"Of all the stupid, idiotic things."
Billa sighs. Noid has been grumbling for the last several miles. She has never known a dwarf to be so irritable - save for Thorin, but she tries not to dwell on those early days for very long.
A soft, but consistent rain has been falling for the last few days since they departed from Bree. Her feet are thoroughly soaked, and the path before them has become increasingly difficult to tread, giving way to a slippery mud that attempted to steal both Gandalf and Noid's shoes multiple times. The hair on the tips of her toes are now caked in the thick earth in a rather unpleasant manner.
"Is there nothing ye can do about this relentless deluge, wizard?"
The words, so similar to another dwarf's gripe in another life, make Billa snort. Gandalf levels an unamused look at them both and sniffs to himself, "It is raining, Master Dwarf, and it will continue to rain until the rain is done."
"Yer telling me yer a wizard who cannae change the bloody weather?"
"Noid!" Billa hisses at him, "Don't be rude!"
"I'm no, I'm just curious."
"Master Noid, if you wished to travel with a wizard who could change the weather, you should have found another wizard."
Billa sighs, it seems that even in second lives, things between dwarves and wizards never changed.
"Ye know ye look surprisingly dry for a wizard who cannae control the weather-"
"Noid!"
Gandalf says nothing, just sort of humphs like a large horse trying to scoff a fresh apple from a proffered palm, and marches ahead on his long legs. Billa cuts Noid a glare, but the dwarf only grins widely at her.
"Ye have to admit it was funny."
"I should have never let you come with me."
"Ye would be frightfully bored if you had done that," Noid states, settling into a similar pace beside her. She tries not to acknowledge the remark, but privately, she rather thinks he might be right. She cares for Gandalf, has done so in both lives, but he can be frightfully cryptic at times, something which still to this day frequently irritates her.
"So."
"So?"
"Are ye ever gonnae tell me how ye came to be in possession of that…of our evil friend?"
Billa sniffs, "It isn't an interesting tale."
"Maisy said ye wrestled it off some horrific creature."
A small tremor passes through her hands. Billa has tried hard not to think about the creature she encountered in those vast caverns beneath the mountains in the long years since she returned to The Shire - but sometimes, on quiet and still nights when the wind howling through the gaps in her windows sounded like Gollum's mournful whales, those glassy eyes haunted her dreams.
She hadn't felt any pity when Samwise had told her of the Stoor Hobbit's ghastly fate, nor sympathy. No, she only felt relief that her Frodo hadn't succumbed the way Sméagol had, that the Ring wasn't able to twist him into facing the same half-life existence of that terrible soul. When she landed back in The Shire, all those years before she was due to face off against Gollum in those dark caves, she put off facing him for as long as she could, had even dallied with helping the elves chase the Goblin King from his horrible throne within the mountain before she even dared to venture further into the depths.
She briefly toyed with the idea of ending the poor soul's life, as she had done all those many years ago, but Gandalf's words echoed in her mind, staying her blade.
Billa gave Gollum a fake name and made off with the ring before he even knew what happened.
"Maisy has a big mouth," Billa bites back. She hops nimbly over some loose stones, avoiding the worst of the mud as she goes. She stares mournfully at the hem of her new trousers, now mired with muck, "Besides we shouldn't be speaking of it out in the open like this."
Noid sighs, "Fine. What's the deal with the wizard, then?"
"Gandalf?"
"Aye, how'd ye know him?"
Billa eyes Noid, "Aren't you full of questions today, Master Noid?"
"Yer avoiding all my questions, Mistress Baggins."
She squirms under his gaze and decides to go for a simple answer, "I don't like to linger on the past."
Noid scoffs, "As if I didn't already know that."
Billa pauses, "What do you mean?"
"Yer very evasive for a Hobbit, Billa," Noid says, his tongue sticking out from between his teeth as he concentrates on his footing. "It would almost make me think ye were lying, if I didnae know ye were a terrible liar."
"I am not."
He gives her a disbelieving look, to which she just scowls and continues to march on. Stupid dwarves, with their all knowing looks.
"Gandalf was my mother's friend," she says quietly. "Later, he became mine."
"That's it?"
"That's it."
Noid is quiet for a moment, "I don't know why I expected some grand tale."
"You have read far too many tales about wizards, my friend."
"Or perhaps, I'm used to ye havin' a grand tale or two about yer own life, Mistress Baggins," Noid replies, scrambling up the incline a few steps behind her.
"I suppose." Her chest squeezes at the thought. Has she always lived like this? Falling into one grand adventure after another with no peace to be found? She thought she had found it in that last life, a few decades to have some peace to herself before her the path of her life ran its course; but then there had been the revelation about her silly little trinket, and Frodo, the light of her existence, had thrust into his own adventure, one fraught with more dangers than she ever faced.
The memory of her nephew, lying so still and pale on that bed, haunts her dreams. The words Gandalf spoke to her when she rushed as quickly into the Healing Halls as her old bones would take her.
"He will never be the same Hobbit, my dear friend."
"If you are quite finished with your nattering," Gandalf appears a few feet ahead of them. "We have reached the pass."
Billa glances up, shocked from her thoughts by the sudden arrival of the wizard. He frowns at them through the mist of the rain, a grey smudge against a green landscape. Noid hurries over to him, Billa a few steps behind.
As she reaches the wizard's side, she sees it, the patch of green smothered by a light smattering of snow. She lifts her hood slightly, gaze moving up, and up and up - until it halts, the breath squeezing from her chest. Samwise described it to her in that other life, weaving the landscape to life with his words in the wee hours of the morning as they waited for Frodo to awake - but this was beyond what she imagined. A thick blanket of snow lies before her, the light glancing off the ground with a bright glare, setting off small rainbows of light through the mist of rain. Beyond a wind howls, sending flurries of snowflakes across the rugged peaks and sharp inclines.
"The Pass of Caradhras," Noid breathes.
"Come," Gandalf says. "We have many miles before us."
The Grey Wizard sets off, the hem of his long robes dragging across the ground. Noid stumbles quickly after him, making sure to keep to the small path the wizard's robes cleared through the snow.
Billa breathes, the cold air burning in her lungs, taking in the tremble of her hands. She hesitates, gaze moving to the North East. She knows if she was to peer through the gloom, she might be able to make out the distant peaks of Erebor on the horizon. For a moment, there is a tug behind her navel, like a rope pulling taught between her and the Lonely Mountain.
"Billa!" Noid's voice shocks her from her reverie, and she turns to see the distant figures of Gandalf and her friend lingering. "Hurry up!"
She takes one step back from the mountain, and then another, and then another until her feet are leading her back to her companions.
Soon, she thinks as she turns her back on Erebor. Soon.