AN: I finished reading The Hobbit again while on vacation and was struck by the fact that later in life, Bilbo has golden buttons on his new waistcoat, even though his share never included wrought gold so small. No hobbits or men in his part of the world are goldsmiths. It got me wondering…

Also, I've been wanting to write a Hobbit piece ever since I listened to "Little Flower" after having a good cry about Bilbo watching Thorin die. This fic is a mix of movie and book canon. Title taken from Thorin's 'Misty Mountains' song in the book.

Bon appetite!

'I won't walk beside you
I won't take you home
But I'll hold your heart from a distance
As all your blossoms come and go.

'And when you wake all alone in the darkness
As the autumn winds are blowing cold
You might hear a voice in the distance
A love that never let you go.'

"Little Flower" ~ Peter Bradley Adams

~OL~

Cold earth switches to cold stone.

Bilbo's tough soles never knew such difference in texture before he went on this endemic adventure. Earth is soft—cold to be sure, with the dried blood still on snowy patches in the dirt—but it gives way under each footfall.

Stone resists. Sneers at the hair on his feet.

Bilbo dreads how mangled his once proud tufts of foot hair have become. He hasn't brushed them in nigh on a year.

Has it only been a year? The battle alone, a fortnight behind them, feels like it happened to a different Bilbo. One who hadn't seen the life leave someone's eyes or known the absence of a friend at the dinner table.

Entering the Mountain's Great Hall, he sees a kerfuffle and sighs. "Another crumbled shaft?"

"Afraid so," says Balin. He and other dwarven engineers from the Iron Hills stand around a table and score of blueprints, hastily drafted by Ori. Clanks echo in the cavernous space, from Laketown men and dwarves forging and carving furniture for new tenants. "You're the only one small enough to squeeze between the fallen rocks. If we could just get to the other side of this particular tunnel, the stone masons can—"

"I'm on it. Just…just let me breathe for a minute. Not used to hiking so far in the cold." Bilbo scratches at his forehead with the hand not holding a sheaf of long-stemmed plants.

Balin brightens. "What have you there, Bilbo?"

"Oh." Bilbo displays them, rosy hue afire in the dim space. "Stargazer lilies, they're called. I can't believe they survived this long, in the snow. Thought they might liven up the little hollow where I sleep. Green things, you know?"

Balin ambles over to clap Bilbo's shoulder. "Mahal knows you need that now more than ever."

"You have no idea. I survive on the sight of growing things. All hobbits do."

Worry floods Balin's fast, so abruptly that Bilbo's heart misses a beat. "Bilbo, lad, you should have said something sooner. Are you ill? Should I call Dori to gather some vegetation?"

"No! Lands, I seem to have bungled this. It's an expression of our values. I won't literally die for lack of plants. At least I don't think so."

Balin refuses to take a chance either way and that's how Bilbo ends up with a hand-made bronze vase for his lilies. Balin snaps his fingers to demand it of a nearby smithy. It's surprisingly delicate, and Bilbo turns it around in his hands while Balin trims the lilies to a proper length. He bows after he takes them from Bilbo's hands.

Bilbo flushes. "It's quite alright, Balin. They're just flowers."

"Still, I should not like you to be parted from them any longer than necessary."

A touched, warm butterfly flutters around Bilbo's chest. "Let me show you where I sleep."

Curiosity smooths the wrinkles around Balin's eyes. Then they reappear in double force. Especially since Bilbo only walks for about ten seconds.

"This is where you've been sleeping? It's cold here, so close to the Mountain's entrance."

Bilbo's smile falters. "I…I know, but I need the sun, Balin. More than warmth below. It's temporary anyway, since I'll return to the Shire soon."

"Still…" Balin glances from the little wooden cot, ringed with a nest of furs, back to Bilbo. The bed sits behind a stone alcove, a shelter from wind and noise. Two chests of gold and silver, respectively, are hidden underneath. "I don't like the thought of you vulnerable, all curled up for heat. You're a small thing. Wouldn't do for you to catch cold."

Bilbo rolls his eyes. "I've slept outdoors most of the last year, if you recall. We all have. Hasn't killed me yet."

Only just, he adds mentally.

Like Balin hears that, he grumbles. "Well, if you get chilled, come find one of the Company immediately. We'd be more than happy to share our beds."

Bilbo's long past blushing about this, having seen how bluntly affectionate dwarves can be. "I will."

They hang the vase on a wall bracket over Bilbo's tiny divan, hobbit and dwarf hands working side by side. The butterfly opens its wings even wider.

"There." Balin stands back. "Now that I see how this has brought some light to your eyes, I'm hesitant to ask any more tunnel crawling of you."

"I like to help how I can, since I'm not able to lift heavier things or forge as you do."

A summer breeze steals over Balin's mouth and fond eyes. He softens, crown to snowy beard. "Bilbo Baggins—you have done so much for our people that you shouldn't have to lift a finger for the rest of your days."

Heat spreads from Bilbo's cheeks all the way up to his eyes and he fusses with the lily arrangement to cover it up. "Yes, well, all the same. Good friends help each other and I should like to do my part."

Balin argues it no more, but his hand is even softer when it rubs a circle on Bilbo's back as they walk away.

Perhaps he hears the part Bilbo leaves off, that staying busy equals staying sane. That he doesn't sleep so well anyway and ever since Thorin's funeral, he can't look towards the Hall of the Kings without his lips quivering.

Voices grow in volume down a narrow corridor. Bilbo turns the corner and spies a familiar face among the huddle.

"I insist on a rope this time," says Bofur, tone hard. He stands in the half ring of engineers around a tiiiiiny hole in the wall.

Balin bows again, shallower this round for Bofur. "I wouldn't let Bilbo go without it."

"Neither would I," says Bilbo wryly. "Not after that tunnel collapsed around me last time."

A collective shudder shimmies through the group. Bofur clenches a hand in Bilbo's coat like he'll disappear if they don't keep hold of him. Now they all look worried.

"What do we think is on the other side?" asks Balin. "This hole could be here by accident."

Bofur kneels, shaking his head. "This block isn't in the original plans. There's not supposed to be a wall or anything here. Seems to be partially collapsed already but we held a candle up to the hole and the flame almost went out."

Bilbo's voice comes out quieter than he plans. "A shaft."

"Exactly." Bofur takes off his hat to place his ear against the marble rubble. "Existing blueprints are real vague on what's back here. Too small even for Ori. We tried him first, blubberin' the whole time. Only made it ten feet in."

Nobody laughs, not even Bofur at his own comment, for cleaning up Erebor has proved more dangerous than expected. They all wear the bruises and bandages to prove it. Ori belongs in the scribe's library, not at tasks like this.

"Okay then." Bilbo inhales, hoping he sounds more courageous than he feels. "Best get this done before afternoon tea time."

A young dwarf—one of the few females in this division—knots a rope around Bilbo's waist. She tugs it and gives him a thumb's up.

"Here." Balin approaches with a hand chisel and stonemason's trowel. "Just in case."

Bilbo takes them with a nervous laugh. "If I go unconscious from a falling rock like last time, these won't do much good."

Balin grasps him by both shoulders. "You'll be fine, lad. I'll formally arrest Bofur if you aren't."

Bofur snorts behind them. Though he doesn't, Bilbo notes, bother to deny it.

Bilbo sloughs his coat so he stands only in his white shirt and vest. The dwarf maiden threaded the rope underneath his coat, so it's no hindrance and stays on.

"Oh." Balin's eyes widen a little. "I didn't realize you still…"

Bilbo freezes once he catches on. "It's silly, isn't it?"

Balin sounds oddly choked up. His hands knead Bilbo's shoulders like bread dough. "If it keeps you safe, not at all. He'll rest easier in his grave knowing you have it on."

Only a slice of the mithril shirt peeks above Bilbo's collar, but it's enough to touch. To feel the cool rings. To remember a king's hand bequeathing it to him in a vow of friendship and protectiveness. One Bilbo couldn't reciprocate.

Bilbo's throat aches. "Haven't uh…haven't been able to take it off since the battle. Not even don't want to, just…every time I go to remove it, I feel…"

How like a hobbit babe he sounds! Not even able to string a sentence together, defending his behaviour like a faunt with a security blanket. Bilbo flushes and ducks his head so the engineers murmuring over blueprints behind them can't see it.

But Balin's already nodding. "Like the good things still matter."

Bilbo's head whips up. Something in the tremor of the earth inside his heart stills. Just long enough for him to dredge up a smile.

"Not all things have been lost, Bilbo." Balin whispers it, tender, just between them. "The battle with all its grief didn't destroy everything."

But it did destroy some things. Bilbo wants to argue, a toddler to his elder. Some things I'll never get back.

Balin shakes his head. "I have seen the tail end of many wars, Mr. Baggins. And the decency that brought people together to fight for what is right still stands. Always will."

Bilbo studies his friend. "You must be very tired then, Balin."

Balin tries a smile too, is more successful than Bilbo. "Not so much that I'm not invigorated by being home again. Homesickness vanquished. A joy I hope you experience soon, however bitterly I'll weep bitterly when you leave us."

Bilbo's heart clenches. He squeezes Balin's wrist and the old dwarf nods.

"Will you keep my coat? It's got a precious gift inside the pocket that I hope to plant in Bag End."

Balin drapes the wool over one arm. "I'll guard it with my life."

"Thank you." Bilbo steps back. "Alright, off I go."

After the usual engineer round of back slaps and ruffles to his apparently irresistible curls—Bilbo has been on the receiving end of enough hair touching to last three lifetimes—he crawls inside the worm-like tunnel.

A hand steadies his ankle until he's all the way in, up to the very end. Bofur. Also a typical ritual in these operations. It's for comfort and not stability.

Bilbo never stops being grateful for it. Bofur is more tactile than the other dwarves, always speaking better with his hands than words.

The shaft introduces a blast of air to Bilbo's face. He wishes for the first time that he could grow a beard like Gloin's. It would certainly help in such times, a guard against icy puffs of subterranean breath upon his cheeks.

Bilbo crawls on his elbows, the rest of his body flat against jutted rocks and broken marble chunks. The fingers leave his ankle, their warmth evaporating. He wriggles a little farther and finds an extinguished torch, where Ori stopped. Bilbo pushes past it.

"See anything yet?" Bofur calls into the shaft.

It echoes loud enough to make Bilbo jump. "Not yet! This extends quite a ways into the Mountain. Though wherever it ends, it must be exposed to the outside to produce this much wind."

"Aye. We wondered about that."

"I'll tug on the rope three times when I crawl back," says Bilbo, though they went over this protocol just yesterday. Can never be too cautious.

"Or if you just want out." Balin's voice now. "You hear me? No shame in feeling pressed in."

"Understood."

Bilbo says it in an absent tone. The chink of his mail shirt on rock sends his mind far away from claustrophobic tunnels and stone coffins and crying himself to sleep every night.

~OL~

"Foolish, isn't it?"

Bilbo glanced up to where Thorin looked. "Stars are foolish?"

The should-be king's lips twisted. He grunted under his breath. "How much time the elves spend mooning over them."

Bilbo couldn't see over the wall they stood upon, especially this tucked away section far from their rubble siege wall. He watched Thorin's haunted eyes stray from the stars down to some camp below. Bilbo heard the elves' sweet singing on the wind, wind that promised snow, and its fragrance filled the garden of his heart.

"Stars should be honoured," said Bilbo. "Revered."

Thorin turned and peered down at him. His eyes were unreadable under the deep-set brows. The Arkenstone burned in Bilbo's pocket and he felt uneasy, like the day Thorin asked about the acorn.

But now Thorin's mouth flipped up. "Well said, little burglar. Stars tell us about our ancestry, both our past and potential futures."

Bilbo didn't believe in seers or reading tea leaves, but Thorin didn't mean that. He spoke of something else.

"Do dwarves study them?"

Thorin pointed at a constellation to the north. "See those two blue stars? They only meet in the sky once every hundred years. The annals record that, back into antiquity. But through telescopes we see that they're crossing paths quicker and quicker, now every eighty years. Some professors were trying to figure out why before Erebor fell."

"The pull of the heavens."

Thorin blinked. "Yes, actually. That was the leading thought. You are well read."

Bilbo toyed with the hem of his waistcoat, self conscious at the praise. The strange pride in Thorin's suddenly gentle face.

"I should hope that…however this plays out, you and your people will always have time for such peaceable things as stargazing. Times of quiet."

"Just not singing songs over them."

Bilbo caught the teasing look, a glimpse at the real Thorin in there. He chuckled. "No. No songs about stars for a long while after this. We've had quite a lot of elves."

The moment of comradery warmed Bilbo's extremities. It reminded him in an abrupt swoop how cold he truly was.

He gathered the folds of his waistcoat and his composure about him. "I still feel silly in this thing, you know."

Thorin's confused brow melted when the mithril shirt mirrored faint starlight. He placed a heavy, warm hand on Bilbo's shoulder. "It suits you."

"Ha!" Bilbo found himself smiling and Thorin echoed it with an even wider one. "I still say you should have given it to one of the boys. A priceless piece of craftsmanship stuffed under a dingy shirt and waistcoat without even any buttons! The Sackvilles would swoon if they could see me in such a state."

Thorin grinned along, but the brows drew together again. "Buttons? What does that matter?"

"Oh, a hobbit's status is always shown somehow in his clothes. Especially buttons."

"Ah. They are an exhibition of wealth."

Bilbo fidgeted on his furry feet. "Sort of. They convey how much care you take in your possessions and therefore the people you give them to. Generosity is only worth the time you put into maintaining or growing a gift."

Thorin's eyes burned hotter than campfires below. "Like this mithril shirt, lovingly made by dwarven artisans a century ago."

Bilbo flicked Thorin's hand, still in its perch on his shoulder. He'd been royally played—literally. "I walked right into that one."

"More's the fun for me."

And even though Bilbo wasn't quite sure why that was, he still laughed for the first time in days. Thorin could be visiting Fili, on watch, or better yet sleeping, but he chose to stargaze on the wall with Bilbo in his insomnia. His fear.

Thorin didn't need to know that part.

His eyes went to Bilbo's arms, clutched tight around himself. "Forgive me. Here."

So saying, he swirled off his fur cape and wrapped it around Bilbo's shoulders. Bilbo blinked, quite stunned. Heat plumed around his chilled skin. The fabric smelled of Thorin, sweat and musk and metallic earth, and somewhere in the shocked pause, a tiny flower of hope budded in Bilbo's heart soil.

"Y-you don't need to do that. Wouldn't want you to be cold."

Thorin canted his head. "Is it not what a good king would do?"

Another trap. Bilbo spluttered, then quieted down. "I would rather it is what a good friend would do."

Thorin said nothing, just stared. Gold sickness retreated in his eyes for an emotion Bilbo couldn't name. Fur tickled at Bilbo's chin, blending with his curls. He forced himself to maintain eye contact despite the dwarf's intensity.

"Kings don't mean anything to hobbits, you know. Not a jot or tiddle. They're the same as other people in our eyes."

Thorin's voice lowered to a rasp. "Would that the whole world thought that way. It would be a merrier place."

"Your glory is not in all this gold, Thorin."

"How else is a king to be generous and therefore respected without it?"

Bilbo exhaled a shaky breath. "Maybe not everyone wants gold."

The emotion in Thorin's eyes flickered. He brushed a barely-there hand across Bilbo's hair, spring's fragile breath on flower petals.

Bilbo's heart sprang into his throat. Tears filled his eyes, though he didn't understand why. The hand was huge compared to his head, but the fingers so gentle Thorin might as well have been cradling glass.

Bilbo ached for grass on this mountain instead of ice, vegetables and growing things and green and—

"You have my friendship, always," said Thorin. "No matter what comes."

A scimitar straight to the belly button wouldn't have cut Bilbo like these words did. He closed his eyes. The Arkenstone and beginnings of a traitorous plan weighed on his bones.

"Promise?"

Thorin waited for Bilbo to open his eyes to nod. His hand dropped, but the loyal intensity in his gaze did not. "Promise. Unto my dying breath and into Eru's presence."

~OL~

Salt dribbles between Bilbo's lips. Whether from this memory or harsh breezes to the eyes, he can't say.

WHOOSH!

Bilbo gasps at the arctic gust and tumbles out onto a stone floor. "Oof!"

The tools in his hands clatter against stone, but Bilbo doesn't spare them a glance in his open-mouthed spin of the room, once he regains his feet—

"Good gracious." A laugh escapes Bilbo despite his shivers. "Thorin, you were right!"

Wide glass panes cover the roof and three walls of the circular room. Some fell and shattered at over the decades. Bilbo takes ginger steps around a field of broken glass to his target set up in the far corner:

Three telescopes, varying in size and make. They're at the perfect vantage on the mountain to see the greatest field of stars once night descends.

"Must have been grand once," says Bilbo, hushed.

To be honest, it's grand now. But bird dung litters the floor around the glass, the stone floor frozen with many winters, and the upholstered couches lining the entrance wall are torn to bits, their stuffing stolen for nests.

So much was lost when Smaug obliterated Erebor's citizens, including secrets to craftsmanship and academic studies.

Who knows the wealth of knowledge that has been forgotten?

Bilbo squints his eye into the view lens of the smallest telescope, the only one he can reach. It's foggy with age—but he spies the blurry outline of a forest, far in the distance.

Then his foot lands on something…squishy.

Bilbo flinches back. "What on earth—!"

A most appropriate question, he sees now. Bilbo rubs his eyes just to be sure he's not imagining the spot of green amidst all this dismal gray stone.

There, curled around the leg of the telescope tripod, is a vernal stalk of forget-me-nots. They somehow trailed in from outside and survived winter by sheltering here.

Blue, perfect, and defiant in their survival.

Something inside of Bilbo, long shrivelled, begins to droop. War and death scorched his garden in the violence of hate he witnessed. Weeds risen from the ground to choke out everything he thought he could depend on.

Bilbo plops on the floor, his legs unable to hold him up. His chest hitches. "I'm sorry, Thorin. Sorry for all of it. I'm so sorry…"

He cups the flowers close to his chest and waters them.

~OL~

Getting back turns out much easier than crawling through. The tunnel slopes on an incline so Bilbo can simply slide down the buried staircase on his stomach while the engineering team tugs him along.

"Bilbo!" Bofur's face is the first to greet Bilbo when he emerges. "Well done! You're a burglar and a spelunker. Hobbit of many talents!"

And so saying, he drags Bilbo in for a hearty hug and peck to his curls. Bilbo explains what he found when the dwarf releases him. Bofur is so tickled by the observatory discovery he even lets Bilbo wear his hat for the rest of the day.

Bilbo smiles, his tear tracks long since wiped clean, but Balin doesn't. He watches Bilbo and Bilbo watches Bofur, to avoid the older dwarf's eyes.

The day is considered a resounding success. Head Chef Bombur gives Bilbo the veal's first portion around the supper table that night.

Bilbo learns he's just as good at lying to himself as he is to kings. He goes to meals and jokes with his friends and has smoke ring competitions with Gandalf—eyes hollow for all of it. The blue forget-me-nots appear in his dreams, like flowers on a grave.

In the early watch a few nights later, Bilbo wakes to a fleecy blanket being oh so lightly draped across his frame. Tucked around his curves by calloused but careful hands.

A glistening, bald head bows over his bed. Dwalin. Sent by his brother, no doubt. The dwarf breathes a prayer-like phrase Bilbo can't catch, with his mind a-wander and eyes burdened with restless sleep.

But he doesn't miss the thumb that tenderly moves a curl off his nose, brushed back into the rest of his mop.

"Sleep safe, little one."

Long after Dawlin drifts away, a tear wets the spot where the curl lay.

~OL~

"Bilbo." Balin finally cracks a week later. He stands by Bilbo's cot, wringing his for-once bare hands. No gloves. Bilbo sighs, his good mood from breakfast forgotten. "I know you're leaving us tomorrow, but before you do I thought…"

"It's fine, Balin. I've said my private goodbyes to the others. I'm ready to go home to the Shire."

"Of course you are. You helped reclaim our home and t'wouldn't be right to keep you from yours."

Bilbo checks and rechecks the leather satchel on his bed, anything to keep his hands busy. "I hope you know I'll miss you too. You can visit Bag End whenever you like."

He can't see Balin's face, but those weathered boots shuffle closer in his peripheral vision.

"Bilbo."

Bilbo slows down.

"Bilbo, laddie, I just…I owe you an apology."

That brings Bilbo's eyes around. Enough to clock Balin's quivery frown. "Whatever for? You've been a dear friend."

"For keeping this from you."

"Keeping what from me?"

Balin holds out a tiny paper rectangle, the length of Bilbo's hand. A casing of some sort. Bilbo takes it and sucks in a breath at the weight. Few objects this small are this heavy.

"A gift?"

"From Thorin," says Balin. Bilbo's hand spasms around the thick paper. "He told me to give you this, right before we went into battle. In the event that…well, in case he couldn't."

Bilbo tries to hand it back. "I don't deserve this."

"Yes, you do." Balin guides it back into Bilbo's space, so he's sheltering it by his chest like he did the flowers last week. "And even if you didn't, a gift from a dwarf king is no flippant thing. I wouldn't dare open it or tamper. That's why it's sealed."

Bilbo glances at the underside of the sleeve and sees a navy wax stamp, in the shape of a mountain. Thorin's seal. "Then why keep this from me in the first place?"

Balin's face crumples a bit more, but his shoulders are square. "Because you're grieving and can barely stand to look at his tomb, let alone this. And because selfishly, I've already lost so many loved ones. Giving it to you meant saying goodbye, that time with you is up as well."

Bilbo's already cried four times today, saying farewells to everyone, so he fights this prickle and wins.

"You'll always be my friend, Balin. Do you know what's in here?"

Balin's face is the most loving Bilbo's ever seen it. Serious too. "I do."

Bilbo almost doesn't open the gift at first. What could he possibly need from a king? A dead one at that? Thorin hated him at the end anyway.

Curiosity wrangles guilt in the end. Bilbo cracks the seal, holding his breath all the while, and peels back a few wound layers of paper.

"Balin." Bilbo's eyes grow wet after all. His voice shakes. "Balin, this is too much."

Laid out on a strip of red velvet are five pure, solid gold buttons. Little loop in the back for sewing and everything. A delicate 'BB' is engraved on top of each one.

Bilbo covers his eyes with a trembling hand. He will not break down sobbing like that day in the observatory.

"Why don't you deserve them, son?"

Bilbo shakes his head.

"Bilbo, look at me."

The buttons clink together in cheery little sounds when Bilbo's other hand shakes too. The craftsmanship on the letters alone…the buttons must have taken Thorin hours to craft. In the heat of the forges, alone, all because Bilbo hasn't any buttons.

"Please."

Bilbo looks up. Balin pulls Bilbo's hand away from his eyes and squeezes it. "Thorin forgave you at the last. For there was nothing to forgive in the first place."

"No." Bilbo hiccups. "You're wrong. That was a deathbed restitution. If he'd lived, I'm sure he would have spit at my feet."

Sympathy wells in Balin's eyes. A tear trickles into his hoary beard. "You gave him back his mind, Bilbo."

"How? How can you say that?" Bilbo tries to snap it out, but his breathing is too much of a mess. "I betrayed him! I gave the Arkenstone to his enemies and wasn't even there to protect him when the orc killed him."

Balin taps Bilbo's hand, the one holding the buttons. "You can't blame yourself."

"I can't stop blaming myself."

Balin blocks Bilbo's path when he moves to step away. "Bilbo."

"What?"

Balin's tone is soft. "Thorin made these after you gave Bard the Arkenstone."

Bilbo stops dead in his tracks. His jaw hinges open and the buttons warm suddenly in his palm.

Balin nods. "He'd disappear for chunks of time and I thought at first he basked in his treasure, drunk on it. But then that night on the eve of battle, he showed me a tiny collection of buttons and I realized it was his way of saying 'thank you.'"

Horse hooves replace Bilbo's heart, thudding away at his chest. The words come out in a wheeze—"Th…thank you?"

"He lusted over gold, yes, but that was the diseased surface layer of Thorin, holding hostage his mind. The real Thorin in there, the one who toddled upon my knee as an infant, was relieved you took the best action for him. The one he could not at that time."

Bilbo waters the buttons too, each tear a star upon the gold. "He didn't hate me."

Balin tugs Bilbo into a tight hug. "No, lad, he never did. Not for a moment."

Bilbo closes his eyes into the puff of white hair across his nose. He hasn't been held like this since Thorin after the orc attack. He lets go, boneless in Balin's arms. The older dwarf bundles him close and cups the back of his curly head.

"None of it is your fault, Bilbo. You're the best thing that ever happened to him and us."

A traitorous sob. Bilbo finally clasps his fingers all the way around the buttons so they settle into his skin. They're soothing, weighty—just like Thorin's hand on his shoulder.

~OL~

"Ahhh." Bilbo gives a satisfied hum and hooks his thumb around his waistcoat pockets. Old joints ache despite the sunny morning—but even that can't dampen his smile. "Coming in fuller than ever."

He admires his own front garden, the giant yellow lilies and baby's breath in a cheery arrangement.

"Indeed they are!"

Bilbo swivels at the voice. Wind stirs his hair, more white than chestnut now. "Bless my kettle! Is that Gandalf o're yonder?"

A gray figure, beaming under his tall hat, strides up the knoll. "Only if you have more cranberry scones to offer two weary travellers."

Two…?

Bilbo narrows his eyes, then almost falls back against his mailbox. A flower inside Bilbo's heart garden, lonely but true, unfurls to full strength.

"Balin!"

The two friends run to each other and embrace, already talking before they reach the front steps. The venerable dwarf is dressed quite respectably. A queen's advisor now, official title, Bilbo finds out. The dwarf's eyes glint upon seeing the golden wink down Bilbo's chest—each button bearing a well polished 'BB.'

Above them, a broad oak tree shades their heads.

~OL~

'If Balin noticed that Mr. Baggins' waistcoat was more extensive (and had real gold buttons), Bilbo also noticed that Balin's beard was several inches longer, and his jewelled belt was of great magnificence.'

~ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, Chapter XIX