Disclaimer: I just play here. It all belongs to Tolkien. And I still need a beta.
Radagast had been perusing the tattered and oft read books crammed in no comprehensive order that the ancient wizard could devise upon the shelves of the captain's cabin when Palansül came through the wooden door, a moaning, live bundle resting unquietly in his arms. Looking up from a book of elven lore, written in the high tongue, with notes in the sailor's cramped Sindarin scrawled in the margins that he had found stuffed between a notebook on lenses and a guide to sea ornithology that Radagast had personally gifted the captain some years ago, the councilor noted Palansül's face wore a most unusual expression for what was normally such a jovial man: he was scared.
The sailor had headed up to the crow's nest in an attempt to lure Miriel away from the palantir long enough for a meal, as both men were becoming worried for her health. Palansül had at last brought her down, but it was none too soon if the runaway queen were to survive. She appeared half dead from hyperthermia, judging by her badly burned arms and face and they way the poor young woman trembled in the captain's grasp. "Radagast… What do we do?" he asked the wizard apprehensively.
"Your old fish tub is empty?" Radagast stood, shaking dust from his favorite ochre robes.
"Aye," the captain replied uncertainly. "Why do you ask?" Unconsciously, he held the queen tighter in his arms, letting her head flop like a rag-doll's against his chest. Palansül had built a small container for specimens of interest that he encountered off the shores of the elven home. Primarily this tub held fish to prevent spoiling, but occasionally it had also served as a bath when the sailor had been too long at sea.
"Put her down in it and fill the tub with fresh water, Palansül," the wizard directed.
"But- but-," the seaman spluttered, turning nearly as red as Miriel's sunburn. As a man of science and exploration, the captain could be known for complete forthrightness when it came to matters of human anatomy in the abstract, but as a social hermit with no permanent home save the sea, the sailor lacked much practical experience with his own species, especially those of the feminine persuasion. Palansül's morally upright, enlightened upbringing had molded him into a successful adventurer, but it had also left him with a quality that Radagast found to be both pathetically useless and yet primitively endearing: the captain of the Elwing was the most chivalrous man Radagast had ever met. The seaman was no great diplomat, but he was ever ready with a smile for his friends or a stranger. The wizard had never known his young friend to bear anyone a grudge. And in his innocent, offhand way, Palansül was coming to care for Miriel. The captain had always been gentle with women, and was attempting to be upon his best behavior in the presence of a lady, but their was something subtle in the way the grizzled sailor treated her that told Radagast that Tar-Miriel would have one more friend who would stand strong in her defense.
"Do you want her to survive or not?" With eyes that could outstare a hawk, the old wizard raised an eyebrow at the stuttering seaman. Palansül nodded empathetically. "Then the fish tub," Ragastion took his friend with his limp, fragile moaning burden by the elbow. Sympathizing with the captain's visible discomfort despite himself, the wizard sent his friend for drinking water and a soothing balm for Miriel's inflamed, irritated skin, applying the ointment himself after sending a furiously blushing Palansül to tend to the falcon that the queen's councilor had brought aboard.
"All right, you," Radagast said upon approaching the sailor with the jessed goshawk sitting upon his wrist, "while I appreciate you exercising Giladrian, and I know we all appreciate her help in controlling your rodent population; I am an old man and I require your muscles to help move Tar-Miriel to a place where she may rest in peace."
"No," Palansül choked on the word. His mind had been reeling with ever more horrible propositions as to the sickly woman's condition, and Radagast's vague modus operandi did nothing to improve this chain of thought. "My cursed weak stomach has killed her." His hand slipped open limply as tears clouded his eyes, and the gules-eyed hawk leapt unnoticed from his glove. As he turned towards the sea to attempt to comprehend the rest of eternity with such a stain of murder by neglect upon his head, the brown robed old wizard whistled, calling his wild beast down to his shoulder.
"Palansül, Palansül, my friend, that is not what I meant at all," Radagast laid a friendly hand upon the younger man's arm, and his hawk cried her approval. "Miriel simply needs a place where she can sleep and heal without us disturbing her constantly. Although, now that you broach the subject," his bushy white eyebrows furrowed in thought, "It would not be a bad idea to remove all sharp objects from the room. She is fairly delirious, and I fear Miriel has become downright suicidal at times. I know I should have told you earlier, but any fool can see that my charge is a very proud woman. I had feared that that is all that keeps her going at times, and shame would push such a delicate creature off of her precariously balanced nest. Pharazon's bid for power has not been kind to her."
The sailor shook his head in bemusement. "I don't understand. She's the rightful queen. Any honest man would support her against her cousin, if Pharazon were arrogant enough to challenge her."
"Unfortunately for Tar-Miriel, you are one of the very few honest men I know." Ragastion clasped his hand behind his back and slipped into a stance that would appear more familiar in the throne room than on a ship, resisting the urge to speak condescendingly to his naïve friend as best he could as the councilor led their short but circuitous walk back to where his exhausted charge had sunk into a weary sleep in the half-empty tub. For modesty's sake, Radagast had covered her up to the shoulders as best he could with a well-patched old tarp. It would not be appropriate for anything remotely resembling a formal occasion, but it kept the sun off of her without restricting her breathing or irritating her burns. "In the realm of politics, honest men don't survive very long. At the very least, they hardly remain candid. Pharazon has gathered every fool and upstart who thinks he can outmaneuver an orc to him, and promised each one a high position in his new regime. He spreads nonsense about Miriel and Palantir before her falling under the spell of the firstborn, who have suddenly become our worst enemy. So far, however," the wizard allowed himself a drolly ironic grin as the sailor began to bristle at the roguish behavior of a member of the royal line. "I believe my favorite part has to be when he offers to lead the good people of Andor to complete domination of the eastern lands, Sauron, and the elves. I don't quite know if he intends to do this all in one battle or spread the fun out into two or three, but our beloved queen's favorite cousin is quite obviously underestimating his skill in battle."
"As well as his attractiveness, from the rumors I've heard in the harbor." Despite the captain's obvious dislike of the subject, Palansül's natural good spirits compelled him to return the darkly humored jest. Gingerly cradling Miriel in her crude swaddling, the sailor shuddered in distaste at his thoughts. "Can't swear I blame her," he muttered under his breath. "I thought they had laws about that sort of thing."
"Speak up, lad. After a few centuries even a Maia gets a little hard of hearing." Radagast leaned in, taking hold of one of the queen's slender wrists. Presumably, this motion was to check her pulse, but it also had the unpleasant side effect of revealing the network of angry crimson scars along the underside of her arm to Palansül. As a near-constant traveler, the seaman was not prone to nausea, but he was willing to make an exception in this case.
"I'll let her have my cabin. It's rather cluttered, but it's dark and fairly dry and quiet, at least compared to the rest of the ship. I don't think I've anything dangerous in there, but I suppose I'd never find it even if there were." How the captain found anything was something of a mystery to Radagast, causing the wizard to joke that he had found a forgotten, unmentioned sixth Istar aboard the Elwing: Palansül the Sea-green, master of chaos.
Reentering his messy domain, the sailor laid his burden gently down upon the bed. She truly slept now, instead of her earlier state of irritated semi-consciousness, but the lost queen's rest was not peaceful. Her eyes were closed tightly, as if she were attempting to shield herself from a blinding light or undeserved blow. Although she seemed to lack the strength to curl up into a ball, all Miriel's heatstroke-weakened muscles were attempting to tense, to pull her into herself. Brushing her still-damp rich brown hair from her face, Palansül made soothing noises as he tried to alleviate her inner torture. Tar-Miriel flinched from his touch at first, but slowly began to relax under the care of the sailor's gnarled fingers that had been hardened by sea salt and manual labor, so different from the ungentle, sword-callused nobleman's hands that haunted her dreams.
"I'll stay with her a little while, Radagast," the captain said as he continued to stroke his ill passenger's tresses from the angry red of her skin. "Just so I know she's safe and comfortable." The wizard nodded and left with a mysterious half smile that would have done his young friend on a more euphoric occasion proud as Palansül continued to explore a realm entirely new to him: the red-brown depths of Miriel's hair.