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The day began like any other, a wisp of light curling into the room from between a gap in the curtains, a small breath in and the slow, meticulous opening of barely-working eyelids. The first thing that Frodo saw was the back of his love’s head, the white-grey wiry strands of hair that came with old age sticking up in wild directions after a night of rest. Frodo watched the tentative rise and fall of his chest for a moment until he moved slightly, rolling over to face Frodo. His brown eyes were heavy and half-lidded with sleep as they gazed at Frodo, a quiet smile creeping across his face and strengthening the wrinkles that had formed from years of stolen grins and deep laughs.
“Good morning, Sam.” Frodo recited, the greeting rolling off his tongue just like it had every other day of their lives that they had woken up next to each other.
They soon left the warmth of sheets and pillows, repeating the ritual they had both grown accustomed to and perfected over the past few months. Slow rising, quiet good mornings, and sauntering slowly down to the courtyards for a leisurely day of lingering about. Frodo breathed in the fresh air of the morning, smelling the Sea that was quietly lapping away at the glowing white beaches surrounding the island. Life on Tol Eressëa was a quiet one, peppered with the occasional interruption from visitors from the mainland. The privilege of boredom was nothing to complain about though, to Frodo at least. He had grown accustomed to the long, stretching days that blended into one another across his many years living on the Lonely Island. Sam was more restless, though his age did not allow for it- it manifested more in a mental uneasiness at the leisurely conditions after a life of hard work and dedication. He soon learned that while there were no great adventures to depart on, there was a plethora of unknown flora to study and domestic duties to tend to.
Sam also busied himself with brushing up his understanding of Quenya, a mental exercise complicated enough to stimulate a Hobbit of any age. Frodo helped, of course, and soon Sam had enough understanding to converse with the Elves that had lingered in Valinor and Tol Eressëa, with a little aid. The Quenya songs and poems that Sam had internalized when he was young through memorization now made sense, thanks to the efforts of Frodo and the other elves. Frodo made efforts to entertain himself through quizzing Sam on various Quenya phrases, teasing him as if they were young children again when he would get one wrong.
During one of their daily strolls though the ruined buildings and old towering monuments to the great deeds of the First Age, as the sun beat down on them, Frodo thought of the story of Arien. How difficult it must be to hold the last piece of something so important, to guide it across the skies and provide light to all of Arda. It was her burden, her privilege, to uphold. He quietly thanked Arien for the long summer days that she provided, for the beams of golden light that he could view Sam through every day of his long life.
As they walked, Sam began to hum a Quenya song that he had been learning as he stopped to examine a sprout of elanor that had grown from a crack in the flooring.
“They’re powerful, these little flowers,” Sam mused quietly, almost to himself. The golden flower seemed to bend to his touch as he extended a hand towards it. “They grow everywhere here. Even where they shouldn’t be growin’.” Frodo watched him, a soft grin growing on his face as he thought of all the times that Sam had done something similar. Every trail they had traveled together, every path or track, he could always find the beauty growing there. Sam finally stood, supported at the arm by Frodo.
They walked through the gardens and pathways, arms interlocked and leaning on each other for support as they examined the world around them, taking in the beautiful island that they now called home. Every so often, Frodo felt the pull of his past- a fleeting smell or taste could trigger a memory of the Shire at any instant. It was worse in the beginning, when he first crossed over the Sea to the Undying Lands; a whisper on the wind telling him that he made the wrong decision and to travel back over the water to reunite with Sam and live the rest of his life in the Shire, as he had always thought he would, like every Hobbit before him. The moment that he had seen a ship on the horizon, watched as it grew closer and closer still, and then finally admired as a much older Sam than the one he had known back in Middle Earth stepped down onto the shoreline.
It was then that Frodo’s relaxation truly began. He had spent the last sixty years in a perpetual state of healing and breaking again, finally reaching the cusp of a normal life only to be pulled back by the memory of the burden he had carried. It was only when he watched Sam’s frail form stepping from the ship that he felt at home again. They had spent very little time apart in the months that followed- making up for lost years with constant time together, keeping one another company without saying a word or doing a thing. They were often bored, but the boredom was a comfortable sort of melancholy that came with the knowledge that there were only so many boring days they had left together. Frodo felt the comfort of the Shire after sixty years of trying to forget it, without the pain of what had happened there. Neither of them ever talked about their year on the journey- there was nothing to say that they hadn’t already spoken about at length before. They were content with long strolls on the shore, watching the waves lap at the sand and reciting Elvish songs until they were too tired to remember any more rhyming Quenya phrases. The comfortable boredom that enveloped their daily lives was enough for them.