This chapter was written with lots of love, and emails from my fellow
Gwethil Angoliel. You flame me, she sets her balrog Freddie on you...and I
warn you, an angry balrog is not pleasant.
And I don't own Aerwyn, she is similarly on loan along with Freddie. And I don't own any canonical characters you recognize. The only character I can lay claim to (legally) is Rhoswen.
If you haven't read Angoliel's fic, ' Summer in Dol Amroth' I suggest you do so before moving on. It'll help you identify with Aerwyn.
----
Aerwyn stepped lightly off her horse into the freshly fallen snow, looking up at the brightly lit windows of her home with a smile; finally, she had been able to convince her uncle to let her come home. Handing her snow dotted cloak off to the servant waiting in the hall, she wound her way through courtiers to find her father. Her winter travel dress was made of wool to keep her warm- she had forsaken her ranger gear with the explanation that the dress was indeed warmer. Denethor was sitting and talking to several of his councilors, and looked up to see the dark haired woman greet him.
"Father," she smiled, walking forward, her arms open.
"Aerwyn? You have grown, daughter. I can scarce believe it is you!" he embraced her heartily and kissed the crown of her head, still wet from the snowy ride.
"How have things been in the White City since you sent me to Dol Amroth?"
"Good, but they will be better now that my sister has returned." Aerwyn turned to look straight at her older brother, who held a glass of spiced wine. She turned back to her father, who waved them away.
"Go with your brother - I know you two have much to speak of. But I shall have you to myself very soon, my Aerwyn!" the Steward called after them. At last, Denethor's heart could truly be at ease; his daughter was home.
"Faramir! It is good to see you again." She hugged her brother close once they had gotten out of the crowds and into a small antechamber.
"Aerwyn, you've grown even more beautiful, if that could be possible. And taller, too! When last we parted, you were but up to here!" He put a hand to the middle of the tree worked on the front of his tunic, laughing. "How was Dol Amroth? Have you any news that I should hear of?"
"Positively boring. The only thing I enjoy there is the sea, and no one will let me out to swim this late in the year," she sighed. With a mischievous grin she added, "And Barahir still thinks I'm pretty enough to chase, if that's considered news."
Faramir laughed. The son of Imrahil had been sweet on Aerwyn since they were children. "Well perhaps you have not yet heard, but our brother has some news of his own."
"Where is Boromir?" his sister asked, pouring some spiced wine for herself from the crystal decanter on a side table, savoring the scent.
"In Imaladris...or somewhere else. He was sent by their lord to aid on some quest, and we have had no word save that he rides with a company of nine on an errand of great import." Aerwyn took a sip from her glass and laughed dryly.
"So like my brother to go off on a mission for Father and Gondor and not drag me along for the ride."
"Well, it will please you then to know that he has done something uncharacteristic of him and gone and gotten himself engaged?" Faramir smiled at his sister, a roguish glint in his eye.
"To whom?" Aerwyn turned to him, incredulous. "You know as well as I that Boromir would never marry. Voluntarily, at least." The Raven of Gondor had had the best teacher in the art of political policy, and knew her father was not above arranging a marriage for his eldest- Boromir needed an heir.
Faramir opened the doors and pointed to a young woman dancing in the hall, her cheeks flushed and her black curls springing behind her as she whirled around. "The Lady Rhoswen."
Aerwyn was dumbfounded. No, this could not be true. It had to be a jest on Faramir's part. Turning from the festive scene she goaded him. "She is but a child! How many years has she? Sixteen?"
"You underestimate her- Three more than that. And our brother is completely smitten with her. Despite the fact that the match came by father's hand." Ahh, so the Steward did have a hand in this.
But Faramir's unnervingly honest gaze jangled her nerves. Stubbornly holding onto the idea that he was still teasing, Aerwyn made to be more serious than he. "I will not see my brother married to a mere girl. She is too young for him, Fara, you should know that!" Her attention drifted back to the merriment.
Faramir took her arm, a little harder than he meant to, and forced her to look at him. "She has two and ten years less than you sister, and near twenty less than Boro, this is true. But what she lacks in years she makes up for in wisdom and compassion. And she is as in love with Boromir as much as he is with her."
"You sound as if you are in love with her as well," Airy spat. "If she truly loved our brother, she would not drive other men to their knees in adoration!" She looked at the young woman with disdain.
"At least get to know her. She is not all what she seems." The ranger Captain sighed. "It is not every day in these dark times one sees the White Rose of Gondor smiling." Faramir smiled sadly and left his sister looking at the young woman with much annoyance.
'White Rose of Gondor...who does she think she is? The daughter of a ruler in Anfalas has no right!' Aerwyn thought, watching Rhoswen. The Steward's daughter felt threatened. Had she been gone long enough from the City of Kings for this woman to have eclipsed her? If what Faramir said was true, would the soldiers' love for her be diminished? For so long Aerwyn's status as the Raven of Gondor had gone unchallenged. For so long, she had been the only woman in a standing of power that the citizens of Minas Tirith had looked to.
Stepping from the side room, Aerwyn made to return to her father to ask him his opinion of this woman when she suddenly felt a hand taking hers and a pair of bearded lips kissing them. At her side was a guard of the city. "My lady, you've come home!" he cried.
"Beregond!" she exclaimed delightedly. Before she could say anything else, he called to his fellow soldiers.
"Hey there, lads! The Raven has returned!"
Temporary pandemonium ensued as soldiers who had been drinking ale or dancing rushed toward her. Unceremonious whoops of joy nearly drowned out the music; Faramir laughed as the men under his command welcomed his long- missed sister home. Even Denethor was pleased that the men were happier now. One ranger was lucky enough to engage her in a dance. The midwinter festivities were even more jovial as the men celebrated the homecoming of their lady.
'Their love for me diminished?' Aerwyn thought as the ranger Damrod lead her to the dance floor. 'May it never pass through my mind again!'
---
Aerwyn saw little of her brother's betrothed in the next week, and always when they did meet treated the youngest woman with the barest of familiarities, but what Faramir had said always seemed to fester in her heart's stiff unyielding corners. And more than ever, she found herself doing what she had promised not to-cause the hatred to grow.
"Who is she?" Aerwyn spoke to her full-length mirror one morning while she looked over her gown. "Who is she, this woman who has stolen the heart of my brother, my city, and its soldiers? The Rose of Gondor." Aerwyn snorted in disgust. "How comes it that those who are not born of Gondor are given titles as to the ones bestowed upon her true children? I damn the day when I step aside for any man, let alone this so-called Rose."
Whirling around to the stone wall, Aerwyn lifted her hands as if she were speaking to a large assembly. Raising her voice also, she shouted, "Who is she?! A child of Anfalas! Rose of Gondor, if you even be worthy to be called by that name, dare you challenge me?"
The Raven's ruffled feathers calmed a bit as she lowered her arms. Her tone became low and dangerous. "It is with a great hesitancy or great fear that I give up my station, if I give it up at all," she growled. "And I have no such fear of you, Rose."
For so long she had the honor of being the only woman of power the people of Gondor looked to. Since her mother had died, it had been Aerwyn who was woman of the house when she was of age. And now, with this mere girl usurping what post was hers by right of blood, Aerwyn felt a threat with the presence of this Rhoswen. She looked in her mirror, a cold glint to shatter glass in her eyes.
"Roses may have thorns, but they are delicate, easy to break and succumb to winter's hard breath. And is it not the bird who wins when beings of both air and earth collide?"
Later, when the sun had risen and was now at it's falling, Aerwyn was passing by the door to her eldest brother's room when she saw the door cracked open and the sound of weeping issuing forth. Opening the door a little more, she saw Rhoswen kneeling at the foot of Boromir's bed, holding one of his shirts in her hands, crying. As quietly as one can, Aerwyn nudged the door open enough to fit through and go to the weeping woman's side. She gently laid a hand on her shoulder, and the young woman looked up.
"Why do you weep?" Her voice was a little bit friendlier than she had intended. Rhoswen's eyes met hers, and Aerwyn could see that what had been unveiled sorrow now turned to ice hard rage.
"Why would you care for what I weep? I see that I disgust you." At the confused look on Aerwyn's face, she continued, not even attempting to blot her tears. "Think you these ears are mute? I have heard what accusations you've shouted to your chamber walls when you thought no earthly being could hear you. About how you think I've stolen your brother's love, your city's love, your place in the heart of the Tower Guard. About how I am a child, how Boromir should find another woman to love...about how the name so many call me by is not mine by right of birth and blood."
The young woman's body shook with sobs, tears running down her cheeks like rain falls in a sudden storm, fast and furied and never seeming to cease. "I have not given it to myself! I am not as weak as you suppose! It was your brother, sainted woman, who gave me that name, your brother who placed me as the banner of your city, your brother who has given me such grievances as I have in these dark times, pains that I bear with a heart so close to breaking it is death to show such helplessness. It is in this that I must be strong, not for myself, but because Boromir would have it so! Find no error in me, madam, for it is your brother you must speak with on your objections. Boromir found no fault in me, and he has given you all your cause to do so."
She drew in a ragged breath, giving Aerwyn time to formulate her own retort.
"I have what is mine by right of blood- And the blood of this house will suffer no weakness in the women of her line." Rhoswen's eyes blazed, and she rose to her feet, her hand unclenching from the shirt and connecting with her verbal opponent's cheek. Aerwyn stumbled back, reeling with the force of the blow, a hand to her cheek; this rose was not as weak as her name assumed.
"Give me no grief that you are perfect either, madam! It is pride that drives your hatred, pride that runs this family ragged, pride that give you weakness that you refuse to see because of it! Curse this Steward for giving his children such a bane as he himself does bear! You both are fortune's fools, for both shall meet a cursed end. Never will he bow a knee for anyone other than himself, and it is this that will be his doom! Now leave me in peace; this grief is mine, and no others! Leave me!"
Aerwyn looked at the distressed young woman and left as quietly as she had come, shutting the door behind her and leaning against the door, the sounds of the bare, pained truth ringing in her ears like to the sting that comes when someone strikes one across the face.
And so I damned myself to she who owns more right to honor than I, Aerwyn thought, musing over the sting on her cheek. The memory of Rhoswen's angry gaze passed through her mind's eye as the Raven ran to her own chambers, ashamed. 'I am no lady. If she has become the banner of my people, it is because I have forsaken the right, throwing it away with both hands because of my foolish pride.'
Wow...what a rat out. I had no idea I could write something like that...reviews would be greatly appreciated. And kudos to whoever can tell me what line I adapted from 'Romeo and Juliet'!
And I don't own Aerwyn, she is similarly on loan along with Freddie. And I don't own any canonical characters you recognize. The only character I can lay claim to (legally) is Rhoswen.
If you haven't read Angoliel's fic, ' Summer in Dol Amroth' I suggest you do so before moving on. It'll help you identify with Aerwyn.
----
Aerwyn stepped lightly off her horse into the freshly fallen snow, looking up at the brightly lit windows of her home with a smile; finally, she had been able to convince her uncle to let her come home. Handing her snow dotted cloak off to the servant waiting in the hall, she wound her way through courtiers to find her father. Her winter travel dress was made of wool to keep her warm- she had forsaken her ranger gear with the explanation that the dress was indeed warmer. Denethor was sitting and talking to several of his councilors, and looked up to see the dark haired woman greet him.
"Father," she smiled, walking forward, her arms open.
"Aerwyn? You have grown, daughter. I can scarce believe it is you!" he embraced her heartily and kissed the crown of her head, still wet from the snowy ride.
"How have things been in the White City since you sent me to Dol Amroth?"
"Good, but they will be better now that my sister has returned." Aerwyn turned to look straight at her older brother, who held a glass of spiced wine. She turned back to her father, who waved them away.
"Go with your brother - I know you two have much to speak of. But I shall have you to myself very soon, my Aerwyn!" the Steward called after them. At last, Denethor's heart could truly be at ease; his daughter was home.
"Faramir! It is good to see you again." She hugged her brother close once they had gotten out of the crowds and into a small antechamber.
"Aerwyn, you've grown even more beautiful, if that could be possible. And taller, too! When last we parted, you were but up to here!" He put a hand to the middle of the tree worked on the front of his tunic, laughing. "How was Dol Amroth? Have you any news that I should hear of?"
"Positively boring. The only thing I enjoy there is the sea, and no one will let me out to swim this late in the year," she sighed. With a mischievous grin she added, "And Barahir still thinks I'm pretty enough to chase, if that's considered news."
Faramir laughed. The son of Imrahil had been sweet on Aerwyn since they were children. "Well perhaps you have not yet heard, but our brother has some news of his own."
"Where is Boromir?" his sister asked, pouring some spiced wine for herself from the crystal decanter on a side table, savoring the scent.
"In Imaladris...or somewhere else. He was sent by their lord to aid on some quest, and we have had no word save that he rides with a company of nine on an errand of great import." Aerwyn took a sip from her glass and laughed dryly.
"So like my brother to go off on a mission for Father and Gondor and not drag me along for the ride."
"Well, it will please you then to know that he has done something uncharacteristic of him and gone and gotten himself engaged?" Faramir smiled at his sister, a roguish glint in his eye.
"To whom?" Aerwyn turned to him, incredulous. "You know as well as I that Boromir would never marry. Voluntarily, at least." The Raven of Gondor had had the best teacher in the art of political policy, and knew her father was not above arranging a marriage for his eldest- Boromir needed an heir.
Faramir opened the doors and pointed to a young woman dancing in the hall, her cheeks flushed and her black curls springing behind her as she whirled around. "The Lady Rhoswen."
Aerwyn was dumbfounded. No, this could not be true. It had to be a jest on Faramir's part. Turning from the festive scene she goaded him. "She is but a child! How many years has she? Sixteen?"
"You underestimate her- Three more than that. And our brother is completely smitten with her. Despite the fact that the match came by father's hand." Ahh, so the Steward did have a hand in this.
But Faramir's unnervingly honest gaze jangled her nerves. Stubbornly holding onto the idea that he was still teasing, Aerwyn made to be more serious than he. "I will not see my brother married to a mere girl. She is too young for him, Fara, you should know that!" Her attention drifted back to the merriment.
Faramir took her arm, a little harder than he meant to, and forced her to look at him. "She has two and ten years less than you sister, and near twenty less than Boro, this is true. But what she lacks in years she makes up for in wisdom and compassion. And she is as in love with Boromir as much as he is with her."
"You sound as if you are in love with her as well," Airy spat. "If she truly loved our brother, she would not drive other men to their knees in adoration!" She looked at the young woman with disdain.
"At least get to know her. She is not all what she seems." The ranger Captain sighed. "It is not every day in these dark times one sees the White Rose of Gondor smiling." Faramir smiled sadly and left his sister looking at the young woman with much annoyance.
'White Rose of Gondor...who does she think she is? The daughter of a ruler in Anfalas has no right!' Aerwyn thought, watching Rhoswen. The Steward's daughter felt threatened. Had she been gone long enough from the City of Kings for this woman to have eclipsed her? If what Faramir said was true, would the soldiers' love for her be diminished? For so long Aerwyn's status as the Raven of Gondor had gone unchallenged. For so long, she had been the only woman in a standing of power that the citizens of Minas Tirith had looked to.
Stepping from the side room, Aerwyn made to return to her father to ask him his opinion of this woman when she suddenly felt a hand taking hers and a pair of bearded lips kissing them. At her side was a guard of the city. "My lady, you've come home!" he cried.
"Beregond!" she exclaimed delightedly. Before she could say anything else, he called to his fellow soldiers.
"Hey there, lads! The Raven has returned!"
Temporary pandemonium ensued as soldiers who had been drinking ale or dancing rushed toward her. Unceremonious whoops of joy nearly drowned out the music; Faramir laughed as the men under his command welcomed his long- missed sister home. Even Denethor was pleased that the men were happier now. One ranger was lucky enough to engage her in a dance. The midwinter festivities were even more jovial as the men celebrated the homecoming of their lady.
'Their love for me diminished?' Aerwyn thought as the ranger Damrod lead her to the dance floor. 'May it never pass through my mind again!'
---
Aerwyn saw little of her brother's betrothed in the next week, and always when they did meet treated the youngest woman with the barest of familiarities, but what Faramir had said always seemed to fester in her heart's stiff unyielding corners. And more than ever, she found herself doing what she had promised not to-cause the hatred to grow.
"Who is she?" Aerwyn spoke to her full-length mirror one morning while she looked over her gown. "Who is she, this woman who has stolen the heart of my brother, my city, and its soldiers? The Rose of Gondor." Aerwyn snorted in disgust. "How comes it that those who are not born of Gondor are given titles as to the ones bestowed upon her true children? I damn the day when I step aside for any man, let alone this so-called Rose."
Whirling around to the stone wall, Aerwyn lifted her hands as if she were speaking to a large assembly. Raising her voice also, she shouted, "Who is she?! A child of Anfalas! Rose of Gondor, if you even be worthy to be called by that name, dare you challenge me?"
The Raven's ruffled feathers calmed a bit as she lowered her arms. Her tone became low and dangerous. "It is with a great hesitancy or great fear that I give up my station, if I give it up at all," she growled. "And I have no such fear of you, Rose."
For so long she had the honor of being the only woman of power the people of Gondor looked to. Since her mother had died, it had been Aerwyn who was woman of the house when she was of age. And now, with this mere girl usurping what post was hers by right of blood, Aerwyn felt a threat with the presence of this Rhoswen. She looked in her mirror, a cold glint to shatter glass in her eyes.
"Roses may have thorns, but they are delicate, easy to break and succumb to winter's hard breath. And is it not the bird who wins when beings of both air and earth collide?"
Later, when the sun had risen and was now at it's falling, Aerwyn was passing by the door to her eldest brother's room when she saw the door cracked open and the sound of weeping issuing forth. Opening the door a little more, she saw Rhoswen kneeling at the foot of Boromir's bed, holding one of his shirts in her hands, crying. As quietly as one can, Aerwyn nudged the door open enough to fit through and go to the weeping woman's side. She gently laid a hand on her shoulder, and the young woman looked up.
"Why do you weep?" Her voice was a little bit friendlier than she had intended. Rhoswen's eyes met hers, and Aerwyn could see that what had been unveiled sorrow now turned to ice hard rage.
"Why would you care for what I weep? I see that I disgust you." At the confused look on Aerwyn's face, she continued, not even attempting to blot her tears. "Think you these ears are mute? I have heard what accusations you've shouted to your chamber walls when you thought no earthly being could hear you. About how you think I've stolen your brother's love, your city's love, your place in the heart of the Tower Guard. About how I am a child, how Boromir should find another woman to love...about how the name so many call me by is not mine by right of birth and blood."
The young woman's body shook with sobs, tears running down her cheeks like rain falls in a sudden storm, fast and furied and never seeming to cease. "I have not given it to myself! I am not as weak as you suppose! It was your brother, sainted woman, who gave me that name, your brother who placed me as the banner of your city, your brother who has given me such grievances as I have in these dark times, pains that I bear with a heart so close to breaking it is death to show such helplessness. It is in this that I must be strong, not for myself, but because Boromir would have it so! Find no error in me, madam, for it is your brother you must speak with on your objections. Boromir found no fault in me, and he has given you all your cause to do so."
She drew in a ragged breath, giving Aerwyn time to formulate her own retort.
"I have what is mine by right of blood- And the blood of this house will suffer no weakness in the women of her line." Rhoswen's eyes blazed, and she rose to her feet, her hand unclenching from the shirt and connecting with her verbal opponent's cheek. Aerwyn stumbled back, reeling with the force of the blow, a hand to her cheek; this rose was not as weak as her name assumed.
"Give me no grief that you are perfect either, madam! It is pride that drives your hatred, pride that runs this family ragged, pride that give you weakness that you refuse to see because of it! Curse this Steward for giving his children such a bane as he himself does bear! You both are fortune's fools, for both shall meet a cursed end. Never will he bow a knee for anyone other than himself, and it is this that will be his doom! Now leave me in peace; this grief is mine, and no others! Leave me!"
Aerwyn looked at the distressed young woman and left as quietly as she had come, shutting the door behind her and leaning against the door, the sounds of the bare, pained truth ringing in her ears like to the sting that comes when someone strikes one across the face.
And so I damned myself to she who owns more right to honor than I, Aerwyn thought, musing over the sting on her cheek. The memory of Rhoswen's angry gaze passed through her mind's eye as the Raven ran to her own chambers, ashamed. 'I am no lady. If she has become the banner of my people, it is because I have forsaken the right, throwing it away with both hands because of my foolish pride.'
Wow...what a rat out. I had no idea I could write something like that...reviews would be greatly appreciated. And kudos to whoever can tell me what line I adapted from 'Romeo and Juliet'!