I feel I should also point out that these chapters will also come in varying lengths, haha. Especially when little rabbit trail scenes start writing themselves into existence while I'm trying to do something else.
Remord
~ n., a touch of remorse; v., to remember with regret ~
Chapter 2: A Little Different
"Gandalf! Not the wizard who…" - page eight
Belladonna Took's son had always been a little different, even as a young hobbit boy, when he sat at the feet of the wandering storyteller in a gray robe, asking to hear more about dragons and goblins and giants. Running across farm fields pretending to rescue princesses from evils that most hobbits stoutly denied the existence of, save in the tales of grand adventures that one or two unsettled families kept on their shelves. Begging to hear more about the lucky widows' sons who could riddle their way out of the tightest corners. Or clapping as the Old Took commanded his diamond studs to fasten and unfasten before his lingering audience of one while fireworks burst in the night sky above their heads.
Bilbo had always taken more after the Tookish side than anyone wanted, although he had seemed able to tightly clamp down on those impulses quite effectively over the years, so that when he was a grown hobbit, he was quite as steadfast and respectable as anyone on this side of the Water.
Hobbits nodded cordially as they passed him smoking on his doorstep and he waved back or invited them to share his tobacco if there was no hurry in their step as, indeed, there rarely was when passing Bag End.
Blood will tell, though, as they say, and the hobbits who had known Bilbo as a child could hardly be surprised when a whole troop of dwarves came ringing at his front door and he invited them all in to tea. They had hoped, of course, that Mr. Baggins would send them off by dinner time, saying that they had had enough of that sort of thing in the Shire for one day, thank you very much.
But the dwarves hadn't left until the following morning. And they next thing anyone knew, Bilbo was chasing after them without a word to anyone else.
No, the older hobbits said as they gathered to drink away the mysterious happenings of bigger folk and the resulting emptiness of Bag End, no, Bilbo Baggins had always been a bit strange.