March, 3019 of the 3rd Age
The Steward of Gondor sat, and waited. He waited for news of his younger son. He had been gone for almost two weeks. "How long does it take to run a simple errand?" he pondered. At that moment, his son's best friend since childhood, Beregond, came into the tower and told the steward that he was letting Faramir's dog, Anduin, outside to get some exercise and uncross his legs. "Any news from Faramir lately Beregond?", "Sorry milord, no word" were the only words they spoke to each other before Beregond and Anduin went outside into the early Spring air. Denethor then went to his chair and sat there impatiently. He sat and thought long and hard and thought about how completely wrong his life was becoming.
He thought about Finduilas and how the remains of her family weren't too happy with him now, he thought about Beregond; who once had an enormous amount of respect for him but after Finduilas died everything changed, and he thought about his sons. Boromir was everything he could even dream of being: proud, valiant, courageous, not afraid to fight, well-respected, and like him, could be really quite stubborn. In fact, the only thing they didn't have in common was physical appearance. Like his brother, Boromir took after Finduilas in terms of appearance. However, he believed that Faramir was an entirely different story. He was as different from the two of them as Anduin was from a human, or so he believed. He took after his mother in practically everything except for gender. He was intelligent, loved to read, held a great dislike for war, was always looking out for those he loved, always placed others' needs first before his own, in fact he was everything that Finduilas was and he really wanted to be. But even though he had a great dislike for war, he was very quite good at it.
Even though Denethor knew that Faramir was everything he wished he could be way deep down, for some reason they hadn't gotten along for about 30 years since Finduilas passed away. He had no idea for why this was. Faramir couldn't have started it. Children don't start these things, and Faramir was only 5 years old at that time. He then realized that it was the fact that he was more like his wife that had started the feud, that he began to question the way he had behaved towards him for the past 31 years. He supposed that it was the fact that Finduilas was no longer around to compare him to that really started it and the fact that he NEVER did anything the way that HE, the STEWARD, wanted it done. He sat there for a long time looking down at the ancient horn that he had once himself borne and had in time passed it onto his elder son when he became of age, and then he heard footsteps approaching: The wizard Gandalf and some person (?) that he didn't know who it was. He pretended not to notice them until Gandalf spoke his name.
