Frodo and Gandalf rarely left him on his own these days and if they weren't hovering over him then there was an endless amount of elves that were willing to babysit him. Not that Bilbo minded, they had endless stories to tell him and of there was anything Bilbo loved it was songs. The now ancient hobbit had never heard so many of the songs here. Telerin sailing songs, Vanyarin odes to the Valar and Maiar and Noldorin craft songs, there were just so many to choose from and if his memory was starting to get a little fuzzy around the edges that just ensured that they would never run out of new ones for him.
Never had a hobbit lived to such an age as he.
Never would they again.
Bilbo's life had first been stretched by the evil interference of the ring and though that had now been fully cleansed from his body, this land of Aman as the elves called it also worked to lengthen his time. Even then, such a long life as he had been bestowed had it's winding down, Bilbo didn't have the energy now that he once had.
Who could blame Bilbo for wanting to hear Master Celairphen's'Ode to a tulip I found one evening in April'and Miss Tulussil's'Oh Lemon Shark! Oh Hawkfish! Oh Whiting! Oh Char of the red scales!' Or better yet Lord Triwathanar's'Bastard File'a song with such amazing lyrics as:
'Bastard File, Bastard File, Lenkor Rod and Hardie,'
'Bush Hammer, Bush Hammer, Dog Reamer and Ball Nut,'
'Ball-End Glass Cutter, Ball-End Glass Cutter, Hip Clamp and Darby-'
It wasn't the most... intellectual of songs but it was very funny.
Bilbo loved how embarrassed everyone but the Noldor and himself got about it. He'd spent enough time around a rather rowdy group of dwarves to know that tools often had the most peculiar names. Perhaps there was something about crafting that just inherently made people horny no matter their race or gender.
Songs however were not the reason that he had sneaked out on his own today. To be honest Bilbo didn't really know why he had snuck out. Surely there had been a reason, a destination that he had in mind before carrying out his escape but standing here at the edge of the vast ocean the elderly hobbit couldn't remember what it could have possibly been.
There were days when Bilbo found himself standing at the shore with no memory of how he got to be there Frodo would be there, standing at his side, holding the pebbles that he had collected. On days like that Master Elrond would be called for to ease the pain in his back. A body shouldn't be doing so much bending at his vintage.
The pebbles however were entirely too interesting to leave behind. Every colour and shape imaginable, ground smooth by the endless lapping of the waves.
Bilbo could name some of them. Afterall he'd had all of those dwarves on his first adventure it would have been a tragedy not to pick up at least a little of their stonesense. A hobbit such as him would never be a stonemason or a great smith but he'd hoped that after the dragon had been dealt with... well he'd hoped that he might make himself at least somewhat useful. Reconstructing Erebor wouldn't be a task that could be undertaken in a short amount of time.
The hope of staying had changed rather suddenly.
His heart clenched tightly in his chest as if only moments had passed between then and now. The air was cold, in one blink Bilbo was no longer standing in the tomb of the Kings of Erebor, he found himself yet again at the edge of the waves.
So far away and long ago it all seemed now.
There was no Frodo by his side this time.
He was alone.
Yet, not alone. Callused hands, rough and not unlike ones he'd seen before firmly held onto what had to be Bilbo's newest collection of rocks. They were the hands of a smith and not an elven one. There was no-one among the Eldar who would dare be seen without perfectly manicured hands.
Soft golden light from the setting sun bathed them, some of the pebbles glow in the strangers hands. Bildo reached out to touch it's soft white glow, reminded so strongly of another stone he'd once wagered everything on for peace. It wasn't the Arkenstone, much too small, much too light and yet there was something about it that spoke to him, told him to hold it in his hands.
'Thorin would know what this was.' he thought to himself. 'Thorin would probably know exactly what this was and the thirty five different cuts that would make it look the best. Definitely not rose cut... there would be sixteen upper girdle facet cuts for sure.'
The world Thorin had lived in seemed to be so close that if he reached out far enough Bilbo could still reach him and pull him back but he was long gone.
So far away.
The memory of that dwarf, of all the dwarves really but in particular that dwarf which had once been so bold, so vibrant and so vivid was starting to slip away too.
Like the pebbles on this beach ground smaller and smaller. Pebbles, granules, sand, silt then clay. Eventually there would be nothing left, an erosion of his mind.
"You know Master Dwarf I first mistook you for someone." Bilbo said. The braids in the dwarrow's dark hair were so familiar in shape and pattern that he almost found his fingers winding their way into them.
But this was not Thorin.
Not his Thorin.
His Thorin was long gone from his side. Long returned to the stone and soil. He had been there when the King under the Mountain had been buried. The other members of the company had made Dain let Bilbo lay a crown of flowers upon Thorin's head before the grave was filled back in.
They didn't understand the significance of that gesture and if they had ever learned of it after, nothing had been said to the hobbit. He'd stayed awake for three days to wrestle the white heather blossoms from the mountain with their short woody stems into something that wouldn't embarrass Thorin.
It had taken the combined efforts of Oin, Gloin, Balin and Dwalin to pull him out of the grave. That memory in particular was still very clear, of the screaming, the way Bilbo had rent his clothes, his hair, at some point his own flesh with broken nails. That memory was not blurred by time and the distance from Aman to Erebor, he could still see it behind his eyes.
The dwarves hadn't understood. How could they? Things were done differently among their people. Sometimes the old hobbit wondered of even Thorin had truly understood his little burglar.
"I am sorry if this form of mine has brought you distress. I rarely get to use it anymore but it is my favourite guise to wear among the children." The not dwarf replied. His face looked dutifully penitent and maybe even a little embarrassed now that Bilbo could see past the resemblance.
This then was either Aulë or one of his Maiar attendants. Everyone else beside Gandalf, who still walked the land of Aman as an elderly man, appeared as members of the first born when taking a physical form. He supposed it made interacting with the elves a lot easier to look like you were one of them as a powerful being such as they.
"Dear Sir, I would not deign to say that you caused me distress. In fact, despite the pain of the memory you evoked, I am glad for it. So many memories are gone, lost like spare coins from the summer fair down the back of the Thain's ancient couch. Though of course you wouldn't know of the Thain he being a Took and all." If Bilbo had been a younger hobbit who hadn't seen quite so much of the world, his rambling would have embarrassed him but all of that was behind him too.
There wasn't time for that.
His dwarf, not dwarf companion smiled then, the concern that he had worn on his brow slipping away to be replaced by mirth.
"I am glad that the sons and daughters made by my hands have brought you joy. I see it in your eyes."
"The Company brought me so much." He almost sobbed then, the rocks in his own hands slipped through his fingers. They landed with soft thuds in the soft sand at his feet. Half buried they laid there as the tide began to turn.
"And you them." Aulë said. For he had to be Aulë.
Between them, the only sound for some time was that of the ocean waves slowly drawing closer to them, tumbling over the pebble covered beach.
Bilbo was tired. He had been for many years but now just standing drained him. Aulë helped him along to the nearest bench where they sat together surrounded instead now by the thick tufts of marram grass. Pink hued clouds passed over them as the seabirds looked to return to their nests.
Enough time passes that when Bilbo looks back over at his beach companion he has to try and supress his double take. He's not Thorin.
He's not Thorin.
But... he's also so much like Thorin.
Not Thorin was carefully placing Bilbo's gathered, still glowing pebbles into a small embroidered bag. What the design was, was hard to make out in the now quickly setting sun. He placed the now full bag on the wooden slats of the bench between them.
"Do you think Mr Aulë-" The Bilbo began to ask as he attempted to look anywhere else but at the Valar sitting beside him.
"Dear Bilbo," Aulë interrupted him as a single tear slowly slipped down the hobbit's face. "Mahal is all you need call me."
Kuzdul heard here in Aman breaks the decades of bindings that Bilbo had so tightly wrapped his heart in. Cleanly, as if they had been sliced away by a sword, they fell at his feet.
"Mr Mahal, do you think I will ever see those dear friends of mine again?" His voice was shaky but Bilbo managed to ask the question his heart most cried out to know. There were more tears dripping their way down his face now and he could only think of just how undignified he must look.
"The doom of men is to pass beyond the borders of this world and what their fate truly is, is known only to them and Eru Illuvatar. The doom of elves is to be reborn again and again until the unmaking of the world." Aulë, now Mahal stated.
This Bilbo knew.
"My dear Kazadh arrive in the Halls of my heart-brother, in Mandos do they dwell until they are returned to me free of the worries and weariness of the world. Among stone, among gems and ores, deep deep beneath my forges in Aman." Mahal said. His dwarven face lit up in fondness the way Bilbo had seen Gloin's do when he had talked of his son. It was the fondness of a father talking to a neighbour of the deeds of his children. "They may not leave and whilst alive Bilbo Baggins you may not go."
The turbulent waters of his hobbit heart must have been laid bare upon his face as Mahal leaned forward and placed both hands upon the Bilbo's small shoulders.
"But I would not have you despair. I would give you hope for hobbits are not bound to the dooms of any other race. To hobbits is given a choice. To dwell in the Halls of Mandos till the ending of the world, to follow the destiny of men, to stay in the Gardens of Yavanna my wife where every day is filled with song and laughter or- "
Or
There was power in 'or' Bilbo could feel it thrumming through the air.
Or
He could be with the company again beneath the great forges of Mahal. He could stand by Thorin's side again. Tell him all the things he never said in Erebor.
"I think I would like that." said Bilbo. His voice was quiet, in fact he was pretty worried that it had been too soft for anyone to hear over the noise of the whispering grass and the restless ocean. The hands of his companion patted the backs of his own and only then did Bilbo notice just how much he was shaking.
"Good. I don't claim to know anything about what your people call your Heartsong but I do know that you are his One." Mahal replied and in the space it took the hobbit to blink in astonishment, Mahal was gone.
In the distance he could hear the footsteps and frantic calls of his nephew.
"Heartsong..." Bilbo whispered as Frodo hastily wrapped him in a thick woollen blanket Lady Celebrian had made for him to ward of the nightly chill. "I guess he was, he is, he will be."
"Uncle?" Frodo asked but the oldest hobbit that would ever lived had already passed away. In his hands they would find a bag of fourteen perfectly rounded pebbles. Each one of them inscribed with a name in dwarven runes.
Runes they would have to wait for the arrival of Gimli and Legolas to understand.
Frodo cried, he wrapped his arms around the uncle who had taken him in when he was so suddenly orphaned. The hobbit who had been the only other being to understand his pain.
A voice on the wind came to him in that deepest moment of grief.
"Do not despair." It said in that quiet place by the sea. "He's going on another adventure."
"No." Frodo cried. "Bilbo's going home."
And he was, right into the arms of one who had waited for his burglar to find his way across the ocean.
"What took you so long?" Thorin asked as he laughed, swinging his hobbit round and round in joyous circles. "Did you get lost?"
"A hobbit is never lost!" Bilbo cried out defiantly but with a rather soppy smile plastered across his face. "Our feet always point us home. The path was just a little longer than I expected it to be."
A/n:Yep... those are all real tools except I'm probably stretching a little to call a 'Ball Nut' a tool. It's something used in climbing. Maybe the 'Hip Clamp' too, that's an agricultural tool used to help cows stand up if they're injured, sick or for various other reasons. You're taking your search history at your own risk looking up some of the more... explicit names from the song up I can't guarantee your safety there.
The world of construction, engineering and just general tools is very interesting. In school I remember laughing so much when our woodwork teacher told us that the oiling points on machinery are often called 'nipples' and there is a tool you can use to help refill the oil reserve faster and more efficiently that's called a 'Greased Nipple Gun'.
There's a Scottish legend about heather that I thought was very apt for this. Once upon a time Malvina fell in love with a warrior named Oscar. One day a messenger came to her home to deliver to her the news that he had been killed along with his last gift to her, a bunch of pink heather. As she held the flowers her tears fell upon them and in her grief those pink flowers turned white. Ever after that day she wished that any other person who was gifted heather would unlike her receive happiness and good luck.