Beginning

All was sunlight and whiteness, there on top of the wave, at the last summit. The world returned slowly, in fragments, but just to turn his head to look at Rosie still gasping, sweat glistening on her skin, was enough to send Sam shivering again. 'The things you do to me,' he muttered, meaning a lot more, and was answered by a heady giggle.

Rosie, seeming recovered, pulled the blanket over them both, keeping herself wrapped around her new husband. They were a week wed now – long enough to have the relatives out of the house, but not long enough to think there could be anything better in the world than spending all day in bed. Mr Frodo had gone off to Buckland for a few weeks, having been led to understand, by a gaggle of aunts and cousins, that that was the sort of thing a housemate should do in these situations. Sam had been sorry to hear he was going, but now even he had to admit the aunts had got it right for once.

Rosie now lay easily and unembarrassed in the pool of sunlight on the Bag End hall loveseat, naked as she was born, slippery skin tight against Sam's. It seemed a more wonderful miracle than any he'd seen in the elven lands, and he told her so, and she told him he was the worst sop in the Shire, and kissed him again, wriggling her hips until he gasped and groaned and found himself hardening again. 'I love you,' she added after a while, breathed headily at first, then repeated, again and again.

Some time later Sam watched her from the loveseat as she padded softly around the hall, lighting candles against the creeping gloom. Her hips highlighted in yellow-gold, shaded in black, and the mop of hair fell down her back like tendrils of fire, or a warm golden halo.

Sam knew this sort of thing couldn't go on forever, so he drank it in, every second. Mr Frodo would be back, and the proper thing to do would be to put their clothes back on and retreat to the safety of places like their bedroom or the pantry or even the shed at those times when it became too difficult to refrain from touching.

Sam thought of Mr Frodo, and that look he'd get sometimes, that tone of voice, that Sam wished so much didn't mean what it sounded like, like the end of hope. For a moment, he wished that there was no such thing as propriety, and that Frodo could be here too, looking at Rosie, drinking in Rosie, following them to the last summit, where it would be impossible not to believe in life, or love.

'What are you thinking about?' Rosie asked when she returned to him, slipping back into the circle of his arms. 'You looked sad. What's there to be sad about?'

Sam tried to find the words. It's much harder, telling a whole truth the right way, than making up poems about oliphaunts. 'Just the ending of things.'

Rosie looked at him for a moment, with her serious eyes, her expression that always soon broke into a smile or into words. Now it broke into a kiss, a fierce one. 'None of that, Samwise Gamgee,' she whispered. 'You'll get no beginnings done if you think of endings all the time.' She was right, and Sam knew it, too. So he pulled her close. But Frodo still filled his mind, big as the world, because he should have heard those words, he should believe them, too. The thought ran like a bitter taste through his bliss.

Later, they would talk about Frodo. And Frodo would return. And somehow, Sam thought, and Rosie later agreed, they would have to show him, and tell him, and love him until he was filled to the brim with beginnings.