#denethorii

@denethorii​ sent:  [ book ] to read to bb LOTHÍRIEL! 

        although she cannot yet turn the ink upon the pages into words, she is certainly only enough to know what a book is, and what the pages may contain: she has been read to often enough, has heard her mother and her father and her brothers change the marks upon the page to poems, songs, and stories. (some small words she can now read, too, but not enough to string full sentences together. not yet, though she wants to.) 

        this room is full of books, full of so many books that she can barely comprehend it. they tower above her in stacks and shelves: bound books and scrolls, even some things set flat on tables and in drawers. wide grey eyes drink them in, so distracted that she does not realize she isn’t alone in the room until a noise (the clearing of a throat? a cough? a laugh disguised as one?) draws her attention. her uncle, whose familiar face coaxes a shy smile from the startled expression that had been turned to him. 

         very young indeed and slightly startled, perhaps, but she knows her manners well and greets him properly, dipping into a little curtsy with her dark-haired head bent, the sindarin term for their relation light upon her lips. she approaches him with steps that are, though not quite timid, still not the skipping steps she might have taken to the sides of her cousins, and glances down at the book she has disturbed him from. she cannot tell but it looks like poetry, the way the words are all aligned, and some of the few words she can read leap out at her. “what are you reading?” she asks, lingering, not afraid and yet still a little shy - - - they are kin, but she is not often in the white city, and he is not as familiar a figure just yet (and, though she does not find him forbidding, he is certainly more stern to her eye than her father or her cousins). “will...that is, please would you read some to me? i promise i shall be very quiet.” 

Anira had taken the grandson of the Steward from the lowest dock into a sturdy schooner in the midnight watches. The boat was already well provisioned and she was shockingly nimble about the sheets, though obviously grateful when Denethor took his share of the sailing. They drifted quietly down river until the Anduin’s banks rose up above them and silt turned to rock and the water’s lapping looked more as waves on the sea. A beach they found, some hours later, in a pooled bend and Anira, hand upon the tiller, slowly eased them into the calmer waters. 

For a moment, Denethor might have assumed he would need to jump into the water in order to tie their mooring upon one of the ancient rings driven into the rocks about, but a figure then peeled itself away from the shadows of the high banks. Even cloaked, the creature was incomprehensibly large, towering over even Denethor himself with a strangeness to it’s movements and an uncanny grace to it’s proportions. Anira only laughed a sound of delight to see it and threw the rope to the stranger, who caught it with big hands and even pulled the boat in closer to tie it off for them. 

The old woman had no patience, slipping down from the boat and into the shallows to stumble over to the stranger. But she was noticed before she could fall, the stranger making an instinctive lurch to catch her with a sound that was just left of exasperated fondness. And it was a strange sight, to see a woman so old and worn wrapped into such a protective and parental embrace, the creature going to one knee to hold her properly. The name “Anira-” came from a voice that thrummed like brass with a gravel to it’s base, unidentifiable, but laced with happy affection,  “you are too well for your own good.” 

The archaically accented Westron did not bother the old woman at all, who squeezed a little tighter to her giant and chuckled wickedly, before finally pulling away. “Shall you scold me for missing you?”

“Yes,” it said, “when you know well you may call on me at any time.”

“I do not like to be disappointed!” Anira countered with a humourous lilt. But the giant only sighed, before pushing back it’s heavy hood. 

Large pointed ears that had been weighed down by the fabric sprung up aside it’s head and in the bright moonlight it’s features were finally visible. Though elf they undeniably were, they looked nothing like the stories claimed. Compelling yes, arresting, but not beautiful in any convention. And the eyes. Quite aside from the scar dragging on their right bottom lid, they were nothing like starlight.  When they found Denethor, they clung, heady and stifling if he stared too long. When they blinked it seemed more to relieve his need than their own.

And yet, for all the primal and thick yet subtle feel of a thunder storm there was to their presence, they bowed to the young lord with every necessary deference. 

“My lord,” Amira began, “This is Razmaur, a dear and old part of my family. She will guide you south, as far as you wish to go.”