The Shifter of the Red Deserts

Chapter 1

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort. It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats—the hobbit-shifter was fond of visitors. The tunnel wound on and on, going fairly but not quite straight into the side of the hill —The Hill, as all the people for many miles round called it—and many little round doors opened out of it, first on one side and then on another. No going upstairs for the hobbit: bedrooms, bathrooms, cellars, pantries (lots of these), wardrobes (he had whole rooms devoted to clothes), kitchens, dining-rooms, all were on the same floor, and indeed on the same passage. The best rooms were all on the left-hand side (going in), for these were the only ones to have windows, deep-set round windows looking over his garden, and meadows beyond, sloping down to the river.

This hobbit was a very well-to-do hobbit, and his name was Baggins respectively when he was integrated into the family some 300 years ago. The Bagginses had lived in the neighbourhood of The Hill for time out of mind, and people considered them very respectable, not only because most of them were rich, but also because they never had any adventures or did anything unexpected: you could tell what a Baggins would say on any question without the bother of asking him. This is a story of how a Baggins in only name had an adventure, and found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected and highly unwanted, maybe not the revenge part but all together nothing went how poor Thythriedear Cryanthus Bilbo wanted it to go. And as it might turn out, it all started with a band of dwarves and a meddling wizard by the name of Gandalf.

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Bilbo was not a morning person, no matter how tempting the prospect of going and killing a band of annoying trolls was. For he quiet liked to hear their screams of pain in the morning. Trolls reminded him to much of the Orc's that had trapped him for their own fun, in other words, torture. And as it turned out, Orc's liked to torture the shifters from the Serpent Clan, namely dragon shifters. Which is what our dear bilbo was, a dragon. He had chose to shed his scales and wings for a more nimble body after that episode in his life. He still had his hair, claws however shrunken and his heightened senses.

So as it seemed, he wasn't expecting anything dramatic to happen today. With this outlook on the morning he was in a good mood, that was until something caught his attention. All that the unsuspecting Bilbo saw that morning was an old man with a staff. He had a tall pointed blue hat, a long grey cloak, a silver scarf over which his long white beard hung down below his waist, and immense black boots. "Good Morning!" said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat. "What do you mean?" he said. "Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?"

"All of them at once," said Bilbo with a slight edge to his voice. "And a very fine morning for a pipe of tobacco out of doors, into the bargain. If you have a pipe about you, sit down and have a fill of mine! There's no hurry, we have all the day before us!" Then Bilbo sat down on a seat by his door, crossed his legs, and blew out a beautiful grey ring of smoke that sailed up into the air without breaking and floated away over The Hill. Blowing smoke rings was one of the things that always seemed to calm him down and sooth his gold lust, no matter the amount gold.

"Very pretty!" said Gandalf. "But I have no time to blow smoke-rings this morning. I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it's very difficult to find anyone." Bilbo stopped. Why would anyone want to go on an adventure with a meddling wizard. Oh yes, he knew who Gandalf the Grey was, and his extremely long list of adventures.