My dear

My dearest friend, High Prince Winter of the First Circle of the IceWing Kingdom,

You asked me once what the world that I came from was like, and what my other adventures were like. And while Middle-Earth was my home, I don't feel that is the case any longer. Looking back on it all now, I can say that I am no longer the Hobbit that I once was.

I truly cherished the time we shared together; this would not have been possible without your wondrous curiosity for stories of my adventures.

Some of this will sound familiar, but most of it you probably have not heard yet. The problem, really, is where to begin.

But I think…yes, I know precisely where to begin.

Let me take you back, long before my time, in a faraway land…

The little figure sat at his little desk, sketching little words into his little book, a story that was long familiar with his own. The only light in the darkened room was that of a candle dripping wax right above his curly head. He was sure that no one would have interrupted his midnight project, it was an undertaking that he was mighty embarrassed to still admit to himself.

As he continued, he suddenly paused, lost in remembrance. It was still wild for the little creature to think about even to the present moment. One adventure should have been enough for him, and yet that one adventure turned into two, then four, and everything in between. Places that he never belonged in had opened up their hearts to him in friendship, all because he became caught in the fray of it all, lost without guidance or even a simple map.

When he had first run out from the comfort of his front door, he had expected to be thrust into a larger world far beyond that which he knew; he had a predisposition regarding adventuring and the sort.

What he had discovered instead…

What I had discovered instead, quite by accident in a fit of rage, was something far grander than what was thought possible for anyone, let alone a simple Hobbit of simple means.

My adventure had not ended, rather it had just begun…


Smaug had left: that much he knew.

The Lonely Mountain was now without its dragon-of-decades to keep the treasure out of the hands of anyone, let alone Dwarves.

No doubt, by now they were all swimming once again in the wealth that they had reclaimed for themselves. Now that they had walled up the main entrance, all of that gold and jewels would belong to them and them alone; provided that no one would march up to the gate with an army at hand, ready to outnumber the Dwarves and take the treasure over their dead bodies.

Bilbo shuddered at the thought. As grim as it sounded, it was the only one that seemed plausible with the Company he was now stuck with. Hired as a burglar, he was promised a share of the treasure for himself, not that a Hobbit would care for gold. He could taste the smell of good cooked food in his kitchen, and feel the warmth of his hearth lighting up his frozen feet.

The adventure was as good as over, what reason did the Dwarves have to prolong it all?

The lone hobbit of the Company sat in his own hidden spot of the Mountain Kingdom, where he could get away from the ruckus of Dwarves, and their stubbornness to hoard the treasure like…

…like dragons.

Those overbearing and piercing golden eyes remained in his mind to haunt him for the rest of his days, and how his voice would slither through his mind, infecting his reasoning and goodwill. That treasure was cursed; poisoned, made foul by the stench of Smaug's great form lying over it for decades upon decades.

Just the mere sight of the gold changed the dwarves; he had seen it in their eyes: they could never shy away from it ever again. In place of the friends he had made along the grandest adventure any hobbit ever had, were shells of greed and gluttony.

He had no comfort in this gloomy, dusty, hollowed empty halls of regret and tragedy. All he had were his lucky magic ring and his faithful Sting; and no peace from the great parties that were never-ending in the floors right above him. The songs were always the same: the gold had been reclaimed, Smaug had been defeated, and the kingdom was theirs and theirs alone.

He cursed the moment he ran out his door. He cursed the night that the dwarves had invaded his home and made themselves a meal out of his entire pantry. And he cursed that fateful meeting with the wandering Gray Wizard Gandalf. He had been a fool all along: Baggins' were meant to keep their homes full of comfort, leaving the adventuring to the Tooks.

Bilbo was a Baggins through and through, there was no doubt about that…at least, not anymore.

For a moment, he remembered something he had taken with him along his adventure. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the one lone acorn he had picked back at Beorn's land. It was in hopes of planting an acorn tree back in his home garden, a memento of the wondrous beauty that was outside the Shire.

The Shire…this adventure had changed Bilbo, no longer could he say that he was the same hobbit that was once respected amongst his kind. What would they say to him now? Having faced Trolls, Goblins, a mighty dragon, had supper with Elves, sprung a company of thirteen dwarves imprisoned by the Wood-Elves, and traversed the entire outside world…

"I've gotten your home back," Bilbo seethed into the darkness, "and now you won't let me return to my own."

He stared ahead, focusing on one aspect that stood out against all that was in the room. In a small pantry littered with cobwebs and dusty and dirty kitchenware, an archway about the size of an Elf was etched into the wall hidden away behind the emptied shelves of rotting food. It was patterned with markings unfamiliar to that of any architecture that the burgling hobbit had ever seen: straight lines lacking any sort of elegant curvature, matching up with all sorts of shapes that had no pattern or rhyme or reason to exist.

In that moment, all of that was lost on Bilbo, who took one glance at the archway and decided that the mere existence of it was to unfairly mock his predicament. With all of his rage being worn on his arm, he threw the little acorn right towards the archway.

What happened next was something that no one on the face of Middle-Earth could have predicted. Instead of bouncing right off the wall and scattering across the floor, it appeared to have phased right through the solid material without incident. Not one second later, something truly amazing happened.

A bright blue light that swirled like the rapids of a mighty river opened up into a large vortex that engulfed the entire archway, sinking inwards against itself.

Bilbo had no time to ponder these wondrous thoughts, as the force of the vortex pulled his little body across the floor without any sort of struggle and right into the heart of the thing.

As soon as Bilbo Baggins disappeared off the face of Middle-Earth, so too did the vortex. It left nothing behind to evidence its existence.

You wouldn't have imagined that a hobbit had just been sucked right out of nowhere. All you would see is a dirty and grimy pantry with a little acorn lost and out of place amongst the cobwebs.