Kindle My Heart
Lea of Mirkwood
--- --- ---
"What do you see?" asked Éowyn with a small smile, craning her neck to watch Merry. He peered out the window facing north.
"The City is quiet. All the people are inside. But wait!" he cried, beginning to fabricate a fantasy. "It's a festival!"
"Oh really?" laughed Éowyn merrily* and looked closely at the halfling. "Are you joking?"
"No!" cried Merry. "It is true! As sure as my name is...now..." he trailed off, pretending to look confused. "What was my name again?" he asked.
Éowyn laughed harder, a sound she realized she had not made for far too long. This halfling made her feel happy again. "I think it was...Tom. Was it?"
Merry hopped down from the stool and marched over to her bed. He leaned over her until their noses bumped. "I don't know. What about you? What's your name again?"
"Éowyn!" replied the White Lady with an air of happiness.
"Are you sure?" asked Merry quite seriously. "I thought I heard it once to be...Dernhelm."
He jumped back and was back at the window before Éowyn had a chance to start laughing again. As Merry described to her the fantasy festival, she though about everything that had happened. She felt like she was being jerked around on a chain at the whim of something else. First she fell deeply for Aragorn, the dark stranger who had come into her life and turned everything upside down and saved everything from darkness. Then she was held back, and it seemed that Aragorn rejected her as she gazed down at him from atop the hill at Edoras. Then as she rode away, she knew there was nothing left for her to live. And her uncle was dead. But here she was, laughing joyously with another wounded soldier of Rohan. Just days after her King, her uncle was gone from this world and she was sharing such happiness with another. She knew she felt guilt, but the greater feeling was relief. She had though she would never feel happy again, nor would she ever be able to laugh again. Now again she focused on what Merry was saying.
"I felt so out of place," he was saying. "In that little cabin in the Old Forest. But it felt real, and also not real to me. Hard to explain."
Éowyn suddenly thought of her brother. "My window does not face east," she whispered. Merry stopped and tilted his head.
"What was that?" he asked politely. Éowyn blushed and felt sorry for interrupting him.
"My window does not face east. I cannot see where my kin have gone."
Merry sobered and nodded gravely. "Nor can I."
--- --- ---
* No pun intended.