"I heard it in my dreams, you know, all those long years," Sam says quietly. Chill water washes over his feet, breaking in a gentle crest of white froth against the rock on which he sits. There is something golden in the sands, as if a vein of fool's-gold had been shattered into specks by the passage of millennia; and when the water flows back outward, the sunlight catches from a thousand glittering golden particles suspended in clarity. The fingers running gently through his hair do not pause in their slow, comforting movement. "Were you happy, meleth?" Sam considers the question. "Aye," he says finally. "It was a good life, Rosie and the bairns and all. But there was always as much of me here as there was there. There was a bird's nest right outside the bedroom window, set in all that thick ivy, and sometimes when I first woke I thought I could hear gulls crying." He stretches out his hands, looking thoughtfully at them. He remembers standing at the prow of the ship and stretching out his hand toward the veil of rain; watching it pass through, smoothed and distorted into the sunlight on the other side, feeling the distortion wash through him as the ship passed into elsewhere. So much cleaned away in that passage, and he feels as young as the first light of the world. "And you? Were you happy?" Frodo settles his head against Sam's. "I think so," he says thoughtfully. "After a time. I think it must have been years before I felt really well, but it didn't feel like years. Do you remember Lothlorien?" Sam turns his head to kiss the hand that has come to rest on his shoulder, his mouth passing lightly over the space where a finger ought to be. For a moment he feels, oddly enough, as though he himself is possessed of an awkwardly excessive number of fingers; nine seems so clearly to be the natural order of things. "I remember," he says quietly. "I've learned so much since I've been here, spent so many nights talking to Elrond or Gandalf or Galadriel – she says Legolas will come, you know, and Gimli with him. But every morning I watched the sun rise from that promontory over there. I watched the first light of dawn turn the water golden." "You watched for a sail," Sam whispers. "I watched for you." Frodo's mouth is warm and soft against the curve of Sam's neck. "For an old flame to grow bright again." Sam's eyes close. "I kept you waiting so long –" "Only for a day, meleth. Only a day."     Back to the fanfics page Back to the home page