The Shire, North Farthing, a few miles from Tightfield: T.A. 3019

Fredegar Bolger had once been fat. This was no spectacular accomplishment in of itself, since most hobbits have some kind of sizable girth under their belt, thanks to a healthy diet of at least seven meals a day. Yet young Fatty – a rather cruel nickname that he had failed to shake off even among his friends – had been fat even by the high standards of his kin. His size had, in fact, been legendary and Fatty had held it well on his frame. A fine figure of a lad, his mother would coo, worthy of any lass or lad's attentions.

Aye, he had been a fine lad of the most pleasing girth in the days before…before everything went shit up. Nowadays he was as thin as…well…as thin as Cousin Frodo used to be, back before well…before he'd buggered off to go destroy a ring. Yet while Frodo's slender figure had been self-inflicted – a consequence of the older hobbit's peevish appetite – Fatty's had been forced upon him, rather like his life as an outlaw.

He had not been incarcerated – thank whatever force controlled this world – like so many of his kin and friends had, and he'd escaped the heat of the blazes that…that Sharky had been setting light all over the Shire. But in his attempts to avoid both fates, a decent meal had been… difficult to come by to say the least. He had by no means starved, there were fish, roots and berries a plenty if you had care to go and look for them, but it was not his mother's freshly baked scones, he could tell you that.

And speaking of roots…Fredegar's face hit the ground sharply when his ankle twisted under an ill-placed root. Pearl Took turned to glare at him, from where she was positioned just a few trees down.

'Must you be so oafish, Fatty.' The girl hissed, and Fatty scowled at her.

'Must you be so murderous? Or shall I not have to watch myself in case you thrust a pillow over my face in the middle of the night?'

The girl scowled but said nothing, well there was very little she could say, after all it wasn't like the rumours about her were in any way false. Old Laila Took had certainly not fallen out of her wheelchair, and down a flight of stairs, by herself. And that was after the old bird had only just survived having a pillow 'accidently' placed over her face while she slept. Yes, while he may joke about it, there was no doubting the validity of gossip sometimes. After all, gossip had kept them a head of Sharkey's men and magics. Gossip had told them when to cut and run from a village, or duck under the next mill overhead. Gossip had, in part led them here, where – at least in Fatty's mother's opinion – no civilised hobbit should ever go.

A place like Tightfield was a tinder box for rumours. Of course, they had all heard them, the strange dancing girls in the wood around the place, the bizarre way the people talked to their superiors and of course…and this was the part that every Took boy sniggered at…the girls of loose moral character. Well, that was how his mother had described it in any case, but she was never a flattering source of news. What was fact though, was the number of…well to be cruel…bastards that had been born within that village's boundaries. Why, it was even said that Old Bilbo Baggins had sired a babe on a girl from that village, of course some gossip was just complete and utter nonsense.

'Get down Fatty, someone's coming, we'll be seen.'

Fatty Bolger fell to the ground again and waited as the footsteps drew closer. Whoever was coming be they friend or foe, it wouldn't take long to come across the two highborn outlaws now.

The footsteps were softer than they'd first thought, and they produced a sharp click, clacking sound that reminded Fatty of when his cousins would tease the old tom cat and he would come at them. Only this was much louder, and much bigger. The sound of a growl made the young Bolger raise his head, and behold Pearl sprawled in the dirt of the forest floor; her skirts and petticoats splayed around her, one of the largest cats either of them had ever seen crouched over her. Its long white teeth pulled back into a terrifying snarl. It was so big that, on first sight, Fatty had trouble even believing it was a cat at all. You just didn't see these sorts of animalistic mutations, certainly not in a plain, dull old place like the Shire. Well, the Shire had been dull, until Sharkey showed up on the scene. Now it was just terrible.

'Please, we didn't mean to intrude on your master's land…'

Pearl was trying to reason with the savage creature, Fatty didn't know what was funnier; that or the fact that she even thought such a beast could have a master at all.

'We were hiding, no, we were running from Sharkey's men and we became turned around. Please, take us to the master of this land if he be a friendly, but leave us alone if he be not.'

'Pearl, you can't reason with the beast even speaking plainly as Rustic folks do, don't mince your words so.'

The creature turned and growled at him and Fatty found himself flinching away, further into the mud. The beast crept forward then and lowered its large flat head into Pearl's outstretched hand. Stunned, the girl just sat there, staring into the monster's two yellow eyes. And, most spectacular of all, the creature began to purr.

His Took cousin's fingers scratched behind the black-as night ears and the beast flopped down beside her. Then a voice cried from beyond the trees.

'Tom? Tom? Where are ye, ye great big bloody fool.'

The cat's ears twitched, and it yowled in the direction of the voice, as if beckoning it to come closer.

Oh Valar, what now?

The sound of feet crashing through the undergrowth was enough to pull the Bolger heir from his terrified stupor. A lass, in a plain blue cotton dress, stepped out of the bushes and glared down at the large cat flopped beside Pearl.

'Well, that's a nice scrape you've gotten yourself into Tom, do you have to be such a wild animal?'

The giant, black cat stood up and growled at the lass.

'Don't you take that tone with me, Father left me in charge while he's out in the village.'

Another snarl.

'Well, if that's the way you feel maybe you should come over here and say it to my face proper like.'

The cat crouched, and snarled once more, before flinging itself at the stupid girl. Fatty screamed, horrified at the bloody crime he was about to witness. Yet it never came, for the beast may have left the ground as a sleek giant cat, but it landed back down as a young hobbit, in a black coat and cap, with a belligerent looking scowl written across his face.

'I wasn't hurting them, she tripped by herself.'

'A likely story,' the girl with the red ringlets snarled. 'I'm sorry for my brother's…well I'm sorry for my brother.'

She said as she stuck out a hand to help Pearl from the ground, the dark-haired lass grabbed the offered hand and heaved herself up from the dust that she'd fallen in.

'No harm done on that front, right Fatty?'

Fatty grumbled under his breath as he picked himself up from the ground but said nothing more on the matter, still a little, okay a lot, stunned at what he'd just seen. I mean you heard about shapeshifters in places like Cousin Bilbo's stories, but not here, not in the Shire. Yet what other explanation for what he'd just seen was there? You know, other than an extremely hard bump to the head.

'I'm Pearl Took, and this is Fatty Bolger, we've been…we're running from…'

'Sharkey? Aye we've heard of him up here all right, but he daren't show his face round these parts, not yet anyway.'

'Oh, well, we don't want to get you in trouble with…with your father. But could we bother you for some food, we'll try not to take more than our fair…'

'Oh hush, what kind of lass would I be if I threw you out back into the cold hard embrace of Sharkey and his men. Come back to the house, me and Tom will get you all cleaned up and fed right proper like, don't you fear.'

'Thank you.'

'No hardship, it's the least we can do for ye after, well after my brother attacked ye.'

'I didn't attack them!'

'Tell yourself that at night Tom, maybe you'll sleep better. Now off with ye, I don't see the deer you were sent out to fetch.'

The boy growled – rather liked the cat – and stalked away into the undergrowth of the forest. Pearl looked back at his retreating back and frowned with a quizzical, wistful expression.

Fatty followed the sister out into the open barley field that lay beyond the shelter of the woods.

'Thank you for this…' He began but stopped midway when he realised something…something quite vital. 'I'm sorry I don't even know your name.'

She turned her head slightly and smiled over her shoulder at him.

'It's Rosie, Rosie Cotton.'

Pearl Took had come from grand circumstances. Her father was the Thain of the Shire, her only brother would be so after him and more than anything, she was a Took. Fallowhide blood run hot within her veins, there'd been enough intermarrying between their different branches to assure that. She'd been raised to view those faraway ancestors, those Fallowhides, as a wondrous and almost elven like people. Their blood the closest any hobbit could come to the magic held by the other peoples – especially the Elves – of Middle-Earth. Yet what she had just seen had shaken that ingrained belief to its fuzzy toed core.

It hadn't been Elven magic, of that she was almost sure of, but then again, she had never exactly met an elf. Maybe they all turned into giant black cats on a whim and a fancy. But then again if that were true, why had no Took ever come home from one of their silly adventures crowing about it? Surely if you found that out, it would be the first thing you would tell stories about? She remembered, dimly that one of Cousin Bilbo's tales had concerned a shapeshifter. Yet still, he was a man, not an elf and certainly not a hobbit.

As she watched the scowling boy disappear off into the underbrush, she bit her lip in thought as she always did when something strange presented itself before her. Yet up till now strange had been Sharkey – and he was a wizard, so she understood where his magic came from - or her cousins' tales of goblins and trolls littering the roads outside the boundaries of the Shire. This was another level all together.

'Pearl, hurry up!'

Fatty's voice called from the other direction and she disappointedly turned away from the boy to follow her diminished cousin. Poor Fatty, he'd had such a lovely plump, robust frame before Sharkey showed his wizened old face in the lands of the Shire. Yet who wouldn't lose weight after what that man had done to their home, especially Fatty's. The Bolger smial had gone up in flames, and Fatty's mother and father had burned along with it.

The Cotton Farm was no grand estate of some landed-gentry, as Fatty had been raised on. The farm house was no hovel either, but next to the Bolger residence it seemed modest indeed; and yet there was something warm and homey that had never really been there in the ancestral home of the Bolgers. The place oozed with the flurry of life, everywhere he looked in that courtyard he could spot something moving, or some hobbit hustling about their daily tasks. A flock of chickens ran clucking across his path, pursued hotly by a pair of grey footed Toms. Pigs snorted, and ponies were dragged sharply from their stables by the sticky and eager hands of many a hobbit child. In fact, there were rather a lot of children on this farmstead, and very few of them looked like they were related to the Cotton Siblings.

'We get quite a few refugees from around your parts, most of them stay here for a few days, get fed and clothed and then move on. Some stay though.' Rosie smiled as she talked, her cheeks curling up into apples.

A child with the distinct blue eyes of the Took line skipped up to the girl, the bottom half of his face smeared with strawberry jam.

'Miss Rose? Halson Greenroot has broken the lock on the larder and now he's stuffing his ugly gob with all the preserves he can find.'

'Oh, Blarney preserve me, not again,' she frowned at Fatty, then turned back to the child.

'Pali, could you be a big boy for me and help our new guests find a bed to sleep in?'

'Aye mistress,' the boy said in an accent far closer to Sam Gamgee's distinctive burr, than any Took Fatty had ever heard.

The boy grabbed with a sticky hand at Fatty's already thoroughly ruined jacket and pulled as sharply as he would have clearly pulled a pony.

'Come this way sir, the Took-Seaworths took off a couple of days ago and I don't think anyone has laid claim to their bedroom yet.'

As Fatty stumbled after the jam-covered tot and into the wide-stone kitchen of the Cotton Household, he felt a kind of serene calm wash over him. A long table was situated in the middle of the room and around it sat a varied plethora of hobbits. Seemingly all of different ages or classes, yet all sitting side by side around that table as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

A hobbit mistress with a pale green gown and diamonds around her neck, helped wipe off the face of a grubby, squirming infant, in the hands of a burly hobbit lad who looked better suited to ploughing the fields than sitting at some grand dinner party. Accents of Tookabourgaha and Buckland mixed with the more rustic sounds of Tightfield or lower Hobbiton. Fatty had always believed, at least as much as any hobbit of his class ever could, that all that hogswallop about Fallowhide blood breeding superior hobbits was…well hogswallop. Yet, he had never really done anything about it. Oh, he might value a chap like Sam Gamgee's friendship as much as he could value well anyone who he wasn't directly related to, but he wasn't about to go breaking centuries worth of ingrained social hierarchy just to break bread with … not to be cruel to old Gamgee… a gardener. Yet now, standing silently in the doorway, watching all these hobbits who would have never even spoken to each other before, mixing and laughing together, he felt ashamed.

Yet he wasn't allowed to feel that way for long, Pearl shoved Fatty aside, slamming him into the side of the doorway, and the hobbits round the table turned to look at them at last. Fatty smiled self-consciously back at them, but Pearl just gave a little bow of the head and asked demurely.

'Do you know where we might find a bed, our guide seems to have wandered off and forgotten about us.'

The farm-hand holding the infant handed it over to the fine-lady beside him and walked over to them with a large smile plastered across his dirty face.

'How'd you do, I'm Jolly Cotton. If ye found the house then I'll take it, you're already acquainted with my family.'

'We met Tom and Rosie out in the woods. They said you might have a couple of beds for us?'

He frowned.

'Beds are running low lately, but I can offer you some pillows, and some warm hay to sleep on if you're feeling too tired to walk.'

Fatty was just about to mention the Seaworth Room, when, as per usual, Pearl talked right on past him.

'You know what, I'm so tired right now, that sounds perfect.'

Jolly Cotton smiled at her and motioned for them both to follow him out of the room. Ah well, thought Fatty sourly, at least the bed wouldn't be too soft now. After all, who wanted to sleep in a real bed anyway, when you could have a pile of hay on the floor.

Two weeks later

Blood soaked through Tom Cotton's last decent shirt, and he growled half-heartedly to himself as he threw it into the washing pile, or rather the washing tower. There were too many hobbits in this house, soon they wouldn't be able to fit them all in let alone afford to feed them…but Rose would have her way. After Sam Gamgee had been dragged off by his mad master into the dangers of the wild, his sister had been devastated, but instead of just dealing with the loss like a normal hobbit would…his sister had somehow decided that if she couldn't have the one hobbit she really wanted in her house, she'd have all the rest.

Granted that was just how Tom saw it, Rosie herself had continued to insist that she was just doing the right thing…and anyway if Tom had such a problem with it, he could have said no when the first refugee stumbled into their door. Whatever, Tom didn't care anymore, years of life with siblings and loud boorish cousins had well acquainted Tom with the art of creeping over piles of unconscious hobbits. He'd managed to make it entirely across the foyer before someone noticed him. Which was a might unfortunate because right at that very moment, he just so happened to not be wearing a shirt.

'Master Cotton?'

Damn to the Blarney Son, Damn to Mother Magda and Damn to her Elven Lover! Pearl Took, why out of the any number of fancy lords and ladies currently staying in this house did it have to be Pearl Bloody Took.

'Am I disturbing you, Master Cotton?'

Preparing himself for what he knew would be a no doubt harrowing experience, Tom sighed and turned to face her.

'No, not at all Lady Took, how can I be of service to ye this fine evening.'

In the light of the full moon that flittered through the small windows of the Cotton Farmhouse, Tom could see Pearl's eyes flick down to his bared chest and then up again. Tom's hands curled at his sides, but he made no other move to stop her as she stepped over the skeletal slumbering form of her ironically named cousin.

'People have always said that it was the Tooks who were the queerest of hobbits. Always going off on adventures and consorting with the likes of Elves and wizards. You know they even say there's just a dash of Elf blood running through our veins.'

She said this with a note of pride in her voice, yet Tom didn't see what there was to be proud of. He might not see evil in the likes of Thingol's kin like some folks did, but he certainly knew they weren't to be trusted. Thought far too highly of themselves, and they were slow to admit fault. Of course, that was the Tooks all over wasn't it? Aye, maybe he could believe there was some Thingol Blood in that land of Tooks. Pearl was still looking at him, as if she expected some reply to that statement; Tom made none, just narrowed his eyes and waited for what he knew must be coming next.

'Yet, we have never been able to change and twist our forms as you and your sweet siblings can.'

That was it, that was a step too far.

'I'm able to, aye Mam, that I cannot deny to one who has seen it with their own eyes. But I'll correct you when it comes to my siblings. Magic touches us all in different ways, that may be mine, but it's not theirs'

'Truly? Well isn't that enlightening. May I guess how it touches them or am I to be kept in the dark about that as well.'

'I don't know what ye feel ye're being kept in the dark about Mistress, but I can assure that whatever secrets my siblings hold about them is nay mine to tell.'

'No, I suppose it isn't.'

She steps closer and ducks her head, until she has to look up through the tresses of her long lashes to meet his eyes proper like.

'I must wait till gentle Jolly tells me why he knows and sees things he really shouldn't, or why Nick and Nibs can melt into the water as if they were nothing but the spray of sea on sand, or why sweet Rose can fly to the highest branch of the old apple tree…shall I go on?'

Tom trembled now, not with anger as he might have done in the past, but fear; real, true, undiluted fear. It weren't exactly supposed to be a secret, the Cottons powers, after all, it'd been Ganyman not Magicians that old Proudfoot had set a price on. Yet, maybe that was only because Magicians weren't talked about, they weren't a secret or nothing at least not officially, they just weren't talked about by folks who weren't already in the know, not like the Ganymen. You couldn't ignore a Ganyman, not with the kind of work they did, and look what came of that. Dead all of them dead, hung by a rope, trampled by a mob or just plain starved in prison. Course old Proudfoot was gone now, left the Shire in Sharkey's tender embrace.

Yet even if all that was over and done with, even if Sharkey left Tom realised, the Shire was no longer a safe place for rustic folks such as he and his family. No safe place for a practice of the Rustic Arts. Because while Proudfoot might have been a terrible creature, it wasn't as if he was one without a master. And as he looked into the devastatingly beautiful dark eyes of Pearl Took, he knew this to be true, and he knew who would be holding the leash next time round.