Title: Confections
Fandom: The Hobbit
Rating: General
Length: 310
Content Notes: Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Bilbo Stays in Erebor
No warnings apply
Summary: Feast or afternoon snack, food is a Hobbit’s language of love.



Bilbo scrapes the knife against the surface of bread just so to get an even finish. Nothing like the heapings of jam he used to have in Bag End, but Erebors stores are not yet supplied to the point where such excess is feasible. Still, jam is jam, and he intends to enjoy it now that he has it. Bilbo has been without descent eating for so long, he can’t help but indulge.

“-and of course the Hillbrooke’s apple preserve is always worth having at least a jar of, but it doesn’t quite count as jam, which I pointed out to Hilda when my blackberry won the prize –"

Bilbo pulls away from the finished piece with a practiced twist of his knife, and the excess is applied to another slice without a drop of waste.

Around the long kitchen table and by counters and in the door way, the rest of the Company settle back and relax to sound of their Hobbit nattering on about varieties of fruit. Dwalin perks up when his talk turns to what might be encouraged to grow on Erebor’s slopes, now that sprouting mosses have shown the Desolation’s abatement, but it is their Master Burglar that carries conversation onwards.

Bilbo does so want to put together a proper feast for the Company. Especially when they’re complimenting his purloined dinner (and prying after family recipes, in Dwalins’ case.)

Imagine! Thinking a simple gentlehobbit’s dinner – and a small pie set aside for a light first breakfast - merited being called a feast. No, that is a state of affairs he cannot continue to let stand.

But that is for the future, when he has the means to do it justice. In the meanwhile he cleans the last smattering of jam from his knife onto the edge of the crust and sets about enjoying his afternoon snack.