#shieldarm

Theodred was five and a half paces behind him, just a little to the left, just close enough to hear his dark laughter but not enough to hear why, just one turn and five and a half strides away.

Which was fine. The blazing fire pits at Meduselde’s centre chased away every single chill Boromir had acquired on the road. The sensation of the heat beating against his cheek was almost reminiscent of midsummer in Anorien, when those plains would truly earn their name as sage filled the air. No sage here in this Rohir winter but the seasoned applewood logs were fragrant enough and making him even drowsier than when he’d first arrived not two hours ago. Too drowsy by half. He would have to wait until tomorrow night to tell Theodred about that song he’d heard the last time he passed through Arnach, and Forlong’s revised version too. A shame, he would have laughed better.

But that was still, fine. Grimbold was getting steadily drunker in front of him and the lady Eowyn. As he usually did! Before they rode abroad. It was a humorous diversion in particular because Grimbold had a pleasant voice but a foul tongue. Very funny, even if Boromir often had to quench the urge to steer Eowyn away as Grimbold’s recitals became ever more blue the more mead he drank. Theodred would know it too and no doubt take great delight in Boromir’s silent inner moral and cultural dilemma… if he just wasn’t five and a half paces away.

The annoyed tension in his chest was stalwartly ignored. It had been ten years already, they weren’t melodramatic young men anymore! Moping over- what? Lack of attention? Affection? Absolutely not. He was just tired, he reasoned, and the usual routine for his arrival in Edoras had been broken this time. Lead up to the halls and presented to the King, instead of Theodred meeting him at the gate so they could meander that way themselves. They were creatures of habit, that was all it was.

The disgruntled sigh he gave was not very loud or large, but obviously still too exaggerated for the Lady Eowyn to not notice. Her glance up was enough for Boromir to meet her gaze. What a gaze, just eighteen and yet already bearing such a stare. He opened his mouth to answer her silent query with a usual easy half truth,

“I am only road weary, Eow-”

His focus was snatched away mid-sentence, there was that laugh again! Sardonic and repressing and grim. He saw Theodred standing in a circle of Thanes with his father and that new advisor of his opposite him. It all set a concerned and frustrated tension to Boromir’s jaw, but he flicked back to Eowyn as soon as he recalled himself. Not soon enough.

Something complex passed over Eowyn’s features, something Boromir could not decipher. She looked Theodred’s way too, calculating. Grimbold’s chattering continued over them but he seemed to know that he’d lost his audience. And so no others saw the White Lady touch the cuff of Boromir’s tunic, nor heard her pensive but decisive advice, words that brought him up short, his brow arching just a little, squinting.

“You can be softhearted.”

There is a pregnant pause. She holds his gaze admirably as he frowns at her, trying to judge what is transpiring in this moment between them. In the end he can find no answer other than the obvious.

There were… many questions that passed through his mind, along with the little wearied and boring panic that he tried to stifle. How long she had known; had Theodred told her; what would she do; had she told anyone else? And he could not deny the doomful weight to his stomach at all of them. But once his catastrophizing was done and he had visibly forced his muscles to untense, the more pertinent question came to the fore; what did she mean?

“... And why do you say that, My Lady?” He asks in an attempt at casual inquiry.

And, even if there is no malice to it, she looks at him like he’s a fool.

Perhaps he is, he concedes. What had they said to each other, so long ago? I want to take heart in you, we can bend for this. Just this. He felt at times he’d spent all the softness his heart could give on that one concession to his austere drive. What would he do, if he had it all back now?

Detach from Eowyn at this moment, most likely, give Theodred a clap to his shoulder as he passed.

And when he eventually followed him to his room, Theodred would find him asleep, sat up on that cushioned seat but turned for him to drop against his side. And he’d awaken and Theodred would grouse over his late arrival and he would reply that ‘if you only kept the roads better...’ which would allow them to replay that argument for what might be the fortieth time but pretending to care as if it was the first just so that he could hear Theodred’s taunts in answer to his own jabs. Until he was just too tired and Theodred would call him an old man as they both staggered to stand and he would tell him he had a song for him and Theodred would say, ‘Tell me tomorrow’ in that edging tender tone he had and then- stars- to sleep! Thank all fates for the winter when his own body heat was a blessing not a curse and they could settle into their proper practiced tangle. Theodred wouldn’t remember to tie his hair, Boromir would find it in his beard before morning.

The sudden sense memory hit him so hard he had to blink it away. The unruly yawning yearning that came with it was not dismissed so easily. He tried to return Eowyn’s somewhat exasperated expression but something demanded he look Theodred’s way once more, perhaps they could do that.

But a single eyeful of the new black-haired, black-minded and suspiciously shadowed man at Theoden’s side reminded Boromir of why they definitely could not.

Why was it that, even as the world and his priorities demanded his feelings mellow, they only grew all the more poignant? That Theodred’s absence in his mundane everyday had only grown more painful with time? The nature of love, he supposed, in defeat.

ÉOMER OF ROHAN  &  ÉOWYN OF ROHAN   →   01 / ?

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING SENTENCE STARTERS ( accepting )

He could strike her.

It was an ugly feeling, birthed forth out of rage and a helplessness he had never before experienced. Drúadan was not quiet this night, nor any night since its trees were but pine seedlings in the dark fertile ground. The sounds of Rohirrim and Drúedain speaking in soft whispers could be heard in the not too far off distance, with the cover of trees and night only granting the pair of them but the shortest passing of time before he would have to return to his men. And she…

( Éowyn. )

Even as she stood there before him, discovered, her helmet held by her side, she still looked proud. Gone, however, was the girlhood arrogance in the set of her mouth. Gone too were the frustration and despair he had seen flashing in her eyes during the days leading up to the march for Gondor. There was nothing now but determination and calm resignation in her gaze as she rested it upon him, unblinking. For one wild, ludicrous moment she seemed more the marshal than he, and he could feel laughter wanting to crawl out of his chest and into his throat. It died before it was ever allowed to leave his lips, anger and fear and incredulity leaving no space for anything else. He had never hated her more than he did in this very moment.

He had never loved her more.

He could not send her back. He could not expose her presence to their King. Her uncle. There was little other choice but to allow her to ride with them, and fight with them. She would find a way. She had already. And had he not allowed it this far onto the road already? Thousands rode on this march. And yet, somehow, it was him who had found her this night. Had he not known, even before he had ridden from Edoras? Had his eyes not rested on every horse with a gray coat by day’s end and wondered? She was a fever in his blood, a barb in his heart, and the ache had not faded with every mile ridden, as it sometimes did. It had deepened, sharpened, a shadow growing in the back of his mind because he had known. He had known. And even now, their gazes locked as they stood in the middle of nocturnal Drúadan, he knew he would not send her back. She knew it, too.

He was the first to break away, head turned sharply to the side to look at nothing in the darkness beyond. Tension remained throughout his body. There was a deeply unhappy set to his eyes and mouth as he came to a decision not entirely of his own making. But for her, he would do this. For her, he would turn a blind eye. One last time.

“ My men shall know to take no notice of you, or the Halfling, ” he began, reluctance in every line of his body as he spoke, his gaze slowly returning to her. “ If it is to Minas Tirith you wish to ride, this Éored shall lead you there. But know this. ” 

He moved, not in the slow and grounded manner she was accustomed to see from him ; but quick and jagged, as though he was still battling to control the anger inside whilst suffering from a great wound at the same time. He stood in front of her then, near enough that he had only to lean in a little for his whispered words to be clear to her. 

All in a splendor of white and of silver, Aredhel did drape herself upon the chair given her. Heavy and wood, carven all with horses rearing their wild manes like the running face of the waves, it was broad enough even for the tall muscle of her. She did drape herself there, did hang one grey-booted leg over a heavy carven arm to cock herself astride. (Once, once had her Tyelko sat thus. Once had his confidence been that which filled up rooms like a smoke, like an incense. Gone, gone now were the Sons of Fëanor, gone into smoke and into ash, gone into the sea!)

The fire was warm in the long hall, the scent of it spiced and familiar. It would suffuse Aredhel’s black hair, it would suffuse Aredhel’s white skin. Later, she would undress to find the scent rich as perfume on her body, woodsmoke and rushes and the musky honey-mead in the cup she held loose in one hand.

The girl was a warrior. How old was she? Aredhel could not say; the aging of mortals yet escaped her. Not old, not too young. But strong of spirit, yes. The mortal girl had that spirit in her, had the wildness, the wanting. Aredhel could see it in her, in the defined tension of her mare’s limbs, in the way she quivered with the need to run, to run wild beneath an open sky. To find where horizons ended – nowhere, never, the horizon never would be met! Aredhel had tried. She had only ever found more sky. Always was there further to run!

Her gaze, sharp and silver, swept itself over that hall. Eyes lingered on them; but Aredhel had guest-right, given open and free. She would not give their distrust, their dislike, any credence more than it deserved. Did they want her humbled? Better men than they had tried. But the girl, yes. Her would Aredhel gaze upon. Hair of gold, skin honey-touched like mead. A wild girl, a horse girl, proud as a mare. 

Aredhel wondered if the girl would race her afoot if she asked.

     “spar  with  me?”  it  is  a  REQUEST,  but  not  one  she  will  let  be  easily  denied.  alysanne  tips  her  head  one  way  as  she  ties  it  back  in  a  loose  tail,  though  dark  curls  immediately  begin  escaping  about  the  frame  of  her  face,  “i  know  the  melee  is  my  weakest  point,  but  i  must  be  prepared  should  enough  fighted  be  killed  that  an  enemy  makes  it  to  the  archers.”  there’s  no  hint  of  false  modesty,  nor  shame  in  her  WEAK  SPOT  - - -  it  is  just  a  fact,  and  one  alysanne  has  decided  it  is  time  to  rectify.

i have a feeling that it was me