‘You are so beautiful,’ thought Sam ‘but you seem so distant lately, I miss you so …’
Then Sam left the room, without a word, and Frodo slept on, peacefully.
* * *
As soon as the translation was finished and Bilbo satisfied, Frodo started to take long walks around the Hill.
He loved being in contact with nature, and hoped to find peace, on his own, in the vast series of cultivated fields of wheat and barley just outside Hobbiton.
The young hobbit stayed there for hours, walking in silence through the rows of high ears that surrounded him with their golden waves, letting the sun shine on his pale skin and warm his tormented soul.
One afternoon, tired of walking, he sat in the green grass meadow just in front of the cultivated fields, resting his chin on his knees, his arms encircling his legs. He savoured the smells of the ground and the sweet Shire summer, and enjoyed the pleasure of the breeze that gently stroked his dark curls with its invisible fingers. He let the silence fills his ears, the only noises that reached him being the lulling songs of cicadas or the far cry of a solitary bird.
Absentmindedly, he caressed the green grass, so well tended by some unknown farmer …
Sam …
Always on Frodo’s mind, no matter how he tried … Sam, with his hair shining, golden as the golden fields right before him, Sam and his skin slightly brown from many hours under the sun … Sam, with his love for growing things and his skill to turn seeds into blossoming flowers or tasty fruits.
In the end, Sam had planted a little seed in Frodo’s heart, and now it was growing, filling him with sensations that were so strangely appealing and uncomfortable at the same time.
The cornfields, less than an hour’s walk from Bag End, soon became Frodo’s favourite place when he needed to be totally alone.
He often returned there, mostly on late afternoons, when the farmers and their workers had already gone, and sometimes in the night.
* * *
One mid-summer night, out in the cornfields, Frodo was silently contemplating a wonderful moon that, surrounded by its bright halo, was reflecting its light on wheat and barley, turning their colour in a gleaming mix of silver and pale gold.
‘That’s the place where the sun and the moon meet…’, thought Frodo, watching, in amazement, the beauty before him, so perfectly natural, but somehow magical.
He lay down in the green meadow in front of the fields and took a deep breath, staring at the moon and the myriad of stars around. He felt so small and desperate. He could not find peace and he felt as though he was constantly escaping: from Bag End, from Bilbo, from Sam.
Only the truth was that he could not escape from himself and his feelings, and, worst of all, his sudden desire for isolation had lately started to affect his older cousin and his gardener.
‘Forgive me Sam’ Frodo told in a whisper to the sky above ‘I miss you so much. I know you don’t understand why I’m turning away from you, but I can’t reveal the truth to you. I must protect your innocence, I must spare you from my unnatural feelings, I will hurt you more, if you knew ….’
