FIC: RISING

This is a short fic - just fragments of thoughts and memories that mighthave passed through Sam's mind during his first night on Tol Eressea. It'sa Sam pov - something I've wanted to try for a while. It's a little bit....experimental. I hope it's not too stuck inairee fairee land and has some truth about it.:O
TITLE: Rising
AUTHOR: Igraine
PAIRING: F/S
RATING: PG-13 (Yes, I've restrained myself - would you believe it? ;))
SUMMARY: Sam is re-united with Frodo on Tol Eressea, but to able to accept the present, he must first let go of the past.
DISCLAIMER: These characters belong to JRR Tolkien. I borrow them with affection and promise to return them unharmed. I make no money.


RISING

When I hold him, it feels like I am cradling cloud. He is weightless in my arms, as if he has grown insubstantial over the long years when for me; he was nowt but the remembrance of a dream. It is as if he has been absorbed by the dream and is moving in a different stream of air. He’s shifting in my arms and he rests cool lips against my throat - I touch him gently as if a strong touch will bruise his satin skin. His lips are glass, his hands feathers, his hair is made of rain cloud. He is a thing of the air and the sea – it moves him in strange rhythms and I try to meet them, but I’m so clumsy and heavy in this place where everything seems made of light and airless beauty. My feet sink into the earth here, my steps are slow, and above, my head spins with disbelief as I hold his hand, openly, ‘neath the sun.
Struggling to catch him in my arms as he weaves in and out of my arms is like fishing without a rod and a reel, stooping in the river, grappling and chasing as the silvery darts chase through my fingers. He laughs and it reminds me of the porpoises in the blue sea that popped their heads out of the water to greet me when I sailed in. He dives his head down below the sheets and I just lie there, spread-eagled, bewildered, consumed by a fathomless joy.
"Are you happy?" he asks me, again and again. I nod and smile but I find it hard to speak. He rends me dumb and the soft Sindarin he speaks slips from his tongue so sweetly he sometimes forgets to translate and I’ve grown accustomed to those gentle sounds, breaking slowly in my mind like the long waves on the shore.
When he sleeps at last, his body sheened and glistening in the moonlight, I return to Middle Earth and hide there, curled up in the grass as I did as a boy, listening for hares. The green earth holds me and I am cradled in the hollow of the dark, fertile earth, soil under my hands. It wants to hold me there – in memory and security and I’m frightened that if I fall asleep there - I will never be free.

*********************************************************************

"Are you happy?"
I look down at him; half-asleep in my arms, the light of an exhausted resignation in his half-closed eyes. He reaches up to touch my face and the sight of his maimed hand, makes me want to wail and curse, but he is so peaceful, I can’t bear to show my anger and my pain. I am glad that thing has gone – that monster. I touch his hand to my lips and when I pull it away, I see that it is wet with tears. The heat of the fire drives most thought from my head, but what is left, is still battling.
"It has gone," his voice is a cracked whisper. I shiver, despite the terrible heat, for I saw the shadow of fear that crossed his face. I saw it, even as he smiled and tried to be at peace. I saw that it would always leave a ghost of itself lodged where once it lay.
I trail my fingers over his breast, softly contoured with many years of swimming under the surf. He stretches out beneath me, unveiling his defiant beauty. His breathing is light and shallow. I lay my palm against the mark, where once the scar lay round as a brand. There is warmth there now and the reckless pulse of life. He marks where my hand lies and he turns his face to me.
"Do you doubt that I am healed?" he says, his eyes ennobled with a perilous beauty.
"Has it gone, then, all that emptiness – that loss?" I ask, my heart thundering.
He seeks my lips. "I have watched it walk away, day by day, changing and receding. Now it has sailed beyond my memory and is out of reach."
"And you’re not sad?" I ask, tentatively stroking his ears, with the lightest brush of my rough fingers.
"No, my Sam, I’m not sad anymore…"
My love swells. It is warm and struggling like an infant is when placed on it’s mother’s belly. Little, disbelieving cries shattering the shocked silence of the candlelit room. Rosie cried, she did, after every birthing and not for love alone. It was the loss, as well, that would come with it, sure as night follows day.
"You still have your little ones," I would say. "They are just changed that’s all, they’re still your babes."
Rosie would shake her head and call herself every foolish name under the sun, her hand stroking the soft, scarred skin of her belly, hopelessly, quiet unnamed tears falling down her cheeks.
"It’s alright – we can have another."
The smile that followed wavered across her face, hopeful and innocent. I would never deny her some more of that joy even though I knew that it came with the burden of sorrow.
I take Frodo in my arms and I hold him, tears starting to my eyes. The joy is mine and the pain and both binds us as sure as those babes were tangled up with the love of her.
The time we have seems endless and yet, it is not infinite.
"I know what you are thinking, Sam."
I start and sink down into the feather mattress, as if with the weight of shame. "You heard?"
"I’m sorry," he says, but he doesn’t look away, even as I draw my hands over my eyes.
"Nay, don’t you say it, please, it’s me, I’m a fool!" I groan out beneath the dark enclosing memories.
And I’m reminded once more of Rosie and her empty belly craving fulfilment. I could give her that joy over and over but there always followed a winter that no warmth could penetrate.
"Frodo – I’m sorry, I feel dirty, greedy. It’s enough, it’s enough that I have you, It’s just…I’ve been feeling so old and so empty for so many years."
"Don’t be sorry for it, Sam. It passes."
He lays his hands over mine and peels my fingers away one by one, kissing them and laying them over his heart. I feel the light pulsing under my hands, as if there is nothing between us but a thin veil of time.

*********************************************************************

The green grass shudders under my feet and the wind raises the hairs on the back of my neck. A lark soars higher and higher in the white sky until it is a single bright note against the scorching sun. Then I see it – the breathless magic of the hare leaping in the pasture. It frees me, breaking a cord that sends me reeling back into my lover’s arms.
He tastes of the sea. He tastes of joy.
I leap into reality as eager as the rainbow trout seeks the cool shadow of the stream as it evades the clutching hands. I break the water and I taste life under my tongue.
When I rise again, I am singing.
THE END