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It was a month into their journey and Bilbo was still as much an outsider as he had been on the first day. He may even have been more of an outsider, since although a few of the dwarves seemed interested enough in learning about their burglar that first week, their interest had sharply tapered off when they discovered he had no opinion to speak of when it came to gemstones and the most advantageous heat at which to work silver and gold. Nor did he have an interest in discussing which of their companions would win in a burping contest after the consumption of various foods, or in placing a bet on how long it would take Oin to realize Kìli had swapped his metal hearing trumpet with a wooden door stop he had picked up in Bree.
After the first couple interactions such as this, the dwarves seemed to decide that their hobbit did not have anything worthwhile or interesting to say after all, and so began to exclude him from their conversations. This at first bothered Bilbo a great deal - sometimes they would even pretend they couldn't hear him if he tried to join in on a topic he in fact did have some knowledge on, and the nerve of these dwarves, to pretend he was mute and not just an inept burglar! It was the very height of rudeness - but, over time, he resigned himself to it. If they were determined to shut him out of their company, he would do his best to shut them out of his thoughts as well.
Thus, Bilbo ended up with a great deal of time to devote to writing as they rode. He composed stories of heroic deeds, poems in elvish on the myriad glories of cheese, and rather silly and occasionally tawldry drinking songs. Most of these he forgot soon after he finished them, but a rare few he considered to be very good indeed, and these he took special care to remember and wrote down in his notebook when they stopped for the night.
Bilbo knew he may not have the opportunity to replace his book for a long time, and was always careful to not waste a page, writing every entry immediately following the next. The singular exception to this rule was a short, catchy song he had made up the night they stopped in Bree. It had been a brief few hours filled with song and ale and the knowledge that they would have neither for many weeks after, and although the dwarves never called on Bilbo to give them a song as his fellow hobbits often did when he stopped by the Green Dragon, he found himself thinking of one anyway. In the morning, having not had a use for it after all, he had fully planned to forget it.
Only, over the next several days, he found he could not. It lingered in his head, repeating over and over, and he found himself quietly humming it as he rode until Thorin yelled for him to "stop that noise, I thought you were a halfling, not a bee!" Slightly chastised and a great deal more offended, Bilbo resolved to finish the song and write it in his notebook that very night. It was hardly the buzzing of a bee, no matter what the ignorant ears of a dwarf king might think! (Nevermind that ears were ears and could not think at all.)
Bilbo could not, however, quite justify adding a drinking song immediately after the longest epic he had ever written in his notebook, and so he broke his rule and placed it in the middle of the pages.
He felt terribly guilty as he did it, and it was only his ire at Thorin's slight that convinced him to put it down at all after he realized his options. Soon enough, however, he was glad he had done so.
A week after the company of Thorin Oakenshield left Bree behind, Bilbo was carefully taking his pack down from Myrtle's back when his notebook fell out. An involuntary gasp of distress escaped him when he saw how close it had come to landing in a patch of mud, and he immediately reached down to retrieve it. Bofur was closer, however, and had turned to look upon hearing Bilbo's gasp. "Oh, here ya go," the dwarf said cheerfully, picking it up for him and moving to return it to its owner, only to freeze with his arm half-outstretched. "Wait, what's this?"
The book had fallen open to expose the drinking song in all its whimsy and ridiculous lyrics:
"There is an inn, a merry old inn
beneath an old grey hill,
And there they brew a beer so brown
That the Man in the Moon himself came down
One night to drink his fill. . . "
Bilbo froze as well, expecting Bofur to mock him for it. He seemed a nice enough dwarf, and not one inclined to cruel words, but he had also not shown any greater tolerance for the hobbit than the others. "This is wonderful!" The dwarf said with a chuckle, and Bilbo felt himself freeze again for an entirely different reason. "Did you write this yourself?"
"O-oh, yes. . ." He managed, one hand fluttering up halfway towards his notebook and then stuttering down again.
Bofur had not missed the motion, and held the book out again with a smile. "Don't suppose ya'd be willing to teach it to me sometime?"
"Oh?" Bilbo gratefully took his book back and blinked confusedly at the dwarf for a moment. "Oh. . . well, yes, of course, I'd be delighted to, Master Bofur."
"Thank ye! And it's just 'Bofur,' mind, can't have my friends calling me any 'Master' nonsense." He winked.
"T-thank you, then, Bofur, for retrieving my book." Bilbo smiled back a bit hesitantly. Perhaps the dwarves were willing to entertain a hobbit's ideas, after all, he thought. It was just a matter of finding the right one to start with. (Now if only he could shake the odd feeling of gratitude he had towards a certain surly dwarf king for forcing him to write down the song. . . ah, well, perhaps teaching his "bee noises" to the rest of the company would be a good way to pay him back.)