Three: The Diary
"Dear Mother. Once again I have told a lie. But I know you would approve. I dare not write the details, so I will only say: It is autumn. Yet spring will come.'
Eowyn looked at the entry she had just written. She felt bad about the way she no longer trusted her family. It had begun when Eomer had revealed he had been spying on his sister, just for fun, and seen her kiss her cousin. On the mouth. A real, long kiss, a lover's kiss.
Eowyn had always known she was adopted. She had been taken to the grave of her mother very often by her father, Meriadoc, who had loved Lily Maggot. When Eowyn had been twenty-two, her parents had told her the entire story. Lily Maggot had been raped by a human, and she had died in childbed. Yet she had loved the child those short moments she had held her. And she had ordered Meriadoc Brandybuck to find himself a wife.
Eowyn's secret was known by all the neighbours, but they tactfully avoided mentioning it. She had told it to all her childhood friends, most of them cousins. Marron was a first cousin. And named Brandybuck. Generally, Brandybucks did not marry Brandybucks, unless they were only very distantly related. Her father had made it very clear Marron had to leave his daughter alone. Eowyn's honour was not to be tainted. The neighbours had to see she was a respectable young hobbit maiden, and the family had to accept her as a true Brandybuck.
Eowyn's tears and pleas had been to no avail. She was young, her father told her, only twenty-nine. She would fall in love several times yet, most likely. Eowyn had not believed a word of it. She browsed to the first pages of her diary;
'Mother, I am half human. And humans have shorter lives. A human of my age would already have children. So why do they treat me as if I was an ordinary tweenager? I am not. Why can't I be myself? I was a silly tweenager, back when I was under twenty-two. But it's over now. This time my love is real.'
Eowyn blushed and hid the diary again. Then she started brushing her hair, too roughly. It hurt. She pretended to herself she was crying only because it hurt to brush tangled hair too fast...