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 Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 12:15 pm
It was a bit early for his annual spring holiday, that was certain. Normally Bilbo would wait until the trees were blooming to head out to his secret vacation hole. This year... he decided that early was better. He couldn't stand one more day of his relatives poking around his home trying to steal things and nagging him incessantly. His birthday wasn't until autumn, and already they wanted to know what sort of party he was going to have! It was all a great bother. He'd disappeared a few mornings ago, only telling a few people on his way out where he was going.
He thought he'd feel more peaceful once he had arrived, but he ended up becoming even more grumpy. He'd forgotten how much mess could accumulate in his hole over the course of a few seasons. His hole was really more of a shallow cave, a place where he could sleep without worrying about being carried off by a kalona or some other beast. He was dismayed to see that the large piece of bark that he used as a door had blown away sometime over winter, allowing all sorts of debris to work its way inside.
"Well, no time to start like the present," he said with great determination, picking up a pine bough to use as a broom.
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Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 12:31 pm
Frerin had been assigned guard duty oh so graciously by his big brother. There had been a great deal of arguing right before Thorin had granted Frerin this honor. A great deal about Frerin never actually working and the need for Frerin to pull his own weight. When Frerin had causally joked that he pulled more than his own weight whenever there were apples to be had Frerin had found himself on the duty roster for the outer patrol for the day. There was no doubt in his mind that this was a punishment from his brother but it wasn't like Frerin could challenge the decision. Thorin was, more or less, the king.
Frerin grumbled as he dragged his feet down his set course. The patrols for the borders were usually taken a month at a time. Thorin had only given him a day. "Just long enough to remind me of who's in charge I suppose." Frerin muttered kicking at a tree like an unhappy child. He would be free to head back home at midnight but it would be close to midday before he ever got home from where he was. And that was if he didn't take any breaks!
As Frerin was walking he noticed something odd. Specifically he saw bits of dirt taking to the air although there wasn't much wind. Frerin tilted his head before frowning. "That's...unusual." He murmured before turning off his course to investigate. He approached as quietly as he could and came to a stop just outside a little cave. To his knowledge there weren't any caves in use this far up but still there was a horse bustling about. It looked a bit like a dwarf, but it was smaller in height and not as broad. It also seemed like it had the misfortune of poorly growing follicles. A child?
"Is your mom about?" Frerin asked with some humor so as not to frighten the little one.
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Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 4:35 pm
"My mother?" spluttered Bilbo, dropping his branch and turning around. A soquili had appeared behind him, sneaking up while Bilbo wasn't paying attention, no doubt. The stallion was relatively short for a soquil but still dwarfed Bilbo's smaller frame. "I don't know what sort of business you might have with my mother, but she's several days walk away from this place."
Bilbo was confused and irritated. Why was this stallion asking about old Belladonna Took? Did he actually know her? If there had been some sort of joke involved, it wasn't one that Bilbo understood.
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Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 4:46 pm
Frerin jerked his head back in utter surprise. The voice coming out of that mouth was no child's squeak. For several long, and likely uncomfortable minutes, Frerin simply stared at the strange creature. It had no beard and practically no hair. Either it was a dwarf disgraced by his small stature and had come to live a reclusive life away from the rest of them or it was an entirely new creature. Judging by the strange attire and the mention of the distance to his mother, Frerin was going to hazard a guess that this was, almost certainly, not a dwarf at all.
"Frerin," A wide grin spread across Frerin's face and he took a few steps closer to the little thing before bowing his head with a flourish. "At your service!" He declared as he straightened up. "And you have picked a strange place for a home little one." He continued barging into the cave even further. "Not much room in here is there?" He questioned as he leaned down to examine the pine branch. "You weren't trying to eat that were you? It couldn't have tasted very good." Frerin wrinkled his nose before kicking the pine branch away. "There's much better food out here you know, you don't have to eat pine branches!" Frerin laughed loudly as he continued sticking his blackened muzzle in every nook the cave had to offer.
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Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 5:00 pm
"Bilbo Baggins, at yours," replied Bilbo automatically, instantly wishing he would have said something dismissive instead. Suddenly this Frerin was invading his home and... "You're tracking even more dirt in!" he exclaimed. "Wipe your hooves, please! And I'm not going to eat that branch so please don't go kicking it around."
Aggravated, he chased his branch to the corner that Frerin had kicked it into, nudging it into a more dignified position and standing over it protectively. He had left Hobbiton to get away from exactly this sort of nosy and bothersome behavior!
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Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 5:11 pm
Frerin eyed the way Bilbo stood guard over the branch like it was a child or something else precious...and not a tree branch. "Tracking dirt? Wipe my hooves?" He asked like they were entirely foreign concepts. They, of course, were entirely foreign concepts. Even the fussiest of dwarves didn't whine over dirt like this. The strange creature just kept becoming more of an oddity for the dwarf prince.
Frerin stopped nosing around and stood up straight to examine Bilbo again. "If you aren't going to eat it why do you care about it? There are lots more of those out there." Frerin gestured to exit of the cave. "Or are you worried you won't be able to reach a new one, little Baggins?" Frerin snickered a little bit. it was a bit too easy to poke fun at him. It wasn't every day Frerin met a horse this much shorter than him. Even most of their women were a little taller.
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Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 9:36 pm
Bilbo fumed. The worst thing was that Frerin had a point. It was hard for him to reach the good branches and would undoubtedly take him some time to find another broom if someone ate or destroyed his present one. He wasn't about to go admitting that to the hairy intruder, though.
"If you want to talk... fine. We can talk." Bilbo said it like he was making a great concession, which he felt he was. He didn't owe anything to rude interlopers. "Just can we please move this conversation out of my hole?"
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Posted: Wed Jan 08, 2014 7:31 am
Frerin considered the option. It wasn't raining nor was it particularly windy outside. He supposed it would be alright to leave the little cave. "After you master Baggins." Frerin said nodding to the outdoors again. "Though, this isn't really your hole, I should mention. As it is you've picked a spot inside our lands which means this hole...actually belongs to my brother." Frerin smiled looking a little too smug with himself for revealing this information. It would have come out sooner or later but Frerin suspected it may just make the pudgy little creature sputter incoherently and Frerin would rather see that right now. It was just so amusing how flustered Bilbo got over every single little detail.
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Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 7:50 am
Bilbo paused at the mouth of his hole, confused and still more than a little affronted by the whole turn of events. "Your brother?" He turned back around and glared at the interloper. This encounter had just gone from bad to worse. "Now I don't know your brother, but what I do know is that I've been coming here to this very spot for years and I haven't ever heard anything about it belonging to anyone." He puffed up with indignation. Was the stallion about to try to evict him? Bilbo wasn't exactly a fighter, but he would argue until he turned blue if someone tried to kick him out.
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Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 8:26 am
Frerin had gotten almost exactly what he had wanted. Bilbo wasn't really incoherent but he was definitely upset, like a bee had curled up in his morning breakfast and then tried to fly up his nose. "You don't have to know him for it to be true, master Baggins." Frerin said making a sorry attempt at sounding sympathetic to Bilbo's plight. For Frerin this was all just a fun little game. "If you've not been bothered before then that's because the guards out hear haven't been paying much attention."
Frerin smiled. He'd meant for it to look polite and charming but instead he looked downright impish. "If you'd like to protest your claim on this charming, little cave, and your sacred tree branch, then I can bring you to just the person you need to see!" If this worked then Frerin would likely never have guard duty again. Just imagining the look on Thorin's face when he brought back an all but innocent (and entirely irate) bystander was making Frerin's grin wider. The guards usually just made them get off their land, it wasn't hard, Bilbo would only have to travel 100 feet north and he'd be in free territory. But this was just so much more fun!
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Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 8:35 am
"I would like to protest, in fact!" said Bilbo, feeling very assertive indeed. If they thought they could push him around just because he was small then they were making a big mistake! He remembered that he was trying to move the conversation outside of his hole then and stepped out, peering around the opening to make sure that Frerin was following.
"Since you've ruined my cleaning attempts, I might as well take a break and meet whoever this mysterious brother of yours is."
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Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 9:05 am
"Perfect!" Frerin exclaimed following Bilbo out of his little hideaway from the elements. Mysterious was a good word for his brother just like grumpy was. "Well then, little one, stick close by me and I will show you the way! It's a little bit of a hike to him!" It was a just a little bit of a lie. Frerin didn't imagine that his new furry-footed friend would accompany him home if he knew it would be well into the night before they ever reached Thorin.
With a smile and several reassurances that it wasn't that far Frerin started the trek back to civilization.
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The trip had not been a quick one. The sun had set hours ago but now Frerin could see the little stream that fed into the royal family's own private pond. He had made a point of leading Bilbo in through all the back ways to avoid guards and any one else that might have been up at that hour. Frerin didn't know who might try to stop him from bringing an almost perfect stranger into the center of their little kingdom away from their actual kingdom. Even if he was just a little stranger.
"Here we are, Master Baggins!" Frerin declared as he came to a stop by a very large display of crystals arranged in an intricate geometric pattern. The area was very spacious and clear of trees except for those that formed the border on all sides, those for shade, a selection of apple trees that did not yet carry this year's fruit, and a few off by the pool. Towards the back the land sloped sharply up into a forest of pines, spruces and deciduous trees. There was enough space for a grown stallion to run around without feeling trapped and still be inside the border of trees.
"What do you think? Much nicer than your little hole in the wall right?" Frerin asked clearly proud of his home. He had every right to be. He had picked the area out with Dis and her late husband specifically because it was so beautiful. It was also easily defended if they needed it.
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Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 9:16 am
He first began to suspect that something might be amiss after the first hour of walking with still no destination in sight. If Frerin wasn't so genial Bilbo might have been convinced he was being lured away to be fed to a skinwalker. Whoever this stallion was that supposedly owned Bilbo's cave, he apparently owned quite a lot of land. It almost seemed like a joke, but Bilbo couldn't find the punchline. What had he gotten himself into?
When they finally arrived, Bilbo was shocked by what he saw. This definitely wasn't a joke, this was a genuine soquili civilization that he somehow had never noticed. Could this all have possibly sprung up in the last year? Or had they always been there and Bilbo just had never explored far enough to find out?
"It's... quite lovely," he said, face giving lie to his understatement.
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Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 9:29 am
Frerin beamed at Bilbo and nudged him, perhaps a little too roughly, with his shoulder before marching off. "Come on, my brother should be out around that tree." None of the fires were lit which meant everyone was probably sleeping. Frerin was sure that if he looked hard enough he'd be able to make out his sister, Dis, somewhere in the shadows. Fili and Kili could have been anywhere on the borders but likely in each other's company. Undoubtedly if he could find Dis she'd be able to tell him the exact whereabouts of the both of them without even opening her eyes.
Thorin was another story. Thorin always slept in almost the exact same place in almost the exact same way. He never laid on the ground except on the most miserable nights of the winter when the entire family ended up next to each other. He always stood up, still as stone, and never seemed to be truly asleep. A pebble kicked in the vicinity could usually pull Thorin right out of his sleep.
Sure enough, there was his brother standing facing away from them towards the slope. He almost looked like he was awake and grazing. Frerin knew better. "Well, Master Baggins, there's my brother. Go introduce yourself properly and explain your problem." Frerin smiled in such a gentle way that it would be easy to trust him. Bilbo didn't need to know why Frerin had dropped his voice to a low whisper yet. He could find that out for himself.
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Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 12:24 pm
As creatures that liked living as underground as they could manage, hobbits tended to have good dark vision. With this sharp eyesight Bilbo was able to easily pick out the dark stallion even with so little light, though he failed to realize that the stallion was probably sleeping. "Thank you, Frerin," he said, before starting his way up the slope.
He had been full of bluster back at his hole but had lost a lot of that indignant energy in the long walk. He tried to summon it back up again, knowing that he might be soon having to defend his claim to his home.
"Hello, sir," he said, not quite indignant but with a good amount of energy. "My name is Bilbo Baggins and I've been told I need to speak with you on a matter of great concern to me!"
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