Back again, and touching on this topic yet again. There just always seems to be one (or a few) character in each fandom that I end up fascinated with, and Finduilas (among others) seems to be it for this fandom. Hopefully I'll be able to express that better this time around.
I own nothing.
They say she withered like a fragile flower from the temperate coast planted in mountain rock. Perhaps they are correct in that regard, but Finduilas does not know if she is supposed to be woman, flower, or the ever-dwindling flame of a candle, burning low as the wax melts.
She left her home by the sea for the White City, for her husband. At first, Finduilas of Dol Amroth held memories in her heart to fill the gap that yawned in the absence of her home. Her fretful dreams were haunted by the sea, the gentle wind, the salt-smell, the vague and hazy memories of playing with her brother and sister as children. However, during the daylight hours she could find solace in all that she found in Minas Tirith. The new life, the family she had found here…
There were many things to love in Minas Tirith, the city in which she had come to stay as a young woman. Her husband, though proud and near-silent and not easy to know, was startlingly easy to love and loved her in return. Her first-born she saw the future in. The family she had here was a balm for the one she'd left behind and rarely saw. And Finduilas had always looked towards the future with anticipation, not trepidation. There was beauty in this stone-hewn city, even if it was not Dol Amroth, not her home, and she had not felt the salt spray on her face in years. She could see that.
But it's not enough, not anymore.
It was after the birth of her little one that Finduilas first began to notice, and first began to feel the cold settling deep in her hollow bones.
Any would shudder away from the sight of the Shadow of Mordor, looming over the mountains. In the dusk of evening and the gray pre-dawn, Finduilas can look at the sky and can see no stars, only the shadow of that blackened, ominous place. Before, she had the comfort of seeing the same stars in the White City as she had in Dol Amroth. Now, even that was denied her.
She had felt a chill on her skin to realize the mounting power of Mordor, to feel its evil seep into her blood, for just one moment, and it has not left her since.
Her heart sinks as a leaden stone tossed in still water, descending ever deeper, away from the light; at the same time, with each passing day weight seems to flee her form. Her skin is pale and translucent, veins showing beneath like the veins of a butterfly's paper-thin wing. Her voice grows faint, her eyes sad and far away, staring ever south, towards the place that she misses so and longs to return to, but never turning towards the Shadow of the East, never looking there. Weaker and weaker she grows, the cruel crossroad of childbirth and homesickness and despair of the shadow growing in the East. Perhaps she is indeed some sea-flower planted in the mountain rock. Finduilas can not thrive here; she knows that now.
For all that he is a wise, discerning man, Finduilas knows that her husband is blind or has blinded himself to the changes wrought in her. He sees not her listlessness, her sadness, her horror at the Shadow of Mordor, or at least endeavors not to see. Sometimes, she catches hints of clarity in him, when his sharp gaze grows transparent as glass and she sees her own desperate horror reflected there, though its cause is different. Finduilas tries to speak the words to make him understand, but she can find no words in her mouth and no strength in her heart to cause him hurt. He has always seemed to have some fire in his skin and in his tongue; her husband burns others with his anger, but Finduilas wonders if he would inflict the same harm upon himself, in despair.
Her first-born is not quite so discerning as his father. It is to be expected, being just a boy, but at the same time, his lesser sight allows him to see more than his father. Finduilas's first-born would not be out of place in Dol Amroth, with its warm, giving people. He is in behavior much as his uncle was at that age—impulsive, daring, bold, impatient. He wants to do a dozen things at once, and heeds only his father to be told that this simply isn't possible. One would think him lacking in all gentleness until they see him with his brother, who he smiles down on with such love. He casts his gaze over his mother's wasting form, and the way his jaw locks speaks of his understanding far more eloquently than words ever could. Where Finduilas's husband shies away from the truth, her son can not take his eyes from it. Would that she could take the shadow from his eyes.
As for her little one, some might say that on account of his age, barely five winters, there is little that can be said of him.
Sitting in a chair by the window, Finduilas shifts the weight of her little one, asleep with his head nestled against her breast and her soft hair, so that he doesn't bear down so greatly upon her hips. All her bones grow brittle and frail, and great pressure upon any of them is painful for her. She looks down at his sleeping face, slack and bereft of any of the cares of the waking day, and can summon a wavering smile to her face.
Her first-born strongly resembles neither of his parents. He resembles himself, possibly his brother, and no one else. But Finduilas can see in her little one the face of his father in infancy. The resemblance is not perfect—her little one has her dark brown hair and eyes the same shade of gray as hers—but she can already see that he will grow to be a man much like his father. Quiet, watchful, discerning. He has at his age no understanding of the fate of Men, but he senses the wrongness of his mother's condition and clings to her as though he knows that her time will be cut short.
Finduilas can not say where the road her feet have planted on is heading, but she suspects she knows how this will end. Summer has come and gone, or at least so she thinks; she has difficulty discerning the summer from the winter seasons for the chill that stays knitted to her flesh all year long. When will death come for her, she wonders?
She is like a hanging plant, rootless, ready to blow away in the gentlest breeze. Anyone who sees this scene would see a ghost holding her living son. See what a ghost the White City has made of her living flesh. She hasn't felt grounded in this world since she first beheld the Shadow, and can nowhere find the words to explain the depths of her malaise. Loving husband and precious children, home and duty, none of these things are enough to keep her rooted in the ground, or to keep the soil from poisoning her from the feet up. None of these things will be enough to save her.
The sigh of her little one distracts her for a moment, but inevitably, Finduilas's eyes turn out towards the horizon. Somewhere beyond the Shadow, there is starlight, but she has not the eyes to see it.