1. As a Fountain From the Earth

- T.A. 2976 -

"Finduilas, you must not marry him," Prince Imrahil said, his hand on his sister's arm. "Listen to me."

Finduilas snatched her hand away, staring at her brother in disbelief. "You like Lord Denethor," she said. "He has treated you as a younger brother, with utmost affection and even respect. Where is this coming from?"

"I do," Imrahil said, "But you must not go to Minas tirith, dear sister. You must never marry him. I fear a future with this man, in that home, would only suffocate you."

"What reasoning do you have for that?" Finduilas exclaimed, staring her brother down. In spite of her glare, for once her brother did not yield, but stood firm, raising his chin stubbornly. "A life with him is all that I want, all I have ever wanted. I will not only have his love, the love of a great and noble man, but a grand household. I will have the kingdom of Gondor in love with me, I will bear the children of Gondor's future. I have long dreamed of such an honor and now it is at my fingertips."

Imrahil sighed and gestured grandly out toward the sea, so grey and angry on this cloudy day. Gulls swooped and soared along the rocky sides of the cliffs and down between the waves, their cries echoing across the bay. "You will not have the wind and the salt air keeping you strong, nor the feel of the sand beneath your feet. You will not have your freedom."

"He is the Steward's son, not a jailer," Finduilas protested, "And he loves me."

"I do not doubt it," said Imrahil, looking fiercely into her eyes, "But a man like that will keep you like a bird in a gilded cage. He will be your master, Finduilas, not your equal."

"He will be my husband and I am determined to be his lady," Finduilas said sweetly, sweeping back her raven hair from her face in an effort to qualm her anger. She knew it furled and flew like a banner against the grey-green backdrop of the sea which spanned out below them. They stood on the balcony of Finduilas' chambers.

"I know you are jealous that I am leaving you, little brother, but there is no reason to try to frighten me out of this match," Finduilas said more gently, laying a hand on her brother's cheek. He nearly leaped away, looking at her in stony indignation.

"I am trying to protect you," he snapped, and shaking his head, he backed away and left his sister standing on the balcony.

Finduilas turned to face the sea, her hands shaking with anger and indignation. How dare he? What did Imrahil, scarcely out of boyhood at the difficult age of twenty, know of Denethor, a man over twice his age? Doubtless he was jealous of Denethor… And who wouldn't be? Finduilas smiled to herself, thinking of Denethor's face as he cupped her face in his hands and asked her to be his wife, and after she had responded yes. First serious and apprehensive, he had glowed with pride and astonishment, looking almost boyish as a grin flashed across his face. He had swung her around and kissed her mouth, holding her up in strong arms against his chest. She had never felt so safe, so protected. He treated her like something incredibly precious to him. He treated her like his queen.

It was at the moment of this proposal that Finduilas had fallen completely and utterly in love with him. Already enamored of him from their first conversations, when words had flowed off their tongues like wildfire, so quick was the connection between them. Whether walking along the shores of the bay of Belfalas, or seated side by side on a bench in the gallery, poring over old books, their hands had just seemed to find one another, coming to rest side by side on the page they studied, or their fingers interlacing just slightly, hidden in the folds of Finduilas' sweeping skirts. He had never ventured to press further on the boundaries of propriety, but his eyes when they met hers spoke of all the things they could not say or do. Finduilas was sure that her own eyes had betrayed the same intention.

She had been flattered that Denethor had paid her any attention, at first. She was the daughter of the Lord of Dol Amroth, of course, so he would have been loathe to forgo the common courtesy of formal greeting, but to seek out her company and to ask her genuine questions of her opinions and herself went beyond such courtesy. While normally her youthful air of innocence and almost childlike beauty struck her assets, in the face of the forbidding, proud Denethor, she had felt little more than a childish slip of a girl. She was small in stature, with hips that were narrower than she would have liked and small breasts. Her face seemed too round, her neck too short, and the light dusting of freckles that appeared on her cheeks and nose in the summer months seemed to her offensive to her womanly age of twenty-five. She was not the statuesque beauty she wished to be, the kind that would bring powerful men to their knees in an instant. She did not take after her mother, whose tall, willowy figure seemed to float through the air and whose graceful, refined features portrayed wisdom, strength, humor and serenity all at once as she looked at her children, her husband, and her people. Next to her mother, Finduilas had ever felt like an ugly duckling, forgetting all at once the striking contrast of her raven hair against creamy white skin and the redness of her heart-shaped mouth, and entirely unaware that the natural sweetness of her expression caused men and woman alike to follow her with their eyes.

And yet Denethor found Finduilas beautiful. Proud, keen-eyed Denethor, the future Steward of of Gondor and the man who did not care to dance and who paid little attention to the women whose eyes followed him lustily wherever he went, had approached her. At the banquet her father had held in Denethor's honor, he had cast aside his rich mantle and ascended the stairs to where Finduilas was seated at the high table. His hand extended, he had bowed deeply before her and asked her to dance. All eyes had been on her as she stood and took his hand, allowing him to escort her down the steps onto the floor. Thankfully she had not tripped, she had thought later, remembering how deliciously light she had felt in his arms.

She knew it was an advantageous match, for Denethor as much as it was for her. It was fitting and appropriate that Denethor, who would eventually inherit his father's rule, take to wife a daughter of the fiefdom of Dol Amroth. At five and forty he was hardly a young man, though he was very much in his prime. Perhaps part of his interest in her was rooted in the necessity that he wed. But Finduilas knew that Denethor loved her and cherished her.

"I have been a cold and spiteful man, Finduilas," he had once said to her, taking her hand in his own. Instead of meeting her eyes, he had looked at the lines in their palms, as if timid to share this truth with her. "Yet you have awoken compassion in me, like a fountain that bubbles up from deep within the earth."

Finduilas experienced difficulty imagining Denethor as spiteful or cold, for when he was with her he showed nothing but warmth to her and to those around him. Yet she believed him when he said that he felt new life within him. She felt the same stirring deep within her, as if her life, which to this point had held little purpose, was now laid out before her. Although her heart would ache to leave the sea, she would go to Minas tirith and become the wife of Denethor. If Illúvatar willed it, she would stay by his side always.