A pretty bit of steel, she was. Fast, and wild, but light: the pommel-bronze with the wildly dancing, flickering horses with the twining manes caught my attention first. Their eyes were grave, and old, but free and wild as only the meara can be. The more I watched them leap and plunge their way across the hilt, the more real they seemed until I could almost hear them scream and sigh with a bloodlust that I did not yet know. They held me, eye to eye, before recognizing me with hungry, feral recognition. I was not the first they had seen, so. Now—only now—I was permitted to let my eyes slide down the blade, but still I felt them watching, pausing for a watching from their hot, eternal dance.
Iron: It is a precious metal among the Rohan, more than gold or silver or shiny stones. The blade was old then, and slightly tarnished, but the blue still rippled under the spiderwebbed black. I ran my finger down the edge, and at the point I watched as a single—no, two, three—drops fell on the blade. I angled it, fascinated, to let them slip, slowly at first down the iron gutter in the balance, back to the twining horses.
It hit them, and I watched the red hit the yellow and spread out along the sculpted knotwork, leaving the raised bits to rise free. The shine of the bronze was made shinier for a moment with the wet...and the meara danced wild.