Chapter Text
All of Arda is home to quite a few races: Men, Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits and even others that are for the most part forgotten.
And all of these races vary greatly: in height, in language, in culture, in traditions…
In certain aspects, a few of them overlap. In others, neither do. Yet there is at least one trait which they all have in common – none of them are ever born with their soul complete; all are born with only a part of it.
Most are born with half of a soul, some with less than that, meant to find their happiness with more than one person, though those are few and far between.
However it may be, there is always at least one other being that is meant for each member of each race. The one or more Soulmates with whom the fraction of a soul an individual holds shall form a perfect whole.
Each race calls their destined one (or ones) differently. They have different ways to find the other part of their soul also.
Those who belong to the race of Men feel a want to move, an insistent tug of an invisible string which is connecting them and shall lead them to their Mate if they follow it.
Elves hear the voice of their Chosen in their dreams. Whispering, laughing, singing… In the long lives Elves live, they are often able to recognise their Chosen from as little as a gasp when they finally encounter them.
Dwarves, being the race of crafters, once in a lifetime feel an insistent need to create a gift for the One meant for them. Something which represents the personality or craft of their One. It does not matter if a Dwarf or a Dwarrowdam is a silversmith, blacksmith or a miner. If their One calls a different craft their own, then once the Call comes, each member of the Khazâd will, in a trance-like state, create an item which represents their One. This creation might bear the One’s name, or it might be something specific to the One's craft. Either way, whether it is at first glance or through eventual knowledge, there shall be no mistake in who is meant to own this item.
Hobbits have the easiest way to find the other part of their soul, usually, as the little folk are born with the name of their Heart written on their skin. One might even mistake such marks for tattoos, which other races favour being inked into their skin.
However, as it stands, such a mark could turn into more of a problem than the way of the other races, because by the Hobbit standards, you could only show your Heartmark to your closest family, or the one the Heartmark speaks of. Heartmarks are, as a general rule, not even spoken about much outside of the family circle.
The thing is that, despite Heartmark being a Heartmark, the area where the mark can appear varies greatly.
Some Hobbits have the name of their Heart written on their arm and take to covering it with sleeves when in public to guard the name on their skin from the prying eyes of gossipers.
Others have the name written on their necks and take to wearing high collars or scarves.
The lucky ones have the name written on their chests, bellies or ribcages, and their everyday clothes are enough to hide their mark.
The unlucky few are the Hobbits, such as Bilbo Baggins, who have their mark written on their backs. It is easy to hide such a mark, yes. However, in Bilbo’s case, the name of his Heart was inked down his spine, a place which he was not able to reach with his own eyes, however much he wanted to and even with all his determination to do so as a faunt.
And therein lay the core of the problem.
When Bilbo Baggins was born, there was a big commotion across the Shire.
After all, he was the much-awaited child of the Master of Bag End, Bungo Baggins and his once-wayward wife, the “Disturber of peace”, Belladonna Baggins, born Took.
Everyone was expecting what a child of such an unlikely couple would be like. They will be unusual, surely.
The gossipers would delight in the knowledge that they might have been a tiny bit right.
Little Bilbo seemed a perfectly ordinary fauntling at first.
Ten little fingers. Ten tiny toes. A healthy set of lungs that he put to use as soon as he had the chance.
And yet there truly was something unusual about him.
His Heartmark.
The place was not that weird a placement for the mark, no. Bungo himself had his wife’s name written across the back of his ribcage in her curvy script.
It was the fact that neither of the parents could read the name of the one meant to complete their little son’s soul.
Because, as luck would have it, the Heartmark on Bilbo’s spine was not written in the Hobbit language or even in Westron.
It was written in runes.
“What are we going to do?” Belladonna asked tiredly, looking at her husband, their newborn son sleeping in her arms.
“I don’t know,” Bungo admitted sadly, rubbing her wife’s shoulder, where he knew his name was written. “What language is this even?”
“Runes. Dwarves use such runes, I think. I am not sure. I can't think clearly now.” Belladonna sighed. “We could write them down. Ask someone, anyone, but…”
Bungo did not need her to continue. He knew what she was going to say anyway.
That they could not, in fact, write the name down without it backfiring on their little son horribly.
It was said that bad luck falls on a child whose Heartmark is written down for others to see. It was all but prohibited.
Being the son of his parents was going to be enough of a problem for Bilbo later on in his life.
Never mind if a word spread that not only was Belladonna going around with a Heartmark of her son written down… There was no saying what the Shirefolk would do if they got to know that little Bilbo’s Heart was as likely as anything a Dwarf.
An occurrence none of the living remembered and none of the chronicles spoke about.
“He’s too small to worry about that for the time being anyway. Let’s not worry about the future now.” Bungo said in the end. “You should be resting, my love.”
And being as tired as she was, Bellladonna agreed.
Whatever the Baggins couple could have planned, the matter of Bilbo’s Heartmark had never been never settled.
Belladonna and Bungo could not tell their son what the runes on his spine meant, and Bilbo could never see them for himself. And however important the issue of finding his Heart could be for him, little Bilbo did not press it.
He knew that, as likely as anything, his parents would get around to explaining why they never spoke about it. Until then, the question of what the problem was with his Heartmark would have to wait.
Bungo and Belladonna would have told him.
Later.
Once they thought him old enough to truly understand just how grave a misfortune his Heartmark could be to him.
But then the Fell Winter came.
Bilbo was just a tween when the winter caught the rolling green hills the Shire consists of in its clutches, refusing to give way to spring.
There was not enough food to last through a winter that long, especially as the only trading roads, the means of getting more food from the outside, were buried under the snow, just like Shire itself was.
As if that was not enough, Brandywine River froze over and wolves attacked the Shire.
The peaceful folk were not equipped to deal with such a threat.
Despite the help that came in the form of Gandalf and the Rangers of the North, many died during that winter, and many more were hurt or otherwise marked by the long months of suffering.
Bungo Baggins was one of those.
Weakened by the cold, the Master of the Bag End fell gravely ill and however much he tried to hold on for the sake of his family, it was simply not enough. Bungo Baggins returned to Yavanna's Gardens a few months after the Winter had passed, and with him went the happy times in Bag End.
Belladonna became just a shadow of the woman she had been, her grief weighing heavily on her. She lasted way too long for someone whose Heart died. Those who were not otherwise tied to this world did not last a day even.
Belladonna held on for her son’s sake… but in the end, she too could not go on any longer. Not when there was no Bungo next to her.
She followed her Heart in death in less than a year.
And Bilbo stayed alone.
At first pushed from one relative to another as a hot potato, then left to manage on his own once his Coming of age came… It was no wonder Bilbo forgot that there was some happiness meant for him in this world.
In time, he forgot his father’s voice. Even the hums of approval he proudly received whenever he did something right.
He forgot the sound of his mother’s voice. The beloved voice which scolded him for his dirty clothes, but asked him about his little adventure later in the day.
Bilbo in time forgot the feeling of his parents’ fingers tracing the shape of the runes on his back.
For the sake of his sanity, he forgot about them as a whole.
Yet not everything is meant to last forever, and the long forgotten memories might yet be brought onto the surface; they might just need a bit of a push...
"Good Morning!"
A truly tiny one.