A Better Place - The Hobbit Fanfiction

Alternate Entry Four - Stirring to Leave

We went for lunch and had a break eventually, but as soon as we were done gossiping we returned to the grindstone my new home was apparently built of. When Dila finally released me I collapsed in a soft armchair by the fire she’d built for me, dismantled, then made me rebuild myself. I was still wound up in a tight warm sore ball there when Bofur returned and threw his stone-dust-clogged coat on the back of the other chair.

“Dila made me beat the dust out of that four times you know,” I informed him.

He froze in the middle of yanking off his leather, equally dusty gloves. “Ah….”

I snickered. “Don’t worry about it. Just don’t let her in tomorrow and she’ll never know.”

He grinned, whisked the coat off the armchair and flapped it out briskly near the door, where there were no rugs and we’d be able to sweep it up easily, whichever of us decided we couldn’t stand it first. I wasn’t getting up. “She told me the two of you did a fair job freshening up the place, after she’d shown you the right way of doing things.”

“Pfft. Apparently I’m not a proper lady until I’ve got dirt and dust all worked under my fingernails like one.” I regarded my fingernails with the straight-fingered air of a woman examining jewels she refused to consent to liking. “And since when have I ever shown an inclination toward being a proper lady?”

“If ever, I certainly missed it.”

I snorted. “They’re going to keep feeding us all in that big hall, right? I can’t cook.”

“I can, a bit. I think they will for a while though, until everyone’s chimneys get knocked out properly and there’s enough food being brought in to distribute properly.” Finished shucking various weather- and work-appropriate layers, he collapsed into the other armchair with a sigh. “Thank goodness Dila at least got the fire going.”

“Hey! I made that fire! She started it, took it all to pieces and made me do it again myself. Took more than half an hour to get it going well enough so I could leave the room without it gasping and moving on to its second life.”

Bofur chortled. “Second life? And just where might that be.”

“Hell if I know. Where else do fires go when they die?”

“They’re not living things; they don’t have to go anywhere.”

I sat up, dropping my legs over one of the arms of the chair. “How are you qualified to declare whether or not fire’s a living thing? I challenge you on that.”

“Oh you challenge me, do you?” He sat up as well, leaning forward. He held his palm out. “You win, I’ll sing at supper. I win, you build the fire tomorrow.”

“Oh bollocks on that! It takes forty minutes to build a proper fire and less than three minutes to sing!”

“It takes less than three minutes to build a proper fire and you need the practice.”

“Then you’ve got to sing for ten minutes! All proper ballads are ten minutes or longer.” I propped an elbow on my knee and leaned in. “The ancients used to memorize ballads that took days to recite in full.”

He joggled his palm. “Done. Slap on it.”

I’d seen the dwarves doing this before so I was familiar with the gesture. We slapped palms together, then the backs of our hands, then stacked our fists. I boggled the fist part, since I still hadn’t winnowed down just how whose fist was on top was determined.”

“Not like that, lass!” Bofur cried. “You’re the challenger, you get the bottom!”

“What! Never.”