If I Should Return

The Prince is in his room. He's curled up in a chair watching the snow fall outside his window and pretending to write poetry. What he's really doing amounts to doodling spirals and scrawling down occasional whole words without much grammatical structure.

It's cold.

It does occur to him that the fire down in the Bar would be warmer. But there's something cocoon-like about hiding up here. And he could always take a nap under the quilts.

But then there would be dreams...

He blinks sleepily and keeps scribbling.

The winter blows cold. He can feel the wind pushing behind his eyes. Strange...
family
...to feel so suddenly lonely. Foolish boy, his father would tell him. And yet...
love
...he left her behind a long time ago. His white woman. His Eowyn. Would she know he had gone, and then miss him?
winter
He rests his head against the window's frame. He slips off his gloves and leaves them sitting there beside the potted herb -- rosemary. He knows it's shivering to be so close to the glass, but he knows it wants to see the sun. A little cold is worth it, for the sun.
duty
He'll let it stay a little longer.

He crosses the floor and sinks down onto his bed. After a moment, he lays back with one hand under his head, the other resting on his stomach.

He lives well here. It is no palace, and he is content with that. He has his duty as a guardian of the peace; he has the simple, distant joy of watching his brother find such love in such a beautiful woman, but for himself...

He shut himself away when he was a young child. He shut himself inside books, and in his duty. He has his honor, he is a fair and a just lord, he is an ethical man, and another father might have been proud to have raised such a son...

...but he has few friends, and in the past months, has shut himself from everything but his duty. There are many whose company he would gladly keep, and seek out, but he has no one he would trust his heart to but his brother. No one knows his past, and no one knows what he left behind when he came here. He lets no one see that part of him. He is ever that knight with a sword in his hand, Captain Faramir, Prince Faramir.

But never friend or lover, never anyone's drinking-buddy or simple companion.

It vexes him to feel such loneliness, knowing that it is within his power to remedy. It vexes him that his heart dares long for what he cannot attain. Yet it always has. He misses the father who never loved him. He misses the woman he would one day call his wife. He misses the vastness and violent glory of Arda itself at the end of an Age. He does not regret his time here, nor would he leave the brother he loves and this simple life.

He has ever been a muddle inside himself.

Perhaps, he thinks, it's time to try a little harder to fix that. It's high time, he thinks, he stopped hiding from the world within himself, and let someone share it with him. Not a lover. Loyalty, even to a promise of fidelity, is truly a feeling: knowing he could never be satisfied with anyone but her, could never desire anyone but her. Yet friendship... that simple, perfect gift he had seen so many times in men and Hobbits alike... he could use a friend.

Faramir rolls off the bed and goes to take his little potted herb away from the cold window.

The Prince sits quietly beneath a sprawling oak.

It is night.

The stars above whirl like mad dancers at a ball that never ends.

28 Flavors. Request one, get a "drabble" (which will totally be longer than 100 words because Ven can't even write HAIKUS that short).

Naughty Faramir
Happy Faramir
Nervous Faramir
Angsty Faramir
Baking Faramir
Horny Faramir
Parental Faramir
Excited Faramir
Book-Reading Faramir
Jealous Faramir
Kidnapped Faramir
Caring Faramir
On-Their-Knees Faramir
Obedient Faramir
Popping-Their-Cherry Faramir
Naive Faramir
Shocked Faramir
Greedy Faramir
Drunk Faramir
Exploring Faramir
Naked Faramir
Serious Faramir
Eating-Their-Lunch Faramir
Exhausted Faramir
Swimming-In-The-Buff Faramir
Well-shagged Faramir
Kickass

Boromir, son of Denethor
Third Age 2978 – 26 February 3019


Through Rohan over fen and field where the long grass grows
The West Wind comes walking, and about the walls it goes.
'What news from the West, O wandering wind, do you bring to me tonight?
Have you seen Boromir the Tall by moon or by starlight?'
'I saw him ride over seven streams, over waters wide and grey;
I saw him walk in empty lands, until he passed away
Into the shadows of the North. I saw him then no more.
The North Wind may have heard the horn of the son of Denethor.'
'O Boromir! From the high walls westward I looked afar,
But you came not from the empty lands where no men are.'

The window was propped open; and upon its ledge a figure sat, his shoulders cloaked against the winter wind that blew over the lake. He leaned his back against the window’s frame, raised one knee to wedge his foot against the opposite, and looked out into the wind, his grey eyes narrowed and his dark hair blowing.

He had come from a land wreathed in springtime, but that had been some months before. Though a year had not yet passed for him, he had long since reordered his life to the calendar of this meeting of ways. He knew well the date, and felt it with the echoes of grief not yet aged for half a turn of the seasons. True, this was no time for grieving—had he not found the ghost of he who had been lost dwelling in this place as alive and as warm as he had been before that day of doom? Yet the time would come when he would have to return—someday he would see a door, and he would have to pass through it—and then there would be time for grieving. He counted it a blessing that he had time, here in this place outside all times, to learn to be at peace with the inevitable.

From the mouths of the Sea the South Wind flies, from the sandhills and the stones;
The wailing of the gulls it bears, and at the gate it moans.
'What news from the South, O sighing wind, do you bring to me at eve?
Where now is Boromir the fair? He tarries and I grieve.'

Faramir gathered into his lungs a deep drought of the frozen air. Its smell was not wholly unlike that of his homeland. Winter, perhaps, smells the same wherever it goes: the sharpness of ice and the smooth, clear movement of the sun across an abbreviated sky day after shortened day. There was the subtlety of pine, a whisper of the stables’ scent, smoke from the chiminy, and food from the kitchens.

He smiled.

Boromir would be there.

'Ask not of me where he doth dwell --- so many bones there lie
On the white shores and the dark shores under the stormy sky;
So many have passed down Anduin to find the flowing Sea.
Ask of the North Wind news of them the North Wind sends to me!'
'O Boromir! Beyond the gate the seaward road runs south,
But you came not with the wailing gulls from the grey sea's mouth.'

The smile faded into a sigh and a puckered frown as the melancholy eyes opened once again to the sparkling lake-ice. He remembered this day well. He remembered the sound of his brother’s horn, though like a half-forgotten dream it had seemed to him at the time, falling like motes of dust through a beam of sunlight. An ill omen: not a cry for aid, but a farewell. No swift rider could have arrived in time, not even had he ridden upon the winds of desperation, following the paths that bound two souls as only brothers could be bound. What hope could there have been? How long would it have taken? And what would he have found?

Three days later, it found him.

From the Gate of Kings the North Wind rides, and past the roaring falls;
And clear and cold about the tower its loud horn calls.
'What news from the North, O mighty wind, do you bring to me today?
What news of Boromir the Bold? For he is long away.'
'Beneath Amon Hen I heard his cry. There many foes he fought.
His cloven shield, his broken sword, they to the water brought.
His head so proud, his face so fair, his limbs they laid to rest;
And Rauros, golden Rauros-falls, bore him upon its breast.'
'O Boromir! The Tower of Gaurd shall ever northward gaze
To Rauros, golden Rauros-falls, until the end of days.'

How long would it be before the door to his world reappeared? How long before he would have to return to the splendid lands where green and glory flourished once again, to the world built upon the shoulders of those proud dead who would never see it blossom? And despite all the sweetness and the bounty, despite the rebirth of the glory of Men, though the echo of Westernesse had risen from a whisper to a roar, its song would ever be bittersweet to him. He would never look over the hills of Emyn Arnen, his promised stronghold, without thinking of the eyes that never would see the lands stretch out before them: his brother’s determined grey gaze, his father’s proud vision.

He would not think of his father now. Not even now, alone, outside of time, away from home, where sorrow might run its course and its burden be that much lighter when he returned—if he returned—he would not think of it. Boromir did not yet know what Faramir had been told only a day before he had wandered into this place. He did not need to know. That pain was for another time.

The prince closed his eyes from the light off the lake, cleared his mind of the flames of his father, and let the resounding memory of the horn roll over him like the great green wave of his dreams. He bowed his head beneath the sweeping current; his hands closed into fists; and then it was over. He let out a silent breath and slid back into his room, closing the window against the cold.

What sorrow there would be in mourning was cast away now with his cloak, shaken out like dust from his hair, and set aside for other times. Rememberence would await him in Minas Tirith. It would find him when his door was ready for him to pass through. But now, there was a busy Bar below, and a ghost more real than his vision of a glimmering grey boat bearing its single passenger into the West.

A ghost whose voice he could hear, whose hand he could take. A ghost whose hollow place he did not have to face yet.

With bright eyes and a faint smile, he left the empty room, and went to find his brother.

A windy hush over Gondor; an open courtyard outside the Steward’s Quarters; it was the day after the King’s Judgments. Faramir, newly named Prince of Ithilien, paused to let the wind tug him where it would, to the edge of the open arches that were barely structures worthy to be called windows. Down and down and further yet, down deeper from here than the deepest sea he had ever seen, the White City spread its roots at the base of the mountain from which it was carved. Its bleached tendrils stretched and speckled the fields of Pellanor, and smoke rose from the winter grasses where the campfires of nomads were lit against the December chill.

The Prince’s fingers sought the carved designs in the facets of the ornate column upon which he leaned. One foot rested raised on the low sill. He could step beyond and be away from the roof, lean over the thick marble guardrail on the narrow promenade that encircled this outcropping. He could look down and see that below his feet, and below the inches-thick strong stone, was an unbroken descent to the rooftops below.

There had been a dream…

I will call to you, I will come, I will ride over the hills and the valleys, I will whisper into the branches, my oath to you. I will—

“My Lord?”

Faramir turned, the mist of visions departing with the wind. “Beregond.” His friend and bodyguard, leader of the White Company—Beregond son of Baranor, who with the halfling had saved his life from the mad Steward.

“You had been gone a good time, my Lord. I worried…”

Faramir pushed off of the smooth column and walked to his guardsman, placing his hands on the strong shoulders even as he stooped into a bow. “I am well enough,” the Prince assured his protector. “I must have drifted into thought and lost track of the hour. What is the time now?”

“It must be nearing four in the afternoon,” replied Beregond. His tone and manner suggested that if Faramir had no event of importance that was to occur at four o’clock on this particular day, perhaps he should devise one, lest his servant, for his Lord’s own good, bloody well did it himself.

A distracted smile shadowed Faramir’s lips. “Ride with me,” he said, and without waiting for a reply, turned towards the door and departed towards the stables.

The wind tugged its fingers through Beregond’s hair. He could smell snow on it.

***
The afternoon was passed with talk lively enough between Faramir and Beregond; yet an air of distance was ever upon the Prince. It wrapped him into a haze like sleep, and led his mind to wander.

There had been a riddle…

A voice will sing out from the highlands;
The flesh of the wraith is remade
From wind on a lie of an island:
The breath of the Traitor Betrayed.

From womb of a corpse comes the living
Who mothers the son of the grave.
The father who needs most forgiving
His own father never forgave.

The White to her Sorrow is wedded;
The god to the godless is bound;
By brothers the lover is bedded;
The lost by his mercy is found.

“I’m sorry, Lord Faramir?” Beregond was looking at him with a puzzled expression.

Faramir shook his head and tossed his hair out of his face. “The White to her Sorrow,” he said. “It cannot mean Eowyn, surely…?”

Beregond heard well the doubt in his Lord’s voice. He reigned his horse and nudged the animal close beside Faramir’s. Both slowed to a lazy trundle towards the city gates. “The dream?” Beregond asked. “You’ve still no insight?” He had heard the riddle, if a riddle it was. The dream had come to Faramir again and again since the coronation.

“It is a foretelling, most assuredly,” Faramir mused. “But of what? I cannot say. I think it must be the sort of riddle that makes itself known when its time is right, and until then one can only watch, and be wary, and take each step as it comes.”

“The dream,” Beregond said, “is it a fearful one?”

Faramir did not reply at once, and for a long minute only the sound of their horses hooves beat the blustery air around them. Finally, with a look in his grey eyes that Beregond had come to understand to mean he saw nothing in this world, the Prince replied—“No, Beregond. It is not a fearful dream. It is… almost comforting.”

The guardsman let his silence be his question.

“In it,” Faramir continued, “I see a scarecrow figure, misused and underfed. I see the form of a woman all dressed in white. I hear songs – some clearly Elvish, some… Beregond, I almost think the voices of the Valar themselves have whispered this message.” His voice was filled with awe that this might be so. Beregond looked away from his Captain. It was hard, he thought, to believe in visions, especially after the last had brought so much grief to the Steward’s family. But Faramir said on, “There is a gathering. A large one. Not as a council, but as almost a city. Men and women and children, strange beasts and strange magics, but I do not think this place is evil. It puzzles me that the words of the rhyme should seem so. Perhaps…”

When Beregond glanced back at Faramir, he saw that his Lord’s head was bowed and his brows dark with uncertainty.

“Perhaps this is not the path I was meant for.”

There was nothing Beregond could say, he knew, to assuage his Lord’s discontent. It would pass, he felt, in time. Let him depart from the City with his Rohirric woman, let him be wed, let him settle his affairs and bring the White Company into Emyn Arnen, and then—then let them be at peace and content and move on with their lives.

Together in silence, they rode back to the city.

***
The halls of the Steward’s Quarters were dark and still. It was nearing dawn. Faramir had risen not long ago with the words of the rhyme once more ringing in his ears. Now he wandered in frustrated contemplation, asking himself over and over, what can this mean?

His feet led him, as they often did without his thinking about it, to the door of the library. There he paused, looking sidelong at the heavy wood frame, its ancient carvings as much a part of his world as his own dreams were. These were shapes his tiny fingers had traced and retraced as a child, where many before him had done the same. And inside the library were books and papers which had been his steadfast companions since boyhood. Their tales thrilled him, comforted him, poured into his heart a more straightforward kind of passion. War is never easy. Love is never simple. But in the songs of his fathers, it was easy to pretend it could be…

Perhaps the elders who set their minds into pen and parchment would have answers for him.

Faramir opened the door.