.:: Echoes of Eden ::.
Sometimes something seems to be moving in his peripheral vision, a shadow he can't quite pin down. Bilbo Baggins interrupts his thought, the sentence he just said halfway out of his lips and the other half soaring in the forever unchanging air of Bag End.
His Hobbit hole is as peaceful and comfortable as it used to be. The ever-clear Shire sun pierces the lace curtains that his mother secretly adored and colors the walls with an orange, welcoming warmth. The fire purrs like a sated cat in the hearth of its fireplace, and the teapot he has placed on the stove emits a lemony vapor that scents the still air—it's true; it's almost five o'clock. Silence reigns supreme there, only occasionally interrupted by the stomach growls of an old boy who is too used to talking to his tomatoes, but is not disagreeable for all that.
Very often Bilbo allows himself the simple luxury of watching the sunset over the hill from the little bench he has placed at the bottom of his garden, a book in his hand and a pipe stuffed with the best weed of Old Toby in the other. Sometimes he contemplates his house and thinks with ever-renewed disbelief that he is blessed to spend his whole life there ...which suddenly seems too short to him.
But this is how things are supposed to go: tidy, tidy, tidy those things well out of place in Hobbit life, he tells himself half-heartedly. Yet he expects to see cracks in the spotless walls, imperfections in the polished floor, shards in the intact panes—something that tells him the world ahead turns and changes, even here, even though the sun shining through the glass of his windows is the only thing that changes from time to time.
"The world is not in your books, Bilbo," seems to whisper his cozy niche that reeks of comfort. "The world is outside." And behind the panes of slightly whitened glass, the soft rays of the day are caressing, tempting, precious.
He shivers despite himself and scrunches his lips, surprised. The season is still hot after all.
Bilbo closes the curtains more and more often, as if to hide a star whose gaze he fears. He croaks and grimaces afterwards, cursing his habits which have become second nature, promises to reverse his gesture and let a little light in. He forgets, only minutes after the fact; the finely crafted curtains remain drawn.
Sometimes Bilbo contemplates his life and doesn't understand that intriguing impulse that tells him something is wrong with his embroidered placemats, his chipped mugs, and the little logs cracking in his fire. Something is missing—but the neat lines of his tidy little life leave no room yet. Everything is perfectly aligned, not a speck of dust on his books and despite the hours he spends squinting for the slightest flaw that would break his hellish routine, he doesn't detect a thing on the polished floors and crumpled curtains.
It annoys him, all this perfection in this perpetual disorder, this illusion that whispers that he has a place for each thing and each thing in its place, even when it does not seem to be. It annoys him, this lack of life, this silence that threatens him instead of reassuring him, and if Bag End is a hell of trinkets, he sometimes fears that it would swallow him whole. It would be a beautiful death, albeit ridiculous, but better than being swallowed by an angry dragon or killed by goblins on the road.
Besides, these thoughts are also annoying because respectable Hobbits worthy of the name of Hobbit do not dream of dragons, have never seen one and are all the better for it because nothing is more improper than missing elevenses and luncheon to escape from the fire of a dragon. Then he supposes—and this is probably where this sadness that he cannot quite explain comes from—that the Hobbits worthy of the name do not have this unpleasant habit of fixing the walls with a stick either. And with too much of an insistent look, as if they were going to end up collapsing, crumbling to dust to leave only the outside. But maybe then, he would be free, free, free ...
He sighs and continues to polish his silverware, cursing the cutlery that Lobelia stole from him during yet another visit that he could not ignore. He was unable to be completely sad about the loss of simple cutlery while there were much heavier losses: a pleasant memory of companions, beloved friends, a proud people, a royal house. All the same, he growls, pushing aside the unpleasant thoughts that assail him. It was fine work, indeed.
Sometimes Bilbo sits down in his father's old armchair, an unlit pipe in his hand and begins to dream—or nightmare, depending on how you slice it. Truth be told, he does not quite know where the line is between the two—He dreams of escapades that would have made his late mother Belladonna proud as a louse, of tales told by the fireside, of cries of rage in the midst of thunder and flames burning the pines. He dreams of terrifying creatures staring at him maliciously with huge eyes as yellow as the sun, eagles with huge wings, and pale crooked fingers wrapped around a bloody sword. He still dreams—and this is one of his most excruciating dreams—of distant figures falling with a strangled cry into a body of dark water and of the rich tears shed by small blue eyes.
He dreams of his ring sometimes, like the one his father used to wear on his ring finger. He dreams of that ring, made of a quiet gold, which shines in the darkness with a discreet glow, which murmurs in a deep voice in black, and which terrorizes him more than anything else; because when he wakes up, he measures the extent of what he lacks, of the silence that paradoxically fills his house with emptiness.
And it's always the same, the same ritual that has something unhealthy about its anticipation. He would always wake up with a start and in a cold sweat, one hand on his travel coat and the other on the small pocket bulge he keeps against his heart, even when sleeping.
Hobbits shouldn't dream of such big things and shouldn't dwell on wasted opportunities for so long, he chides himself as the tips of his fingernails brush the circular indentation underneath his dressing gown. And this is all the more true since Hobbits are not very resentful people—with a few rare exceptions as he is sure that his feud with Lobelia Sackville-Baggins easily finds its explanation in his charmingly missing silver spoons—and are quick to forget bad memories; however, Bilbo, son of Took son of Baggins always recognized and assumed his strangeness among people of his race. Maybe he's not made to ignore bad memories, or maybe they have too strong a hold in him for him to let go.
No one ever told him, after all, that melancholy had such great power.
Bilbo boils the water and draws the neat curtains his mother loved so much. When the water is hot enough, he pours it over the tea leaves—green with a powerful aroma, as his father liked to drink—and tries to appease with the steaming drink this incessant bitterness which burns his throat.
He almost got there that time.
When the sun finally falls behind the hill and the evening air becomes too chilly to prolong his evening ritual of quietly smoking a pinch of Old Toby outside his door, without making any excuses, Bilbo comes home grumbling and lies down on his soft mattress, almost too big for his short stature.
He's almost scared to sleep, sometimes, but when he finally closes his eyes, it's like nothing has changed since the night his world turned.
He can hear them behind the closed door of his room: the low voices accompanied by the scraping of cutlery, the sound of parchments being deployed and oh, how can we forget the map where, in the center of it all and yet abandoned by all, stands the effigy of the Lonely Mountain? How can we forget the excited murmurs and sinister tones that evoke the grandeur of the then-lost Dwarf kingdoms, which mourn the arrival of Smaug the Terrible and the loss of such a prestigious legacy? How to forget these fourteen figures in a hurry in his dining room where they were so tight the air was becoming scarce and from where, however, the heat never seemed to want to leave?
Bilbo does not forget. The impeccable walls and glossy parquet floor of his echoing house did not give him the opportunity.
Unless it was his treacherous memory, that misplaced guilt, that he'd felt all day afterward and all the days that followed, he still finds ridiculous because he welcomed them into his home, let his pantry empty and spill out tearful stories—though he'd been sorry for those thirteen dwarves who couldn't talk about home anymore without adding mourning to it; even though losing his homeland would be definitely a tragic fate, he hadn't wanted to let his own back suffer a burden.
And this had always remained a sliver in his heart, even if the cause he'd served had been one of the best that could exist.
He owed them nothing. He, the burglar, still owes them nothing. He owes nothing to these echoes that haunt his house without ill will, and yet they invite each other every evening as if his refusal had not been clear enough.
(Maybe if he keeps repeating it to himself, he'll believe it eventually.)
Behind the closed doors, the imaginary clearing of throats are finally quieter, and the joyful atmosphere has plunged into a solemn silence that did not exist before. Bilbo squeezes his eyelids tight and retracts his toes; that doesn't stop the memories from running over the slats of his floor, up the bedposts, and under his nightcap straight into his Hobbit ears. Thorin Oakenshield's deep voice rose in the still air.
Beyond the misty mountains ...
And as always in these moments, Bilbo cannot prevent his feverish fingers from tracing on the small bulge which he keeps against his heart the familiar contours of the golden band.
Outside, in the heart of the lush green hills of the sleeping Shire, under the thin stream of gray smoke emanating from the chimney of Bag End, the wind finishes blowing the dying embers of its hearth. They have the timid airs of those little stars that few are lucky enough to see, lost in the pale western sky, guiding travelers on their way home.
And lost within his silent walls of memory, Bilbo Baggins dreams of mountains and songs.
A/N: As always, reviews are appreciated and are replied to. Or, if you'd prefer to leave a comment more privately, feel free to shoot me a PM. Cheers, + KVP