I have always had a soft spot for my character Cahira. She has been in my head since sixth grade and has gone through a great deal of editing and re-designing. Just a note, I do not own Lord of the Rings.
Part 1: Beginnings
The Eyries were a beautiful place to behold, with sweeping cliffs and clear blue skies. The Eagles made their home high above the ground to keep their young away from predators and so that they had easier access to the wide skies above. It is in the Eyries that Ivriniel, former princess of Dol Amroth, sister to Imrahil, chose to make her home. Ivriniel was a traveler by nature, and as her journeys took her farther and farther from Gondor, it was longer and longer since she saw her family. She chose to take residence among the Eagles because it was in the Eyries that she felt true peace. It would be in the lands near the Eyries that she would first meet her beloved: Toreindel, an elf lord from Lothlorien.
She was gathering herbs in the forests near the Eyrie when a band of elves faded out from the forest. Their leader was Lord Toreindel, and he wanted instructions to get to the Eagles, as his liege-lady requested that he contact them about an important matter. The young Ivriniel, instead of merely giving him instructions, offered to take him and his men to the Eagles. As they walked together, he was struck by her curious nature and the way the light shone from her large blue eyes, and in turn, she was entranced by his tranquil voice and the way the wind swept through his long, dark hair. Attachments between elf- and man-kind are a rare thing, but in that simple afternoon journey from the base of the mountains to the top of the Eyrie, the two fell in love. Time passed, and Toreindal, or Tor as Ivriniel called him, would visit, and it was from one of these visits that their daughter, Cahira Lothiriel Hawkmoon was born. She was named by them both, for different reasons. Cahira was the name of one of the ancestral spirits that lived in Tor's forest home, while the name Lothiriel came from one of Ivriniel's ancestors. It was actually the Eagles who dubbed the child Hawkmoon, due to her mother being a healer and thus under the sign of the moon and Tor's familial standard bearing a hawk. She was a happy child, but one that did not have her father very long or very often, because he had duties in Lothlorien that needed attending. Her mother never complained about seeing her beloved sporadically or the rare messages that he sent, but her longing for him was apparent to those that knew her well.
Cahira's earliest memories were of her and her mother looking out over the cliffs of the Eagle's Eyrie, watching the nestlings take their first flights. She knew that her mother was a beautiful woman, brown of hair and blue of eyes, with her blue healer's marks prominent upon her cheekbones. When she was young, Cahira used to paint her own cheeks with berry juice in a semblance of the ones upon her mother's face. The girl had no real knowledge of her mother's family in Dol Amroth, nor did she know much about her father's family either. Cahira's slanted grey eyes and slightly pointed ears spoke of her father's Elven nature, but other than her mother's occasional wistfulness when another year passed without a message from him, Cahira did not think much of her father.
The Eagle's Eyrie was not the safest environment for a young girl to grow up in, but between her mother's watchful eye and the eagle's ability to communicate to each other mind to mind, Cahira managed to escape some of the more lethal dangers of the Eyrie. She grew tall and strong from running to catch up with the fledgling Eagles or climbing the cliffs to visit her neighbors. Her mother taught her the difference between deadly and edible plants, how to be polite and mannerly among other beings, and how to travel with a single pack and a smile on one's face. The Eagles taught her swiftness of body and mind, honesty, and bravery in spite of fear. From her father, she learned a most important, though bitter lesson: value the ones you love and each day with them, because you never know when it will be your time to leave.
When she was fifteen, her father died. She remembered climbing up to the cave where she and her mother lived and seeing her mother weeping on the floor, clutching a letter to her breast. From the letter, Cahira gathered that he and his men had been attacked in the forest by a superior force of Orcs. The elves had been defending the borders of Lothlorien. Her father's body was to be sent back into the arms of the trees in one week, not enough time for Ivriniel or Cahira to walk to Lothlorien. Hastily, Cahira started gathering travel packs so that they could fly on the backs of the Eagles to get there in time, but her mother stopped her. Ivriniel said that she and Cahira could not just fly into the forests of Lothlorien, because it was disrespectful to the rulers, Lord Celeborn and Lady Galadriel.
No matter how hard she tried, Cahira could not convince her mother to go, so she decided to go with her Eagle neighbor Freyr. They flew to the borders of Lothlorien, but when Cahira sought entry to the realm on the grounds that her father was an elf lord of Lothlorien, she was denied. The border guards that stopped her and Freyr, while sympathetic towards her loss, because they too loved Lord Toreindal, could not let her pass, by orders of the Lady Galadriel. Cahira, angered at being denied from seeing her father's funeral, wrote a letter to the Lord and Lady and requested that one of the scouts take it as soon as possible. In honor of her father, one guard did so and returned hours later with a message and a bundle.
The message was from Lord Celeborn, a friend of Cahira's father. He wrote that while he grieves for the loss of a friend and for the loss that Cahira and her mother are bearing, he cannot let them into Lorien because they are not elves nor are they seeking sanctuary. He offered his condolences and said that if she ever needed a favor, all she would have to do was to call to any nearby hawk, and the creature would be honor-bound to aid her to the best of its ability. Cahira then unwrapped the bundle and found a small signet ring emblazoned with a hawk and a tree of Lothlorien, which she put in the pouch at her belt. Also in the package were a set of Elvish long knives and a bow and quiver set. The scout that brought the message and bundle from Celeborn commented that the weapons had belonged to her father and his family for centuries and that she is quite fortunate that Celeborn saw fit to bless her with at least a small part of her father to remember him by. Cahira only retorted that if Celeborn saw fit to bless her and her mother, than perhaps he should have allowed Toreindal to live in the Eyrie. With those words, she sprang onto Freyr's back and they flew back to the mountains.
After her beloved's death, Ivriniel began to fade. She had been strong for so long, with the thought of seeing Tor keeping her focused on life, but with him gone forever, she had nothing left to hold her to life but Cahira, and the girl had long since chosen her own path. Ivriniel became ill and less than a year after the death of Toreindal, Cahira lost her mother. The Eyrie grieved for the loss of such a bright and caring healer, a brave traveler, and a long-forgotten princess, but Cahira grieved for the loss of the mother that had sheltered her from harm and taught her all that she knew. Before she lit the pyre to burn her mother's body, Cahira took the healer's headband from her mother's body and tied it around her own neck, to remember Ivriniel. With the lighting of the pyre, Cahira bid farewell to her childhood and took a step into an uncertain future.