Lord of the Rings - written for Creative Challenges and FFFC

[prisca]

Title: Lavender
Character: Samwise Gamgee, Rosie Cotton
Challenge: lavender (Clouds and Shadows) // anniversary LotR (FFFC)
Word Count: 218
Finished: 06.03.2021

:::

Sam stopped in every movement when he entered the house. Lavender! The smell of lavender greeted him, instantly brought back so many memories.

Hot summer days he had spent at the nearby lavender field together with Frodo, Merry, and Pippin. Carefree times with no foreshadowing of the dark clouds which were already approaching. They joked and laughed and talked about the upcoming party.

Bilbo's 111th birthday, and Frodo's 33. There would be cake and wine, music and firework. Bilbo seemed wildly resolved to make it the biggest party the Shire had ever seen. „Will you ask Rosie Cotton for a dance,“ Frodo had asked him, and Sam had blushed when he thought about the good-looking hobbit girl. „Maybe you should bring her some flowers. I've heard Rosie loves lavender.“

Footsteps tore him out of his thoughts, and when he turned around, she was there. Older, not as slender as back then, after eight children, she had given birth, but she was still the most beautiful woman for him. A dream which had outlasted horrible times, a dream which had helped him to move on when his heart seemed to be broken.

He smiled and said: „Lavender!“

„My favorite flowers; they will always remind me of our first dance.“ She bent forward and placed a kiss on his cheek.

Lord of the Rings - written for Creative Challenges and FFFC

[prisca]

Title: Feeling lost
Character: Samwise Gamgee, mention of other LotR characters
Challenge: clothes (Clouds and Shadows) // anniversary LotR (FFFC)
Word Count: 301
Finished: 06.03.2021

:::

So Sam was standing there, beside his friends, and slowly it started to sink in, that all the trouble was over, that the evil was gone, that the right king was back on his throne. A day to celebrate peace and freedom.

Merry and Pippin obviously enjoyed the festivity. But Sam felt a deep uneasiness growing. Frodo looked still pale and much too serious for his gusto, though he had reassured him multiple times that he was fine. And he missed the smell of dirt and sweat hanging in his old clothes. The shiny new ones they had given them, fine handwork, one would find nowhere in the Shire felt so foreign on his skin.

Sam was torn out of his thoughts when Aragorn, no, not Aragorn any longer, King Elessar, the twenty-sixth King of Arnor, thirty-fifth King of Gondor, and the first High King of the Reunited Kingdom stepped closer together with Lady Arwen. And he bent his knee, together with the other Hobbits, like they were supposed to do.

The king smiled friendly, put a hand on Frodo's arm when he said in his so familiar, warm voice: „You, my friends, bow to no one.“ Then he bowed down himself, followed by Lady Arwen and all the others around.

Sam's heart was beating wildly; his mouth suddenly was dry. No, it was wrong. He was only a little gardener, and this was not the place where he should be. He didn't need expensive clothes and the luxury of Minas Tirith. All he wanted was the Shire, and Rosie, and his garden. And even if he would miss the good people around, Aragorn, and Eowyn, Faramir, Gimli, and Legolas, and Gandalf, of course, he couldn't wait to leave all of them behind to go back home as soon as possible.