Chapter Text
Bella Baggins was trekking through the small forested area just outside Bree, her first time this far from the Shire, when she heard a great many crashes. The small creature slid down behind a large tree and peeked out to see the disturbance. It was coming from the direction of the road.
Hobbits rarely used the roads outside the Shire but they still travelled near them. Ever since the Fell Winter, fifteen years past, dark things had kept happening. Good folk of the Shire would just disappear when they went out from their homes.
Bella had heard the whispers from her cousins. The bounders were finding traces of struggles on the roads. There were hints of big folk coming and taking the good hobbits of the land. Supposedly there was one or two hobbits that had escaped a group of big folk in Budgeford. The story goes that the big folk were slavers and that hobbits were bringing them good coin. So it had become common practice for the hobbits to avoid the roads or travel in large groups.
The little hobbit stared out at the big folk tramping around the forest near the road. She was dangerously close to a group arguing loudly.
“You let it escape!” The graying man nearly screamed, his hands flinging out in outrage. “We paid good money!”
“Aye and you were given your prett’ yesterday evenin’ when you purchased that little ‘un.” Scowled a broad chested man. “Ya signed the contract and everythin’. The contracts states clear that the prett’ is your responsibility once we hand it over for gold. It’s your problem now. We’ll be nearin’ the Sarn ford spot if you be wantin’ another pretty to replace the one you misplaced.”
Bella covered her mouth to keep from making noise. Were these slavers? Was there a hobbit out here needing her help? She couldn’t consciously leave the area without looking but she would have to wait till the slavers moved on.
“Now see here! We haven’t even left the place of purchase. You have to give us some aid or compensation at letting our slave escape the encampment!” cried out the gray haired man as he rushed off after the slaver.
It wasn’t long before the slavers, who looked like perfectly respectable merchants, headed out. The new slave owner and his companion trampled around the area a while longer before giving up with a huff and mutter of the lack of respectable businessmen.
The comment turned her stomach. There was nothing respectable about slavers.
Bella carefully looked around the area just outside the searched circle the big folk had trampled over. A small broken branch on a low hanging bush was the hobbit’s only hint. She headed past it, in the direction that led the furthest from the old encampment the quickest.
A few other broken twigs and branches kept her wandering for a good twenty minutes until she reached a steep, wet hill. The ground was moist from abundant rains and the closeness to the river. She almost missed the torn up earth. Barely covered by flexible bush branches was a chunk of disturbed earth, disturbed in such a way it was pointed sharply down the hill. Something running had made it.
The little hobbit carefully walked and slide down the hill searching for any other hint. Other chunks of the moist earth was pulled from its proper place from something that had rolled down the hill. It was near the bottom, just feet from the Brandywine river, that she found it.
A small body lay motionless against a jutted out rock that had stopped its descent into the river. She was beside the body within seconds. Twigs, moss and mud covered it. Bella spoke softly as she carefully took one of the body’s arms. “Can you hear me? Are you awake?”
There was no verbal response and the body made no motion either but she could feel a pulse. The hobbit lass proceeded to carefully slid her hands down each limb, looking for any indication of harm. The slight jerking motion from the body when she pressed carefully down one of the body’s ankles relieved and worried her. A reaction meant that the person was responsive and could still feel his legs, meaning that the back was most likely alright. The reaction also meant that the ankle was harmed in some way.
She very carefully shifted the body until she had it in her arms. A mud covered face and red-brown hair was revealed. It was a child, a little boy. Bella slid her shaking hands through the dirty hair, finding a braid that had come loose. Whatever had held it together appeared to have been chopped off. Perhaps it had been of some value to the slavers?
Bella shook her head sharply. What was she doing sitting here staring at the poor thing? She needed to get the child home, cleaned and looked over properly!
The little hobbit shifted the boy around to slump against her back and struggled up. It took the rest of the day for the little hobbit to reach Woodhall. The resident healer worked with Bella to clean and care for the child. It became surprisingly clear that the little boy was no hobbit. But neither was he a child of man.
“Is he...” breathed Bella as she slid her fingers through the boy’s oddly cropped hair, feeling the fever radiating from his forehead. Her eyes didn’t stray from the little red whiskers on the child’s jaw. They were barely noticeable.
“A dwarf?” finished the healer, “Yes, I do believe he is.”
“You just found him by the river?” asked, for the twentieth time, the bounder captain for Woodhall.
Bella turned her gaze from the unconscious child with a huff of annoyance. “Yes, yes. Are you hard of hearing? I’ve told you all this earlier! Now, what are we going to do about the slavers?”
The bounder captain gave her a confused looked. “Whatever do we need to do? They’re long gone.”
The golden haired, mud covered hobbit lass jumped up in outrage. “They might have more people! More children!”
“They’re big folk, what can we do Miss Baggins?” cried out the captain, his cheeks pale in horror at the idea of going after the slavers.
The healer interrupted the argument, “The Merrdock’s in Budgeford have lost their daughter, if you recall the message from yesterday, Billen. The slavers may have her.”
“I overheard them saying they’d be near the Sarn Ford,” added Bella, relieved over having another joining her side. Hobbits rarely left the Shire and they even more rarely got involved with the conflicts of the big folk. Yet children were involved and it seemed none of the big folk were doing anything about it.
“I’ll.... The rangers have been less helpful lately, there are less and less of them it seems nowadays.” Billen waved his hand up in a flustered manner. “I’ll send word to Tuckborough and figure something out.”
That something was never really discussed with Bella or the healer but a week later ten more children were brought in for healing. Six were little faunts whose family rushed to take them home. The other four were dwarrows. Unlike the little hobbit children, the dwarven children were badly wounded. Their only guess was that the dwarrows fought against their imprisonment and the slavers.
It was five days after the five dwarven children came into Bella’s care that one of them woke with coherency. It wasn’t the child she had found by the river, he was still trapped in fever. It was what appeared to be the youngest of the children.
The boy woke with a soft groan and shake of his head. His newly cropped, vibrant red hair swayed back and forth as he woke himself up. The very act of trying to wake properly seemed to exhaust the child though. Bella spoke in warning, “Careful little one. You’re safe here.”
The boy forced his eyes open and tried to focus on to her. “Ma?”
Bella’s heart broke. “I’m sorry. I’m not and she isn’t here.” She paused hesitantly. “Can you tell me your name? What your ma’s and pa’s name are?”
The little boy’s eyes were falling heavily with a couple tears sliding out. He spoke in just a whisper and slurred out, “Gimli.” The boy was asleep before Bella could asked whose name that belonged to.
Two day’s later one of the children died from infection, the only girl. They buried the brunette with all the stones they could find to surround her body. Her grave remained unmarked by name but they planted the flowers for a mother’s love, innocence and the traditional flower for the dead: pink and white carnations, and daffodils.
The fevers finally started to properly break on the boys and Bella found herself taking the children home. She had been the only one willing and able to look after the remaining four dwarven children while the bounders searched out rangers to find answers. No one brought up the lack of information the name Gimli was going to bring.
Time flew by and winter crept to Bag End. The four children no longer had fevers but they slept the days away as their wounds healed and they recovered from infection and possibly a cold. It was on one windy evening as Bella Baggins went through the rounds of cooking stew, the broth for the boys, that things changed.
“Hello?”
Bella slapped her hands over her mouth as she whirled around in shock. The little boy she had found nearly a month ago stood shyly at the kitchen entrance. Her hands lowered to her rapidly beating heart. “Oh, you gave me a scare. I’m not used to having anyone else up and about.”
The little boy nodded slowly in understanding before he said, “Who... who are you?”
The hobbit lass smiled kindly down at the boy and said, “I’m Bella Baggins,” before waving over at one of the chairs for the kitchen table. “The stew is ready if you would like to sit.”
The scuffling sounds of shuffling feet told her that the boy had chosen to come in. Setting a bowl down, she regarded the boy. Brown-red hair framed a face thinned from hunger and large brown eyes that held a surprising amount of innocence besides a wariness no child should have.
Bella sank into her own chair and dug into her bowl of stew. After a few minutes of companionable silence she finally spoke, “So what’s your name?”
The little dwarf boy paused with the spoon halfway to his mouth. “Oh...” Large brown eyes met hers in faint panic. “I’m so sorry! I didn’ mean- I shouldn’ have...” The boy paused before speaking up with only a slight tremor in his voice. “Ori. My name is Ori Mrs. Baggins.”
“No, no. I’m no Misses. I’m not married Ori.” Bella smiled reassuringly at the boy. She paused for another moment, trying to organize her thoughts. “Do you know where’s home?” She finally asked. As much as she wanted to ask how he and the others had been taken, she didn’t want to bring up such memories.
“Erebor.”
Bella smiled at that. She had never heard of the place but it was good news that they would be able to get the children home. “Where about’s that?”
“Far over the Misty Mountains...” answered the little boy as he continued eating the stew. “To dungeons...deep! ummm” The boy frowned before mumbling, “I can’ remember all of the parts about where.” He looked up before adding, “There something about hammers and spells... and-and about the dragon though!”
The hobbit lass listened in confusion and then growing understanding. The child was trying to remember some poem or song about his home. Her mind blanked, though, at the word dragon. “Dr-dra-dragon?!?”
Ori nodded decisively as only a little boy could. “Smaug the Terrible took our home but we’ll get it back one day.”
“I see.” Bella pushed the potatoes around in her bowl, deep in thought. She somehow doubted that dwarves were living with the dragon in Erebor. Yet the child had called it home. She looked up and regarded Ori with deeply shadowed green eyes. The dragon had their home so where did the dwarves of Erebor live? “Do you know where we can find your family?”
Ori’s head shot up sharply. “Dori? Nori?”
“What?”
The little boy wrung his hands for a second before whispering out, “My brothers. I-I don’t know where they are. Dori is where we’ve been livin’ and Nori just comes and goes.”
Bella sighed sadly at that, “You don’t recall any names of places, perhaps?”
“The men that took me went through Fornost before comin’ to Bree. Then I got sold and escaped.” Ori frowned down at his bowl before adding, “They said somethin’ about havin’ to go round abouts to avoid elves.”
“One second,” said Bella.
She left the dwarrow in her kitchen and rushed to her study. She made quick work of her many maps, searching out and taking the newest one of the west. Bringing it back to the kitchen she laid it out and showed the little boy where they were, where Fornost was and where Bree was. “To avoid the elves now...” Bella carefully tapped out the two Elven communities she had on the map. “They were either talking about the Grey Havens or Rivendell, I think.”
“I guess,” agreed Ori as he stared intently at the map.
Bella stared at the map for a few minutes before heaving a sigh. “That possibly cuts out everything besides the North but the North is a very large place. Perhaps you can describe where you lived? Were you in mountains or large hills or such?”
“What’s the difference between mountains and large hills?” Ori asked in turn, “There are dwarves and men and there are coal mines and trees and wooden buildings that let the wind in no matter what you do.”
“Well, lets see here.” Bella hummed as she thought. How did one describe mountains and large hills when one has never seen such before themselves? “Mountains are very, very large.”
“Larger than large hills?”
“Yes and taller too.”
“Then how large and how tall are large hills?” asked Ori, his nose scrunched up in deep concentration.
Bella felt rather ridiculous as she answered, “Well larger than hills in the Shire but I don’t rightly know.” Ori’s confused expression didn’t help matters at all.