21 The Free Peoples (V)

No one seemed willing to say anything after the dressing down Bilbo had oh so casually inflicted upon the lot of them, even if just by proxy. Balin was, predictably enough, the worst of the lot, riding his pony with his face downcast and burning with shame and mortification.

At least until Dwalin snorted, nudged his pony closer to his brother's and, making full use of the training he'd gotten from herding the younger royals in the house of Durin for the past 70 years, gave his older brother a good, clean smack on the back of the head.

"Doh!" Balin squawked, shocked. "B-Brother!" He stuttered, stunned. "What's gotten into you?"

"What's gotten into you, you mean," Dwalin snapped. "Whoop-dee-fracking-doo, you've finally realized you've turned into one of those dirty politicians you so despise." The dwarf shrugged. "I could've told you that."

Balin stared at Dwalin in absolute shock.

And he hadn't told Balin that, which begged the question of why.

"Which begs the question of why you didn't," Bilbo echoed Ori's thoughts out loud, much to everyone's consternation other than that of Dwalin himself, by the looks of it. "Unless you thought so little of Master Balin that you didn't feel it worth your time to waste on him your counsel." Gloin and even Thorin seemed about to finally explode, but then Bilbo spoke his true thought, and suddenly none of them had words to contribute at all. "Or you knew Master Balin thought so little of you, Master Dwalin, that you expected nothing other than for you words to be summarily dismissed, along with any idea that you might actually have valuable counsel to offer."

"TREES!" Kili squeaked desperately, waving erratically at the orchard two hills away, or whatever it was. "Trees on the… hill." He finished with an admirable but ultimately failed attempt at a straight face, mostly because his voice still sounded like a strangled cat that had just been stepped on.

"Yes lad," Bilbo humored him. "Those are, indeed, mulberry trees."

"Are they though!?" Oin cut in loudly, and Ori somehow knew it wasn't just the fact he was half-deaf that had him talking so loudly. "They don't smell like they ought, mark me words!"

"Consider them marked," Bilbo said, playing along for the sake of their battered egos, Mahal bless him. "But I fear I must stress that they are, in fact, mulberry trees."

"Cauldron!" Fili croaked frantically. Then he paused, as if surprised by himself, or rather what he was gesticulating at. "A giant cauldron," the prince's eyes climbed upwards. "Or is it a bucket?"

"A bucket," Balin echoed tiredly, only to clamp his mouth shut when he realized there really was, in fact, a bucket.

"A bucket," Bofur repeated.

"A giant bucket," Kili marveled.

"A very wide giant bucket," Dori agreed, as desperate as all the others to wrench the subject away from the disaster of a conversation that had only just concluded, even though it was, in fact, not a bucket at all.

"It's a giant pan actually," Bombur helpfully corrected the lot of them.

"I'm not sure what they're cooking though..." Kili wondered, growing more comfortable now that his attempt at changing the subject seemed to have worked. "Or what they could possibly need spinning wheels for."

"Spinning wheels?" Fili leaned back to look past his brother, blinking. "Huh."

"They aren't cooking," Bilbo said, sounding rather amused at the turn the discussion had taken. "They're making silk."

"Huh?" The princes eloquently asked even as Dori's mouth formed a small 'o' of understanding. At least that made one of them, seeing as the others seemed to be suffering from a lack of context, and who knew what King Thorin was thinking under his eternal glower, not that Ori was one to judge.

Bilbo looked at Kili and Fili with something resembling consternation. "You two have no idea what silk is, do you? Let alone how it's made."

"The education afforded to the main line of Durin does not give itself towards teaching thread spinning, no," Thorin growled, which must have been the first time he addressed Bilbo Baggins directly since that awful first night in Bag End.

"And we actually do know what silk is, thank you very much!" Fili groused, obviously trying to imitate Master Baggins' own manner of speech.

"We even know what it's used in," Kili added just as snootily. "You're wearing some of it right now," he gestured at the velvet coat the hobbit was wearing.

Bilbo tugged on his reins until his pony lingered back enough to leave him alongside the two princes, then he pondered them while completely ignoring the evil eye Thorin was sending him. "Silk thread is made from the cocoons that silkworms spin for themselves in order to pupate from larva to butterfly-"

"Wait, what-"

"Silk is made from insects-?"

"-which means that the worm inside must be killed before it can hatch, otherwise the thread is ripped to shreds and rendered worthless." Bilbo calmly explained to the rapidly paling princes. "Which is why farmers make sure to gather the cocoons up as soon as possible and boil them with the worms still inside."

"…"

"…"

"The silk strands of the cocoons are then gathered up with a coarse brush and put on a winding bobbin, after which the silk from one five or more cocoons is spun together to make one silk thread," the hobbit helpfully finished summarizing to his thoroughly appalled audience. "The thread can then be woven into cloth or, as you so expertly noted, in the making of more complex fabrics such as velvet."

For an uncomfortably long time, Kili and Fili just stared at their erstwhile host, agog.

"B-b-b-babies…" Kili finally stuttered, sounding faint. "You… Y-you m-make silk by mass murdering babies."

"Butterfly babies…" Fili wheezed, shocked.

"Unborn butterfly babies," Kili looked and sounded as if he would pass out from horror.

"And three parts of what you both are wearing are processed pieces of dead carcass," Bilbo said dryly before Thorin could act on his obvious impulse to snap, though whether at Bilbo or his nephews Ori didn't have the foggiest. "How utterly terrible of you to be tromping about in such fancy furs and teeth necklaces."

"But but…" Kili fumbled. "But babies!"

"And lamb means baby sheep."

"Gluh!" Fili and Kili yelped in their saddles and nearly fell off their ponies, scared half-way out of their skins. Not that Ori himself or Dori or half of the others were any better off. Where had that hobbit come from? When had he time to sneak up on them from behind?

"And eggs are unborn chickens, chickens are infant hens, turkey meat tastes best the younger it is, and what do you think happens to most calves before they're grown? Veal means little fattened baby cows you know." Fortinbras Took frowned up at the deathly horrified duo from where he was striding down the road right next to them, having come upon them from behind unseen and unnoticed at some point during the past few minutes. "Welcome to civilization. The stage of a people's development and organization which is considered most advanced. It's is a pretty word, lads, but in many ways the only difference from olden days is that we grow the things we kill, rather than having to go hunt them in the woods. Do make note of the complete lack of anything to do with 'morality' in the definition."

"Take care how you speak, halfling!" Thorin barked. "It is not given to you to lecture those of our kith, nor do we suffer insults gladly, veiled or not!"

"Of course, we are none of us sinless, so far be it from me to question your double standard," the Thain's son said blandly, then quickened his pace to leave behind the king – now coloring enough to be verging on apoplexy – to catch up with Bilbo Baggins.

"We're almost there, I know," Bilbo pre-empted his cousin. "I'll move ahead soon enough, or was there something else you needed my help with?"

"Not unless you've seen that cousin of yours with more cheek than brains-" the hobbit suddenly threw his head back, barely dodging a thrown stone that had flown around and between Dwaln and Balin's horses and almost brushed the nose of Bofur's pony on its way to-

"Aaah!"

Their entire procession froze at that distinctly feminine scream of pain. The scream of pain that came from the field of grass. The field of high grass.

The field of high grass well beyond the fence lining both the side of the road, from which now rose Primula Brandybuck, daughter of Gorbadoc, Master of Buckland. Her hair was like spun chestnuts, her travel wear an earthy brown, and her left hand covered the side of her face leaving only her right eye exposed, looking murderous.

"… Oh dear," Bilbo gave words to their shared thoughts.

"Drogo Baggins."

"(… oh crap)."

Almost as one, the company of Thorin Oakenshield – and guests – all turned to look at the grassy field precisely opposite the one from which had spawned a hobbit lass. Even the two princes, despite they grey and sepulchral disposition.

"Drogo. Baggins."

From somewhere came a "P-primula, my flower-"

"DROGO BAGGINS!"

"Gyah!" The hidden bounder suddenly bolted from behind a camouflaged mound, crashed into one of his fellows, jumped over a second, ran a dozen paces before tripping over a third, then hightailed it like the wargs of Gundabad were after him. "Every hobbit for himself!"

"Come back here Drogo Baggins!" The lass shouted in outrage, her voice like the sound of dew drops on bellflowers as she charged through the grass, hopped over the fence, barely seemed to touch the ground as she ran past Dori's pony and ducked under Thorin's startled mount and Gandalf's horse, after which she jumped over the other fence and seemed to almost fly across the field in her rage. "You'd better hope I don't catch you, wastrel spawn of a snail darter! The moment I get my hands on you and I'll have your guts for my mother's garters!"

The company of Thorin Oakenshield and their plus two stared in shock as the two hobbits disappeared into the distance.

It was a minute later that the groans of the victims of the pair's rampage shook Fortinbras Took back to action.

For a given definition of 'action.'

The Prince of the Shire pinched his nosebridge and shut his eyes in pain. "I'm surrounded by idiots."

And he walked off.

Sighing, Bilbo Baggins let them know that he would be hurrying on ahead as well because they were only a couple of miles away from their destination so he ought to go and see to it that things proceeded apace. Especially seeing as nothing else of what he'd planned to do actually panned out as intended once the Bywater folks spread the word about how thoroughly they'd ruined his purchase plans.

The dwarven scribe watched and listened in befuddlement as the hobbit trotted away, muttering to himself all the while about troublesome neighbors, exasperating relatives, and the general mass conspiracy that had caught the Shire in its spiteful grip and whose single purpose was to stop him and only him from finally making something useful of his revenues and being a properly productive member of the Shire society, and what was everyone thinking spurning all his attempts to buy things by pitching in just to spite him, did they think he was a spendthrift or something, wasn't it enough that he had Lobelia for an in-law, that this mass insanity was only putting him in the very position coveted by her and her equally greedy and larcenous Bracegirdle relatives, did they not care what that meant for his reputation, did they give no thought at all to what they did to him, what was wrong with these people!?

The dwarf's jaw hung slack and his charcoal stick hovered over his travel journal for a whole five minutes while his mind tried and failed to come up with a way to record the most recent events in a manner that wouldn't later read like he'd been exposed to mind-addling elf grass and sucked on by brain leeches.

In the end, he failed.

Ori, son of Bori, clamped his mouth shut, very carefully returned his charcoal to his pouch, thwapped his journal closed and put the last five minutes out of his mind with all the deliberation of someone who'd spent the last week doing his best not to think hobbits were completely insane creatures, only to finally be forced to admit surrender and face the facts.

Hobbits, one and all, were just completely nuts.