She dreams of Golden Hope

Two Roads and the World Ahead

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."- The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost

Bilbo Baggins awoke the next day to the early morning sun striving to illuminate every crevice, every detail of his chamber. It should have been a normal morning for all intents and purposes. The sun was shining just as brightly, as every other day and the air outside smelled of maturity, with the aging leaves and the receading warmth signalizing the approach of autumn. He would perceive the homely smell of fresh bread and the herbal scent of recently brewed tea. If he strained his pointy ears he would be able to detect the sound of soft and sweet humming, coming from the kitchen. A sound, which he had grown used to hearing routinely during the years. A melancholic tune, which he would be able to discern and recognize anywhere.

Yet he did not. Bilbo Baggins awoke and he did behold the warm scent of first breakfast. The air around him did not include the smell of his cousin's cooking, but simply encompassed the smell of the not-yet vacated dew and the warm, mellow scent of the end of summer. His ear perceived nothing, but ambient and prevailing silence. No matter how severly he would have strained his ears, his search for the haunting tume his cousin sang, as a past-time during her chores, would prove unbountiful. And this was the first anomaly of this morning.

Another anomaly was the oscillations, which had seized Bilbo Baggins, when he awoke. Now Bilbo Baggins prided himself on being a comfortable and serene Hobbit. Long forgotten were the days of his youth, where he would awake each morning and even before he had ingested first breakfast, he would run into the woods, surrounding Bag End, Laurel in tow, searching for fantastical creatures and adventures.

Now Bilbo Baggins would usually awake in the morning and a feeling of lethargy and muzziness would pack him and he would lay on his feathered bed for a few seconds, slowly awakening and becoming discerning to his surroundings, before standing up and with all the time in the world, going to join his cousin in the kitchen for first breakfast. But today it was different, because the first second after Bilbo Baggins awoke a sense of urgency and anticipation and the need to do something, to be efficacious annexed him. So strong was this urge, that at first Bilbo did not perceive the lack of the things, that had always accompanied him and his routine in the early mornings. For a creature of habit, he was most surprisingly unalarmed about today's lack of the entities, which constituted his morning routine. No, this compulsion caused him to be oblivious to the vacancy of first breakfast smell and of the sound of Laurel's tune.

It was only after he had quickly risen, propelled by this queer sensation that urged him to do something, that was most unbearable to endure lying still; it was only after that, and while he was wandering Bag End's halls, which were still not completely lit and partially in shadow, due to the early hour it yet was, that he perceived the eery, almost deathly silence that reigned in his halls and which was at odds with the tumulteous turbulence, which domineered Bilbo's interior. It was most disconcerting for the little Hobbit, yet it shouldn't have been, because this was routine. Bag End was normally reticent and tranquil in the early morning hours, as every respectable Hobbit hole should be. Who had ever heard of a Hobbit home, that was filled with clamor and agitation? No, Hobbits were quiet, peaceful folk, which made them most respectable and their homes had to reflect this facet of Hobbit existence. Especially the home of a Baggins, a family of Hobbits, which were most reputed. Yet it seemed to Bilbo, as he moved through his halls to not find a soul within them, that his halls were barren, barren of everything, barren of life. Especially after the hullaballoo of last night, created by the dwarves.

Bilbo had been so chagrined with the unannounced arrival of Thorin Oakenshield's Company. He had been incensed with the dwarven lack of courtesy and the fact, that they had most inconveniently disrupted their evening and the order, which reigned within Bag End. Not a second had passed last night, that Bilbo had not resented the presence of his uninvited visitors and, after Gandalf and the leader of the dwarves had revealed that both he and Laurel were to go on the quest, to outsmart a chiefest calamity, that was the Dragon in Erebor's halls, Bilbo had vehemently wished for the dwarves to leave.