Chapter 1: A Long Endured Shadow of a Party.
Chapter Text
When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday, everyone was like, “Dang, is it that time of year already? Pretty soon it’s gonna be tax season.”
My name is Frodo, son of Drogo. Everyone tacks on the Drogo obsessively, especially Bilbo, so much so I’m pretty sure I’m just his lovechild. I mean, the dude has, like, a bazillion relatives, why’d he take in me, and only me? Bag End is stupid massive, and it’s just friggin’ me and one old man rattling around inside it. Not to mention he looks incredible for his age, and he’s rich. I guess I can only hope I inherited my “uncle’s” gentle relationship with Time.
Bilbo always throws these stupid big, showy birthday parties with so much catering people fall into food comas for months. And, of course, it just so happens to also be my birthday—and yeah, I know, I should be grateful he took in his definitely-not-lovechild, yadda yadda yadda. Really he is a great guy (if, y’know, you like walking, which I can’t say I really do. We live underground, for crying out loud, and we don’t even have stairs. All I’m saying is, Illúvatar made chairs for a reason).
But look. I really don’t need him to go all-out for my birthday party. I’m fine with doing, like, a small thing, friends and family thing. It’d also be kinda nice if it was my birthday party. Bilbo really thinks it is, but everyone else is like, “Oh, Bilbo Baggins’ birthday party! Did you hear about Bilbo’s party? It’s Bilbo’s birthday party!”
I don’t even get to give away most of the presents, Bilbo’s got, like, birthday waiters setting them all out next to the monogrammed napkins. Friggin’ bite me.
I guess I’m just bitter because I’m now technically an adult, and no longer allowed to throw things at people without getting in trouble with one of the Shire’s whopping twelve members of law enforcement. Or being mauled by dogs. But that second one was a threat before, anyway.
I know, I need a better attitude. I also have to go stop the dwarves from accidentally lighting a clown on fire.
Bilbo doesn’t just buy out the local economy for his—I mean, our—birthdays. He also feels the need to cripple supply chains by ordering toys from across the death mountains that are filled with death. So all his weird old drifter buddies show up, and I don’t know why, but they’re all dwarves, and they sing weird songs that make me uncomfortable, and they all wear shapeless sock hats on their heads like my buddy Sam. They’re not bad guys, honestly not a thing wrong with them, I just feel weird when they all show up and take over the house, and they start reminiscing with Bilbo, and he becomes a whole other person from a past that predates my existence (he still mostly looks the same, allegedly). I just don’t know where I fit into the vibe when they’re all talking about that time that troll farted and then all the trolls got murdered and they stole all the troll stuff, and Bilbo’s like, “I still have that sword I stole!”
And everybody laughs. And I try to laugh, too, but when I start, they kinda stop, and the dwarves look at me, and I realize I’m not one of the guys.
Look, I hate to make it all about me, okay? It’s just, I’d love to have my own birthday for once. Is it mean to want that?
It’s not much better when I try to go drink with strangers instead of my dad’s weird war buddies (something about a Battle of Five Armies? And one’s always like, “Remember the Dune worms?” and the other’s always like, “No, since when the frick were those a thing?” They can’t just have one army like a normal person, no, they have to lay it on thick with five). When I go out to The Green Dragon or The Swishy Codswallop, what do I hear? Bilbo, Bilbo, Bilbo, here’s a crazy story about your crazy uncle Bilbo.
Bilbo’s supposed to be one of the biggest furniture collectors in the land, but I don’t really believe it. Sure, when he came back from his crazy road trip, high as a kite on pipeweed, he brought a couple of small ottomans, but that’s hardly the fabled tunnels filled with hutches and ornate footstools. People talk as if he’s got a freaking Ikea buried under the place.
He does have the Piano, though.
The Piano’s a secret, and not a very good one. For as long as I can remember, Bilbo has sworn me to secrecy about its existence. When I was a young boy, I did not question this. But, as I got older, like a child looking at a wood stove chimney and wondering how Eärendil would get down, or suddenly noticing how many bottles pile up near the recycling, it slowly stole over me that a secret Piano wasn’t normal.
But it’s not a normal piano. It’s a magic Piano.
You see, he didn’t just lug back those two admittedly nice ottomans (with the throw pillows). He also hauled back, dragged behind a team of exhausted donkeys, the Piano.
He first told me he won it on a late night game show called Riddles in the Dark, hosted by everyone’s favourite late night talk show host, Gollum. I knew this was a lie because he could never get a seat next to someone as famous and internationally beloved as Gollum. Also, because Gollum is freaking old and doesn’t even have his slick black mullet anymore, let alone his once-beloved show.
But Bilbo is also freaking old, even though he looks uncomfortably not that, and he told me he won the grand prize: A full-size grand piano.
Later on, he told me the truth.
Well, as much of it as he knew.
Gandalf is the guy I blame for most of my “uncle’s” psycho-behavioural problems. One day, back in the age of yore, he showed up and vandalized Bilbo’s door, and Bilbo was into it. It turned out the vandalism was a gang symbol and a whole gang of dwarves showed up to party like it was the Second Age and Narvi and Celebrimbor had just finished the West-gate, and Bilbo straight-up ditched his entire life and lack of job and “hit the road.”
And, of course, brought back the Piano I have to pretend isn’t there when company comes over and asks if I play (and I have to be all like, “Play what?” and then I don’t get a second date).
All throughout this, Gandalf has been the consistent common denominator. And when, trying to read a book about mountain-climbing under my third-favourite tree, I hear the telltale engine revs of Gandalf’s sweet ride, I know we’re in for trouble.
He’s peeling down the road like he’s my buddy Sam going at potatoes, narrowly dodging Hobbit children who are screaming the Alphabet Song but replacing every word with the letter G.
I don’t know what possesses me to do it, but I grab one of the fenders and swing myself inside his open-top racing-jeep monstrosity.
“Hey, Gandalf!”
“Whuh?!” Gandalf shouts, through gritted teeth. He has his pipe in his mouth, and judging by the stank, he’s as high as the White Towers.
“Gandalf, you’re going eighty-three in a thirty-five!” I howl.
“Happy birthday to you, too!” coughs Gandalf, dodging a stray child and taking out a couple of trees.
“Gandalf, it’s not my birthday yet!” I yell, desperately, “Gandalf—!”
“Got your old ma—uncle some fireworks then, didn’t I?” Gandalf drools, sucking at his pipe like a nebulizer, “Your uncle knows how to throw one Angband of a party!”
“Sure!” I shout, “Turn here, turn here, TURN HERE—!”
“Just about wet yourself, then, didn’t you, Frodo, m’boi, son of Drogo m’boi?” chuckles Gandalf, almost incomprehensibly, through his thick beard and the thick clouds of pipeweed smoke.
“Gandalf, I just have to ask—“ I stammer as we run down a wheelbarrow, its pusher barely fleeing in time, the barrow bumping loudly under Gandalf’s spiked tires, “I just have to ask, like—why do you always have to come round? Why not pay for delivery, or—or—or get a real job?”
“FIREWORKS, M’BOI!” coughs Gandalf, briefly passing out and almost wrecking the car.
We pull up, somehow still alive, at Bagshot Row, which is just past Bag Front, on the way to Bag End, beside Bag Empty, and just outside Bag Full.
The Gaffer is sitting outside his hole, peeling potatoes and glaring at us like we might steal them.
“Darn kids,” he grumbles.
“I’m older than you are!” Gandalf shouts, hoarsely.
“Kids these days with their sassafrassing attitudes,” complains the Gaffer, to his potatoes.
“Says the little halfling who can’t grow a beard,” says Gandalf.
“Gandalf, that’s offensive,” I say, trying to cut in before this gets physical.
“What, we can’t say halfling now?” says Gandalf.
“Look, when we say halfling—Gandalf, how old even are you?” I ask.
“Before Eru dropped the beat, I was. Since the dawn of time, my dear Frodo—son of Drogo—I have been,” says Gandalf, wisely.
“And then you came down here to Middle Earth to get high?” I ask.
“Precisely,” says Gandalf.
“Dang kids with their pipeweed,” grumbles the Gaffer, “In my day it was cocaine.”
“You haven’t seen someone snort cocaine until you’ve seen a Maiar snort cocaine,” says Gandalf, swinging himself out of his idling jeep with surprising speed, as if the Gaffer has cocaine with him. Hopefully he doesn’t.
I sigh, switching off the jeep, pocketing the keys, and scrambling down after him. “Let’s just get ready for the party, okay?”
I hear the traitorous sound of dwarves coming down the lane to unload the jeep, singing about lost love and tinfoil. Bilbo’s voice cries out from up the Hill, “Heyyyyy, if it isn’t Gandalf, you old crazy son of a gun!”
“Never tell anyone you’re a Pianist!” Gandalf screams back at him.
It’s going to be a long week.
Chapter 2: The Passing Shadow of a Long-Ignored Piano.
Chapter Text
Disco is the worst thing to ever happen to Middle Earth.
Yeah, yeah, I know. Melkor and stuff. The “Enemy,” or whatever. Mordor and all that jazz, Angbad, that time with the two trees. Disco is worse than that time with the two trees.
But Bilbo really loves disco, because all his weird dwarf friends are really into that Moria stuff from the Second Age. Apparently some guy called Bálin—why’re they all called Bálin?—dropped a new album recently. It’s really bad, even for disco, but friends who steal things together, and accidentally kill dragons and destroy towns together, apparently buy EPs together. It’s called New Moria Boogie, by Day Before Dúrin, and it’s currently blasting from every eight-foot subwoofer across the entire small county Bilbo has rented for his—our—birthday party.
Bilbo is always extra. He knows nothing but extra. With the local economy thoroughly bought out, he has bribed the local government to secure temporary usage of even more land, and poached most of the local workforce to set up and manage one gargantuan disco birthday party the size of a small country. Every time he—we—have a birthday party, it’s always followed by an economic crash everywhere from Frogmorton to Waymoot. Even Girdley Island will suffer some inflation in the price of eggs. Bilbo does love his omelettes, especially fired out of cannons.
Hobbits don’t get presents on their birthday parties, they give them. As a boy, I used to think Bilbo made this up so he wouldn’t have to buy me birthday presents, but as it turns out, hobbits are suckers. For many years, I kept trying to point out to Bilbo that, us sharing a birthday, we could give gifts to each other—hint hint, wink wink, nudge nudge. The old man never bought it, though. He’s always been a canny sort, whatever the heck that means.
Hobbit Santa comes down the chimney and demands gifts. It’s weird and sad.
Deprived of any chance at real presents, standing around watching my mouth-breathing neighbours ooh and aah over freaking pencil cases Bilbo insisted on buying from the other side of the world, all I want to do is creep off to some quiet corner, think about my extremely dead parents, and get absolutely plastered with Sam, Rosie, and the guys. Hobbits may not be a mechanically advanced people, or a culturally refined one, or really an educated one in general, but boy can we freaking brew beer.
Also, we’re the only democracy in all of Middle Earth. So that’s kinda neat. Drunk and voting for impotent mayors out the whazoo. Beats living in a castle city shaped like a cake with constant traffic jams.
But I’m not plastered. I’m not with Rom (that’s Sam and Rosie’s couple name, yes, it’s objectively awful, but the rest of us are single so we can’t make fun) and the guys. Instead I’m sitting here, in what is literally called (in custom-made neon signs all the way from the hills of who cares) the Cool Tent, at one end of a long table staring into the middle distance.
All I want is another slice of birthday cake, but the table is about eight miles long, and the cake’s been passed down that way, so it’s never coming back.
Everyone is smoking enough pipeweed to make a horse throw up purple. There’s thick, smelly clouds of it hanging low all across the crystal-encrusted ceiling of the Cool Tent, interfering with their intended reflection of the disco stroke lights that threaten to give VIPs a seizure if the pipeweed doesn’t knock them out cold.
The entire nation is going to have one heck of headache tomorrow morning. And probably wonder where its pants are.
Somehow managing to make themselves heard over the deafening disco-chant of Day Before Dúrin, the guests begin hammering on the table as only drunk hobbits can. Slowly, their various cheers, hoots, screams, and curses coalesce into one slurring cry, “Speesch! Speesch! Speesch!”
Bilbo does a good job affecting modest surprise, waving away the idea at first, as if he couldn’t possibly, even though I know he practiced his speech in the mirror for hours. By degrees—strictly honourary degrees—he gets up on the big stage at our end of the table. I was seated at his right hand, so I have to crane my neck and twist in my seat to see.
On the stage, moved by the ponderous efforts of a small army of dwarves, has been set up The Piano. Bilbo’s secret, magic Piano. It has been cleverly disguised as a regular piano by being left out on the stage.
Bilbo motions for the music to quiet. Someone throws a bottle to wake up the DJ.
“Well, well, well,” says Bilbo, leaning back against the Piano almost unconsciously, “Wellwellwellwellwellwelllwell.”
“Speesch! Speesch! Speesch!”
“My dear, drunken hobbits!”
Everyone (except for me, and those by now physically unable) raises a glass and makes incoherent noises of raucous approval. The loudest of these is Gandalf, sitting across from me and spitting all over my food as he beats on the table with his dirty stick, shouting some inappropriate but mercifully incomprehensible joke about the Brandywine.
“My dear Bagginses and Boffins, Tooks and Taken, Bilges and Bunkerspuds, Fumcrumpets and Bottle-Openers!”
Cheers from the members of these esteemed families still conscious. Someone breaks a mug, thumping splashingly on the table, and someone else breaks the table.
“My dear Brandybucks and Brandycents, Yumguffins and Stoffins, Gamgees and Gamgoshes, Stuffins and Boppins, Stoves and Kumquats!”
Thump thump, hoot hoot, smash smash, crash dash. A younger Kumquat has fled in terror at upsetting the drink of an older Boppin, who seems intent on giving him more on the head than a bop. I look around to see if anyone is going to deal with this, but apparently not. I aim a surreptitious bottle at the vanishing Boppin, but thankfully he collapses from inebriation before I have to take drastic measures.
“My dear Hooligans and Hooligones, my dear Droolflubbins and Cowflops, Gorgemunches and Bellyups, Limberwigs and Garys, Proudknuckles and Shamefeet!”
“ShameFOOTSES!” screams a particularly enraged Shootfootsee, who is apparently an angry drunk. He pulls a large butcher knife and a cheese grater and is tackled by the last two comparatively sober dwarves, who are keeping their eyes peeled after the Kumquat incident.
“Shamefeet,” reiterates Bilbo, with smug sadism as he watches the howling drunk begin to gibber and sob beneath the dwarves in fury at the insult to his family name. Most of the hobbits are too drunk to notice, and those that do just begin making bets. Gandalf’s money is on the dwarves, and I’d be inclined to agree if I had any inclination to be here at all.
“I want to thank you all for coming to my little party!”
My, of course. Never our.
“Even the Sucksville-Bagginses, Sackville-Plasticbagginses, and Sicksvile-Stoginses. The Stoginses snuck in uninvited, of course!”
General laughter. I don’t know why this is supposed to be funny, or why Mrs. Sicksvile-Stogins is nodding and smiling as if she’s proud of this, while her husband throws up in the background giving two big thumb’s up.
“The Sucksville-Bagginses are especially dear to me, as they have not graced my dear Bag End since I swiped it back from them in a real estate lawsuit that permanently crippled their hat business!”
Polite applause from everyone except the Sucksville-Bagginses. Someone in the back who might be the Gaffer cheers and yells, “Darn toot’n it did! And crummy hats they were, too!”
Bilbo clears his throat, smiling with the twisted enjoyment of a faux-polite, sarcastic host. Hobbits brew passive aggression even better than beer. As a people who have allegedly never raised a hand against one another in deadly violence (emphasis on allegedly), we’ve had to find other ways to settle our differences, and burying them deep until they fester with smiling hate has been the generally popular method.
“To my little party,” Bilbo repeats himself, looking around the vast kingdom of indulgence his absurd wealth has wrought. How many orphans could this man adopt, with this kind of cash? My self-acclaimed uncle drives home his core points, to reach his sufficiently well-watered audience, “Today is my birthday! I am eleventy-one today, and feeling more like a winner than ever!”
Cold silence. Hobbits hate puns even more than clocks and massage chairs.
“Eleventy-won, I say,” repeats Bilbo, reading the room and relishing the hate in every eye. You can practically hear the fingernails scraping the tabletop as hands clench with revulsion. Gandalf is laughing his wasted rear end off, almost as high as his beard is full of ice cream.
“Counting the years of Frodo, my dear boy, son of Drogo, who I kind of knew, makes fourteenty-four. Or, one might say, one Gross. Not that anyone would say that about this food!” Bilbo is practically doing a stand-up gig, at this point, and he is bombing hard. And the little sociopath is loving it, twisting the knife in his audience that is either too bribed with gifts or too drunk to stop him.
“Eleventy-one grosses, incidentally, are what I saw flying overhead the day I rode a barrel out of a tunnel with my crazy friend Bálin throwing up inside it—the very same dwarf who provided today’s sick beats! Yes, yes, give it up for Bálin!”
The audience does give up. Or rather, gives in. There is a smattering of applause.
“I was tripping quite hard that day,” Bilbo reminisces, fondly, “And today is probably the anniversary, judging by the date of the arrest warrants. We gatecrashed Laketown and threw the place a party they never forgot—their greatest and their last, because within days we’d enrage a dragon and unwittingly bring untold destruction upon them. Or, at least, upon whatever was left after our dope good time.” Bilbo laughs, wheezingly, “Smaug burned that place to the waterline! Phew! Mind you, I was pretty mad about it at the time. I had a cold during the party, from rolling the barrel around and dunking myself underwater on the way there, to make Bálin throw up, and I could only snort half as much crack as I was trying to.”
No one knows if they’re supposed to applaud, except for Gandalf and the dwarves, who all cheer and say things like, “Bilbo, you maniac!” or “Bálin smelled for weeks!”
Bilbo continues without segue, so it’s unclear if he’s talking to his guests, or continuing with the story, “I like half of you as half as much as you’d like me to like myself, and twice as much as three times how much your mother liked when I, like, liked what she liked about liking people like you.” He clears his throat, “And I hate exactly three of you.”
A few people exchange glances through the drunken haze. Some of the individuals inclined to become more energetic on pipeweed are trying with a bleary paranoia to work to it out on their fingers. Most of those present, however, are too far gone in a stupor to really do much other than apply the necessary treatment of further food and drink.
“One Gross is too gnarly a time to spend among such estimable, inestimable, and estimatable hobbits such as yourselves—though not yourselves necessarily—but I’ve had it. I’m sick of this place, I’m sick of watching you all sit there stuffing your faces day in, day out, while the world goes by around you, and you don’t even have the decency to ask it for spare change. I mean, what’re we afraid of? Or is it that we don’t have the guts to fear anything? This is pathetic, we’re pathetic, the Shire can to go Angbad for all I care. It’s time for a change, a BIG change, I’ve made up my mind! It’s over, Hobbiton! Goodbye, under-and-over-the-same-friggin’-hill! I’m going to go get high someplace with a view! I want to be killed by something besides my own arteries! I’m going, it’s over, smell you later—PEACE OUT!”
And with these last, final, dramatic, stunning words, spoken at an actual scream, Bilbo steps backward.
He fumbles awkwardly for a moment, clattering the Piano’s keylid, “Hang on, just—“
And, with a flash of light, a minor third, and a bang that smells of pipeweed, Bilbo disappears.
And so does the Piano.