The Hobbit (A Retelling of a Great Work, Now Ruined By Me)

Chapter 4

When Belle heard the birds sing she quickly got out of bed. She ended up not sleeping a wink and something told her she would regret it later but sleep could not come to her after last night's events. So she layed in her bed staring up at the wood panel of her four-post bed. Now with the sun soon to rise she went around her room to pack any belongings she wished to bring. Packing a change of clothes, a few sets of undergarments, a warm coat, a brush, two bars of soap, and her money purse she knew that it was sufficient. She rolled a thick blanket and tied it down to her pack. She then dressed in her most comfortable frock and pinned her hair away from her face very lazily. There was no control over her curls.

She glanced around the room and made sure she did not forget anything when her eye caught something on her bedside table. Her mother's jewelry box. Hobbits did not usually cater to vanity but on nice occasions, it was not unusual for someone to wear a piece of jewelry. If there was one thing she did not wish to be sold off it was her mother's jewelery. Inside were a pair of pear earrings that her mother wore on her wedding day and a pearl necklace with a ruby dangling in the middle of the string of pearls. The set matched the hobbit's coloring perfectly as did her mother's. The mother and daughter only shared two things in common, their looks and their name. Despite that, Belle was close to her mother and now that she was gone she felt as if she had no one. Bilbo did not give her the company she longed for, he was always going on and on about some gossip in the shire. And the age gap between the two did not help one bit. When their mother died, a year after Belle moved out of Bag End she couldn't handle living with just her brother's constant nagging. At first, when she moved he was most displeased but eventually grew accustomed to having Bag End to himself. She still couldn't believe he hadn't touched her old bedroom. The last time she visited, which was last Sunday, she went to peek to see if it was just the same as she had left it and it was! A part of her heart hurt at that. Perhaps her brother did miss her in his own way. And she felt bad to now leave him too.

Gandalf had told her that his initial plan was to ask Bilbo to accompany the journey but was quickly turned down. And he had told her that it was Bilbo who mentioned her name but she doubted that Bilbo intended Gandalf to ask her. She knew if her brother were to find out she was joining the adventure he turned down he would not be too happy. But she knew he would still let her go. Especially if it could make her smile like she used to before.

Belle could hear the dwarves beginning to rise and quickly stuffed the jewelry box into her bag. Luckily everything inside fit nicely and she was now ready to go. She silently made her way into the sitting room off the dining room, where she left the party last night. She noticed how the dwarves had cleaned up the mess from the night and the dishes were all cleaned and stacked on the kitchen counter. Maybe dwarves weren't as bad as she thought.

"Oye, are you still sleeping?" A dwarf in a fur cap said to another dwarf on the floor in his bed roll. He had a gleeful smile on his face when he kicked the dwarf laying there.

"Oof!" The dwarf on the ground grunted. It was the dwarf with a white and black beard. Belle hadn't realized until this moment that the dwarf had a piece of an axe embedded into his forehead. He looked at the dwarf who kicked him with fierce eyes and swung a bag at his legs hard. And the other dwarf was knocked to the ground.

She was right, they were bad.

Before the sun had risen they all were out the door. Belle was lifted onto a pony immediately after stepping outside and they were off. As they moved down the lane toward the unknown, Belle kept her eyes back on her home until she could not see it anymore. And soon they passed the last house in the Shire and even that came and went and there was now no trace of home. A part of her wanted to jump off the pony and race back home and pretend this was all a bad dream but then she remembered that in a month she would be married. And so, she turned her gaze to the road ahead.