From the Journal of Belle Baggins

Lord Elrond said that it's best to put down traumatic incidents on paper, that it can be cathartic. He was referring to the wolves I'd faced the first time I'd left the Shire but I suppose he'd say the same now. But I am afraid of what would happen if I were to put it into words. Would writing it down make it real and no longer a thing I can scarce believe or would it simply be a proof of my insanity, of the tricks my mind has played on me?

Even as I question my fears, wonder if the last few months have been but a dream, I know I am not insane. I can see the proof of it int he hand that holds the quill, the nail that has only just grown back, a mottled little thing entirely out of place. A reminder of how the one sthat preahc of peace hide demons.

I do not entirely believe I am mad but if I'm not mad then...then that means that I am the only sane person for miles around. And that is perhaps more frightening than the thought of being mad, there is an ignorance in being wrong that might be easier to live with. The prospect of Mad Belle Baggins being sane? That scares me.

What scares most people?

Is it death? The dark? Loss of loved ones? Is it starvation? Perhaps its mediocrity. Failure? All of these?

For the longest time, indeed all of my childhood and a great deal of my adulthood as well, the Shire was all I ever knew. Oh I would play at being an adventurer of course, I'd learn of worlds that I had not seen from mother but the Shire was still all I knew and it was a happy place. Not perfect, of course, but close. A simple life, of good cheer and laughter, of celebration and contentment, was all anyone asked for. There is always place for one more at the table and a warm hearth for any that should need it.

Until quite suddenly it wasn't.

It started when I wasn't really here. I'd left the Shire for the first time in my life and made for Rivendell in spring. By the time I was supposed to start my journey back, the Fell Winter was there. Lord Elrond extended an invitation to stay, he offered me sanctuary. He's nice like that but I think he also wanted to know more about hobbits. From what I understand mother wasn't as forthcoming as I was, she always did like keeping secrets. But then the Fell Winter passed and I was back in the Shire again. I think I was truly glad to see it then, the elves are beautiful and Imladris is a marvel, such hospitality, such sheer democracy in the way they worked but there was also the weight of memories upon them all. I do not envy them their immortality in the least.

Mother always said I was a dedicated child. That I would set my mind on something and see naught else. She made it sound like a wondrous trait to have, but now I wonder. It is this self same determination that left me blind to the happenings in my own home.

When I came back to the Shire it was the spring again, I'd spent a whole year on my own. Talk of the town for a few weeks but then a Brandybuck and an Underhill eloped so the village had something else to focus on and I got the chance to settle in. It wasn't an obvious change, it didn't happen overnight, you know. Didn't even realise something was wrong really. Sure Lobelia was a bit more overbearing than usual and Hamfast got sharp with me about the state of my prize winning tomatoes in a way he usually wouldn't but since I wasn't really given to socialising much I didn't notice any difference. I just stayed at home really, didn't leave except to go down to the market. I was translating a set of Sindarin books about the legend of the Silmaril that Lord Elrond had been kind enough to lend me and it was a time consuming task. I didn't notice much in the two years that followed.

When I'd passed through Bree the first time I'd gone off on an adventure, I'd made friends with a family of Men. They were from Rohan and they had different celebrations for Yule, even had a different name for it just like the name they had for hobbits and they'd invited me to see how they celebrated it. I had hit a dead end in my translations and needed to just get away for a bit so in winter I set off again.

I suppose it was the marked difference that really made it obvious to me. The Yule celebration in Bree had been bright and happy, so colourful and I was in a festive mood when I returned.

The further I got into Shire the more wrong it seemed. There was a big layer of fluffy snow all over but no one was out playing. No fauntlings making snow angels, no tweens having snow ball fights, just...silence.

The smials were all quiet and they had the same long wicked shapes of ice hanging off their houses. I know they were common enough in the houses of men but in the Shire we rarely got snow let alone icicles.

And then I reached the Party Tree. For Yule we hang thin coloured streamers to it and when the snow fell, little ice beads would form upon them and sometimes they leach the colour from the strings and take them onto themselves, like little ice baubles. When you walk under them they tinkle against one another like the prettiest wind chime in existence.

That was what I expected to see but the winds had been so harsh that the ice had formed in sharp lines, like daggers jutting out. One had taken the colour of the red streamer it was attached to and it looked like it was formed of blood. It was perhaps the most terrifying thing I had seen. How hard and long the wind must have blown to cause such shapes to arise?

I was drawn towards it, I don't quite know why. Maybe it was the Valar guiding my actions, maybe it was just female intuition but I was walking around its trunk, my steps dragging through the snow heavily and my toe hit something strange. I cleared the snow away with dread, hoping it was just one of Farmer Murrywort's tubers that had been left to freeze but the first thing I saw when the snow was cleared was a hand, gone blue from the cold. I worked faster after that and screamed bloody murder when I found myself looking at a very dead and very blue Old Man Horner. Around his neck was something that looked a lot like one the streamers we tie to the party tree and between that and the purple marks it wasn't hard to realise that he had been hung there and left to die. I pulled at the streamer and found the other side connected to a branch. It must have fallen and taken his body down with it.

My scream had attracted attention and finally I found myself looking at another hobbit. Terreon, who seemed so angry at me, eyes flashing dangerously simply smiled, at complete odds with the rest of him.

'Miss Baggins, back already eh?' He sounded so happy and I was kneeling in the snow, crying while holding on the branch from where Horner was hung. I didn't understand what was going on just...sat there shaking.

'What happened here?' I managed to ask, somehow and he looked at Horner with such venom, that smile and jocularity just gone in an instant.

'Horner was punished, duly by the Thain.'

The Thain, my grandfather. Old Took who'd never so much as hurt a rabbit, ordered someone dead.

'Why?'

He wore a sickening smug smile on his face as he stared at Horner's prone body. 'Horner was the lookout. Blasted man failed to warn us that winter was coming. We lost young Bardos.'

I didn't understand, I still don't, how in Arda was old Horner, who could barely move in the summer let alone in the winter when his joints got locked up, supposed o warn the village that winter was coming? They've 'explained' it to me a million times since and I don't understand, I just don't. They just wanted someone to blame and that Old Took would order for Horner to be killed as retribution?

I still can't sleep most night, just lie awake and wonder if anything would have been different if I hadn't run off to Bree for the winter. Maybe I could have convinced the Thain otherwise, maybe I would have been the lookout and managed to warn them in time, I don't know. Maybe I could have done something. But maybe not. I am a coward after all. I left. Left, ha, I bloody ran away, all it took to scare me was Terreon looming over me and saying 'You'd best be getting home now' and I ran, didn't bother with anything just turned the pony around and kept on riding until I reached Rivendell. Don't know how I did it honestly, nor how my poor Myrtle managed it. Maybe she was just as scared as I was, I don't know but I rode long and hard.

It didn't do any good though. Elrond simply patted me on my head, said it would be fine, the Rangers were watching over the shire and allayed my fears just enough so that I figured it to be a lapse of judgement, temporary and I left to go back home.

It is a curious set of luck that I have. I meet extraordinarily wonderful people who are made even more extraordinary by the way they rise above their terrible circumstances. I came across a farmer on my way back, he lived close to the road. A few weeks before my arrival he had gone off to the nearest town to trade his produce for a doll for his daughter's birthday. He returned to find that trolls had destroyed his house and his wife and daughter were nowhere to be found. He hadn't given up hope and was still searching for them and despite his circumstances he was so kind as to offer me part of his rations and I repaid him the only way I could, by offering to help him in his search.

It was my first night there and he was fast asleep, tired after scouring the forest but to no avail. I woke up in the middle of the night at the sound of whinnying and found Myrtle gone. I followed her sounds of distress and what should I find but trolls, three of them, one of them having just settled Myrtle into a little enclosure.

Strange things, trolls. Giant and grey and deformed but social. Oddly human in a way. One of them stirred the pot of broth that smelled absolutely vile, another complained the whole time and the two of them together fussed over the third troll who was just a smidge smaller than them.

'Horse soup again?' the little one complained and sulked. "I don't like horse, not enough fat on 'em. Not juicy like them girls we had for dinner.'

'That was weeks ago and horse is better than nothing.'

I hadn't realised that the farmer had followed me there. It wasn't exactly what he wanted to hear and he rushed into the clearing with his pitchfork in hand and tried so hard to fight. He was mad, mad with anger and pain and in his zeal managed to hurt them quite badly actually. They were limping soon enough and one bled profusely from his eye from where the farmer had struck him but it was one man against three trolls and they soon knocked him on his head.

That was when I walked into the clearing and tried to rescue him. It didn't work but I stalled them, the prospect of a 'tender girl flesh' had them running after me and I was so small I slipped out their hands quite easily. But just when I thought that I couldn't run any longer the sun rose and with it he trolls turned to stone.

The poor farmer though, he was too badly hurt. He'd been knocked on his head so hard when I went to help him he called me by his daughter's name .

'Lucy, why're you crying?' He wasn't going to live, the gash on his head from when they'd thrown him against a boulder had bled too much, when I tried to staunch its flow he didn't even flinch even though it should have hurt. Instead he reached into the bag he always kept on him and pulled out the doll and pressed it into my hand even as his eyes shut. 'Happy birthday my wee darling.'

I suppose that's something to be glad for, at least he died with a smile on his face. I buried him near the ruins of his house. I wasn't in much of a rush so I looked around eventually found a cave nearby, littered with bones and reeking of troll. Most of the skeletons weren't human, the trolls must not have been there long enough to find the town but there were still enough human skeletons. I found one skull, impossibly small, clearly that of a child and had to leave that foul place to throw up.

Why them and not me?

I buried them all, they didn't deserve the deaths they had gotten. There are probably people out there who miss them and have no idea where to go looking for them. I wished I could have given those poor souls more than just an unmarked grave. I left a brass button from my coat there, to commemorate them. It's not enough but it was all I had.

I kept the doll with me. I don't know why, it was quite obviously meant for Lucy and maybe I'm stupid but I can't help but hope she escaped. It doesn't change the fact that if it wasn't her then there was still someone else that the trolls had killed. But if the fates would allow it I would wish for Lucy to be alive so that I can give her the doll and tell her of how brave her father was.

But after the trolls incident I rushed home. I had almost forgotten about Horner, made up excuses and justified it and flew on Myrtle's back to home, desperate to see the rolling hills, the green fields to sit in my armchair again. The stench of troll clung to my dreams turning them to nightmares and I just wanted to get away from it all, certain that nothing could be worse than what I'd seen at Trollshaws, nothing in the Shire could be more terrifying than that.

I was wrong.

In hindsight, I feel like an idiot. I literally just strolled into the Shire thinking everything would be fine, so focused on getting back to Bag-End and being able to breathe again. Instead I was met at the borders by Rovenoac Kelt, a former suitor of mine who had enlisted as a Bounder a few years past.

I'd been surprised back then that he was patrolling the borders. Rovenoac was a rather agreeable hobbit and very new to the ranks of Bounders. When I'd rejected his suit he'd been so awfully nice about it I'd almost taken it back, he had the ability to get anyone to agree with him and I thought he'd be better off at the marketplace, making sure no one was misbehaving. Now of course, I realise that he was probably deliberately stationed there to make me more malleable to what they wanted, expecting me to bolt at any second.

'Allo Belle!' He'd waved cheerfully and it was a huge relief to find myself in the Shire. I'd been having nightmares of trolls for the past weeks of travel, ever since I'd first come across them.

'Roven, thank Eru, I'm so glad to be home.'

'Well before you go home, I'm supposed to take you to Tuckborough, the Thain wants to see you.'

Like a lamb to the slaughter I went. Grandfather looked paler than he usually did and he seemed to have developed a few habits as well. He rubbed his fingers together every few seconds and every time he did so, he scowled. I wondered if perhaps his health had deteriorated further but by the sprightly way he paced the room that seemed unlikely.

'So you are back at last. Tell me Belle, why do you insist on leaving the Shire?' There was a lisp to his voice as if he was trying hard not to hiss the words at me.

'I was worried. I found Old Man Horner's body and it scared me.'

'Scared you? Why? He has been duly punished for his lapse, there is no reason to fear him any longer.'

'It isn't him I was afraid of. To punish him with death for something he could barely have prevented-'

'Could barely have prevented?! Bardos dead, my great grandson, your nephew and you say he didn't deserve it?!'

'A life for a life does not seem right.'

'Right? IT is fair.'

'I don't agree.'

He opened his mouth to say something but stopped looking at someone behind me. I turned as well to see two Bounders and Lobelia there. 'I hoped you would understand but it seems Lobelia was right. You are far too wilful for your own good, you must be broken.' He wasn't my grandfather, he was only the Thain. I realised that when the Bounders took a hold of my arms on either side and frog marched me, struggling and kicking to the Sackville-Baggins home. They led me around the back to where the cellar and I was thrown in there and the doors shut.

I was never really afraid of the dark. Other fauntlings were but I wasn't. If I lost my way there were fireflies to guide me, I knew the ground under my feet well enough to never get lost and under the cover of dark, while I was blind I was content in knowing that others were blind to me.

That changed after my punishment. I had never experienced the dark as I did in the cellar. Silent, completely silent but only for the first few hours. Then my hearing adjusted to the dark. I started hearing things then but they were not pleasant noises. Squeaks and scurrying feet, shifting soil and sudden creaks in the wood planks. I was all but buried alive.

I grew afraid of my own voice. I remember digging my hands into my own flesh as skittering sounds echoed in the hollow space, only a mole digging above my head, I know this now but then...then it was anything and everything,

I don't know how long I was there. Time has no meaning in the dark, no sun to tell me if it was another day, no moon sparing me a few slivers of light, nothing. Lobelia came to me on occasion bringing me some bread and a mug of water. I attacked her the first time round, desperate to escape but she had anticipated that and brought some bounders there to make sure I couldn't leave. Eventually I learnt to just stay in the corner and wait for her to leave the meagre rations on the steps and leave. I tried to use the mug and plate to break the wood of the planks away and dig an escape but I was too loud and they found me. After that I was only allowed cutlery there when someone watched and left alone again in the dark.

'It's for your own good.' She'd say and pat me on the cheek like I was some wayward child. It didn't stop me from trying though, I tried to scrape the wood apart with my hands only to injure myself. My nails broke off my hand, leaving a bloody gory mess that I couldn't even see. I could feel the wetness of the blood which soon dried into a sticky flaking paste on my hands. They stopped me then as well, simply tying me to a chair and then I learnt. I behaved. And four months after I was finally allowed out of there. I thought I was free but while the medic fixed me up, they slapped the cuff on my leg then and I finally realised what they wanted.

They wanted me to be a good, obedient, proper little hobbit that stayed away from Outsiders and didn't run off on adventures. They wanted me to be just like them only I can't. I can't help who I am, I can't control myself from asking questions and that is simply not allowed. Not anymore.

So I pretend to fit in now. I know they don't entirely believe it but then again they have other worries. Every winter since has gone on for so long, some of the crops failed. We still have enough for us all but it spreads a gloom on everything. The trees don't grow back their leaves at all, instead they remain bare and those that do sport leaves are yellow and seem to be dying, the smell of rot filling the air. In the summer the smell becomes unbearable especially when the stench of decay combines with the sickly sweet of the overripe fruit.

That is our reality now. Where once we lived in peace and plenty, now we must limit ourselves. Gone are the days of yesterday, it seems that the generations to come will think of the seven meals a day as pure myth, the land is unable to support such excess. Perhaps we will simply waste away into nothingness. Perhaps this will be read by people long after I am dead and they wonder what sort of creatures lived in such tunnelled tiny homes.

If so, allow me to introduce myself. I am Belle, an adventurer and elf friend, Halbytla and Perrian, I am the daughter of a remarkable Took and a respectable Baggins.

And I am alone.

A/N: Sorry for not updating but I HAVE EXAMS COMING UP AND I AM FREAKING OUT! There's still a few months left but that isn't a lot of time and there's so much to do! I won't be able to reply to all the seriously lovely and awesome and bloody inspiring reviews you guys all leave, I am so sorry for that but I haven't had any time.