Happy Unbirthday Eschschiola! As promised... The Cougar Problem set with permission in Annafan's 'Surrender to the Steward' universe and featuring a few *cough* cameos. See if you can guess who is who? unbeta'd.. you have been warned...comma issues lurk ahead ^_^

Fourth Age 020

"Do I have too? Captain."

"You do, Lieutenant. Just like every new recruit. Now sit straight and no more griping. Brayt can't work if you're staring at your boots."

Mablung barks the order with just enough heat to stick; loud and a little startling in the warm heaviness of the room. Outside the wide barracks windows it's a golden late summer afternoon. Twin clouds of tawny dust kick up: one from the latest greenhorn to be set into the dirt; the other from the threshing team for harvest's come again. How did that happen? Or this, thinks Mablung's doing his level best to treat his new lieutenant as just another raw recruit. It's hard (damned so). Time's slipped again and a boy he's known since leading strings is now stationed in his troop.

Elboron. Firstborn of Faramir and Éowyn. Eighteen and commissioned and already blooded in service to the King.

Can't be true. But is. The evidence sits, a little resignedly, before his eyes.

He is oddly touched by the hurriedly remembered rank.

Smartly turned out in dress tunic and silver buttons, Elboron fidgets just enough to protest but obligingly lifts up his eyes. Brayt cocks his head and studies the fall of the fading day's mellow light, just ever so slightly turns the youth's bearded chin. His charcoaled fingers leave a small smudge of grey amidst the gold. "Much better my lord. Now I pray you keep very still."

The little man hurries back to his stool, pulls up his parchment to his knee and quickly settles back to work, instinctively understanding the men have only so much patience for this duty. He glances up and back, murmuring to himself, deft fingers sketching out the beginnings of shoulders, neck and chin.

Beside him stands a trestle table covered in small wood blocks, assorted knives and sharpened chisels. Orvan the printer, who will take up the portrait and turn it into relief, is looking on and nodding eagerly; waiting for the image to come to him to carve. Garrulous to a fault, in the quiet pauses between Brayt's polite and deferential manoeuvering he happily waxes rapturous about his new vocation.

It sets Mablung's teeth on edge.

"It's a problem sir, and your lord father saw it right enough," Orvan gushes, pale hands flailing in excitement and nearly knocking loose a frame. "Too many new Rangers and the folk further up the vales don't get to know the Men. Not like Captain Beregond's company stationed near the hall. You'd be surprised how many widows are living on their own, way up off the North Road. We don't want them surprised and suspicious when you come haring out o' the trees."

'No we did not,' thinks Mablung to himself. Some of them would just as soon put an arrow in a strange man's backside as question him. Some of them nearly had. Leyt, who has his near Silvan eyesight to thank for not meeting Irmo before his time, sported Widow Lara's sincerely apologetic bandage for weeks.

Embarrassing. And needless.

Now that the Steward's new-fangled printing press is firmly (if somewhat skeptically) ensconced, the people learn the Rangers' names and how they look. The leaflets go out to every market and road marker, announcing the new recruits and (as in this case) the occasional new officer. All very tidy and organized. It's the posing for the portrait that they resent: an hour or more lost time, holding still when they'd rather get on the job.

Mablung stalks back to his small inner sanctum, sits on the corner of his immaculately tidy desk (a virtue pounded in by Madril, not their messy former Captain) and glares at the paperwork, hoping it will go away. When it doesn't he reluctantly picks up a sheaf, scratches at his greying beard and begins to read. All of it is routine: a lost cow retrieved, two episodes of drunken fisticuffs, a joint exercise with Legolas' men. Straightforward enough that he keeps one eye on Leyt's report and another on the artistic efforts. Strictly speaking he needn't be in here, would much rather be outside training in the yard, but with Elboron's platoon heading soonest north of Henneth Annun, he wants to keep a weather eye on how the lad's settling in.

Can't be easy being the Steward's son and a prince. Made to take a post in every corner of the army.

There'll be some good natured razing just like he's getting now.

"Bayt are you certain you've got his nose? It looks a trifle small!"

"How about his eyes? Are they just the shade of grey?"

Orvan doesn't help. Oblivious to the catcalling, he hovers over Bayt's shoulder, clearly mulling how thick to get the ink. The woodblock works wonders but is a little crude for showing tones. "Be sure to catch that he's so fair, my friend. Not too many strands where the ink might merge."

Brand and Corwin, the next victims of the scheme, seem to forget this fact and break down whispering and snickering at his words. "Ooo yes. Not too many strands. Don't want the lasses thinking he isn't pretty."

Mablung's jaw tightens reflexively. Both are sixteen. Raven haired like their Minas Tirith fathers and if one were charitable- pleasant faced. Their words aren't meant to fly but their Captain has many years of keeping tabs on every rustle in the forest. He sets the report back and rises, noting how Elboron, tucked in the farther corner, can hear it too. The boy, blessed with his father's canny ears, sits stiffly, barely batting an eye as ordered but the thin long fingers in his lap clench harder, knuckles white.

His mother's son in this. Pride makes him want to hit. Even when he knows he can't.

Mablung sucks in a breath and hollers through the door. "Private!"

"Sir?"

"Yer next, Private Brand. Best you remember that. And if I hear anymore artistic comments you'll be counting fletching feathers one by one. For a week. " he growls with enough menace to make a youthful cheek blush red. That'll shut 'em. At least until Orvin begins fussing once again.

Over by the window Elboron breaks form and full on grins, mouth quirking up in a wide and wry exact duplicate of his dead uncle's smile.

Nienna's mercy.

Boromir's mouth. Faramir's eyes. And Lady Eowyn's hair.

If he is privately in some doubt there's a female left in Ithilien that doesn't know their young Crown Prince is blond, the veteran Captain keeps it to himself.
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For those wondering about the original tweet.. google Gainsville Police and cougar... grin