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The Letter  by Antane

Chapter Ten: Kindred Spirit

Breakfast was rather delayed that morning, but once everyone saw that the darkness had once more been beaten back, they tended to stomachs that were quite put out from being ignored and were now demanding attention.

Frodo accepted Sam’s hand in getting out of bed. Pippin and Merry gave their cousin a quick, tight hug and then left. The others smiled at him encouragingly, squeezed his shoulder or hand, and the beleaguered Ring-bearer smiled back, tremulously at first, but stronger with each new one he made.

Sam pulled out a shirt and breeches for his master to wear and then when Frodo was ready, the two looked at each other. The younger hobbit smiled and there was so much love and light there that the elder found the strength to push away the last of the cobwebs from his dream and smile in return. Sam held out his hand and Frodo took it and they left the room. They hadn’t needed to talk any further, for their hearts were laid bare to each other from the ordeal of the Quest and all that passed there was plain for the other to see. Sam felt his master’s fatigue, melancholy and worry that he would never heal, all that Frodo would have hid if he could. Frodo felt all of his beloved guardian’s love, strength, hope and light that Sam had always enclosed him with that was growing ever stronger.

Sam pulled out a chair and placed himself right next to his master. Rose brought them both a large bowl of porridge. The others were already seated with their own steaming bowls in front of them.

"I’m sorry," Frodo said. "I was so happy when you all came, but now I fear I’ve ruined it for you."

"We came to be with you, mellon nin," Aragorn said with a smile. "And that is not going to be ruined by anything."

Frodo tried to smile back, but the clouds had already descended back around him. The others looked at him, wanting to offer anything to help him, but not knowing exactly what to do. Sam squeezed his hand and Pippin laid his head against his cousin’s shoulder.

"What is it, Frodo?" Gandalf asked quietly.

The Ring-bearer stared long into his barely touched bowl, then got up abruptly. "I’m sorry," he said again and left the room.

Sam got half way out of his chair before Gandalf put a hand on his arm to stop him. Faramir slipped quietly after Frodo. The gardener’s eyes welled with tears, as did Merry and Pippin’s, as he sat heavily back down.

"What can we do, Mr. Gandalf?" Sam asked. "It was that wonderful that you all came and allowed Mr. Frodo to become a hobbit again for a little while, but he’s still so wounded and I don’t know what to do. I love him that much, we all do, and it’s just... It’s like that voice I heard in Mordor. It kept trying to cause me to despair and give it all up. I wonder if Mr. Frodo heard it too and is still hearing it."

His tears flowed freely now, but he tried to be quiet about them, for he didn’t want Frodo to hear. Rose took his hand and he squeezed it tightly. Arwen rose and brought him a mug of chamomile tea for which the gardener murmured soft thanks. The queen touched his free hand and the gardener looked up into eyes soft with love and sympathy.

"I know a little of how you feel, Panthael, because I felt it when my mother was badly hurt. Father was able to heal her physical wounds, but we could all see she was bleeding from her fea and nothing we did was able to stop it. I looked in her eyes and I saw something similar to what you see every time you look into Iorhael’s: tremendous love for me and this horrible pain that screamed to my heart to solace and healing. I could only hold her against me while she cried and the screaming went on and on. I could not hold my ears against it for it was not coming from her lips. And I did not want to block it out, though it broke my heart and she would be holding me then as I wept, as much as I held her. My brothers and Father did the same, but we felt so helpless against the flood of torment that poured out of her. She was the one attacked but we were all broken."

"I’m that sorry, my Lady," Sam said, wrapping his fingers around hers in sympathy and not even thinking it was not his place to do so. "That does tell how it feels, all too true."

Arwen squeezed his hand. "I’m sorry that you have to face it also, and in a worse way, for the ones who hurt my mother were just hateful servants of the one who took your master."

"How is your mother now?" Sam asked.

The queen smiled. "She is better now, but it was a hard road for her, as it will be for Iorhael. But as she found solace and healing from those guardians set about her, so will he."

"What guardians are those?" Pippin asked as all four hobbits looked to their queen hopefully.

"The ones I spoke of," Aragorn said softly, "when I told Frodo he was not alone, when we were being hunted in the wilderness, before Weathertop. They are with him still."

"Then can they help?" Merry asked. "Who are they?"

"Yes, they will help," Gandalf said with a deep smile and such great assurance and faith that peace filled the hobbits’ hearts.

"Good," Sam sighed and took his first sip of the tea. "How long did it take your mother to heal, begging your pardon, and hers."

"Some years, for there was much damage. She had to return to the West for she could not find it here."

"Back where the Lady Galadriel is from and Mr. Glorfindel and all?" Sam asked.

Arwen nodded.

Sam sighed again. "I’m that glad that she be all right now. I’d miss him something fierce, but I wish Mr. Frodo could go there," he said with a wistful longing. "If anyone could heal my master, it would be the Elves. Don’t you miss your mum though?"

The hope and faith of the little gardener, so small in stature, so great in heart, touched the queen and she was moved to pray once more for Frodo’s solace and healing. She felt a surge of longing for her mother, gone these hundreds of years, but never from her heart. Aragorn felt it touch his own heart and he knew his beloved wished for a moment that she could go West and see her naneth again. He squeezed her hand and she squeezed back and smiled through her tears as she looked at him. Her tears shimmered in her light like stars and the breath caught in the throats of all the hobbits at the incredible beauty of it. The longing shrank back down to the level it normally occupied. Arwen did not regret her choice. Frodo needed healing more than she needed to see her nana.

"You never stop missing one you love," she said, "but after the initial loss is over, you realize you can still feel their presence alive in your heart. My nana is as near to me as my next thought. And when Ada leaves, he will be that close also. The ones we love so dear never truly leave us, even if all the Sea is between. I felt in my heart all the trials Naneth endured as she healed, and all the small victories that grew ever bigger as peace and joy returned to her. I felt most keenly the day the pain ended and I have felt her joy every day since then and her love at all times. Such happens when such fear are so knit together."

Aragorn brushed his wife’s mind with gratitude for he well knew, as the hobbits did not, that she was preparing their hearts as well for the pain they would feel, and later the joy.

"I wish he could go there," Sam said again. Pippin and Merry nodded.

A/N: For those not familiar with the Sindarin words used here: mellon nin is my friend. Fea is soul, fear is the plural. Naneth is mother, nana is mummy. Ada is daddy.





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