March 16th

Faramir's Diary

The warden has suggested I keep a diary. Make-work if ever I encountered it! Still, I might as well fill my time somehow as I am confined to this place for quite a few days to come. I still feel ghastly. Every so often, quite unpredictably, I am hit by waves of tiredness and a chill like the threat of death. I'm also filled with fears, both imagined (the aftermath of the Black Breath I'm told), and real – in particular, a strange sense of unease at the thought of my father's death. No-one will tell me the details, so instead my imagination is hard at work, and nothing it comes up with is good. I have these half-remembered fragments, but I can't tell what is real, and what is my over-wrought, fever-addled brain making things up.

One piece of good news. Ioreth has just told me that tomorrow I can get out of bed and walk in the gardens. Thank the Valar. If I have to stay in this tiny bed, in this tiny cell for another day, I shall run completely mad.

Éowyn's Diary

So, apparently I am to keep a diary. Writing about my fey moods will help me to overcome them, supposedly. Which seems a singularly pointless task. Firstly I don't for a moment believe it will work. Secondly I don't see the point of shaking off my fey mood in any case. The whole world stands on the brink of ruin and destruction: a fey mood seems to me to be an entirely appropriate reaction. And thirdly the one thing that would genuinely lift my mood – the chance of an honourable death in battle – is denied to me because I am stuck in bed, arm splinted, feeling weak as a kitten.

And Béma, how I miss my uncle. My thoughts keep circling to his death. He was the nearest I had to a father after my own died. No, that's wrong, that makes him sound like second best, and he wasn't that. He was entirely himself, first and most beloved uncle and foster-father. And my brother – I am terrified he will die too. I want to be there by his side, to protect him, to be with him, to die with him if needs be.

Gods, isn't it funny how real emotions throw imagined ones into sharp relief. Knowing that I have lost one of those dearest to me, may lose the other – my foolish fancy for the Lord Aragorn seems to have evaporated like so much mist in the early morning. All I feel towards him now is embarrassment.