A Better Place - The Hobbit Fanfiction

Alternate Entry Sixteen - Visiting Master Bard

For the next several days which swiftly turned into weeks I was swept up in my own joy of staying in a place that belonged to me for more than a couple of weeks, and a place in which I was happy. A place in which I could run in and out of the house and slam the door if I was in a hurry or trying to get attention and be yelled to and not yelled at. A place where people smiled at me when they saw me, and waved if their hands weren’t full.

To act my age, I’ll express it as being awesome.

It was incredibly strange for me not to celebrate New Year a week after Christmas, but I survived. I carefully took down all the earrings and necklaces and first brought down the necklaces to Byrnhild, then the earrings to Runi. When I saw what a mess the thousands of only semi-untangled earrings were in, spread or dumped out over nearly as many tables as fit in the great hall, my mouth popped open and I stared for several minutes.

Finally Runi saw that I was still standing where she’d left me and came back. “Want to help for a bit?” she asked.

“Sure.” I followed her to the opposite end of the room and Runi showed me the exhaustive and laborious sorting process. At the first table earrings were being sorted first just by the metal they were made out of—namely silver, gold and bronze, though there weren’t many bronze ones. After that the earrings were laid into baskets and sorted by the predominant gem if there was one, and carted off to their respective tables. From there each one was measured and sorted by lengths, and after that came the most difficult part—finding each earring’s match. “I can help?” I asked for clarification when she was finished.

Runi nodded. “Why not? We’ll be at this for another year at least, I swear. At least new people are still coming in, otherwise we’d all be sick of gold by now.”

I laughed. “And wouldn’t that be a pity!”

So I began sorting jewelry with Runi most mornings. I too began getting tired of it after a week though, so I found other work to fill every other morning. A series of pulleys that fastened into hooks in the stone ceilings had been moving throughout Erebor for the past month or two I’d been back, the men and women sitting strapped into their chairs being hard away at scrubbing dust and other accumulated filth off the endless high walls. I presented myself to one of the women on her way down one morning, explained my utter lack of fear with heights and desire to be of use, and after she sent me home that day and I came back the next with Bofur’s written permission for me to help wash walls she accepted me gladly, though she eyed my skinny frame with a distinctly dubious air. And then it was settled—I traded my mornings between sorting and cleaning, and soon had—not counting the Company—more friends of my own size than all my friends among the tall folk combined.

Bofur was hard at work repairing the statues out front, so I went out and ate lunch with him every day, usually finding an array of things in the great hall that I knew or thought he’d like—not that he was picky—and brought out two platters, the appropriate cutlery, and a sack of water I brought down from our house that we shared during the meal and I’d leave with him for the afternoon, taking his empty one back upstairs with me. I met a number of Bofur’s friends this way too.

“Why can’t you visit me at lunch, Mabyn?” Gimli teased one day when he saw me balancing two heaped platters on one arm and carrying the bulging water skin in the other.

I turned as I passed him so I’d still be facing him. “Because if I’ve judged you right your appetite would require me to carry a barrel instead of a platter! I need to eat too you know.”

“Doesn’t look like you do though,” he hollered as we continued walking away from each other.

“You are just jealous of my gorgeous figure and ability to fall through cracks in bridges!” I bellowed after him, and he waved a dismissive hand at me over his shoulder.