There is no moonlight that night when the army stops for rest. Éowyn and Merry rest beneath a shelf of earth. Éowyn speaks little, and her eyes are dimmed. Merry would attempt to fill the silence, but he has little to say and less that he feels he should.
"I thought I saw you in a dream," he says suddenly, and Éowyn turns to him, grey eyes like steel and stormclouds.
"You would do better to leave me out of your dreams," she says quietly. "Dreams are an idle distraction when one rides to war."
She looks away, and Merry wishes she would not. Something that he doesn't know how to explain stirs inside him when she looks at him, and if he were to try and explain it, he would call it a combination of pity and longing, for he wishes that he could see those eyes shining with merriment and hope, just once.
"I saw you standing beside a battlement of stone, and before you all was darkness."
"We are all before darkness now," Éowyn responds.
"Yet I thought a light like the sun shone behind you," Merry goes on, "and though you faced the shadow there stood a great many people who waited for you to decide whether you would watch the darkness or turn to see them standing in the light . . ."
Éowyn is looking to the east, and Merry swallows before continuing to speak.
"And it seemed that you would never turn, that you would always be seeing the shadow, but as I woke I thought a hand was extended from the light, and you turned until your face was only half-shrouded in darkness . . ."
Éowyn is silent. Merry watches her, and wonders if he has spoken too much.
I do not believe that this will be your end, he wishes to say, but dares not, for Éowyn is looking across the soldiers, and it may be that she is wondering who among them will ever see Rohan again. How many men have kissed their wives for the last time? How many sons have seen their fathers depart, never to return?
How many will die tomorrow who did not set out with that intent?
Éowyn is graven, and she looks to the shadows in the east, and there is moonlight somewhere in the darkness, but Merry can not see it.
"Look for me in your dreams, Master Meriadoc," she says. "Tomorrow, you may find me nowhere else."