#valacar

Menaleiht laughed, a bright and joyous sound. “I raised a good son, but you and I both know that your brother is too impatient to be anyone’s teacher. The first time Prince Valacar falls behind on a hunt, Vidusunus will leave him to fend for himself in the thick of the forest rather than give up a shot at a good boar.” 

Though Vidumavi would never give voice to a criticism of her twin, she knew there was truth in their mother’s assessment. Vidusunus had many admirable qualities, but restraining himself for the benefit of others was not among them. 

“Besides,” continued her mother with a cocked brow, “a little discomfort may be a blessing for this ambassador in the making. No one ever got sharper or stronger or braver by being comfortable. If he has only a year to learn all about our customs and way of life, he will do well to take his lessons from you.” 

“And he is to do all of this learning while speaking none of the language?”

“He will learn that as well. Just talk to him as you would anyone else. He’ll pick it up quickly, and if not, we’ll send him home and ask Rómendacil for a smarter one next time.” She laughed again and tugged affectionately on one of Vidumavi’s braids. “Now go see to our guest before he starts to doubt the quality of Northmen hospitality.”

Vidumavi bowed her assent and turned to take a good look at her new charge. 

Valacar of Gondor was tall and lanky, the kind of man who lacked brute strength but had quickness and agility. He was engrossed in observing the hall around him, eyes roving over every fine detail and nodding quietly to himself as though he was mentally cataloguing each ornately carved wooden column or colorful wall hanging. But he stood up a little straighter when he noticed Vidumavi approaching, and he tugged gently at his black surcoat, smoothing the front with a nervous hand, before giving a small, shy smile.

They had already been introduced, if that was the right word for an awkward exchange of names, at the moment of his first arrival, but she reached now to give him a true Rhovanion greeting, a hand behind the neck and the press of her forehead to his. She pitched up onto her toes to make it easier, but as soon as her fingers landed on his skin, his posture notably stiffened and a surprised little noise escaped his lips, less than a gasp but more than a breath.

“Not comfortable being touched, I guess?” She dropped down to her heels again, backing up as she did so, and raised her palms in what she hoped read as a conciliatory gesture. “Duly noted.”

He murmured a few words in his own language, indecipherable to her but very solemn in tone. When he then bowed with ponderous formality, she had to suppress a laugh.

“You’re going to be quite a project, aren’t you?” She took another appraising look at him and then at the stack of trunks and bags at his feet before picking up the largest among them and swinging it easily onto her shoulders. His eyes widened slightly, but she grinned and held his gaze, almost as if to issue a challenge. “Might as well start with your first lesson right away.”

She gestured to the rest of his things, and he hesitated, eyes darting around in search of the servants and porters he was used to. The Gondorians, she knew, liked to pay others to do the common or menial tasks of life, but in Rhovanion only the lazy or the infirm would pay another to do what he could do himself. Fortunately, Valacar seemed to realize quickly that no one else in the hall was at all concerned with his belongings. He bent down to lift two great armfuls of luggage himself, nodding at her from a small gap between leather-bound cases when he had taken all that he could heft.

“We may make a Northman of you yet.” She laughed as he staggered a little under the weight of his load and jutted her smiling chin in the direction of the sleeping quarters. “Follow me. Your new life begins that way.”

**********

Early December

“I’ve brought you an old family remedy, guaranteed to help.” Vidumavi held up a blue painted bowl full of bright green paste. “May I come in?”

Valacar gave an apologetic shrug, his usual response when he hadn’t understood what she’d said, but he stepped back to let her pass nonetheless.

He’d been given his own room, a significant gesture in a hall where many bunked down together amid the rushes and herbs that covered the floor. Still, his quarters were likely quite spare by Gondorian standards. There was a simple bed laden with furs for warmth, and a variety of skins were tacked to the walls to keep out the draft. By the small fireplace were a stand with a pitcher of water and a bowl for daily washing and a chair, which he’d fashioned into a makeshift desk for himself with a plank that sat across its arms. She moved aside a few papers in order to set the bowl there now, giving the paste one last stir with a wooden spoon.

“Any better this evening?” It was an idle question, as were nearly all of her words to him while he still had so little command of the language. But she really didn’t need to hear him say that he remained in the grip of what they had always just referred to as Winter Sickness. His nose was red, he had a persistent cough, and a slight sheen of fever sweat glistened on his brow. 

It had been something of a mild source of amusement to the Northmen how quickly he’d taken ill — I thought they made them stronger than this in Gondor, they laughed — though those same jokesters couldn’t help but admire the way he still doggedly struggled through the week’s duties and lessons despite the cough and chills. No one could question his dedication, at least, though his condition had left him even more reserved than his reliance on rarely spoken Westron would dictate. 

“My mother makes this, and it uses just about every herb and root in the forest. It smells like rotten eggs, I admit, but if you spread it on your chest then you’ll be breathing better in no time.” She scooped a few handfuls of air toward her face to illustrate her point and then rummaged around in the folds of her woolen wrap. “Let me just get a cloth to clean your hands when you’re done.”

She looked up again just in time to see a heaping spoonful of the paste on its way into his mouth, and before she could move or speak, he had put the whole bite in. It was all edible, in the most technical sense of the word, though no sane Northman would willingly eat it. His eyes began to water as soon as the paste touched his tongue. He chewed slowly, fighting to keep a neutral look on his face, and swallowed with noticeable effort before attempting a little affected hum of enjoyment that came out more like a strangled moan instead. She might have laughed if he had not then held the bowl out to her.

“You?” His voice was deep, hoarse, and twinged with the distinctive accent of Osgiliath. He had rarely spoken since his arrival and only knew a handful of words so far, but his meaning here was unmistakable: gifts were to be shared.

The laughter died in her throat. Putting any of that paste in her mouth was one of the last things she wanted to do, but he was looking at her with such sweetly expectant earnestness. He is trying to be kind. To correct him now would just embarrass him, a discouraging end to a week when he had already struggled enough with a constant string of misunderstandings and mistakes. She somehow found that she wanted that even less than the awful taste of her mother’s sulfurous breathing remedy.

She dipped a reluctant hand into the bowl and grabbed a small clump of the oily herbs. “Here we go,” she sighed, more to herself than to him, and stuffed the handful into her mouth, trying to get it all over with before her tongue could register each offensive element in the clashing mix of earthy and sharp, bitter and salty. 

He watched carefully as she first chewed and then forced it down with an audible gulp, and though she tried her hardest, she couldn’t hide a small shudder of distaste as she swallowed. She met his eye, straining to look well pleased, and for a long moment he held her discomfited gaze in silence. And then he laughed. 

It was quiet at first, and he tried to stifle it, but somehow the more he worked to hold it in, the more obvious it got. As the first full barks of laughter leaked out, the sound released something in her, and she found herself laughing along with him — at the ridiculous little sound he had made, at the look that was surely on her own face, at the absurdity of the whole situation. Soon they were both giggling uncontrollably, feeding off one another’s giddiness and only laughing all the harder when she jokingly proffered another noxious spoonful and he accidentally snorted in response. 

Eventually the laughter died down, and as he wiped at his face she took fresh note of the deep dimples in his beardless cheeks when he smiled and the liveliness of his eyes that gave them warmth despite their cool grey color. Winter Sickness or no, he was quite handsome, and his relaxed, easy manner now left her feeling like she was seeing the real him for the first time — the version of himself that he would show to a friend and not just a teacher or host or diplomatic ally. 

It took a few more minutes of gestures and detailed pantomimes to show him the herbs’ true purpose, and then she prepared to leave him to his night’s rest and recovery. He walked her to the door and smiled as she slipped out into the hall. 

“Good night, Vidumavi,” he said, heavily accented but clear, and she thought her own name had never before sounded so lovely. 

**********

Early February

If Valacar was nervous about this riding lesson, he was hiding it well. His posture seemed relaxed and his expression calm, both marked improvements from earlier in the week. 

He didn’t lack coordination generally — he was an excellent archer and quick with both hands and feet in the sparring ring — but he had recently decided to learn to ride in the Rhovanion style, and it was proving to be a particular challenge. Without a saddle or bridle to rely on, the effect of any error in horsemanship was magnified, and even such basic tasks as mounting became troublesome when he no longer had stirrups, pommels or reins for help. 

He had been offered both a mounting block and a leg up, but he wouldn’t accept any aid that a Northman wouldn’t use himself. Instead, he stood at the side of his new horse, a particularly tall strawberry roan named Marhail, and tried repeatedly to get himself from ground to back without incident. Sometimes he would hoist himself up on his belly only to flop around like a fish on a boat deck when he couldn’t find sufficient leverage to swing his leg astride while the horse shifted nervously beneath him. Other times he simply slid right back off again, and more than once he’d accidentally kicked Marhail while trying to get purchase, unexpectedly sending the horse bolting forward and himself flat onto his back in the dirt. 

Today, though, he approached Marhail with confidence and carefully positioned his hands, one just below the withers and the other mid-back. With a graceful leap, he lifted himself up onto his palms, locking his elbows and allowing his hands to support his weight while his right leg slid easily over Marhail’s hindquarters and he dropped into his seat. He took a moment to evaluate himself, looking down at his limbs as if to verify they were each in the right place, before turning his horse and trotting toward her in triumph.

“I see that someone has been practicing.” She had noted him leaving his room each night for the last few days and assumed he was going out to sit with the other men for mead around the fire pit just as she sat with the women and their weaving at the hearth. He had succeeded in making himself an agreeable and popular companion in the evenings, even after it ceased to be so easy to take his money when the dice games began, and he never lacked for invitations. But this progress in the riding ring clearly didn’t come from spending his free hours at the bottom of a bottle with Vidusunus and the other good natured rabble rousers of Bagmē Blōma. Real effort had been expended. “I’m impressed,” she said. “Your efforts have paid off wonderfully.”

His brow furrowed as he tried to work out her words, still beyond the fundamentals that he was improving each day. “Again, please?” he asked, and so she drew her horse up next to his and spoke slowly, clearly and with shorter words.

“Very good,” she said, giving him her biggest smile. “I am proud of you.” 

And he blushed. 

**********

Late April

The Eisgataurn festival was well underway, and all of Bagmē Blōma had spilled out into the western glen to celebrate the melting of the final vestiges of that winter’s snow from even the coolest, shadiest sections of the forest. With spring at hand, there would be drinking and dancing for as many hours as the sun shone overhead. But though Valacar loved a party and was an enthusiastic dancer, Vidumavi noticed early that he had disappeared. 

She checked his room and by the main hearth with no luck and had just decided that she was alone in the hall when she turned a corner and nearly collided with the subject of her search. Startled, Valacar dropped a small stack of envelopes and wiped quickly at his eyes before stooping to retrieve them from around his feet. She helped to gather them up, ten in all, each one addressed in a flowing, feminine hand and bearing a wax seal of a tree under an arc of stars. Letters from home. 

He never spoke much about his life back in Osgiliath and less still of his family. Even with his improved speech, he tended to avoid those topics, and she had always wondered what this meant. Was he unhappy back home and glad not to speak of it? Or was he homesick and found thinking about his old life too painful? Even if he had not been entirely content in Gondor, she had to imagine that parts of it called to him nonetheless — the comfort of familiarity, places where he wasn’t new or different, time with friends and loved ones. She couldn’t imagine being separated for so long from Vidusunus and his wife, their mother and father, or any of the people who were the threads that wove her life together, and yet Valacar bore it without any outward complaint.

Perhaps the letters he now held, those that had brought tears to his eyes, were from his mother or an aunt or maybe even a special woman that his heart loved and missed in a very different way. The idea twisted something in her chest, a quick, sharp pain that was as clear as it was unexpected. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, averting her eyes to give him a moment to collect himself. “I can go if you want to be alone.”

“No.” The word came out quickly and a little loud, echoing around the otherwise empty room. He gestured to a bench behind them. “Please. Sit with me.”

She sat down next to him, and for a time they were both quiet, listening to the distant sound of music and laughter and watching the squares of sunshine on the floor ripple with the shadows of blowing leaves.

“I miss my home,” he said at last and wiped at his lashes again with an embarrassed laugh. 

“I understand.” She thought about taking his hand, allowing him to rest his head on her shoulder, whatever small gestures of comfort she could give. But she had come to learn that unmarried men and women did not touch one another casually in Gondor, and she didn’t want to add further to his discomfort on a day when he was already out of sorts. She handed him a square of cloth to dry his eyes instead. “It must be very hard.”

“It is.” He sighed a little and then brought a small smile to his face. “But I am very happy right here.”

“I am glad to hear it.” 

They went back to companionable silence, each confined to their own thoughts. But this time, she watched him from the corner of her eye, trying to read the dimple in his cheek or the lift of his brow. Right here, he had said. Like as not, he meant Rhovanion as a whole, or perhaps her father’s household in Bagmē Blōma. But when he turned his head and met her gaze, warm and soft, she allowed herself to hope he meant something else entirely.

**********

Mid July

The remains of dinner had been cleared away, and much of the company had either gone to their beds or moved outside, where an impromptu wrestling competition had broken out among the younger men, their grunts and cheers echoing through the warm night air. Nursing a twisted ankle, Valacar had remained indoors, drawing his seat up next to Vidumavi at the edge of a circle of women, each engaged in some small handcraft as they traded bits of news, laughed at jokes and debated who among them would make the most formidable opponent were she to join the contest outside.

Vidumavi had a piece of stag antler in hand, shaping it with a small knife into one of the little offerings to the Great Hunter that would be left at the forest’s edge before the morning’s riders set out in pursuit of their own quarry. Already a clear horse head had emerged from the bone, and she was carving out the front legs when Valacar cleared his throat and pointed to her forearm, exposed by a pushed up sleeve.

“What does this mean? Can you tell me?”

She followed his pointing finger to the delicate green patterns that wound their way up her arm from wrist to shoulder, the fern fronds that marked her as a member of Vidugavia’s royal family.

“These are a sign of my father’s people,” she said, holding out the arm so that he could see better. “And this one” — here she pushed up the other sleeve, exposing a cluster of stars near her elbow — “is for my mother’s family, who followed a star across the wood to these lands.” She rotated the arm, displaying a half dozen other small marks and drawings. “Some of the others have meanings, some are just things that I liked.”

He leaned in to look closer and pointed at a bird in flight just above her right hand. “This one? It means something?”

“That is for Auhaim, the man who prepared Vidusunus and I for our coming of age trials.” She looked down at the bird and ran a finger lightly over the black lines and curves of its wings and talons. “The falcon was the symbol of his house.”

“So he was your teacher?”

“Yes. And a great man, too. I admired him.”

There was a moment’s pause as he considered this. “Should I have one for you then?”

Her head snapped up in surprise. “What?”

“You are my teacher. And I admire you.” He smiled. “This is the custom, yes?”

She felt unaccountably flustered by the very thought and rubbed at her cheek as though she could wipe away the blush she felt forming there. “For a Northman, yes,” she finally managed to say.

He sat back, satisfied. “Then for this Gondorian, too.”

He didn’t seem to be joking, and he turned now to contemplate the potential canvas of his own arms and chest. She had seen him without a shirt once, on a hot day after returning from many hours out in the forest, and she knew that his skin was smooth and unmarked by anything except a long scar that ran between his shoulder blades. In fact, no Gondorian that she had ever seen had skin art, though he made no mention of this fact.

“What about here?” 

He was pointing to a spot just below his shoulder, and she tried to imagine that shoulder marked with a remembrance of her as he rode back to Gondor, as he walked the streets of Osgiliath each day, as he knelt to accept the crown that was destined to be his. Circumstance and responsibility and birthright would inevitably take him away, back to the life he was meant to lead, but at least there could be this. A few errant tears pricked at her eyes.

“Vidumavi?” He had looked up at her silence, suddenly uncertain. “Only if you like the idea.” 

She blinked back the tears and smiled instead. “I love it.”

**********

Early September

“You didn’t have to get me a gift.” Valacar examined the small parcel that had just been handed to him, wrapped in a square of leather and decorated with a few bright blue kingfisher feathers.

“I wanted to,” said Vidumavi. “Your family isn’t here to mark the day, and I didn’t want it to be forgotten.”

“That’s very kind.” He smiled and shook the parcel lightly. “Should I open it?”

The ties that held the little package together came off easily, and the leather wrap fell open. Inside was a small wooden medallion carved with a majestic tree under a halo of stars, just as she had seen on the wax stamps of his letters from Gondor.

“It’s a cloak pin,” she said. “I noticed that yours doesn’t always stay fastened where you want it.”

“Oh, Vidumavi, it’s beautiful.” He turned it over in his hands, admiring the smooth, dark finish and the delicacy of the branches and leaves that had been shaped with both precision and elegance. “Did you make this? It’s a work of art.”

The praise sent a rush of warmth to her skin, but she gave only a modest shrug. “It’s not an unusual talent. All Northmen have some skill with a carving blade. By tradition, most of our gifts are woodcraft.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“When one of our trees comes down in a storm or simply from age, we set it aside just for that purpose. To become a gift gives the tree another life while also honoring the one it already had. You can see a tree’s whole history in the rings and knots of its wood. Years when it had lots of sun, or years when it suffered from drought or forest fire. You can read everything that happened to the tree, and those same things happened to us as we lived here alongside it. It’s a record of our time together.”

“That’s also beautiful,” he said, running his thumb thoughtfully along the whorls and patterns in the pinewood of the pin. “I will remember that for your next birthday.”

She’d had a birthday not long after his arrival in Bagmē Blōma, and he’d given her a delicate golden arm band, one that he’d presumably brought from Gondor to have on hand for any such occasion. She admired it often but rarely wore it, afraid that it would be lost or damaged in the course of her daily tasks. But her next birthday wouldn’t take place until after his planned time in Rhovanion had ended, when he was expected back in Gondor to share his newly gained knowledge and diplomatic experience. Her heart took a happy little leap in her chest at the thought that he might stay longer. “Will you not be returned home by then?” she ventured.

“I just wrote to my father to ask for more time, and I think he will agree. I hope so, at least.” He looked up from the pin and smiled again. “I’m not ready to part so soon.”

**********

Late October

Though the final snare of the day had been set, Valacar had no desire to return to the hall. 

He had been glad when Vidumavi invited him along on a grouse hunt, just the two of them in the crisp fall air and the quiet shade of the trees. Though they spent most of their days together as a matter of course, opportunities to be truly alone were rare, and this day he had things to say that cried out for privacy. Things that involved his most personal feelings and desires. Things that could create a diplomatic mess, upending his entire purpose in being in Rhovanion, if they didn’t go as he hoped they would.

It was hard to say exactly when his feelings for Vidumavi had changed, and perhaps there was no single moment. He’d been drawn to her from the start, so lively and bold and so unlike the reserved, deferential women that his father was always putting in his path back home. Vidumavi never treated him any differently because of who he was, and he’d quickly come to see that he never felt more himself than when he was in her presence. With her, he wasn’t the prince of Gondor, with all the advantages and constraints that accompanied the title. Instead, he was just a regular man — one who was eager to learn, who sometimes made mistakes, who loved the freedom to laugh and swear and say what he felt. And now what he felt was that he could no longer imagine his life without Vidumavi in it.

He followed along as she worked her way slowly from the outskirts of Bagmē Blōma to the deep forest, helping to carefully site and lay a dozen small willow and sinew traps as they went. It was finicky work that required concentration and quiet, and it took all of his strength to hold in the words he was fairly bursting to say, words that he had painstakingly written out and that rested now in his shirt pocket, pressed against his heart. But at last their task was completed, and rather than head back, he suggested that they sit together in the woods for a while. They settled in, propped comfortably against a fallen log under a canopy of brilliant autumn leaves so thick that it colored all the light below in rich golds and reds, and he took his chance.

“Vidumavi, may I speak to you about something that has been on my mind?” 

“Of course.” The sudden seriousness of his tone seemed to pique her curiosity, and she turned to face him more directly. 

“It is hard to think and speak in different languages, and I don’t want to get this wrong. I hope you don’t mind.” He drew out his little speech, a folded paper covered in small, neat tengwar arranged phonetically to make words in the tongue of the North. He smoothed the page against the plane of his thigh, and when she gave him an encouraging nod, he cleared his throat and began to read. 

“I was sent here to learn about Rhovanion so that my people might better understand yours. I was told to learn about the language, the customs, and the land, and I did that. But I also learned a lot about myself. How to face challenges. How to be humble. What kind of man I want to be. How it feels to be truly happy. And you were my teacher for all of those things. You are what makes me happy, more than anything else.” He raked a nervous hand through his hair and swallowed hard, the irrevocable moment upon him. “I know another man might be better for you, a Northman who already knows all your ways and will always live here among your people. I know that it’s a lot to ask of you to take a chance on me instead. So I don’t have any expec… expecta …Wait...”

He frowned down at the paper. The momentary stumble on an especially big word had broken his focus, and with so much giddy anxiety coursing through his veins, it was difficult to restart again. But just as he got the word out at last — “expectation” — she put a hand on his and all further thought fled from his mind.

It was the first time they had touched each other outside of accidental brushes since the day he arrived in Bagmē Blōma all those months ago. Just as then, her hand on his skin sent a jolt through his whole body, a wave of warmth that started at her fingers and radiated out from there. But unlike that first day, he didn’t pull away. Whatever stodgy old rules of propriety his mother had drilled into him from boyhood vanished the second her fingers wrapped around his and gave a gentle squeeze. 

“Valacar, are you trying to say that you love me?”

He looked up again, meeting those soft, lovely eyes, flecked with gold and brown, that gazed at him now with what looked like hopeful joy. By Eru, he prayed that it was hopeful joy. He took a deep breath, trying to summon the last of his courage before finding out for sure. “If the answer was yes, what would you say?”

“Only this.” And she kissed him.

Dividers by @/quillofspirit