Chapter Text
The first time the whisper of rumor about Lobelia Sackville-Baggins latest find found its way to Bilba’s ears, she paid it no mind. Her cousin was always finding new and exotic or fanciful items to bring home and gloat about over tea with the neighbors, and whatever it was this time, Bilba was sure it would be of no consequence just as all the others hadn’t been. Her cousin tired of the new things quickly and ended up selling or tossing them away, so the fad she had discovered this time would fade into the background soon enough.
Though not before the hobbit lass had a chance to show it off to everyone from the side of Bree to all of Hobbington of course. And seeing as Bilba was Lobelia’s most despised family member, she would be the last to see her ‘exciting’ treasure as a slight to her cousin’s social status. Not that Bilba cared about social niceties or any such bothersome details. She was a Baggins…but she was also a Took, and as such had much more important things to worry about other than if she was high on the well liked to come to tea list of the ladies of the Shire.
Sadly though, it was Polite to accept an invitation to tea, so accept she did if only so that she could get the visit over with and go back to her garden in peace.
So it was that Bilba found herself seated on one of her cousins overstuffed chairs in the modest but well furnished living room of the smial, sipping tea and nibbling biscuits and making small talk while hardly listening to what her cousin was saying. It was only when the other hobbit mentioned dwarves that Bilba really turned her attention to her relative.
Lobelia had an unbearably smug look on her face, and it sent a thrill of nervous energy through Bilba’s body as she took in the expression. That look never boded well for whom it was directed, and when her cousin picked up a small brass bell and shook it almost as a summons, a dawning horror began its climb from the pit of Bilba’s stomach up to her heart.
The feeling intensified when there came from the other room a slow shuffling and the clink of metal striking itself, and when the door was pushed open and a tall, if slightly hunched form made its way into the living room; it was all Bilba could do to stop the gasp of disbelief from escaping her throat.
For the ‘treasure’ that her cousin had brought home this time was not a pretty bauble or a new stitching of lace, but a Person. A dwarf to be precise, tall and handsome if abit gaunt and worse for the wear in appearance. The face of the male was down turned in subjugation, but Bilba could see the line of a proud nose, a strong jaw framed in a dark beard and brows pulled down in a furrow of displeasure. His cheeks were slightly sunken from lack of good food, the tattered clothing hung loosely from the dwarfs frame and an all over air of neglect seemed to hang about the being; but Bilba had no doubt in her mind that the dwarf would be striking if properly taken care of.
The harsh nasal grate of her cousin’s voice ripped the owner of Bag End from her musings, and she could only watch in a shocked sort of numb disbelief when Lobelia Ordered the dwarf to kneel by her chair. When the dwarf silently refused, his hobbit mistress narrowed her eyes at him and slowly reached into her pocket and pulled out a pair of scissors and set them upon her lap purposefully.
The dwarf’s whole frame seemed to stiffen up into a pillar of stone, but slowly, he moved to do as she bid and kneeled as best he could with shackled ankles by the seat.
Bilba watched the whole exchange, her mouth partially open from the shock of seeing the atrocity that her cousin had brought into the shire by her purchase, and swallowed fitfully a few times to compose herself. It would do the dwarf no good for her to explode in her cousin’s face about the immorality of the act, it would likely just get the other in trouble and that was the last thing that she wanted to happen to the poor male. So Bilba kept her mouth tightly closed and politely listened to Lobelia drone on about her incredible find, all the while plotting in her mind privately on how to get the dwarf away from his fate as soon as possible.
As quickly as it was socially acceptable, Bilba excused herself and fled the smial, her anger at her cousin burning bright as the sight of cobalt blue eyes gone flat with despair followed her departure through the doors of her cousins house and away from the heart wrenching scene.
It was a full two weeks before Bilba could bring herself to go anywhere near Lobelia’s house again, after that horrible incident with the dwarf and all the hobbit was feeling rather put out. There was very little she could do to help the poor dwarf until her cousin tired of him, and that could take months. Bilba didn’t want to leave the dwarrow in the clutches of her cousin for any longer than she had to, and so had sent a few letters out to her mother’s old friend Gandalf to try and see if she could enlist his help in the matter.
Being a wizard however she had the feeling that Gandalf wouldn’t be arriving until he ‘precisely’ means to, and that left Bilba with the dilemma of how to free the dwarf on her own.
If possible she wanted to avoid having to Buy him, which would be only a little better than what was happening to him at this time. Of course Bilba would be a much better mistress than her cousin but the point was that she didn’t want to be his mistress at all.
So for weeks she pondered and worried and tried desperately to think of a solution, but still at the end of the month and she still hadn’t come up with anything better than purchasing the dwarf, Bilba was hard pressed not to give up on the scheme completely.
Of course it didn’t help matters any that any time she went near her cousins house the memory of the blue eyes staring after her and the poor state that the dwarf was in pulled at her heart, it simply wasn’t right for someone to be put in such a situation.
So she tried to be patient and to hold her tongue and Not Think about the dwarf that her cousin held, and though she failed rather spectacularly in that regard, she did manage to keep herself from marching over to her relatives and demand that her cousin loose the dwarrow she held captive.
Though her silence was soon to be broken, though at the time she didn’t know it; or the change that would be coming into her life due to one dwarrow, her own inclinations to adventure and trouble…and the will of a wizard.