Chapter Text
The raven arrived on a Mersday. She was as black as ink, and her feathers had a glossy shine that spoke of youth. Bilbo watched her alight on his fence, her flapping wings disturbing the bushes nearby for a moment before she settled. There was no question about where the raven had come from, or who might have sent the message attached to her thin leg.
Bilbo stood up from his bench. A sort of excited impatience spread through him at the thought of spending the morning reading a letter from his dear friends in the East. Still, he made sure to walk up to the fence with a casual air.
“Greetings, Master Baggins,” the raven croaked.
“Good morning,” Bilbo said, offering his arm. “Will you come in? You must be tired from your journey.”
“Indeed I am! Flying all the way from the Lonely Mountain is no child’s play,” she cried, then hopped along the fence until she was near enough to close her claws round Bilbo’s forearm. Then she hauled herself up onto his shoulder with unexpected gentleness, mindful of her sharp talons. “I am Crä of Rauk, and I bring news from the Kingdom of Erebor—and a message for you, as you can see.”
“I do,” said Bilbo, one finger grazing the rolled-up parchment. “And how fares the Mountain?”
“You would ask questions before feeding the messenger?” asked Crä. “I thought hobbits knew better than this.”
“Indeed we do!” Bilbo agreed with a laugh. “How uncivilised of me.”
Bilbo went inside as Crä continued to talk about how famished she was. He pushed the round door closed behind him, humming his absentminded agreement with what she was saying. He lifted his arm, and the raven squawked and climbed up it until she was on his shoulder.
With now both hands free to use, Bilbo made quick work of untying the roll of parchment from Crä’s leg. It was quite large and heavy, even for a bird of such size. He looked down at it with puzzlement.
Crä gave Bilbo a low croon in thanks for relieving her of her burden, her beak ruffling the curls behind his ear. The action made Bilbo unfreeze. He shoved the letter into a back pocket, not even peeking at its contents, and then strode into the dining kitchen.
Frodo was setting the table, good lad that he was. He smiled up at Bilbo when he walked in, then gave a little jump, almost dropping a plate. It was one from the porcelain set Bilbo’s late aunt Ruby—and Frodo’s grandmother on his father’s side, coincidentally—had given him as a welcome-back gift after his adventure. Needless to say, her disapproval of his journey had made her choose a set with a rather lurid flower pattern. Bilbo wouldn’t have minded it if Frodo had chipped or even broken the plate.
“Yes, Frodo, there’s a raven on my shoulder. I noticed.”
“Greetings, Young Baggins,” said Crä, taking in Bilbo’s nephew with an inquisitive beady eye.
Frodo stared, looking faint at the sight of the talking animal. Bilbo rolled his eyes and went to stir the sausages in the frying pan, the bird twisting her neck so she could keep Frodo within her sight. Really, Frodo was reacting as if Bilbo had never told him about the speaking ravens of the North. Then again, perhaps being told about them wasn’t quite the same as hearing one.
“A pleasure,” said Frodo at last.
“The pleasure is certainly mine, Young Master. I am overjoyed to finally meet the Burglar’s chosen heir,” croaked the raven. “To think many of my cousins and siblings met you before I did! Why, they couldn’t even greet someone in Westron, yet His Highness chose them over me time and time again!”
Thorin probably sent the ravens who couldn’t speak the language to avoid scaring any of Bilbo’s neighbours into an early grave, but he refrained from explaining this to Crä. Something told him that she wouldn’t take that piece of information as a compliment.
“Oh, I’m—I’m sorry to hear that.”
Crä huffed, but Frodo’s words seemed to appease her. “So am I. But let us speak of merrier things!” She flapped her wings, throwing Bilbo’s tousled hair into further disarray, and glided to the table. “Your name is very well known back in the East, you know?”
Frodo shot her a curious look. “It is?”
“Why, yes! Your most esteemed uncle”—Bilbo snorted—“has regaled His Highness with many delightful tales about your person throughout the years. You have made him hoot with mirth more than once.”
Bilbo tried to imagine Thorin hooting with mirth and couldn’t. His memories of the dwarf were solemn, always tinged with a melancholy and sadness so profound that the emotions threatened to overwhelm Bilbo even in the present. It was good to hear that his dear friend had turned less stoic and more jovial with the passing of the years. He only wished he could have experienced the change in person. Suspecting it thanks to the lighter tone in the King’s letters was simply not the same.
Frodo glanced at Bilbo, his eyes accusing. The old hobbit spotted mortification at the thought that his childhood indiscretions had been narrated to a Dwarven King—the Dwarven King, as it were. Instead of throwing a tantrum, however, Frodo set the ugly plate down with a low sigh. It seemed that he had decided to act as if nothing were out of the ordinary.
Bilbo tried not to show his disappointment by poking at the sausages. He liked it whenever Frodo overreacted and asked a million inconsequential questions. When he was little, there was no end to his queries, but as he grew older, those occasions became scarcer the more he became used to his odd uncle.
“Well,” said Frodo, “that King Thorin finds enjoyment in retellings of my everyday life is… an honour.”
“A dubious one, I’m sure,” Crä cackled.
“That, I cannot deny!” Frodo retrieved two mugs from a cupboard with a smile. “Oh, I haven’t got the pleasure of knowing King Thorin in the flesh, but he has sent me many a kind word through his letters to my guardian, and Uncle Bilbo himself has told me of his innumerable great deeds. Being the cause of his laughter is a dubious honour, yes, but not one I would resent.”
“You were no object of mockery,” crooned the raven.
“I know his laughter wasn’t unkind,” said the young man, setting the mugs on the table. “Rather, I imagine it was a fond counterpoint to the good-natured yet world-weary sighs my uncle bestows upon me whenever I do something daft—which is always, by his standards!”
“You deserve each and every sigh I have ever bestowed upon you,” Bilbo quipped. He pushed the sausages into a plate and shook his spatula at his nephew. “If you weren’t so foolish a lad, I wouldn’t have to sigh at you quite so often. Now go get some scones and cakes from the pantry, will you? A couple of conserves wouldn’t go amiss, either, and some fruit and ham for our guest.”
“Of course, Uncle,” sighed Frodo, leaving the kitchen.
“And be quick about it!” Bilbo called after him. To Crä, he muttered, “That boy, I swear…”
“He’s nice enough,” she said, tilting her head in a manner that Bilbo knew all too well from years of interacting with ravens. He petted her, scratching the nape of her neck and carding his fingers through her glossy feathers, and she warbled at the caresses. “Not a proper dwarf at all, but then again, he is no dwarf, so I suppose that is a good thing.”
“You suppose well.”
When Frodo returned with the food, they sat down to eat.
Breakfast was a relaxed affair. Frodo was odd for a Baggins, very much like his uncle, and thus welcomed the oddity of a talking raven joining them at the table with open arms after he got over the initial shock. Bilbo participated little, eager to see how his nephew fared interacting with a being from outside the Shire.
Frodo did wonderfully. He asked Crä about Erebor and the human cities near it. Letting his curiosity take hold, he asked about the River Running and the Long Lake, and wondered if the desolation had been erased from the lands surrounding the Mountain. True to his hobbit heritage, he also asked about what dwarves ate, and how often, and if they were prone to having dreadful table manners like Bilbo had described in his tales.
Crä left not a single question unanswered, and her descriptions were rich and detailed, if sometimes strange due to her telling things from a bird’s perspective. Bilbo listened to the raven’s words as if they were a breath of fresh air after weeks in the depths of Mirkwood.
Of course his friends had described the Lonely Mountain to him in their letters—how it glittered in the torchlight after the gems and ores decorating the ancient halls had been buffed and shined, and how the Front Gate had been rebuilt into a graceful archway with robust doors.
They had told him about it all, and they had boasted and bragged and begged Bilbo to make the journey and see with his own eyes the splendour of the kingdom he had helped recover. He never had, for more than one reason, but he had never doubted that it was as lovely as they made it sound.
Crä, however, crowed about Erebor with such pride in her tone that it made Bilbo feel as if the words from all the letters he hoarded in a wooden box in his personal library were finally coming to life. The raven’s voice morphed in his ears, and it became rich and gravelly and solemn, and the descriptions of the chambers and mines and hallways left Bilbo failing to recall the breakfast in front of him as he stared at the bird, her black glossy feathers reminding him of dark tresses and her claws of silvery hair beads.
Then Crä realised his sausages had gone cold and pecked at them.
“Oh, you dratted thing,” Bilbo muttered, shooing her.
“But it has gone cold,” said Crä, as if that were reason enough to help herself to his meal.
“And I have a perfectly warm hearth to heat it back up; thank you for your concern,” Bilbo replied, then noticed that Frodo had finished his own breakfast while Crä had been talking. Perhaps he wasn’t that odd a Baggins, then. Not as odd as Bilbo, at least. “If you’re done, my lad, then you may be excused.”
Frodo nodded and went to gather up the dishes and cutlery he had used, but Bilbo stopped him.
“I’ll do it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes!” Bilbo pushed off his chair and took his plate. “Now go.”
Perhaps sensing the strange mood Bilbo was in, Frodo nodded again and left after telling Crä that he still had many questions for her. Not surprisingly, the raven puffed her feathers and promised that later she would answer all of the boy’s queries to the best of her ability. Bilbo shoved his sausages back into the frying pan and put it on the hearth with a little more force than necessary. His head was brimming with familiar baritones that he had thought long-forgotten, and it made his chest ache.
Crä pinned him with her probing eyes, but he ignored her. There was silence until he was sat back at the table, his food suitably hot and greasy. He tucked in, deciding to continue ignoring the raven for the time being. She wasn’t going to fly off until she had delivered whatever news she had been told to deliver, so he didn’t feel pressured to keep her entertained.
Ravens, however, were clever creatures who enjoyed being paid attention and good conversations, so she soon started strutting along the table and ruffling her feathers to show her displeasure. Her attitude evoked images of brooding dwarves in Bilbo’s mind. With a suppressed chuckle, he relented.
“You said you had news for me?” he prompted, holding out a bit of sausage. “From Erebor?”
She took the peace offering and gobbled it down. “Yes, though most of it has been said in the company of your nephew. All there is to add is that the Company of Oakenshield misses you so, and they all would be very glad if you would accept their invitation this once.”
“Invitation?” Bilbo frowned.
“The letter I carried here,” said Crä. “It is not just that.”
Bilbo had actually forgotten that Crä had delivered a letter. It seemed silly, writing something when you had a raven who could speak the words you wanted and even intonate them the exact way you wished so that no meaning was lost to the recipient.
But Crä had delivered a letter—a large one, rolled up and tied off with a strip of red velvet, Bilbo observed as he took it out of his pocket. It was also sealed, the gold dot of wax showing a crown surmounted by seven stars. The emblem of the Line of Durin.
For a moment, he fancied not opening the letter. Let it simmer, a voice in his head said, and only pick it up when you’re positively burning to know its contents. He had played this game many times before: Resisting to read his mail, if only to extend the excitement of having a letter from his friends that he hadn’t read to exhaustion yet.
Crä’s words, however, made him lose the game in less than a minute. She had called the letter an invitation, and while Bilbo had been invited to Erebor many times over the years by different members of the Company, it had never sounded quite so official. Funny, how a formal request for his presence would be forwarded through the lips of a bird. Well, beak.
He broke the seal and unrolled the parchment. A smaller letter fell onto Bilbo’s lap, and he gave a quiet gasp. This one sported a blue dot of wax with two identical ravens back to back. It was Thorin’s personal stamp.
He set what he guessed to be the invitation down and picked up the little envelope, his fingers definitely not trembling. Thorin and he wrote to each other with a certain amount of regularity; there was nothing odd about getting a letter from him. At least, there shouldn’t be, but Bilbo’s heart was acting as if there were.
“I think I’ll—” He made a vague gesture and got to his feet. “Yes, I should—yes. He’ll need a reply, most likely, and my writing supplies are in my studio, so I best go there and read this.” Bilbo reached for the invitation. “These, I mean. Both of these.”
“Very well,” said Crä, edging for the bits of sausage Bilbo had left.
“Oh, please help yourself. I won’t be too long.”
“There is no need to rush, Master Baggins,” Crä assured him. “You may be as long or as swift as you like. I will wait.”
Bilbo gave a little bow, feeling a bit foolish, and almost ran down the hallway. The letters were heavy in his arms, demanding his attention, but he refused to read them unless he was sitting on his desk with the door locked behind him.
He rushed past the drawing room where Frodo was lounging with a pipe and a book, ignoring his nephew’s sound of inquiry. When he at last reached the studio, he shut himself inside and sat down on his stool, the old wooden chair creaking under his weight. He put Thorin’s letter down and held up the other. Just like with his meals, he wanted to save the best for last.
The bigger letter was the invitation Crä had mentioned, asking him in sparkling dark-gold ink to join the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the reclaiming of Erebor. The text was encased in lovely symmetrical patterns. Bilbo ran his hands over them, wondering if he could convince some hobbit woodworker to carve them into something. Dwarven designs were beautiful, simple in their intricateness, and Bilbo found that he wanted Bag End to have a little of that.
He put the invitation down, took a deep breath, and held the smaller letter up. The seal broke when Bilbo slipped a finger under it, not even needing to tug. The letter unfolded in his hands, easy as breathing, and Bilbo’s eyes raced through its contents.
Without meaning to, he began to smile. The letter was something one would expect from an effusive lover, not a former travelling companion, yet Thorin wrote of the agonising distance between them and missing the sound of his voice as if those were common things to tell a friend.
Of course, they weren’t just friends. Not really. They may call each other that, but once upon a time, there had been the beginnings of something else between them, and that budding something had never withered. It had survived prejudice and cursed gold and half a century with a whole world keeping them apart, and it would continue to do so.
Bilbo traced Thorin’s handwriting with a fingertip. He could almost hear the King whispering the words. His imagination could never make justice to that silken baritone, but Bilbo’s smile softened all the same.
In his chest, there was a stirring. It thrummed under his skin and sent him back to the day when he had ran down Hobbiton Hill to catch up with his group of dwarves. He hadn’t felt like this in a long time, but he knew what it meant. It was akin to a fever, but where a high temperature sapped one’s energy, the fire burning inside Bilbo made him want to walk out the door and let his feet take him as far as they could.
He didn’t let them wander far this time. He trotted out of the studio and back through the hallway, entering the kitchen with Thorin’s letter held against his chest. Crä looked as if she had been waiting for him all along. She tilted her head at him, prompting him to speak. Something about the way she moved made Bilbo suspect that she already knew what he was going to say but was waiting for him to confirm it out of sheer politeness.
“No need for a letter, after all. My reply is rather concise,” Bilbo grinned. “Please tell Thorin I said yes.”