It is a curious, and little known fact about dwarves, even among themselves, that in almost every case a name containing only three letters will belong to one of their rare females. Such was so in the famous company of Thorin Oakenshield.

"I still can't believe that none of the company has noticed that you are a woman, Ori," Bilbo commented. The petite dwarf's jaw dropped.

"How do you know?!" She hissed in a harsh whisper. "Only Dori and Nori ever knew! Da was dead, and Mum died birthing me!" Bilbo blinked.

"It's rather obvious, isn't it?" Ori spluttered.

"Even dwarves have trouble telling our men and women apart! The first step in courting is to discreetly find out." Bilbo blinked. "Now tell me! If the others find out, I'll be sent home!"

"She'll be in disgrace. We're protective of our women, as less than one in three births are female, and fewer live to adulthood. Half of those never marry, either." Nori growled, pointedly twirling a dagger between his fingers, while glaring at Bilbo.

"W...w...well, o-once a m-moon, Ori i-isn't shy a-and s-starts snapping a-at everyone," Bilbo ventured, "a-and n-never b-bathes w-with most o-of the others… a-and she feels l-like a woman."

"HAve you been groping Ori?!" Dori snarled, bringing his pony up so that Bilbo was sandwiched between two overprotective brothers.

"WHAT? NO! You PERVERT!" Bilbo shrieked, nearly falling off of Myrtle's back in outrage .and horror, the volume gaining everyone's attention.

"Keep it down!"Ori hissed.

"Why is the hobbit shouting about perverts?" Kili asked eagerly.

"I made a comment, and it turns out that the burglar is a prude." Nori lied lightly, an explanation that seemed to be easily accepted by the company. After the others returned to their conversation, the dwarf with the braided eyebrows glared again at Bilbo.

"What did you mean, then?"

"W-well, I've r-read that some o-or all dwarves can sense things about m-metal a-and stone…"

"Aye. The Durin's are able to find their way through any cave, but bring them above ground and their lost in moments. What's that got to do with anything?" Dori allowed, cracking a walnut in one hand, making Bilbo gulp.

"Dori! Nori! Stop it! Quit scaring Bilbo! If he faints you won't get any answers!" Ori said sharply, her brothers the only ones she seemed able to raise her voice to.

"I g-guess th-that y-your s-stone sense is l-like h-hobbit sense, except w-we c-can tell things a-about plants, a-animals and the land, you see," the hobbit stuttered.

"And…" Nori drawled

"It means Bilbo can sense that I'm a girl, you idiot!" Ori snapped.

"And Oin is. So am I." Bilbo added quietly. "S-so you can s-see, I'm not going to tell." Three gaped jaws were the reactions to that revelation.

"Whu-?" Was the rather intelligent response from the normally well-spoken Dori. Bilbo snorted tartly.

"I may have been wearing my father's old clothes after working in the garden, but I certainly made no effort to hide my gender, until the second day of travel, when Gandalf informed me that dwarves are over-protective of women, and I'd be sent back, or smothered."

"...oh." Nori's knife vanished and the two elder brothers blushed. They'd been threatening a woman! "Ummm…"

"Shut your mouths before something flies in," Bilbo advised. a triple click was heard.

"Oi! What are you lot talking so intently about, that has Dori'n'Nori in a tizzy?" Kili asked riding his excitable pony in circles around them.

"Quit showing off! You'll make Bilbo fall off his pony because watching you is making me dizzy." Fili snorted.

"We were...ah…" For once in his like, Nori didn't have an out ready.

"I'm afraid I may have broken them; Ori and I were trading some of the more ridiculous theories that the Big Folk have about our respective peoples." Bilbo said.

"Oh?" Kili asked archly, guiding his pony between Dori and the hobbit, with a wink.

"I heard some merchant theorizing that the reason there are so many fauntlings in each family is that hobbit men can get pregnant." Bilbo said, and if Gandalf had been watching, the wizard would have said she had a decidedly Tookish gleam of mischief in her gaze.

"GACK! WHAT! NO! That's just… WRONG!" Fili yelped, falling off of his pony, which had been, typically of the brothers, named Kili.

"In SO many ways!" Kili added, as his pony, Fili, tossed her head in response to her rider's agitation.

" 'S'not true, is it, laddie?" Bofur, who'd gotten an explanation as he kept Kili-the-pony from running off before Fili-the-dwarf could remount.

"Of course not. Men don't realize that hobbit pregnancies only last seven months, and hobbits have a far harder time not getting pregnant than the reverse. My mum was one of nine, and her father was one of twelve siblings."

"T-twelve children?!" Dori sounded awed and faintly horrified, as he's all but raised Ori, and finished raising Nori.

"Eh, it was unusual, even for hobbits, but family size is usually kept down because feeding the faunts is a task and a half. Tweens and toddlers can eat more than their own body weight a day."

"Tha's a lot o' food, and 'ere I was thinkin' tha' Bombur's fourteen ate alo'." Bofur said after a pause. "Mah brother an' 'is wife struggle t' feed so many mouths. Tha's why we an' Bifur are on this quest. T' take care o' our family." There was a pause, then Bilbo nearly fell out of the saddle, leaning to give Bofur a hug.

"That's so sweet of you!" She said, delightedly, as Nori tugged her back upright, wondering how, with squeals like that, he'd not noticed Bilbo's gender, before.

"That's not exactly a compliment for most dwarves," Fili snickered.

"Hmph!" Was Bilbo's retort.

"I dunna mind, lads, I'm a toymaker after all." Bofur said mildly, not noticing Fili glaring at him, as the young dwarven prince edged his pony between hobbit and toymaker.

A/N: Thanks to my little sister for helping me write this. We expanded it from a random idea that came up in a late-night insomniac conversation.