Renacida || Fili x MGIME OC ||

Bilbo's Secrets

"Come, come, down through here."

Bilbo gestured for me to follow him through an unfamiliar part of the mountain. The way he spoke and how his feet carried him told me that we were going so far away from the rest of the Company for a reason. Though the braziers remained lit, more rubble, dust, and cobwebs littered the passageways.

The pressure of our increasing depth seemed to grow.

"This way. Just a little farther."

I listened to Bilbo without response. My mouth set into a grim line, and the tightness in my stomach outmatched the tightness in my limbs from the workout with Fili. I knew what Bilbo was going to show me.

We reached a chamber with a lit brazier inside it. The room, however, lacked warmth, meaning that it hadn't been going for very long. Bilbo must have planned ahead. I would have given him a hard time about being paranoid, but because of where we were—and what he had—I didn't. In fact, it was good of him to. And because he was a hobbit with common sense, he even laid out some furs for us to sit down on.

I tugged my coat tighter to myself. Bilbo slid the chamber's stone door shut with a little grunt, then turned with his back braced against it. Sweat faintly glistened on his brow.

"Hey, Baggins," I said, motioning for him to come closer to me. "Take it easy."

"Oh, Valeria, things are not good, not good at all," he sighed. He moved forward and plopped down onto the furs. I joined him and tucked my sore legs underneath me. My fingers absently brushed against the droplet. "I'm worrying myself to death."

"Well, stop. Stop it right now." I wished I had some food to give him to calm his nerves.

"It's not that simple!"

Bilbo's exasperation wasn't meant to be amusing, but I still unconvincingly pursed my lips to hide a smile. He plainly saw it and frowned at me. "Valeria. This is serious."

"It is! It is. But..." I groaned and put my head in both hands. "At some point, things are so bad that they're funny. You know what I mean?"

He huffed. "Of a sort, yes."

Composing myself, I sat straight. "Alright, Baggins, what have you got for me?"

Despite our complete isolation, the hobbit glanced about the room to make sure that, I don't know, a dwarf didn't spontaneously appear to accuse him of mutiny and cut us both down. When he was certain, he dipped his hand inside his Lake-town coat and, rather slowly, pulled out the Heart of the Mountain.

I stared at it, breathless.

The Arkenstone shone with a light I had never seen, a light that pulsated with life and memory and power. Veins of gold and red and violet and blue spun and whorled until they knotted around the center of a captured galaxy, where a deeper light countered the one encasing it. Like the core of the Earth, it seemed to be compressed into liquid, a molten dark blue that held something I could not comprehend.

Bilbo placed the Arkenstone in my hand. I didn't realize I had beckoned for it until the weight settled in my palm. It was either warm from being inside Bilbo's pocket or from radiating its own heat. Specks of gold and silver spattered across the veins like stars. The light rippled and moved on its own accord. It gave the illusion that the chamber was underwater where the sun refracted its light through the waves.

I had never seen anything so beautiful.

So, appropriately, I whispered, "Wow."

"It is as though Varda herself made the Arkenstone." Bilbo also spoke in a hushed, awed tone. "And Aulë grew the mountain around it. It is...it is something of both heaven and earth, is it not?"