Chapter 4

The first thing I woke to that morning was a pain in my neck. I had slept in Bilbo's armchair that night, as he had his own bed to sleep in. I was quite lucky that I had slept here to be honest, it could have been much worse in the morning if I had slept in one of the wooden chairs.

But what I didn't think of at the time was that I could have slept on the floor. Maybe I wouldn't have had any pain if I had done that.

Once awake, I realised that I had woken a lot earlier in the morning than I usually did. The sun was barely coming through the windows, indicating that it was early morning. I think I could hear a bird singing outside, that is over the noise of the dwarves.

To be fair, they were really trying to be quiet. I couldn't see Bilbo anywhere, him having gone to bed after telling us that he wasn't joining us on the quest. The dwarves were obviously making an effort to make as little noise as possible while they cleaned up so that he could sleep. But no matter what they did, they were still making noise.

Things were being dropped or knocked over, some dwarves kept tripping over things and others couldn't help but talk and laugh amongst themselves.

I don't know how Bilbo hadn't woken up yet, to be honest.

A body suddenly fell in front of me, causing me to gasp and jump back into the chair. Wide eyed, I leaned forward a little to see who it was.

Kili's head popped up, looking around wildly. Upon noticing me, he gave me a grin.

"My apologies for startling you, milady." He said before jumping up.

"Dani. Call me Dani."

"Well then my apologies, Dani." He replied before looking around the room. I looked around too and noticed Fili standing at the other end of the room, smirking at us.

"Fili!" Kili shouted, running off. "Why did you push me?"

Staring after him, I could only shake my head in confusion.

Forgetting about the young brothers, I stood up and moved to help Bofur rearrange the chairs. He smiled at me and said, "Good morning Miss Dani."

"Good morning Bofur."

"Did you sleep well?"

"Yeah, alright I guess. Not too bad. Now do you need some help with this?"

He nodded and told me where the chairs were meant to go. Doing as he said, we soon had the chairs in their right place.

"Do you know if anyone else needs my help?" I asked him.

"Hmm." He thought for a second. "Well, Kili and Fili are about to be sent out to prepare the ponies. You could help them with that. They're in the next room."

I smiled. "Ok, thanks Bofur!"

Moving to the next room, I found Kili and Fili nodding to Thorin before they started to move to the door. Moving quicker, I rushed to cut them off before they left.

"Wait!" I cried, as they stared at me in surprise. "I can help you with the ponies… You know, if you need some help, that is…"

"That would be great, thank you Dani." Kili said, smiling again. I smiled back.

"But we will not have time to come back before we leave the Shire, so if there is anything you need, you need to get it now." Fili explained.

"I don't have anything." I said softly.

The brothers gave me a soft, sad smile, before Fili said, "Well then let's go. Thorin wants to leave as soon as possible."

We headed outside, where the sky was lit up in hues of orange and pink. I had never been up this early before, so I had never seen a sunrise. While I missed the main part of the sunrise, I was still in awe of the colours of the sky. It was beautiful.

The sound of the door shutting behind me made me jump and spin around. Now I was looking at Bilbo's house in amazement. I vaguely remembered Cassie telling me about how hobbits live in little houses in hills, but this was incredible. There was literally a round, green door in a grassy hill.

I found it hard to comprehend, to be honest.

When I realised that Kili and Fili had kept walking, I hurried to catch up.

"Thought we'd almost lost you for a second there." Fili said once I had caught up.

"You know, you shouldn't wander off by yourself while we're here." Kili piped in. "Hobbits are usually not very welcoming."

"What are you talking about?" I asked, confused. "Bilbo has been-"

"There are always exceptions to rules." Fili interrupted. "Kili here is the exception for dwarves, seeing as he's beardless." Kili glared at his brother. "You would be too actually, considering your lack of a beard."

"So you should stick close." Kili said after looking away from Fili. "We wouldn't want you to get hurt."

"You're lying." I argued. "You are," they stared at me, completely serious, "…aren't you?

They shook their heads. My eyes widened in shock. I was sure hobbits were all good guys… weren't they? Although I do remember something about Cassie laughing when she told me that a farmer hobbit with a scythe chased after the good guys.

What if hobbits weren't nice people?

My thoughts were cut off when Kili burst into laughter, closely followed by Fili.

"You actually believed us!" Kili exclaimed through his laughter.

"…What?" I hissed, glaring at him. Fili had stopped laughing and his eyes had widened a little. Kili, of course, kept chuckling.

"Hobbits are the least likely creature in all of Middle Earth to be dangerous- oh." Kili finally realised just how hard I was glaring at him and stopped laughing. Both of them stared at me in apprehension.

"Bastards!' I snapped before storming away. There was a fork in the road, so I took the right one.

"A lady shouldn't swear!" Fili called out to me in amusement.

"I don't care!"

"You've gone the wrong way!" Kili called out after me.

Freezing in place I spun around and walked across the grass to the other path. The brothers soon caught up to me.

"We're sorry Dani." Kili spoke first.

"Truly, we are. We didn't realise you would be so upset." Fili remarked.

I stopped and turned to look at them. They both looked back with wide, apologetic eyes. They definitely looked contrite.

I glared at them for a few more seconds before erupting in giggles.

"You fell for it!" I smirked.

"So you were never upset?" Kili asked, starting to smile.

"No way! That was a good one, you really got me! Of course, I got you back…"

"We're going to have to watch out for you now." Fili said, teasingly. "We can't have you ruining our jokes."

"I wouldn't dream of it."

We all laughed as we continued down the path. We walked in silence for a while, but it was a comfortable silence. With one brother on either side of me, I was happy.

"You're very good at acting, by the way." Kili stated after a few minutes of walking. "I truly believed you were angry with us."

"Thank you." I had studied drama at high school. It was one of my favourite subjects, but I wasn't going to get into that while I was here. For all I knew, they might not even go to school here.

Arriving at the edge of the little town, the trio turned left to head down a path into a forest. Not too far in, a bunch of ponies were grazing in a clearing. The whole area was green. The tall trees had deep green leaves, the grass was a bright green, green, green, green! It was amazing how many types of green could be in the one place. Of course, the green of the environment really made the ponies with their varying shades of brown stand out. With a grin, I ran to the one closest to me. Lifting my hand, I stroked its brown neck. The pony let out a small whinny and leaned into my hand.

"Whose pony is this?"

"Thorin's." Kili answered, walking over to me. Fili was over at one of the other ponies, tacking them.

"Really?" I asked, surprised. "But it's so… sweet."

"Sweet?" Kili asked, confused.

"Oh! I mean… it's nice. It's cute."

"And Thorin's not?"

"No –I mean, maybe? Look, he's just a bit… intimidating." I blushed.

Kili chuckled. "Yeah, he is a bit. You should have seen him when we were young. He's our uncle, you know."

"Really?" I gaped. Not only did I insult Kili's leader, but it was also his uncle! My blush deepened.

"Yep!" He grinned. "I was terrified of him when I was a child."

"Oi, you two!" Fili shouted at us from across the clearing. "Stop flirting and get on with it! We have a job to do!"

The red that had slowly started to fade from my cheeks came back in full force. Sheer embarrassment flooded my body as I looked away from the dwarves.

"We weren't flirting, we were just talking!" Kili yelled back to his brother. I quickly moved to Thorin's pony and began putting the saddle onto her. Luckily I knew a little about horses, so I knew what I was doing.

"Of course you were flirting! You were both grinning stupidly and she was blushing. All the signs were there!" Fili continued to shout.

"Can we please move on from this topic?" I pleaded. Fili smirked and laughed at us, but complied. We swiftly prepared the ponies with only light conversation as we went.

As we finished, I turned to Kili. "What do we do now?"

"The others should be here soon. We'll just wait here."

I looked around and eventually walked to a rather large tree and sat against it. The brothers followed and sat on either side of me.

"Thorin wants you to ride with one of us, by the way." Fili told me.

"What? Why?" I quickly did another count of the ponies. "There are fourteen ponies. I assume Gandalf has his own horse, so there are enough for all of us to have one. Why don't I get my own?"

"Gandalf seems pretty sure Bilbo will come with us. He wants to keep a pony spare for him." Kili explained. That would make sense. I doubt the book/movie would be called The Hobbit if Bilbo was only in the first bit of it.

"Ok, but then why am I sharing with one of you?" Don't get me wrong, I would rather go with one of them, I knew them better. But I was wanting to know why Thorin thought I should.

"We've been told to watch out for you, in a way. Since you have already told us you can't fight, Thorin has told us to make sure you don't die." Kili said, matter-of-factly.

"We're also to teach you a little combat when we get time." Fili said.

"But why do you guys have to do it?" I asked, ignoring the slight turning in my stomach at the thought of learning to fight.

"Didn't ask why. I assume it is because he trusted us to do so." Kili stated proudly.

"I think it was more to give his annoying nephews something to do so they won't cause trouble." Fili remarked. Kili deflated a little.

"Surely I won't be that hard to watch over. You could still, you know… cause trouble." I didn't like seeing Kili look down. I was too used to seeing him smiling.

"Don't worry, we still will." Fili smirked. Again. "We just won't do it too much. We don't want to push poor Uncle Thorin too much."

By the time the rest of the company joined us, we were all laughing. We had been for most of the time we were in the clearing. We sobered up pretty quickly when Thorin gave us a look.

"Mount your ponies. We leave immediately." Thorin commanded.

Kili, Fili and I stood up as the others began adding their personal packs to the ponies before mounting them. I was right when I said Gandalf would have his own horse.

"You can ride with me, if you would like." Kili said to me, smiling again.

I nodded and followed him to a light brown pony. It was so hard to think of them as ponies when they seemed to be so big compared to me. I still wasn't used to being this short.

Kili swiftly climbed onto the pony's back and held out a hand to help me. Grasping it tight, I climbed on behind him, hoping I wouldn't show off my lack of balance again. Fortunately for me, I managed to get on the horse without much difficulty, bringing a smile to my face.

Kili glanced over his shoulder at me and gave me a smirk that was very similar to his brother's. "I was almost expecting you to fall off."

"Ha ha." I said sarcastically. I glared at him, causing him to snigger.

Next thing I knew, we were moving. With a squeak, I grabbed onto the back of Kili's thick jacket, praying I wouldn't fall off. The rather large company of ours was steadily moving through the forest.

We hadn't been travelling for very long before a voice yelled "Wait!"

Bilbo, dressed appropriately for travel, ran after us with the contract in his hand.

It looks like the hobbit was coming with us after all.

I'M SO SO SORRY!

I know this is late and I was supposed to have it out like a week ago, I just couldn't seem to write this one. School just started, so I probably won't be able to update within a couple of days like the first few chapters, but I will have the next chapter out soon!

Thanks for all the reviews/alerts/favourites! You guys are the reason I want to keep writing this story!

Sorry about the mix up if you get two alerts. Something went wrong so I took the chapter down and re-uploaded it.