Chapter Text
When Bilbo sat in the hall of his hobbit hole and listened to the dark, melodic voices of the Dwarves singing of mountains and long lost treasures, something Tookish began to stir awake in him, whispering sweetly of adventure and tales to be told. Of a Hobbit that was not quite a burglar, but had left the tranquil security of the warm and friendly shire to hunt dragons and treasure and help the King under the Mountain reclaim his rightful throne.
He had tried to ignore the soft voice in his mind, because he was a Baggins of Bag End, and a respectable Hobbit as himself – Took blood or not – would not run off on something as preposterous and pointless as an adventure, jeopardising the comfort of a soft bed, warm hearth and seven meals a day in the process. No, Bilbo would not run off with Gandalf and the Dwarves, not for any gold in the world, however big the promised share would turn out to be in the end, thank you very much.
However, when he was laying beneath his thick blanket on his soft bed, hugging his hand-embroidered pillow, he could not find the peace of sleep, and it was not the loud snoring of his guests – as much as it was shaking the foundations of his little home, threatening to bring it down and bury the lot of them beneath it – that kept him awake. No, it was the memory of a song echoing in his mind, of deep voices sad with loss but full of hope and determination, that brought his little heart to beat violently and far too fast in his small chest and made him wonder how the grass smelled and the water tasted and the birds sang behind the borders of the Shire. When finally he drifted into a deep slumber, Bilbo dreamed of wide plains and dark, endless caverns filled with piles of glinting gold deep down in the belly of a mountain.
Later, when he would be curled in on himself on soft furs, and his body ached with all kinds of pain, the presence of the massive, stinking figure next to him too much to handle, he would think back to that night he sat in the hall of his warm hobbit hole, listening to the dark, melodic voices of the dwarves singing of mountains and long lost treasures, he would sob silently and wish he had never heard them.