Chapter is a bit shorter but only because it went originally too long and didn't follow my normal 3-stage set up. It would have been 4, which in my opinion drags on a bit long. If I split it up, it would've split strangely.

So! This travel portion will be here today and the entire rest of it tomorrow.

Also, I'd like to blame The Almighty Johnsons for this chapter's delay. That show is amazing and Dean O'Gorman is one fine Bragi.

Summary: After the morning training, the Company heads off to Beorn's home...

By Yavanna, it was just so unreasonably hot. I should have expected something this bad given how the weather stifled and made me sweat even before the sun rose but by the Valar , this was quite unbearable. Everyone else grumbled and moaned about the heat, breaking down at some point to strip off their leathers and haul them around either across their still gotten packs, or in their arms.

Thorin's pointed glare was the only thing keeping the brothers' sweat damp tunics on but even then they whined and complained so loudly that all of us were sure that they must have forgotten at some point just what they were complaining about. Now just the sound of their voices made the rest of us sweat even more. At the point where I was mentally in all this, the very sensations against my body made me frown and whenever Thorin glanced back at me to see how I was faring, I could barely keep myself from groaning with my overwhelming need to whine.

It was miserable. I was hot. So unbearably bloody hot!

The brothers were also miserable and they were being insufferable in response to their discomfort. I was being insufferable. I could tell given the way I glared at everything that literally blocked the breeze and made whinging noises whenever Dwalin decided that he didn't want to provide me with any shade from his very tall stature.

I was glad for the braid that Thorin put in my hair because it was probably the only thing keeping me from passing out. My vest and jacket never made it back on after our training and while I didn't miss any article expressly, Kili was glaring at his Uncle so intensely that Thorin couldn't help but look back every so often. The thing that Kili kept staring at? My ascot tie. At some point earlier in the day, Kili tried to win the tie from Thorin so that he could use it in his own hair but our leader turned out to be rather good at hand games and won the rights to keep the ribbon. By the time Fili went over to try and steal the ribbon from his hair, the heat was finally starting to have an effect on Thorin's already at times delicate manners.

Rest assured, he was valiant and he held out for as long as any other dwarf could have, hoping to keep his nephew in line by not provoking a response; Fili brushed against him, tugging at his arm like a child in the hopes that he would be able to distract him enough to basically tear the ribbon straight from his head. He couldn't use Kili in the plan either since the brunette dwarf would just take the precious fabric for himself. So in the end, Kili, Gandalf, and I amused ourselves by watching Fili practically drag Thorin along, whisper too closely in his ear, and wrap his arm around his waist just to be able to get physically closer.

However, Gandalf's chuckle reminded us that the heat had been trying on Thorin's nerves and now that Fili was literally pressing his furnace of a body close and impeding his Uncle from walking correctly... well, it was only a matter of time before...

The company laughed when Thorin finally had had enough. Even I couldn't help it when he finally snapped. With a rough shove, he pushed Fili away, growling something in Khuzdul and wiping the sweat from his brow as he went for his high collar and unbuttoned it. He looked exhausted and the heat was wearing on him like it did everyone else in the company.

He didn't pay much mind to where he pushed his heir because as soon as Fili landed on his back, he burst out into laughter.

Gandalf and I exchanged looks, wondering if the heat made him crazy..

"How was it? You were trying at it for a while!"

Upon hearing Kili's voice, Fili looked over at us and our curious stares, still slightly dazed from when Thorin pushed him. I helped him up just because he looked so pathetic and he smiled at me before nearly dragging me down along with him. It was far too hot for such games and I pinched his arm so that he knew that.

"If we're being honest here, I kind of forgot why I even went over there." Gandalf waited for us so that none of us lagged behind and when we were once more in the group, we went quiet and just let our body language complain about how miserable we all were. Gandalf himself didn't seem to mind the heat, looking delightfully cool and uncaring about the entire situation. Given how I felt at the time, I felt a stab of envy at the sight of him prim and proper in his robes and I sweating like a dirty hog in my layers.

Honestly, if I were less of a proper Hobbit lass, I would say bugger all to wearing my bloomers and petticoat and just allow the breeze to do its work! All I did since it was at least more proper was unbutton another button on my shirt, sighing when the breeze kissed along sweaty skin.

"Button that back up, Miss Hobbit." I looked at Fili weakly, his voice a tremble on my bottom not from any emotion but because he was weary from the heat, "Just the thought of what's underneath makes me sweat."

I rolled my eyes at the thought.

"Brother, do your duty and end my misery."

Kili's dramatic voice was weak on the other cheek and I groaned at the feel of it because it was so damned uncomfortable. On my other side, Fili looked at his younger brother and his eyes went down to where his knife was, "Uncle, Kili wants me to kill him. I think I need permission for that..."

A long suffering sigh could be heard even from the ten paces that Thorin walked in front of us, "If your brother has any courtesy, he'll ask when it is night and we won't be inconvenienced by dragging around his body in this heat."

"I don't want you to kill me, you idiot!"

"Sticks and stones, brother."

"You two are being so noisy." I couldn't take their voices on me anymore and I sighed, wiping the sweat from my forehead, grateful for the fact that Fili's braid kept my bangs free from my eyes. Still, the braid didn't give them a free pass to act like idiots. As I walked along, I closed my eyes because the darkness made me feel slightly cooler...

"Why would you think I wanted you to kill me?"

"You did say that you wanted him to end your misery, Kili." Gandalf gently guided me off to the side because my eyes were closed and I was about to trip over the root of a tree that edged too closely to the path we were walking.

"Oh." The younger Durin responded, looking entirely too stupefied and completely unaware of what he must have even asked, "No, though, I meant; you must end my misery, brother. Spit on me," All of us literally turned around to look at the youngest Durin, our faces all surprised by such a request. It was funny that we did not bat an eyelash over his request to kill him and yet his request to spit on him literally had us all shocked. His dark eyes looked at us pleading, "Ya know, spit must feel like water... right? I'd cool down if you spit on me."

"I'm not spitting on you." Fili looked away as if were grossed out by the idea if only because if he gave up his precious saliva, he might feel the heat all the more. My throat was already feeling parched so the thought of actually spitting anywhere was absolutely off the menu. When those dark eyes focused on me, I shook my head, "NO! Absolutely not!"

"Quite the kinky relationship you guys have."

I skipped in my step at the sound of Bofur's voice tickling my feet, a chuckle on my breath but his response to this entire conversation was completely out of my depth! Even as I dismissed the thought of it myself, Kili was dragging his feet heavily behind Fili, his body practically thrown over his brother and making him pull him along.

Even as they started to whine again, I looked to Thorin and saw him pointedly ignoring how exhausting his nephews were being. As I saw his face force the voices of his nephews far from his mind, I felt I was very much in agreement with Thorin about what he was doing. I ignored them too.

I frowned as I watched them because as Kili dragged Fili down to the ground and they wrestled in the grass, I felt my lip curl in a sign of disgust because of how they were acting in the heat. Just looking at them made me nauseous with how rowdy they were being.

I rolled my eyes, "Dwarves."

Now that I was no longer being bothered by the brothers or whatever else nonsense I was sometimes being pulled into, with Gandalf beside me, I could finally ask him what had been bugging me since we set off from the Carrock.

"So why is it called 'the Carrock' anyway? I've never heard of such a thing before."

Gandalf's eyes glinted at me and as he walked along beside me, he carefully moved out of the way of any low hanging branch and set to work on getting his pipe ready for a smoke. I waited patiently but knew that if he didn't hurry up, I was going to smack him. This heat was unbearable and wherever we were going, if fire were there, I would scream. Literally scream or want to strangle something.

"He called it the Carrock, because that is his word for it." Gandalf shrugged, his voice a constant weight on my shoulder as he spoke until his words lifted away, "He calls things like that carrocks, and this one is the Carrock because it is the only one near his home."

"Your mysterious stranger friend, yes? Whom you haven't given us the name of yet."

The company was around us, walking along at their own pace and yet somehow, as I spoke with Gandalf, I noticed that they hovered closer and seemed to try and not walk too far ahead. I thought again of how awful of gossips the company of Thorin Oakenshield was, no better than the hobbit wives back in the Shire. If Gandalf and I were talking about trees or flowers, the company would be the first to know even if I wanted it to stay a secret.

"Yes, a very great person." Gandalf himself noticed just as I had that we had an audience much larger than myself; at once, his eyes swooped around to the various members of the company, lingering on the brothers who were still going back and forth on whether Fili spitting on Kili was an actual means of relief or just disgusting. "You must all be very polite when I introduce you." He explained very simply, his eyes scrutinizing me for a moment before he grinned, "I shall introduce us all slowly, two by two, I think."

Once again, his eyes went to the brothers and also to Thorin, "Also, you must take care not to annoy him. He can rather appalling when he is angry..."

With such warnings, I found it even hard to believe that Gandalf thought we were better off going to his home! I mean, goblins were appalling when angry and the orcs were hardly any better! What made Gandalf think that going to this person's house was even a good idea?

"And this is the Somebody that you're taking us to? Right now?" The company gathered around Gandalf and I closer, feeling the charge of female wrath that was about to come because of the heat and because I just realized the danger we might be in just going to where we were supposed to be safe at. The funny thing was, as I thought of the company that Gandalf normally kept, it wasn't that I thought this mysterious stranger was possibly a great danger to us... more like, a great annoyance that we didn't want to deal with on top of everything else.

I thought back to the last friend of Gandalf's we bumped into, Radagast the Brown, who was a fellow wizard and smelled like dung and had a voice that chirped in my ears like bird calls. By Yavanna, had Radagast been a strange creature. No matter where that wizard lived and no matter how distressed I was, I didn't want to go anywhere near that smelly wizard's house.

The heat made me petulant and more likely to whinge like the brothers.

"Do you not have any friends who aren't complete nutters?"

"Mistress Baggins, the heat is making you rude!" He tutted, voice a sharp poke against my shoulder that nearly made me trip. "He is perfectly sane, just in the ownership of a temper, which as you personally know does not make him unlikable."

"Excuse me!" I knew what Gandalf implied with such a statement, knowing that it was a jest about how I was involved with Thorin and that he also was - as Gandalf so aptly said - in the ownership of a temper. Still, to air it about! In response to my slight chastisement, the grey Wizard just rolled his blue eyes at me and shook his head.

"If you must know more, his name is Beorn. He is very strong, and he is a skin-changer."

"What?! You mean the wives weren't exaggerating?!" My hand went to my mouth and I gasped at the shock of what the Hobbit wives once said about this exact thing! Well, they hadn't used that exact term but the description was more than enough to match! Oh, how I wanted to go and run to the Hobbit wife circle and tell them that their stories were true! Actually true and not just them nagging!

"A skin-changer? You mean like a furrier? They used to tell me stories of men like that who killed animals and then dressed up in their skins and then went out to mate it out in the wild!"

Even as I said it, I knew it sounded so crazy to even think and to solidify my thoughts, Gandalf nearly dropped his pipe and the dwarves listening around us burst out into laughter.

"Good gracious, Bilbo Baggins, you need to stop listening to those awful women!" He sputtered, fixing his bag and adjusting his beard; even as he fidgeted, I could tell he was replaying the words in his head for he would shake his head at the foolishness of what I said. "My word, no! Beorn is nothing -No! Don't be such a fool if you can help it!"

Well... my face felt sufficiently red from Gandalf's reaction to what I said. Even after he stopped speaking to me, he still shook his head as if in disbelief and for once, I actually felt like a dwarf making crazy assumptions based off very little said. Certainly making up the very wrong of a situation was their forte but to so blindly trust in the hobbit wife circle...

Why was Fili staring at me like that?

"What?"

"Wives?" He asked with a quick rise of his eyebrow, a healthy tone of curiosity that cupped along the flesh of my bottom.

Unbeknownst to many of the dwarves, throughout my journey with them, I had at times gone to the advice of the hobbit wife circle, replaying old conversations and nitpicking sayings based on their gossip. I thought of Azaelia Bolger and what the hobbit wives frequently said of her and how most of it could now be applied to me. Oh Yavanna, just the thought the line of Durin coming back to Bag End and me being the talk of the circle!

Maybe I could be friends with Azaelia when I went back? Oh by the Valar, that was a nasty fate. Might as well just never go back...

Oh, Fili was still looking at me waiting for an answer.

"Yes, we have a gathering of wives, who tend to gossip when they get together..."

Gloin, who had been hovering nearby throughout the conversation with Gandalf suddenly piped up, "Oh, you mean like a crafting circle? My wife does that with the other lasses." He puffed up his chest in a display of pride, going for the locket that he kept around his neck. I knew what pictures were inside, if only because since saving Thorin's life, I had seen the locket no less than twenty times. "She makes the best pendants I've ever seen!"

"We know!" Bombur shouted from the front, loud enough to make my belly tickle. Upon his shout, Gloin seemed to bristle at the implication that he he'd been speaking of his wife and son Gimli too much and went up to the front of the train; immediately, we heard shouting about the sweetness of hair and beards and whose child was better at this and that.

The company promptly ignored them because listening to them made us sweat.

"So wait, what? A crafting circle?"

Kili practically hung off his brother again, nearly being dragged by a Fili who looked like he wanted to wrestle with his brother yet again but did not want to expend the energy doing so, "Aye, our women get together and sew or craft and they gossip like old crones." Kili grinned at me, his voice a sure stroke along flesh, "Our Ma makes fun of them. Calls them wasteful, old naggers with nothing better to do than run around being old bitties." He tiredly nodded in my direction, so sure that what I spoke of must be the thing that he thought of, "It sounds similar to your wives."

"Oh, I suppose, though, they don't craft while they gossip."

Fili's look of confusion at this was actually quite endearing, "Well, what do they do? Surely they should do something productive themselves in some way while they talk?" I was surprised by the casualness with which how he said such a statement because from what I knew of the dwarven culture, their females were equals and very much not idle for any reason. It just seemed so strange to hear something so demeaning, to suggest that their women couldn't get together without doing something productive as well. It seemed that my thoughts were correct because Thorin sighed from a few paces ahead of us again. My eyes glanced in his direction before Fili leaned in close, "Don't tell Ma I said that, of course."

"Well," I thought about the question for a moment even though I didn't really need to. I thought that perhaps maybe if I thought for a little bit that I would able to think of something that the wives did as we talked but... we didn't do anything. Ever. One might have been sewing a sock at one time but it was a one time thing...

"I suppose we just kind of stand by the market, looking at the food and the people that walk by."

I knew Thorin's grunt of a chuckle anywhere and turned my eyes on his back, wanting to reach out and grab that ribbon from his hair just to subject him to the awful heat like everyone else had to, "Got anything to add, O' mighty Leader?"

In response to my challenge, Thorin glanced at me before resuming his walk, "Sounds like your lot don't have enough to keep their minds occupied."

"We have plenty to keep ourselves occupied, thank you very much! We just, like to people observe." I thought of how we tended to observe Azaelia and the other less popular Hobbit lasses, "Some people, I guess, deserve it, looking so forlorn at married couples..."

"Awww, do not tell me that hobbits are jealous when a woman embraces her sensuality?" Kili truly was being insufferable in the weather, choosing to almost brush against me like some animal, his sweaty dirty fingers gripping onto my shoulders before pulling me close in an awkward side hug. By the Valar, how did dwarves sweat so much?! Kili was practically soaked!

"We are not! We just don't prefer it to be toted all over the Shire!"

As much as I wanted to deny Kili's allegation against the hobbit wife circle, I knew I couldn't with the way that Fili looked at me and really knew how it must have been while in the middle of the affairs of women. It made me think that when he was a babe, he must have been carted off to at least one of them and knew the ways of how the women there spoke. It was that way at least with the hobbit wives, who sometimes brought along their children when they couldn't leave them with their husbands.

"Don't be jealous, Miss Hobbit, it's a very natural thing for a woman to express herself sexually." The elder of the brothers practically oozed sex appeal as he grinned at me, his voice curling against flesh as he himself curled up along my side. If we hadn't been moving, I would have entertained the idea of maybe pressing up against him but aside from our movement, there was also the heat.

The heat in question that was currently making him feel like a giant furnace of sweat ball fury, which was disgusting because he was literally dripping sweat and his breath was hot on my face. He laughed at the way my face twisted in disgust, knowing all too well why I wasn't turned on by his advances but that didn't stop him from trying to lean in for a kiss that I giggled into, jokingly attempting to get away from his hot lips. When his lips finally made contact with my cheek, I pushed him away with a laugh, "Get away, you''re way too sweaty for that."

"Ah-HEM!" Gandalf coughed, interrupting the impromptu love fest that Fili and I had devolved into and once more bringing all attention back to him. "Bilbo, if you'll act your age. As I have been trying to say, Beorn is not such a man. He changes his skin; sometimes he is a giant black bear and, sometimes, he is a giant man with a great beard."

I nodded at the statement, realizing that Gandalf was actually being quite serious when it came to his friend and how he was literally a skin-changer and not just a crazy man who dressed about in animal furs for his own demented pleasures. Unfortunately, despite the seriousness of our topic, Kili was still exhausted by the heat and he was grabbed onto Thorin's arm, dragging his Uncle back like a petulant child.

"By the Valar, this heat is unbearable and I'm starving! When will we be sent off to hunt, Uncle? Running might cool me down!"

"Which leads to another point," Gandalf quickly interjected, "Beorn keeps cattle and horses and some other animals at his home that are truly marvelous." At the sight of Kili's – and really the rest of the company's – eyes all looking at Gandalf like he were their savior once again, the elderly wizard groaned and rubbed at his head, taking in a deep breath of his pipe, "No, he does not eat them, you heated fools! They talk to one another and neither does he hunt or permit others to kill on his lands."

"So how does the beast survive?" Dwalin gruffed out, amused by the company as a whole but very much still not in the mood for when Kili attached onto him, "Master Dwarf! You all will need to get the fuss out of your breeches before we meet him. He does not tolerate bad manners though he himself can have rather questionable ones himself. Just know that he does have good food!"

As much as all of us were desperate to get to Beorn's home hidden away in what Gandalf said was the "bosom of nature", when we finally came upon the pastures of gigantic bees that were far bigger than hornets and the single scariest thing that I had ever seen in my life, we were all a bit reluctant. Looking around, I knew they thought the same thing I did. If the bees were so much bigger than an average one, how much bigger was Beorn?

Even though we wanted to linger, Gandalf pressed us onward, citing that we were on the edge of Beorn's personal bee-pastures and that we only had a little bit further to go. It was a while longer after we set off again when we finally came upon the edge of an arching pathway of oak trees that rose up tall and were sturdier and greener than any tree I'd ever seen before.

Living in the Shire on the edge of forests, I was well acquainted with trees but just the sight of these was enough to make me reach out and stroke along its truck, amazed by the height and how thick its trunk was. Their long limbs covered in moss and foliage elegantly arched and draped over the glade that we walked in, creating a winding pathway that we followed. As we walked along underneath them, all of us noticed that through their thick branches, the intensity of the sun was lessened. They provided excellent shade and underneath their canopy, the air cooled considerably and we all finally breathed in relief at the prospect of being somewhere cooler.

Onward we traveled until the pathway suddenly veered off and disappeared behind a thorn hedge, so thick and tall that not a one of us could not see beyond. On closer inspection, even the horns on the hedges were enormous, bigger than my fingernails and when I tried to peer beyond it, Gandalf stopped me. "You all had better wait here. We must do this delicately or else we'll be thrown out right on the spot."

My eyes darted over to Gandalf for a thought passed my mind so swiftly, I could not really ignore it. I thought of the rather unexpected party that Gandalf heralded back at Bag End and how all of the dwarves came nearly one after another until I unexpectedly had little choice when all of them arrived. By then, I barely could contemplate how so many dwarves managed to con their way into my own without a proper invitation. Now, I knew.

I should have known.

Now, I felt awful considering that I would be a part of this nonsense. Essentially, I was now to do what Gandalf had done to me and if the dwarves were going to raid this poor man's pantry then... I couldn't even finish the thought, I was already so annoyed by what we were doing.

"Now, again, as I said before, you'll each come two by two since we are a rather large group."

"What's the signal?" Kili quipped, his brother quickly following up on his inquiry. "A barn owl or a brown owl? Should we have more than two this time?"

"Fili, Kili, you'll stay behind. I'll go with Gandalf first." Thorin huffed out, exasperated and just all around frustrated by the day that came after the training that happened in the morning. Upon his decision to go first with Gandalf, the rest of us backed up and I watched as Thorin untied the ascot from his hair and ruffled his hair free. I rolled my eyes at the display because, of course, he would never meet Beorn with his hair looking anything less than majestic.

As soon as the tie was out of his hair, Kili snatched it up, much to Fili's protests and the next thing I knew, he was pulling his own dark hair up. "Oh by Aulë, that feels amazing."

I rolled my eyes, just thinking about how simple dwarves could be sometimes. Simple yes, but still selfish seeing as it was my ascot!

"No, no, I think I'll be taking Miss Baggins with me."

"The burglar?" Thorin's voice was a whisper along my back, making sure that I understood that it wasn't intended to be offensive but that he thought it was a ridiculous notion for me to go and greet Beorn with Gandalf when I was the company's burglar. I couldn't imagine why anyone would want a burglar in their house.

"Yes, Miss Baggins will be ideal for this."

"He's not a funny one, is he?" Thorin asked, instantly suspicious. He was not entirely too willing to be at Beorn's in the first place and knowing that all of us might not be safe was something he would not abide.

"Goodness gracious- !"

"Look, brother, I'm Kiki, the Hobbit lass!" Kili interrupted and all of us glanced at the pair just in time to see him bat his eyelashes at Fili, who was attempting not to laugh. The fact that he was also running his hands through his ponytail had nothing at all to do with the slight chuckle that escaped my lips.

" Save me from all of you today! Do any of you know what the date is today?"

In a second, I knew that I didn't know the answer and looked around at the other dwarves for any possibility that they would know. I thought back in my head and really tried to think about the last time I really knew what day it was and thought about how I lost track sometime in the journey over to Rivendell. It was spring when we left and now it was summer, that was for sure. Other than that, I was a little lost. Maybe Afterlithe by Shire-Reckoning?

Or was it Wedmath? I did the basic math in my head very roughly, counting silently and feeling that I was pretty sure that we definitely were in Afterlithe but probably getting close to Wedmath.

"You are quite right there, Ori." I startled out of my thoughts just in time to miss whatever Ori said, "Yesterday was the 19th lunar cycle of the Moon of the Gold Mountain. According to Shire-Reckoning, though, it's actually the 20th of Afterlithe. In two days, the moon will be full."

Gandalf waited for everyone to understand just what point he was trying to make for us but none of us quite knew and I certainly had no idea. Just from what Gandalf said, the dwarves apparently used a lunar calender and that was something that I couldn't understand even in the slightest. So whatever it meant about the moon being full meant nothing to me considering that I lived my life based on a solar calender.

We waited and waited and when no one said anything, Gandalf shook his head again. Suddenly just as Gandalf was going to explain, Ori exclaimed that he understood! All of us jumped back and I had the sensation of the damned kittens again as he smiled around at the group. "The moon will be full in two days! I read about it in books about creatures that worship the moon! Gandalf mentioned while on the Carrock that Mister Beorn sat and looked at the moon."

Not a one of us understood and when Ori looked at me happily, I almost flinched. If Beorn worshiped the moon, in two days, we weren't going to have to haul ass out of here because he would try to sacrifice me, right? There really was a whole lot of that idea that just wasn't going to happen.

"What does that have to do with Mistress Baggins, Ori?" Thorin tried to keep his temper under control but the heat combined with the lack of food and the journey was starting to get to him.

"Well – and I just read this in books, mind you – but if what I believe Master Gandalf is implying in that Mister Beorn is a moon worshipper, then Miss Bilbo will make him like us." Well, that certainly caught everyone's attention, I noted with amusement, watching as everyone turned to give Ori their full consideration. "We consider the moon male but they consider the moon female..." He trailed off nervously at the looks the various company members were giving him but while his voice shivered over my palms like scared little kittens, I had to note that he was at least confident in his information. "Well, with the full moon coming up and a female in our company, he'll take it as a good omen and want us to stay. Hopefully, anyway."

"Brilliantly said, Master Ori!" Gandalf smiled his proud gleaming smile down on Ori, who nearly collapsed on himself in embarrassment at actually having been the most knowledgeable in our group about a matter that only the wizard himself knew. It was quite nice to see Ori perk up and equally as adorable watching him hide his red face in blushing pride.

"So you think that he'll take to us if Miss Baggins is with you?"

Thorin once again was distrustful of the situation but from the way his voice lingered over my back, he definitely was now considering leaving me in Gandalf's capable hands to face our unknown – and unknowing – host despite the information that he was a fierce creature. He thought to himself very quickly, his eyes darting to a point unseen beyond the hedge and then to me and when finally he decided, he nodded his head and waited off by Dwalin.

"Very well. We'll wait for your signal and join you in pairs."

Now with Thorin's blessing, I stepped away from the hedge and looked up at Gandalf, suddenly feeling like a trapped little animal the more I thought about how he was planning to offer me up to a furrier... Not a furrier, I tried to remind myself!

Well, if Gandalf and I were going to greet our unaware host, he would at least need to see that we were decent guests. I took a minute for myself, buttoning my shirt as proper, putting on my vest again, and getting back into my jacket, already groaning from how heavy it all felt against my body in the heat. I made sure that I looked presentable enough and tried to fix my hair as best I could but when I noticed that everyone was starting to get impatient for a hobbit fussing, I rolled my eyes.

"What? I won't greet a host looking like a sweaty cow."

"Moooo!"

I gawked at Kili, who was smiling and looking pleased with himself while he enjoyed the luxuries of not having to look proper and also having my ascot in his hair. I shook my head at him and frowned, "Fili, spit on your brother. I swear, you dwarves today!"

Though I had no room at all to talk, I was as pleased as a babe when Fili instantly went for his brother and they started to wrestle and I smiled wide when I joined Gandalf beyond the hedge and heard the sound of Fili spitting and Kili practically screaming from how foul it felt.