Title: Belong To
Author: Tiamat's Child
Rating: G
Characters: Sam, Frodo
Summary: When it comes time for the animals to give birth, Sam is always kept busy.
Belong To
Tiamat's Child
Sam loves birthing season, when the heifers and ewes and mares finish their long wait for their calves and lambs and foals. He's loved it ever since he was a tiny child allowed to come with his father to check on a neighbor's animal in the middle of the night. It always seemed like a quiet kind of magic then, in the dim lamplight and warm barn smells, with his father's rough voice lowered to the gentle tone he usually reserved for his wife and daughters.
Hamfast Gamgee has long had a reputation for having an almost uncanny way for animals in a hard birth, and the whole district knows that Sam's much the same. People come to them when there's trouble, looking for someone to help along a bad time. In birthing season Sam and his father barely get a wink of sleep, the long hours of stanching blood and clearing noses to take first breaths taking over time meant for rest.
During those times Sam spends his days in Bagend's garden half-waking. He moves like someone in a dream, clearing away new growth of grass from tender shoots it would strangle and smother if he let it. Frodo always tries to send him home, or at least get him to come later in the day, so that he can have some rest, but Sam won't have any of that. The garden is his job and his joy, and for all of Frodo's fine qualities and talents, he can't really care properly for it in spring. Besides, Sam is selfish, and he's not willing to let anyone else have charge of this bit of earth when it's waking up from its long silence, letting fragile green things unfold from its surface. That's a sort of magic too, one that he holds close when he can, and gives himself to.
Frodo tends to follow him, plying him with tea and lemonade, completely transparent in his attempts to keep Sam from overworking himself. Sam often gives in, simply because it's hard to tell Frodo 'no' when he's determined to get something. In truth he is tired, and it is pleasant to sit on the damp grass with Frodo and watch the world make itself new.
On one day a small boy comes racing up the road, calling that Mr. Burrows prize mare is foaling, and the foal's breech and won't come and everyone's afraid and he's been sent- And Sam leaps to his feet, running behind the boy down the path to the place where the mare kneels, heaving, soaked in sweat. He sets to work, and forgets everything else for a long time in the rhythm of turning the foal and tying cords to its small hooves. The pull of cords and guiding of hands becomes all there is for a long time, with a soft, gentle voice whispering encouragement to the mare.
At last the foal falls to the ground, alive. Sam wipes its nostrils clear and carefully sets it by its exhausted mother's side. She begins to lick it, making warm, happy noises that Sam always loves to hear. He looks up from this minor miracle, finding Frodo sitting on the mare's other side. This doesn't surprise him at all, he'd thought the voice speaking to the mare was Frodo's, as it was the right timbre and he's never met a hobbit who didn't know at least that much about birthing.
Frodo smiles, and Sam smiles back. Here they are, with new life between them, and Sam can't think of any better way to be. Sam is warm, and light, and whole, and he knows that there's nothing he'd like more than to be someone who helps new life live.