An Unexpected Addition (Thilbo - Bagginshield)

Snow

"And it was a right nasty one, too," declared Bilbo with a firm nod. "We'll have to let your mother have a good look at it later. Show her how well you did in retrieving all of my maps with this terrible thing in your finger."

Donel nodded with another proud smile. "I hate splinters. They're really nasty. Do we need to look for anything else?"

"No, I think this is more than enough for today," said Bilbo. "We've got supper in an hour or two, and I've still got to sort through all of these maps. Frodo, are you finished with your letter yet?"

"Uh huh. And I spelled Merry right."

Bilbo took the paper from his nephew and quickly skimmed over the messy lines, sharp eyes checking for any major misspellings or grammatical mistakes. But, as always, Frodo's literacy was superb for his young age and Bilbo wouldn't have to make any kind of corrections to it.

"What're those about?" asked Donel.

"Well, I'm not quite sure about these, either," said the older hobbit. "Both of them seem to have some kind of elvish written at the top, but I'm not familiar with it. However, I think the underlined words are the native names of the region. This map appears to show some place called...Lú Tyr Sû... Very strange name. And this mountainous one looks like it says...Orocarni? I've no idea what that means, either. Maybe it's the indigenous title of the mountain range. Hmmm, Karn Ord... "

"Ugh, look what you've done," groaned Frodo. "He's at it again. There's no hope of prying him away now."

"I wouldn't say that."

All three of them looked up to see Kíli's head peeking around a bookshelf, a wide grin on his beardless face as he surveyed the haphazard piles of maps on the floor. With a devious whistle, the youngest prince joined them near the fireplace and attempted to look as innocent as possible. He failed miserably at it.

"What do you want, Kíli?"

"Oh, I just thought our darling little hobbit and dwarfling would like to know that a momentous event has occurred since the lunch hours," drawled the prince, nonchalantly picking at his dirty fingernails. "But alas, it would appear that all of you are quite busy. A most unfortunate shame, that is."

"What's happened?" demanded Frodo, curiosity piqued by the prince's tone. "Did something explode? Are there elves?"

The prince looked puzzled for a moment. "Ugh, what? No, no! There's no elves. Uncle's far too paranoid to even let men from outside of Dale or Laketown into the city yet, let alone a bunch of those prissy tree-shaggers."

"Kíli!"

"Sorry, sorry, I forgot, you don't like those names," whined the prince. "I know a couple of nicer ones, though. How about...pointy-eared bastards?"

"No! Absolutely not!"

"Weed-eaters? That's a pretty nice one, if you ask me. Even Tauriel thought it was funny."

"Ugh, why do I even bother?" muttered Bilbo. "Stubborn dwarves, never listen to anyone besides themselves." He rolled up the maps and gently whacked Kíli over the head with one of them. "Now what did you come down here for, little bird? I'd like to catalogue all of these before supper, so spit it out."

"It's snowing!"

And there went any semblance of calm inside the room, both Frodo and Donel all-but tackling the older hobbit to demand that they leave immediately to play in it. The brat who instigated everything was shameless in his begging as well, stating that little hobbits needed lots of fresh air and snowball fights and ice ramps and snowmen and fruity ice cones to grow up strong and healthy and not wither away in the dark tunnels of Erebor. He tried to call foul on several of them; but being hugged and tackled by three boisterous children, of which Kíli was most definitely an associate seventy-five percent of the time, was quite difficult to resist under any circumstances.