#gondorain

It took Alys a few seconds to realise she was being spoken to, and another half a minute before she could gather herself well enough to RESPOND. “I apologise, my lord. I was quite lost in my own thoughts.” She fell quiet while thinking for an answer that wouldn’t OFFEND her host, and the protector of the White City. “’Tis quite a difference from Dol Amroth,” She confessed, “I am unused to being so far away from the sea. But Minas Tirith is BEAUTIFUL beyond words, that is plain to see. And the library is quite impressive.”

[ @gondorain​ ]

It was chance more than anything, that he happened upon him. A whisper on the trees as he was on the hunt, a watchful silence that betrayed a stranger having set foot in the forest.

He wasn’t hard to find, a soft, inevitable crunch from every careful step giving him away. A man, dark-haired and long-limbed, face cautious and wary as he glanced about him - as he should be. That one of the Atani dared stepping beyond the borders of the first line of trees at all was curious to Celebrimbor. Even they should feel that the forest wasn’t welcoming.

So what was it that had driven him in there?

The last time he had talked to an After-born had been what must now be decades ago. Maybe it was that, as well as his puzzlement as to what the man was doing here at all, that eventually let him speak up.

It was as though the world had fallen asleep. Silent, even the wind and the birds holding their breath, awaiting the doom of Middle-Earth.

Two days ago they had ridden out, a long stream of soldiers, helmets gleaming and banners flying. But there had been no cheers, no cries of encouragement, only exhausted grief and desperate hope. Éowyn had watched them from a window in the Houses of Healing, arm in a sling cradled to her chest.

Ever since then, the city had been silent, and her mind, it seemed, with it.

        TIPS FEATHER NIMBLY OVER GRASS ,  sun’s  warm  breath  kissing  her  face  as                         she lies  listening  to  words  spoken  not  many  feet  away   .   evidently  she  teases  at  ignoring  his  sentiment  but  is  horribly  betrayed  by  the  smallest  curve  around  her  lips  .   ADMITTEDLY  SHE  FAILS  ENTIRELY  AT  SUCH  AN  ACT  and  resorts  to  words  to  play  out  her  games  more  sucessfully  .   ❝  but  are  promises  not  merely  a  telling  of  how  we  are  all  sure  to  fail  ?   but  tell  me  please  how  you  are  certain  that  any  promises  of  mine  can  naught  but  be  broken  ?  ❞

☆ﾟ*・ﾟ      “   does it seem so long ago?   ”     to him,      perhaps,      but she has seen the years of this land draw onwards and he cannot imagine how it must be to have lived so long.      ever now,       the years move faster to him,      some pull that has shifted now he is older and has lived more years.      “   and am i so changed that you might speak such?   ”        oh,      then,       perhaps.       for certainty,      he carries more heavy on his brow now in this moment.       his FATHER’S tone takes it’s measure on his soul,       and his are men who follow;       he wears their weight upon him      //   @valorfated.  sc.

         In some ways, it feels as though it was just yesterday that she stood beside him and his brother, too, discussing the defenses of Gondor; in other ways, it felt as though she had never been here at all, and it was some other strange woman who had marveled that a human man might look so fair as an elf. "No one is now what they were before. The darkness may be past, but it has changed us all." She offered him a wry smile, a suggestion that at least in this, free folk shared the burden together as comrades both at arms and at heart.