- Lobelia Sackville-Baggins
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Frodo stood at the window of the nursery, eyes melted closed
against the morning sun, and for once the shadows under his eyes looked to be
no more than the shadow of his lashes on his cheeks. The soft bundle of blankets wrapped carefully, lovingly, in his
arms cooed contentedly and reached up a small chubby hand to pat at his cheek,
and the sunlight touched a small smile underneath that hand. Sam had forgotten when he'd last heard Frodo
sing; his voice was quiet, lovely, a cloud-soft tenor that slurred the slow
Elvish into the voice of a running brook, that wrapped the alien melody into a
homely lullaby fit to soothe any hobbit-bairn in the Shire. There was a shaft of gold slanting between
Frodo and the doorway, dividing him from Sam, and it looked to Sam's eyes as if
it were shining through water. He set
his hand against the doorjamb and thought, as slowly as if he were drifting in
deep water himself: I'm losing him.
For long minutes he only stood and watched; and if time passed, he did not feel it, knowing only the sunlight on the flagstones and Frodo singing to little Elanor. I feel torn in two, he remembered saying, and for a while he had been able to fool himself into believing that the tear could be mended. He had thought that he, whose hands were deft enough to coax life from the most arid soil, could hold Frodo in one hand and Rose and Elanor in the other, could keep them close and living and whole. Now suddenly he saw clearly, and saw that the few feet between him and his master contained all of the sundering Seas within it. Broad enough already, this distance needed no more water added to it, but he tasted salt tears on his mouth anyway. Frodo sang, barely louder than a whisper; and Sam would have torn his own heart out of his chest to buy time for that fragile peace in his master's face, to lift him out of that water as, in another lifetime entirely, Frodo had once lifted Sam himself. How can he have gone so fast where I can't reach, how can he have drifted away without a sound? Sam would have closed his eyes if he could. Instead he thought: Oh, let me reach him. Please, let me have one more chance. Motes danced in the sunlight, borne in through the open window; and the slightest of breezes lifted dark tendrils of hair from Frodo's forehead, dark as seaweed tossed on the waves.
 
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