely terrified at seeing it, until at the last possible moment before hitting the ground they released each other and soared back up into the sky. Bilbo breathed again as the two then settled on a nearby ledge, to the calls of several other eagles.
"What do you think?" Landroval asked from beside him.
"It's beautiful, but scary."
"It's the Flight of Unity. It is how we choose a worthy mate and ensure we have the strongest chicks. If you choose wrong you will not be able to complete the dive, you will hit the ground. We begin our lives together with a show of great trust, to know that our heartmate will protect us as much as we will protect them."
"Why don't you have a mate Landroval?"
"I did, once, nearly an age ago. Her name was Laegecthel. She died in battle, and it was a worthy death for one as fierce and brave as she. We never had chicks though. An Eagle mates for life Galadhên, and even though her life is over, I have not wished to take the talons of another. I may never wish to."
"Sounds lonely. Mom always says we shouldn't be lonely, it's not good for the health."
"How can I be lonely Galadhên, when I have you as a companion and friend?"
"M-me? But I'm just a hobbit!"
"You are strong and brave beyond your years, quick and clever and very kind hearted. Anyone should be proud to have such a friend."
"I-I'm proud to have you as a friend Landroval."
"Would you like to fly? There's a lake nearby that has finally become unclogged from ice. You might be able to go fishing. They are sure to be hungry after such a long winter."
"I'd like that."
The rest of that spring he watched every courting dance with rapt attention, holding his breath and praying for their safety as they fell through the sky. He hoped one day he'd love someone who would trust him just as much.
.
.
TBC