Water lapped around the ankles of Drogo and Primula as they walked hand-in-hand along the edge of the Brandywine River. A bit ahead of them, their seven-year-old son stooped down to pick up anything and everything he found interesting. Sometimes he ran back to show his parents a particularly pretty stone or other prize he had found. “Maybe a dragon dropped this one, Mama,” Frodo said about a polished green one that seemed to shine in the sunlight as though lit by a fire within. “Uncle Bilbo told me about the dragon he saw and all the jools he had.” 

Primula smiled at her lad. “Maybe you’re right, my dearling.”

The child put it carefully in the pocket of his breeches. “Maybe when Uncle takes me on one of his Adventures I will see a dragon and then I can ask him if he dropped it. Uncle talked to his dragon, you know.”

“Of course he did,” Drogo said. “It is very considerate of you, my lad, to be concerned whether it was lost or not. I’m sure the dragon would appreciate your thinking of him.”

Frodo smiled and continued his treasure hunt. Some things he just picked up and then discarded. One thing he kept was a stout branch just large enough for him to pretend it was a walking stick just like his da had. He held onto it as he walked along the side of the river with the water tickling his toes. As any lad liked to do, he enjoyed squishing the mud between his toes. One time he stopped for a long time and picked up a very lovely white shell that was so big he couldn’t even wrap his whole hand around it. It intrigued him more than anything. He didn’t think any dragon had dropped that for it seemed too fragile for such. He shook it a little, looking at how curled in on itself it was and wondered if there was anything inside. He held it up to his eye but couldn’t see anything. He shook it once more but nothing came out. His eyes widened as he held it up to his ear.

“Mama! Papa!” he cried, as he ran up to them. “Listen!”

Frodo held up his prize to his mum first. Primula obligingly held it against her ear and smiled and then Drogo did as well. “That’s the Sea, my lad,” he said.

“How can the Sea be in there?” his son asked. “I shook it, and no water came out. And isn’t the Sea too big for it?”

“Only the sound is in there, love.”

“Do you think the Elves made it? It sounds like something they would do.”

Drogo looked down and smiled at his lovely, inquisitive child and wondered again whether there was an Elvish strain in his lad as Bilbo seemed to think there was. “Not true Elvish blood, mind you,” the elder hobbit had said once, “Frodo is a hobbit through and through, but it is not their blood that makes the Elves shine, and I have never seen that light in a hobbit before. Something else is lighting him up within just like them. I don’t think we know just how special our lad is. It will be a joy, will it not, to discover that each day?”

And so it was, for all three of them.

“I don’t know, my Frodo,” Drogo replied, drawing his mind back to the present. “Your Uncle would know more about that than I would.”

“I’ll have to remember to ask him when he comes next for our birthday. I can’t wait!”

Frodo spent the rest of the day carefully tending to his prize and listening to it. It seemed to his parents that the light they had always seen in him grew a bit brighter as he hearkened to its melody. They listened to his sweet voice softly raised in song that they could not understand, but Bilbo had told them was in the Elvish tongue called Quenya. He didn’t look at anything else that day and when they got home, he placed his treasure on the table in his bedroom, next to his bed and beloved books, writing slate and drawing sticks. The small green stone he placed there also to make sure he would remember to tell his uncle about it.

* * *

Years later, it was one of the few treasures Frodo took with him to Brandy Hall after his parents’ deaths. Years after that, he showed it to his Merry, who listened to it in wide-eyed delight, and later to Pippin. After he moved to Bag End, he carried it in his hand the whole time for fear the bumpy cart ride would damage it. It was the first treasure he showed to Sam, who listened to it with awe.

“How can you hear the Sea if no water is in there?” his cousins and Sam all asked him, each in their turn.

“I don’t know." 

Sam was the only one Frodo told that he thought mayhap the Elves had made it, after he learned that his friend shared his love for the fair folk.

The child’s eyes opened wide. “Truly, Mr. Frodo?”

“Well, I’m not entirely sure,” Frodo conceded. “I asked Uncle Bilbo, but he didn’t know either. Still I think it has to be magic to hear something and not have it there at the same time, and the Elves are the only ones that can do magic that I know of.”

Once Sam heard his friend and future master say that, he held up the shell and listened once more, with even greater awe. Hearts that were already growing strongly entwined around each other found a new bond to share.

“I’ve dreamt a lot of the Sea, Sam,” Frodo confided at one time. “My ma told me I was born during a terrible storm, and so I’ve heard water all my life. I’d like to see it one day. Would you like to, Sam?”

“Not specially, but then if you went without me, I wouldn’t like that neither.”

Frodo smiled and touched his friend’s shoulder. “I don’t think I would like it either, my Sam. Or to go without Merry or Pippin. Merry can swim just as well as I can, and Pippin will be learning soon I’m sure. I could teach you if you’d like.”

“I don’t think my Gaffer would hold to that. He sees no purpose in learning anything you can’t use, and he don’t see no use for swimming. It’s only because Mr. Bilbo was his master that he allowed me to learn my letters, and he don’t see use for them neither.”

“Well, then, my Sam,” Frodo said with a mischievous glint in his eye, “I suppose you could say, if you really wanted to learn, that Bilbo suggested that too.”

Sam looked uncomfortable. “I don’t think so, Mr. Frodo. I know you’ve been around it forever and can swim and all that, but I don’t think I’d like to get my feet wet in more than a puddle or bath. But if you went, I’d go. I’d follow you anywhere.”

Frodo smiled and hugged his friend and felt the tight return embrace. “I know, Sam. Thank you.”

* * *

After Frodo and Sam returned from the Quest, and the pain and the memories grew too much, Frodo lay at times on his bed and listened to the sound of the sea. It drowned out the lingering voice of the Ring and the longing for it. The shell had lain forgotten in a drawer for many years, but the troubled hobbit found its rhythm soothed him when nothing else could. During these times that he thought of the offer that Arwen had made to him. He realized with fresh potency that he had heard the Sea, and he was meant to go there. He listened for hours to that shell. At times Sam would come and check on him and find him asleep with the shell still pressed to his ear. Sam wanted to believe that the moisture on his master's cheeks was the water finally leaking out, but he knew it was not.

* * *

After Sam returned from the Havens, he found the shell on the nightstand in Frodo’s bedroom with a short note written in that beloved hand. Listen to the Sea, my Sam, my Merry, my Pippin, and may it bring you peace as it brought me. I will listen where I will be going and hear the same thing you are now. We won’t truly be apart. For if we can hear the Sea without seeing the water, we can hear and see each other without the sight of our eyes.

 
In their turn, the three hobbits listened often to ease their grief, and at times they fell asleep to the sound of the Sea.