'A ship's in port.'
On a day warm and fine, bright as could be found in a land that greened from too much rain, the news ran swift as a water spout through Lofnui's jumbled streets.
"A ship's in port and Malik says it's Minuramar."
The welcome words caught Branwyn arms deep in the afternoon's napkin washing and she could not help but turn her head. Could it be? So soon?
A hope that she held so carefully in check set two spots of colour on her cheeks, made Alain chuckle as he rolled his eyes, leaning against Bluebell's door.
"What's to stop ye, lass? Go. Go!" he said, shooing her away. "Custom's light. If tis him, I expect I can spare you til the morrow. " Calmly, pointedly, he took up a dirty jug of his own to clean, feigned annoyance at her ecstatic kiss but his lips were pulled into the wryest of fond smiles and his keen gaze was approving. Another man might not have been so generous. Alain of Lofnui knew in every bone that chance oft came with the wind.
Branwyn quickly doffed her apron, flew threw the pining of the wet blue check squares on the laundry line and bent to catch up her satchel, frowning briefly at her dress. Her skirts were damp; her long sable hair was almost a bird's next, and her fingers were pruned and raw. Not exactly a queen, she laughed to herself, but there was nothing to be done-Minuramar might be here and she simply could not wait.
A rush of excitement propelled her to the greyed wood quay, oblivious to the hails of passing seaman and neighbour, by instinct avoiding usual obstacles of bales and ropes and barrels of fish. She did not see their smiles; her gaze was fixed on the sleek, dark shape that might be a brigantine anchored in the final berth.
Was it really? Could it be them? She drew closer and Blessed Varda her heart gave a leap. T'was no mistake! The new ship that sat gently rocking was not an ordinary trading sloop; was not a ferry vessel or Prince's warship- the flag that snapped jauntily on the high main mast bore no swan-ship of silver on clear sea blue; her decks were not swarmed by navvies in smart uniform and smarter trims. This was a hunter; a fighter. Lean and fierce, with a hull of deepest midnight to hide upon the wide dark sea.
Minuramar, Wings of the Dawn. The most feared ship about the southern shores and east she had ever sailed.
Branwyn ran to base of the gangplank and stopped, heart full but stomach all at once aflutter. It had been two moons since Mir had been last to port. Look for me when the shipfish return he'd said, and so she'd settled down to wait, be patient for summer's end, but here he was! Early and unexpected.
Uinen's mercy let it be fair wind not foul that brought him here this time! Let him be well. Unharmed. Unhurt.
She had sent a prayer to the Lady of the Sea each day that he'd be gone, casting her wishes like petals into the sea. It was rough magic—simple and seaweed-strong; of Langstrand's long wild shore, and it worked. She knew it, for it was all she had to give.
"Permission to come aboard!" Branwyn called all but bouncing on her slippered toes, raising her voice to heard above the wind that set a moaning in the shrouds, above the wild hammering of her heart.
"Ahoy!" A tall seaman whose braids were decked with blue-green shells leaned nonchalantly against the gunwale and ran a hand thoughtfully across his chin. "Lofnui again?! Can't credit it. Something must be wrong." He turned and shouted back toward the bridge. "Captain, there's a lass here looks like she knows her way around a punch! Not sure that we should risk her boarding. Dare we let her storm the ship, the way she's stormed your heart?"
The seamen scuttling on the deck, winding capstans and tightening ropes, let up a cheer. "Let her in!" "Don't keep her waiting," they cried but the big second mate with the kind smile and kinder heart shook his head, crossed his arms and planted his great trunks of legs athwart the open hatch.
"Not sure we dare," Rorend laughed, eyes glinting mischievously as the First Mate joined him in peering down. "She's dangerous this one. Bewitched us far off course and Valar knows where else we'll fetch up? Mr. Carn what d'ye thi…. "
"Ror! you bloody, great…..!"
Rorend was shoved summarily aside and all at once he was there. Mir-braids bound in a leather tie; shirt open at the neck and ragged cuffs undone. The hand that poised almost languidly on the starboard shroud was a little thin, dark circles were smudged below his mist-grey eyes, but otherwise he looked himself.
Sleek and dark as the ship that he commanded.
Yavanna's mercy.
"Brannie!?" With the prowling grace that ever sat easy on his skin, Mir stalked down the narrow, jouncing gangway; stopped so close she could smell the scent of spice and sea; could see the deep breaths of his chest she had come recognize were tension held in check.
Was he nervous? As she? The hand adorned with ink-blue waves reached out to touch a loose swaying tendril of her hair as if she were a siren about to disappear.
"May I? Come aboard?" she breathed over the cloud of butterflies dancing in her chest. Even after this year, a half dozen visits clustered in spring and fall, each reunion felt new as the first—and she as skittish as a girl at her first Midsummer dance, waiting for the magic.
"Oh, lass." A rush of emotion played across Mir's face like breaking wave and then a smile was wide as Manwe's air sky shone out. "Could you ever doubt it?"
All at once she was lifted up and off her feet. "Carn you have the wheel!" Mir ordered as he bounded up the plank and past his grinning crew.
"Yer welcome, captain," the first mate grumbled half-heartedly and Branwyn turned head back to yell an apology, but Carn already moving, shouting orders to the men. Blessed Lady. This dance, this unorthodox courtship was now most routine for them,. The men were already swarming the mid-deck, bringing down the stays and scurrying up the rigging, readying for the heavy work of furling the sqaure mainsails. Mir ignored them all. He swept them past their bemused audience, made straight for the quarterdeck where Branwyn's skirts swished against the wooden panels of the passage, her shoulders brushing at drops of sea salt and wet.
"Mir put me down!" she laughed, giddy to be in his arms again. The leather of his baldric was rough through the thin cotton of her dress, his hands so warm they almost burned.
"As my lady commands!"
The cabin door was banged open so abruptly it bashed against its stop. Tinker, the everyday denizen of his bunk, meowed and leapt in protest. "Out of the way Tink!" Mir ordered, and the grey tabby sought the safest perch-the desk, this time piled high with dark blue log books, its inkwell secured to the top. Branwyn had no time to peruse the new and intriguing contents, she landed down on her back, softly, dead center of the tidy blankets, and heaved a sigh of longing as she welcomed Mir's warmth and weight. Eager hands wound into the lose ebony strands that framed his handsome face.
No braids or beads or dolphin this time but she had not the focus to wonder why. "You're here."
"I am."
He nestled closer. She felt his surrender, felt the focus, attention on Minuramar fall away and let him melt a first soft kiss of re-acquaintance onto her lips. Once. Twice. Then he was pulling back-the great grey eyes with their blue black lashes devouring every inch of her face as if committing it to memory again. "Branwyn, meleth. By Ossë's sacred music, every day since we last met has seemed like half an Age."
Oh he was not playing fair. To set the fire flaring up again and then pull away. "Sixty-three days," she noted precisely. Each one was crossed off in chalk upon lintel of her little cottage, would have continued on the appointed plan. Why now? Why so early? Surely this unlooked for visit came after Minuramar had broken off some arduous hunt: Mir felt more wiry, looked more weatherbeaten. And older. She raised a hand to caress a new surprise- a beard that had begun to fill in the hollows of his cheeks.
"Are you quite sure you are the same pirate that has carried me off before?" she teased. "I wouldn't want to be thought free with every devastatingly handsome man who scoops me up."
He chuckled. "You have caught me out fair wench! Twas a fight to finish for he was canny bastard, but I murdered the rogue and threw him overboard."
She grimaced at his truly ridiculous, vicious scowl. "Pity. I was rather fond of him. Let me see if you truly taste just as well."
It was the right thing to say. Mir made a low growl of longing and dipped his head, devouring her mouth with an almost searing kiss. Blessed Lady. First contact and tendrils of need flew to her fingertips, her heart thudding with a different tide in her blood. Just like their very first, hesitant, awkward press all those months ago a spark of wonder flared—lightening or moonstruck. She felt like a firefly, the night-shining foam, a phoenix, wreathed in light but whole. He consumed her and she him.
"Mir, how long…?" do we have…she began to ask, trying to reach her practical self again, but already the riously elegant, long fingers already were unlacing her bodice top, seeking the milk white skin below the tan. Hot fire spilled across her breast and she gasped, dizzy with it, unable to decide if he sought to still the query poised on her lips or truly could not wait to pull forth the tiny mewling sounds of need? Or both.
Thoughts of time, and distance, and cool nights alone and sorrowing flew off, like the great cranes at summer's end. His fingers were a cinder coal, teasing, torturing; mapping every inch of her until liquid warmth replaced the jitter of the need, made a haze without sharp edges or shadows. She had been a little chilled in the breeze, in dampened lap and skirts but it mattered not.
Fire. Ice. Today. Tomorrow. All of it slid together for he was there.
Later, after the sea's rocking lulled them to sweet slumber and before the pink light of coming dawn bled morn through the porthole, as he sometimes did, Mir awoke, shaking and crying, gasping out of green water.
Wave
"Mir! Mir! You are fine. And here. Come back to me," she crooned, running gentling hands down the corded muscle of his back, holding him closer until the shudders passed.
When they did, he raised a shaking hand to wipe the cold sweat from his brow. "The same..?"
"Aye." He blinked; eyes narrowed and almost all of black, the grey just the merest sliver of silver stream. "A great boiling wave was flecked with foam. It climbed over the green fields, up and up to the mountain top. Greenlit this time, not dark.
Bless Lorien. "Then fortune smiles," she said for sailors were a superstitious lot, anxious to hold the good. She reached unfailingly in the half light for the flask of water that always stood tilted against a pile of books.
He drank like a drowning man. "If it only it felt like so."
It hurt to see him doubt. "Could speaking of it not rob it of it any agency?"
"You may be right. Perhaps… "
For a moment Branwyn thought he might say more but then she saw him put the thought away, still his face to calm like a drawer being closed.
He hugged her hard, drew her back down to the bunk and spooned up behind, heaving a small sigh. Minuramar rocked, swayed in the southern wind, and both listened for a time, soothed by quiet sussuration of rope on rail and mast, but the question bubbled.
"How long do we have?"
Her voice was a steady as it could be. She turned to catch the sunlight throwing greying shadows across the familiar planes of his handsome face. It was still and calm.
When she did look away, a finger smoothed the frown line that gathered between her chestnut brows. "A week at most."
"Oh" So little. His kiss was gentle once again but the smile was a little wan. "And after?"
"After harvest time. When the winds begin to change…"
So far? For a few moments she had recklessly allowed herself to think they would see each other soon again, but then Branwen shoved it hard away. She had made a promise to not be that kind of woman. She was no child. No teenage lovelorn lass. She had came to him willingly; at first for the excitement in her dreary humdrum world, for the stories of flying battles and strange curious shores. And the sweet stolen kisses.
Later she came because her heart simply flipped at the thought of him, and if it wondered through this year magic who he really was, she was smart enough not to ask. Ships bring goods and gossip. Rumors ran wilder than a summer storm each time Minuramar came to port. He was a Black Númenórean seeking to snatch the unwary back to Umbar and its shadowlands. He was a smuggler. A trader. A brigand. A Prince. She'd scoffed at that. Mir was no dashingly elegant Prince Adrahil and there was no swan upon the prow. It was well known that he was the soul of patience with his dandy of a little brother-the spoiled, baby of the family who drank like a fish and vanished for months at a time from Dol Amroth's shores, gambling away his fortune in Minas Tirith's least desirious gaming dens. That was not this man.
Once she'd made a mistaken turn below, saw swords brightly keen, oiled and ready next to the grabbling hooks and shivered thinking of the mystery ship, the hunter said to the harry Corsairs at every turn. Please let that not be him—a foolish hope for she had seen the longing, the twitching unsettledness in the first weeks of their meeting. Minuramar was too long on shore. Mir would stand face to the wind that blew from the sea wherever that he was, eyes to the white gulls crying overhead.
And Wordan, wrapped in a long grey cloak against the wet, one who had plied the Bay for five decades on the Lord of Anfalas' swiftest ship, would watch and mournfully shake his grizzled head. "Be steady lass. Tis the Unquiet of Ulmo that drives him. Blessed are they that hear the Ulurmuri call, but ever after they will follow the white gulls crying and the bright foam flying. The music of the deep sounds within his heart."
Valar that was true.
And she knew not how to keep him safe. "Where were you this time?"
"Everywhere. Nowhere. Destinations of delight."
All his sailing stories were stripped of names, like branches without leaves. East. South. Far as we could go. Still they entranced her. "You should see it Brannie," he would say. "I can stand on her high prow and almost catch the Gates of Morning. At night the sky is dark vault that robes us like a mantle; blue-black and studded with a myriad white and sparkling jewels. Ithil will shine above, his light streams down to kiss the churning sea set endless swirls of shimmering green and blue dancing on the waves. And low in the sky, the brightest star of all the dawn will lead us on: bound to Vingilot who sails the heavens round.
This time, as always, though his arms were strong about her heart, he did not quite see her as he spoke. "One day, hen the thrice be-damned dogs drop off their hunt I will take you out onto the Bay, my love. The glory of it never leaves. The fall and rise and raging wild. The gull's cry and the wind on the waves, slicing like a whetted knife. In it sometimes I think I hear just an echo of Ulmo's voice."
Branwyn bit her lip. The tempest of words had drifted down, thrilled her but also made her ache. "Wordan says our ships are guarded and that other hands than ours guide them on."
"Perhaps."
They nestled together once again, chest to chest; and for a while she drew lazy circles across the perfect fineness of his hip.
It did not help. Once again, she did what she had promised herself she would not. "Can you not…"
The words were stopped by a finger's tip. "Meleth. Hûn nín." A strong hand reached up to hold the wood above their heads. "She is my life. And my first love."
And Branwyn would always be second. "She is jealous lady, your ship, to lead you always back to this vagrant gypsy life."
His smile tickled against her neck. "If it is any consolation you are not the only female exasperated."
He was always one to tease. "A dog?"
"Nay. My mother. She hates it. A woman of earth, of roots and shoots and all green and growing things. Wise and very beautiful. But not so beautiful as you." A flight of kisses swirled lazily across her skin. "Branwyn. Lady. Your eyes could steal a sailor from the sea."
Could. Another man perhaps but never Mir. He shivered a little then and sat, setting the blanket falling askew as he reached to a little drawer set in the bunk. A small bag of green-gold silk came out and from it, a flash of argent so bright it almost hurt. "You have me so dazzled I almost forgot your gift," he murmured, letting the locket fall gently down, spreading his arms to lay it at her throat.
"It is Elvish work. From Lórinand."
"Ohhh, Mir." It was a locket. Chased with the finest filigree and hung on flashing braids of silver set, like his, with beads and creatures of the sea. Inside his likeness was painted perfectly—proud and strong and smiling, because of course he could not keep a sombre face through hours of sitting still.
Foolish tears threatened to tumble down. She had asked him for an image-to prove in the long watches of the night that he was real. "Thank you. Thank you so…" She kissed his cheeks and eyes and lips, touched and thrilled, but then all at once her heart began to chill.
Why now? Why a piece so very fine?
Surely even Princess Fana in Dol Amroth's ancient palace had nothing so very perfect. Surely it cost half a hoard. Surely…it was…
Goodbye.
She breathed through the sudden shards of pain but he read her heart as he always did. Set a hand to cup her cheek. His eyes were dark. Storm tossed, but filled with only her.
"Brannie. Nay. Do not think so." He softly brushed a thumb against the sparkle on her lashes, caught the tears before they fell. "I cannot promise when, but I promise I will return, for if my heart has a home at any other port it is here. Within your arms. My love for you is boundless as the sea."
But she was first. Branwyn bent her head. The men said 'A ship was safe at harbour but that was not what ships are for'. She had known this. Forever. And he had always told the truth.
And she had promised no regrets.
Greedily soft lips sought his-demanding the fire flare up again and he groaned; wound his fingers into hers, pulled her down across his chest to let his hands and arms and need show much more than he could say.
It was enough. Despite the blazing pink of dawn, soon all she could see were shining pools of grey.
.
One more chapter and then this muse will quiet down and I can return to Flame in the West again. Apologies... I think by now you all know my muse is a little ADHD... A new idea is such a bright shiny thing... like a silver locket :)
This is unbeta'd..so likely will clean up this weekend
