They tighten their belts, something which brings no small amount of grumbling from most directions. Only Gandalf remains silent, eternal wizards not seeming to need quite as much to eat as the rest of them or simply more accustomed to times when it is necessary to go without. Bilba takes it the hardest, already restricted to three meals a day, being reduced to two seems to leave her light-headed towards the end of the day. Hobbits need to eat more meals than the larger races, Fíli knows, and while the poorer families will often only eat four or five times a day the wealthier hobbits are given towards up to seven meals a day. Fíli might be able to stretch to four meals a day, although even with his work in the forge and morning training he would likely find himself soft and over round, but more than four would be impossible. Hobbits manage it as easily as breathing and even though they are prone to softness, portliness is only really seen in the old gentlehobbits and plumpness of mothers, as is expected in any race except elves.

What they fail to take into account is that Bilba is a hobbit and that means that she knows most of the wild things that grow in this region that can be eaten. Fíli has never much cared for mushrooms or green things that grow. In truth he had no idea that there were so many types of mushroom or that different ones could be found year-round. Bilba forages as they ride, stopping to pick mushrooms and flowers and plants that look like little more than weeds, but that crunch and burst with flavour on his tongue when she lets him try them.

"You're sure those aren't poisonous, lass?" Dwalin asks her one evening as Bilba deftly chops some mushrooms to add to what would otherwise be a rather sparse rabbit stew. The look she directs at the large warrior is pure venom and Dwalin raises his hands. "It was just a question," he says mildly.

"I'm a hobbit," Bilba sniffs. "If I couldn't tell if a mushroom was poisonous or not, I would have been dead before I was ten. There isn't much a hobbit likes more than a good mushroom."

Fíli eats his share without complaint. The last time food was restricted like this was the Fell Winter and it brings back unpleasant memories. He suspects the same is true of Bilba and he knows that the hobbits suffered just as much as the inhabitants of Bree during that time. He will never enjoy green food, but he can admit that the flavour it adds is appreciated. Ori picks and fusses with his, always more indulged by Dori than he should have been, and Nori glares at him over the fire when it looks as though Ori might try to dump his out once he has picked the meat from it.

"Don't you dare," he orders. "You'll be grateful of that before we get to Rivendell, eat up." Dori might have cajoled and bargained and ultimately given up with a sigh, preferring to fight other battles over Ori's hair or craft instead of food. Nori doesn't do that. Nori just grins at his brother and casts Dwalin the kind of sidelong glance that promises Ori will eat his meal, even if Dwalin has to sit on him while Nori spoon feeds him.

To Fíli's surprise Ori eats it all and even offers Bilba an amazed compliment when he is done. Instead of crowing over her cooking success, as Fíli would have expected her to do, Bilba ducks her head with a shy smile and mumbles that her skills over an open fire are nothing to those of her Uncle Fortinbras. He takes the children camping for a week every summer, she elaborates, and spends much of his time in every season teaching young Tooks and others what wild things they can forage to add to their meals. Fíli offers up silent thanks to Bilba's uncle while Nori laughingly promises to send him a bottle of fine dwarf spirits when this is all over.

The following day they come across a farm and are able to replenish their supplies enough to at least make their journey more comfortable. Thor still grumbles that they may have to stop in Rivendell, there being little else in the way of settlements between the Last Homely House and the Misty Mountains, but there is nothing else for it. Khazad-dûm may be under the control of dwarrow once more, but much of the rest of the mountain range is still infested with goblins and orcs. Nori suggests that they find somewhere nearby to camp, and then he, Dwalin and Ori can take Bilba into Rivendell and ask Lord Elrond for supplies at the same time. Thor considers it, though Balin advises against it. Gandalf seems happy enough with the plan, given that they need to move with all possible haste and have fallen behind. Finally, Thor agrees, but insists that Ori remain with the party and Balin go into Rivendell instead, Balin being more diplomatic than Dwalin and less prone towards stirring the pot than Nori. Fíli expects Bilba to object to being passed off like a parcel to be delivered but she simply sighs and admits that she is ready for her adventure to be over. She tells him that she longs for a hot bath and a comfortable bed, and Fíli can admit to the same. He can even admit to feeling a pang of envy at the thought that she will get such things while he waits in the background.

They decide to wait in a burnt out farmhouse, although it's location is a little over a day from Rivendell. Thor dispatches Fíli and Bilba to keep an eye on the ponies while the rest of them split the supplies. Fíli suspects that Thor just wants them out of the way and obeys grudgingly.

"Duty is important to dwarves, isn't it?" Bilba asks after a time, breaking the comfortable silence that has been between them. The stars have begun to shine in the darkening sky, glittering like jewels and Fíli turns his eyes from them to look at the hobbit. Her eyes are fixed on the ponies but he doubts that she is really seeing them.

"I suppose," he shrugs. "I've never really thought about it," he admits after a heartbeat. "Thor raised me on stories of duty and honour, taught me the importance of being able to fight and helped me to find my craft."

"Is that all?" She asks. He studies her face, she's tilted her gaze upwards now and he can see the rapid flutter of her eyelashes as she studies the stars. She's upset, he thinks, though he has no idea why.

"I don't know," he mutters. "Family, honour, craft, Thor says those are the most important things. Why?"

"I'm beginning to get the impression that Lord Elrond won't let me stay in Rivendell," Bilba whispers. "I think I might end up going to Moria anyway, whether I want to or not, and I don't think I'll ever go home if I do."

"You think the heir of Durin will suddenly appear?" He asks.

"No," she laughs, but the sound is wet and Bilba swipes a hand across her cheeks. She's crying, Fíli realises, and he has no idea what to do about it. "I think I'm more like my mother than I realised. They never thought she would settle down until she met my father, and even then she never seemed truly happy. There were times when she would look so sad, and sometimes she would just disappear for weeks or even months. My father would say that she had gone to see her brothers and sisters or her cousins in Buckland and I was a child and didn't understand distances, so I believed him. She would come home with stories of the mountains or the roads to Rivendell and I thought they were just more tales from her trip to Moria. Now I think that going there woke something in her that she couldn't put to sleep again, and I think it might be happening to me too." By the time she has finished speaking Bilba is looking at her hands and her ragged curls have fallen to curtain her face.

"Would that be such a bad thing?" He asks. "Do you have a lover waiting for you in the Shire?"

"Torluc," she mutters, looking at him with a rueful twist of her lips. "Torluc Proudfoot is everything that a proper hobbit should be. Every maid in the Shire wants to be the one to catch his eye and I'm the one he has noticed, even though I won't be of age for another year and five days. He's been courting me, as best he can when we have to keep it a secret from my grandfather." That makes something cold settle in Fíli's stomach. Bilba would hardly be the first to engage in a secret romance, but from all the stories he has heard in Bree these things rarely end well and those that do end in marriage often leave many parties associated with it deeply unhappy, including the lovers themselves. "Torluc will never go further from home than Bywater, Grandfather says, and, much as I hate to admit it, he's right. I won't be happy with that and I'll end up as odd and isolated as my mother if I go back, and where would I go if I don't? To Bree? I'm sure it's lovely but I don't think I would be happy there either."

"You could go wherever you like," Fíli smiles. "Once you've completed the ceremony you could go anywhere, see anything you wanted."

"I suppose," she sighs, "not that it's worked out so well so far, and once every dwarf in Moria has sniggered at the silly hobbit."

"What would they laugh?" She glares at him, her eyes glittering in the moonlight. "Because there's no heir of Durin?" Bilba nods. "You just said it; duty is important to my people. By presenting yourself, you're doing your duty. They won't laugh at you for that."

"At least not to my face," she sighs. Fíli has no reply to that. Dwarrow aren't exactly known for their openness with the other races and it is possible that there will be those who will find amusement in the fact that the hobbits obey the letter of the treaty. Balin has explained it to him, and he remembers that battalion of dwarrow who marched past Bree with Gandalf during that awful winter. He had only caught a distant glimpse of the wizard, even though he hadn't known it at the time and would never have realised it had Balin not mentioned it. The dwarrow who came during the Fell Winter likely saved a larger number of hobbit lives than they ever realised. It is only natural that the hobbits would continue to honour their side of things.

"Can you fight?" He asks, the subject change is abrupt, but he thinks Bilba needs it. Besides, the only real experience he has of comforting anyone is Kíli and he doubts that Bilba will appreciate it if he tickles her, the only other way of cheering his brother up enough to get him to talk or pull him out of bleakness had been to spar with him.

"I'm a hobbit," she replies slowly, and he grins. "You know full well I don't have the first idea."

"Stand up," he hops to his feet and she stares at him. "Stand up," he laughs, pulling her upright. His swords will be too heavy for her, he knows, but he has a pair of long daggers hidden up his sleeves that should suit her well enough for the time being and he pulls them out with an effortless seeming flick that took him months of practice to get right. Bilba seems suitably impressed, however, and that only makes him smile wider as he flips them so that he can hand them to her hilt first.

"I could hurt you," she says and there is a tremble to her voice as she accepts them. Fíli knows that she killed the Man who had tried to take her as a slave, but from what Dwalin had said that had been luck rather than training or intent.

"You won't," he assures her, then frowns, "especially not holding them like that. You're more likely to hurt yourself. These aren't carving knives." She scowls and he circles behind her, correcting her grip and her stance with gentle fingers and softly murmured words, remembering how Thor did the same for him when he was barely into his twenties.

He isn't actually aiming to teach her anything. It would be pointless given the fact she is due to depart in the morning and go to Rivendell. He knows, however, that she is scared of what this trip may have turned her into and what she might find in the world. Perhaps this will give her the courage to ask someone, even if it is an elf, to teach her so that she can keep herself safe. He closes his fingers around her on the hilts of the daggers gently, and slowly uses his longer reach to move her body through a few simple movements. He is probably pressed too tightly against her to really be proper by her standards, but Bilba doesn't seem to care at all and she moves with him gracefully and almost without any effort at all.

"It's like a dance," she breathes, and he agrees, though it is completely unlike any dance he has ever seen or experienced. She rests against him as he moves her arms in arcs that are more graceful than practical and the scent of her fills his nose. She smells of the road, of course, he doubts any of them smell particularly fresh, thick with the scent of pony and dust and sweat, but there is a sweetness to her as well that he cannot quite place, and it makes him lean into her a little more. She sighs, turning her head to look at him, his chin just over her shoulder as he watches the movements of their arms. Their eyes meet, the swords stop moving and for a heartbeat they stand there with nothing more than a whisper of air between them.

A nearby crash makes them flinch away from each other and Fíli looks around frantically, half expecting his uncle or Dwalin to appear with dinner and a lecture on proper behaviour. What he spots lumbering towards them makes the blood in his veins run cold and he drags Bilba behind a nearby, half ruined, wall. He gestures for silence, listening to the heavy steps pass them, then carefully pokes his head over the wall, barely far enough to see and hopeful that the creature's eyesight is as terrible as the rumours would lead people to believe. He ducks back again as it turns, holding his breath and keeping a tight grip on Bilba until the vibrations of the earth grow less and that tells him the coast is clear.

A mountain troll just stole two of their ponies. Uncle Thor is going to kill him.