Guest story by Hope.
Rosie couldn't remember if she'd ever wanted Sam for her all. Wanted all of Sam, to be all of her. She remembered rolling her eyes at other lasses mooning after this lad or that, sighing that Oh, if I can't have him I might die!
Rosie couldn't see the sense in that. Most of the lads didn't even seem to notice them anyway; lasses were convenient because their dresses (whilst occupied, of course) were convenient storing-places for frogs and other slimy creatures -- why would you want to die for something like that?
She'd never wanted Sam for her all. Never wanted all of him, of course not.
She'd quashed the sudden lurch in her belly when her father had come home one night, come in still warm from the sun and booming conversationally Hamfast tells me the Baggins is taking himself to Buckland, and he's taking young Samwise with him. Plate and mug shaking in her hands for only a moment; her father giving her a brief, queer look. Lying in bed that night with hands clenched into hot-wet-salty fists, telling herself stories of heroines that rescued themselves. And of spinsters and jealous witches with poisoned apples, red apples shining like revenge against those who had what she coveted . . .
She had never wanted Sam for her all. For her own, but not her own entirely; a long year wasted allowed a lot of time for thinking, and his return only proved the true nature of her thoughts.
Their return.
She had never wanted Sam for her all, and she never needed him for her all; she needed this: The colours of their bodies as they moved together or slept together. Woke together. Spoke, laughed, cried, fought. The colours and smells, and tastes and sound of even breathing when the darkness was still and soft. The way her body, her smells, her sounds fit into this; her breath and her colour; a matched set, never a pair.
That was her all.
~
Pretty Good Year | email Hope