Author's Note: You ever hear one of those songs that almost makes you cry? It's silly, but this one does. I listened to it (Garth Brooks, btw) for the first time in years tonight. I had to replay it three times because it was so intense. I felt so inspired, that I just sat down to start writing, and came up with this. Hope you like it!
Sorry, LSOA! Fishing, though I've started it, will just have to wait. This plot bunny is evil...
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She was a girl on a wagon train
Headed west across the plains
The train got lost in a summer storm
They couldn't move west and they couldn't go home
Then she saw him ridin' through the rain
He took charge of the wagons and he saved the train
And she looked down and her heart was gone
The train went west but she stayed on
In Lonesome Dove
A farmer's daughter with a gentle hand
A blooming rose in a bed of sand
She loved the man who wore a star
A Texas Ranger known near and far
So they got married and they had a child
But times were tough and the West was wild
So it was no surprise the day she learned
That her Texas man would not return
To Lonesome Dove
Back to back with the Rio Grande
A Christian woman in the devil's land
She learned the language and she learned to fight
But she never learned how to beat the lonely nights
In Lonesome Dove, Lonesome Dove
She watched her boy grow into a man
He had an angel's heart and the devil's hand
He wore his star for all to see
He was a Texas lawman legacy
The one day word blew into town
It seemed the men that shot his father down
Had robbed a bank in Cherico
The only thing 'tween them and Mexico
Was Lonesome Dove
The shadows stretched across the land
As the shots rang out down the Rio Grande
And when the smoke had finally cleared the street
The men lay at the ranger's feet
But legend tells to this very day
That shots were comin' from an alleyway
Though no one knows who held the gun
There ain't no doubt if you ask someone
In Lonesome Dove
Back to back with the Rio Grande
A Christian woman in the devil's land
She learned the language and she learned to fight
But she never learned how to beat the lonely nights
In Lonesome Dove, Lonesome Dove
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He came for vengeance.
Revenge was too kind a word to describe the cancerous rage that had swirled through his soul for twenty years. It consumed him. He could hide it most of the time; many people did not see anything amiss in his life. Yet there were always those with clearer sight, who could gaze into a man's eyes and see his heart. So it was with the young Lady of Rohan.
He knew, the instant his eyes caught hers in Meduseld, that she could sense his anger. To his surprise, she neither stepped back nor looked away. A look of curiosity and, strangely, understanding came over her. In that moment he felt close to her, a thing that had not happened with anyone since...the night his father was killed.
- - - - - - - - -
Rana watched the travelers enter the hall with her usual curiosity. News from afar was always welcome to her ears, and this party had journeyed all the way from Far Harad. She hoped that they might come with tales of exotic cities and people, legends of pagan gods, or at the least a few bolts of foreign cloth. Standing behind her mother's finely carved wooden seat on the dais, she could see the strangers' faces clearly as they approached her father, the King.
The group was a large one. They were dressed plainly, but heavily armed. Or at least, they had been before the guards had requested they remove their weapons. Still, all the men (there were no women, a fact that Rana observed with a hint of annoyance) looked plenty dangerous enough even without swords. Their faces were familiar to her, for these people had been raised in the far North, and were thus distantly akin to her father's people, the Rohirrim.
Rana's eyes fell on the Northerners' leader, and she found that she could neither look nor walk away. The man was no taller than the rest. All were equally well-built, with similar light colored hair and pale blue eyes. A single ornament set him apart from his companions: a thin gold chain from which dangled a ruby drop. Aside from this, he was in such like to his men that from a distance, it would be difficult to tell them apart. Something else held Rana's attention.
She relaxed her mind the way her uncle, Faramir, had taught her; clearing herself of outside influences and concentrating solely on the man bowing to her father. Emotions and brief images flooded her consciousness. Usually, opening her mind invited a short flow of the impressions the other person was experiencing, washing through her quickly and peacefully, like river-water over a stone. The Northerner's thoughts were far more intense. Suspicion, adrenaline, and anger all radiated from him in waves that, to Rana's Sight-gifted senses, were nearly palpable. Above all, she absorbed the man's incredible pain.
Such pain! Laced with fury, the sensation was all too familiar to the Lady of Rohan. She knew not what caused it, but tears came to her eyes nonetheless as the Northerner finally looked up at her. Clear blue eyes met dark brown ones. Unbidden, memories long suppressed floated to the front of Rana's mind.
It is not the Sight- but what gives this man such a connection to me?