West of the Moon
A Tolkien Fanfiction Archive
Psychopomp
SR 1482 midsummer to September 22. Sam POV.
Author: Angharad
Rating: G
Long years of sunlight and long years of soil under his hands. Long years since he'd come back again from where the ships sailed away at the western edge of an ending that never quite made sense. Long years: that had passed like sunlight in the garden on the Hill and like moonlight on the Water; and passed like the smell of pipeweed on an autumn and a memory of long ago.
Sixty and more good years. And no more to ask of his life but to wait a little while here in the kind green land that had given him everything and know his rest had been well-earned.
It was only a few days later when Sam sat in the study again with his hand on the book that he let himself wonder: Not yet . . . Your time may come . . . gentle then and gentle now in his mind. But that was not to be thought on and he went outside to watch the sunset; and that westward dying of the day was not to be thought on either - so he walked down the Row a little way and breathed in the slow scent of summer with his eyes closed.
And walked back in the close dark and knew that Eleanor was waiting for him and knew when he'd put his hand to the time-polished brass knob on the round green door that she was in the quiet there, somewhere, saying nothing. So he set the kettle on the range and sat at the kitchen table and found himself tracing patterns and his fingers ached and pouring hot water into a small blue teapot that had a discoloured chip in the spout.
He must have fallen asleep at the table but he couldn't be sure because it seemed that he looked up from one moment to the next and Mister Frodo was sitting across from him and watching him carefully with a smile and his dark curls framing his face just as they used to do.
"Will you share a cup with me, Sam?" The same smile, the same half-shy glance and the same shift and gesture towards his empty cup with the interlaced leaves painted around the rim.
He poured more tea and they didn't talk.
* * *
Elanor never fussed to find him sitting in the kitchen every morning and the blue teapot cold in front of him. She set about her day as she always did with a kiss on his cheek before the others spilled into the room and sat around him and the babes climbed into his lap. His children, his grandchildren, his great grandchildren about him as they should be. All was as it should be and he sat on the stone step and smoked his pipe and watched the light through the leaves and sat in the study and chuckled at the way he still held the quill in a clumsy grip like the lad he'd been at Mister Bilbo's knee trying to learn his letters and shape them just so.
And when the smial was all shadowed and quiet he'd drink his tea and wait until he looked up into blue eyes watching his face and waiting back. And asking "will you share a cup with me, Sam?" and waiting again until he lifted the small blue teapot with its chipped spout; and smiling at him like a memory.
Then a hand touching his across the table as if to ask something more but they didn't talk and Sam didn't wonder at it anymore.
And every morning Elanor set two cups on the sink for washing and looked at the leaf pattern on them and kissed her old dad on his wrinkled cheek and went about her day.
* * *
He walked into Hobbiton most days, as the summer simmered and turned to its ending, and all the way into Bywater every other week to sit at the corner table in The Green Dragon and listen to the gossip and nod wisely and offer advice and smile into his ale and think that he might be content and watch the busy passing everyday. And walk home with a weight of years on him until a quiet sweet breath in his ear and an arm under his as though to help him on his way.
Eleanor waiting to hear him through the green door and the kettle on the range and two cups and a blue teapot on the scrubbed wooden table and waiting.
"Are we going to talk, Sam?"
"I don't think so, Mister Frodo. It's been too long."
"Will you share a cup of tea then?"
"Aye, Mister Frodo."
Then warm hands in his and memory.
* * *
The rain was lashing across the Hill and he sat in his study with the quill bending under his hand: in his study and its small window facing west; in Frodo's study - and he wouldn't think too much about that - in Mister Bilbo's study where the scrolls and books and ink-smell darkened around him.
"Are you ready to talk, Sam?" Warm hand on his shoulder and oatmeal soap and faint tang of familiar sweat in his nostrils so that he sighed and wanted . . .
"I can listen . . . I can listen, me dear . . ."
* * *
He could feel the pony restless at his side and the weight of the book in his hands. She waited and said nothing.
"I want you to have this."
Gathered the book to her and said nothing.
The pony snorted in the grey mizzle and shifted so that he had to shift too and the morning about them and the Hill behind him and the Water shrouded down aways and the road stretching out although he couldn't see it.
"Goodbye, my dear child."
Her warmth in his arms and the book awkward between them and her lips on his cheek, "dear child of mine . . ."
"I'll keep it safe, Dad . . . always. Goodbye."
And he wouldn't look back.
And as he led the pony down the track there was an arm tucking into his and a warmth leaning against him.
"Your time, Sam."
"Aye, Mister Frodo."
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