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As all things come to an end, even this story, a day came at last when they were in sight of the country where Bilbo had been born and bred, where the shapes of the land and of the trees were as well known to him as his hands and toes.

Arriving home had the feeling of a great big sigh, the kind you heave when you're snuggled up to someone you love under a blanket on a lazy fall evening, with a pot of cider on the stove and a fire dancing in the fireplace. You know the kind.

My parents and I drove to Cornwall to visit my grandmother who turned 91 yesterday. We zoomed along the 401 on a route I'd taken so many times, it really did feel like I knew it as well as my hands and toes. The great, overflowing forests of southern Ontario listed and leaned as we passed, and I smiled quietly at them from the back seat of the car. Europe is wonderful, there's no denying it, I thought. But Canada... Canada is pretty great too.

I know my travel goggles will eventually fall off, but they are still strapped tightly to my head for now, and I plan on enjoying every second of it. I love everything from my weak Tim Hortons coffee to the lilac growing on the side of the highway to the sprawling concrete of every city and town. Even when the goggles do fall off, I'm sure I'll be able to stow them away somewhere safe and take them out from time to time.

Something has happened to me since coming home. I noticed it sometime over dinner on my first night back, chatting and laughing with my parents and sister on the patio. It's a feeling, a feeling that started in the back of my head and flowed down my spine, filled up my chest and ran along my veins to my fingers and spread down to my toes. It feels like a secret, but a good one, a happy one that you're bursting to tell everyone, but you know that you can't, so you just keep it to yourself. It's on the tip of your tongue, it's playing at the corners of your lips, but it's a secret, so it stays where it is, nestled calmly and quietly somewhere behind the light in your eye, or the smile on your face.

The End