Once Upon A Contract

𝕮𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖗 1: 𝕾𝖍𝖎𝖗𝖊 𝕷𝖔𝖗𝖊 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝕮𝖔𝖓𝖙𝖗𝖆𝖈𝖙𝖘

In the Shire, there were two truths. The Tooks were odd and the Baggins were respectable.

The Tooks were wild. They ran through the fields, stole Farmer Maggot's prized mushrooms and potatoes, and were generally held to be different. How could they not be? When the Tooks were the only ones who walked with the Big Folk without fear and stood beside the Rangers as Bounders, content to walk the borders and deal with folk were certainly not Hobbit. They were also the family that held the Thainship, but that was neither here nor there.

(The Tooks weren't royalty. Not really. Hobbits held loyalty to a kingdom long to ashes and paid taxes to maintain a road no one ever used.)

(No one wanted the Thainship either, so the Tooks were a perfectly reasonable family to hold that 'honour'. They were already odd enough you see.)

Then, there were the Baggins. The holder of contracts, the keepers of Bagshot Row, the owners of The Hill and Underhill, and everything in between.

The Tooks were odd and the Baggins were respectable.

If one were to go to the Great Smials of Tookborough and bothered to dust off the mathoms collected there, you would also find something that had been long since recorded and never spoken about. The Tooks were odd. The Tooks ran wild. The Tooks danced through the trees in the Old Forest and Yavanna only knew what they found there.

But the Baggins?

Well...

It was in the name.

Owners of The Hill and Underhill.

Everyone in the Shire knew that the Tooks were the people you went to for the odd problems (that had nothing to do with being the family of the Thain). You went to a Took for traps and forestry. You went to the Gamgees for plant lore. And may Yavanna help you, you went to the Sackvilles for thievery) but it was the Baggins you dealt with for word and contract.

You did not cross a Baggins. You came with a bag of seeds and a coin of silver (there was a reason, after all, that numismatics was not popular in the Shire). You came with a closed mouth that showed no teeth. You came with no scratches or wounds covering your skin. And you never came to bargain something you couldn't live without.

And you never came with dead iron.

You never gave your name to a Baggins, not your full one anyway, and you always prayed to Yavanna that the Baggins never came to collect any debts. The Shire had been built on favours after all and while it was the Tooks who held the title of Thain, it was the Baggins who held the deed to The Hill and Underhill.

The Baggins were respectable but that was because you couldn't call them anything less.

Bree folk, arguably the only folk that knew the hobbits the best, aside from the hobbits themselves, thought hobbits remarkably simple. Hobbits, they knew, did not deal in precious metals and iron never sold in the markets that wandered through the Shire. Wood sold best and Bree folk only watched in fascination as their hobbit neighbours gained more yield from fields that were never left to fallow or ever cycled through crops.

Most Bree folk chalked this up to hobbit magic.

(Not there was such a thing, but then, Bree folk also thought that Hobbits came from an unholy marriage of Darrow and Elf. The Hobbits themselves had never bothered to correct these notions.)

Baggins contracts stated that there would always be good yield on tenant land.

And so, there was.

To be fair, most of the Shire didn't bother to ask how the Baggins did it either. You signed a contract with most of your name, gave a bag of seeds, and offered a silver coin. Then you went about your day and tipped your head when the Baggins you signed with came by to see how you were doing.

The Tooks were odd and the Baggins were respectable.

These lines did not change, and the families did not mingle.

The Tooks stayed in Tookborough and the Baggins stayed in Hobbiton, and the Shire breathed a sigh of relief.

And then, one day, Bungo Baggins and Belladonna Took began to court.

Belladonna Took was a beautiful little thing, all golden hair and bouncing curves. Bungo Baggins, like the rest of his family, was not. His hands were gnarled from writing contract after contract, his back was bent from pouring over ledger after ledger, and he did not see well into the light, not after years of eyestrain from reading only by candle. Belladonna Took did not care.

It was, the Shire reflected years after the wedding, the only Took wedding that did not occur by eloping, but instead by proper Baggins contract and Shire paper. No one knew what was in the contract, but everyone knew what had come out of it. Belladonna Baggins nee Took was given a home as a courting gift. For a wedding gift, she was given safe travels.

Bungo Baggins was given a son.

It was unfortunate, but even the respectability of the Baggins could not save Bungo and Belladonna from the wagging tongues of the Shire (no one ever said anything to the Baggins family though, it was one thing to talk in the privacy of a garden, it was another to say it to the holder of your contract). But, there were whispers. Whispers that Belladonna had only agreed to the suit because of the contract Bungo offered. Whispers that Belladonna had only signed because she wanted to guarantee safety when her feet lead her off of tenant land and into the wider world.

What the hobbits had seemed to forgotten, was that Belladonna was one child of twelve and two of her brothers were bounders. She was not as defenceless as the other hobbit lasses, no Took girl was. What had also been forgotten was that years before, under the Party Tree, Bungo Baggins had sworn that he would gain Belladonna's hand in marriage or he would never marry at all. What was remembered even less, was that Belladonna had shyly agreed.

And so, Bungo and Belladonna Baggins had married and had a son.

Bilbo Baggins, as he was known to the Shire, was as odd as his mother and as respectable as his father.

And, since he was a Baggins, he would never be called anything less.