A/N: When the writer's bug bites, you don't ask questions. You just write, and post. Who'd have expected 2 chapters in 2 days? Certainly not me... and this one is a monster of a chapter. Plus, we get some Éomer action! Retrospective Éomer action, but still. Next chapter is half-written and features Éomer, Aragorn, and all the Dol Amroth crew.
Nostos
- 13 -
Until We Meet Again
T.A. 3019
March 13 - 27
"So it was Gandalf took command of the last defense of the City of Gondor. Wherever he came men's hearts would life again, and the winged shadows pass from memory. Tirelessly he strode from Citadel to Gate, from north to south about the wall; and with him went the Prince of Dol Amroth in his shining mail. For he and his knights still held themselves like lords in whom the race of Númenor ran true. Men that saw them whispered saying: 'Belike the old takes speak well; there is Elvish blood in the veins of that folk.'" (The Return of the King, The Siege of Gondor)
If you were to ask Lothíriel, Princess of Dol Amroth, of her happiest memories, she would have many. She is the youngest sister of three beloved brothers, after all. Happy memories had never been in short supply.
But there was another time and place that she held close to her chest: Lossarnach. Her father had sent her to Lossarnach after her mother died. Her mother had been a lady of Umbar, never quite accepted in Denethor's most proper court of Minas Tirith, and so the royal family of Dol Amroth had lived a mostly insular life at their own palace, except for her father's occasional diplomatic and military missions undertaken on behalf of the Steward. Lothíriel had been especially close to her mother, but on the whole they'd been a close-knit family. Even as her brothers grew older, they had not ventured far at all - when he'd begun to command Dol Amroth's navy, Elphir had continued to live in the palace at Dol Amroth, and Erchirion, when he left to serve with his father's Swan Nights, had returned home every few weeks.
So when their mother had died - the Princess of Dol Amroth, mother to four beloved children, wife to a man still deeply in love with her - it had shattered their worlds.
Lothíriel had felt a ghost, unmoored, and it seemed she had nothing to distract her, nothing to draw her attention away from the raw gaping wound in her world: her mother was gone.
So her father had finally proposed sending her to her cousins in Lossarnach. She had accepted laconically.
Lossarnach was quite a nice place. Lots of flower gardens. She liked her cousins. They had dances, parties. They were kind to her. But still she floated on. No one could quite touch that frozen sensation she carried with her always. Some nights she could not help it: she cried until she was left with nothing but wrenching choking sobs.
"Oh, by the by, my dear," her aunt Ivriniel had said one morning over breakfast, absently. "We're accepting a new guest in a week's time. You won't see much of him, I imagine."
"Oh," she'd said flatly, uninterested.
She'd been in the garden a week later when she'd heard the footsteps. Oh no, she'd thought. I don't want to see anyone. She'd arranged a stupid bit of a smile and hoped they'd move on.
Instead, a man came into view. For a moment she caught her breath. He was one of the handsomest men she'd ever seen, broad-shouldered, with tawny hair and a long easy stride that spoke of confidence and power. For a moment, she forgot her grief. And then it came crashing down as quickly as it'd gone, mixed with heavy guilt. I'm sorry, Mother. I forgot. I won't forget again! I'll never forget you.
Then she turned to look at him again. He was coming towards her, hands outstretched. And she recognized him in a flash. "Éomer?"
"Lothíriel," he said, and before she could process anything, she was running to him, and then his arms were around her, and she felt, for the first time in a long time, completely safe.
They talked that afternoon; they spoke of loss, and grief, and love, and moving on, and when they had spoken until they had nothing left to say, she felt as though she'd cried a great river and had been left cleansed and calm. Then he said, "I think dinner will be served soon. We will pretend to be complete strangers so Forlong and propriety are not offended."
Lothíriel had known Éomer when she was but a child, and it was odd in some ways to meet him now. They have written each other over the years, but letters cannot bridge the gap. Briefly she wondered how husbands and wives managed when separated. Then she wondered, with a traitorous blush, why she was thinking of husbands and wives.
One of her cousins, Ivriniel and Forlong's eldest daughter, leaned to whisper in her ear. "Isn't he just madly handsome?"
She giggled. "Aredhel! I couldn't say such a thing. Or think it!"
"Fine by me," said Aredhel. "I'll think it for you." She winked. After dinner, the musicians took up dancing music, and Lothíriel watched Éomer whirl her cousin around the dance floor, her cousin's head thrown back in laughter. Then a handful of other girls claimed him. She wished she could be part of that, somehow. But the cold lingered on. Mother.
She ought never smile again. She ought never laugh again. What sort of daughter would she be, to claim any sort of happiness?
Then, over the music, Éomer turned to look at her, face light, and she was on her feet, almost unconsciously, walking to meet him as the dance ended.
"Princess Lothíriel," he said, bowing over her hand. "Would you do me the honor of a dance?"
"Me?" she asked, delighted, a little bemused. "Oh yes, I'd love to! But I'm not a very good dancer."
One of the other girls said, "Oh yes, Lothíriel's always had two left feet."
Aredhel said, "Well, she's better than you, at any rate," and Lothíriel cracked a grin for her cousin. Then she turned to look at Éomer and met level hazel eyes, and felt a strange whirling in her stomach. She took the hand he offered.
She was not a good dancer. Neither, in truth, was Éomer.
"Bah, this Gondorian dancing is for pansies," he told her. "The Rohirric stuff, that's the real dancing. You would like it, Lothíriel. You actually move! None of these mincing little steps."
She giggled, stopping her mouth with her hand, but he tugged it away.
"See," he said. "I'll get you to laugh yet."
She said, "You can always make me laugh."
"Really?" he said. "Do my letters make you laugh? I try. I'm not much of a writer. You're the only person I write to. Apart from Éowyn, of course."
He spun her around, and she, laughing, protested. "Éomer, that is not part of the dance!"
He grinned at her. "Now it is!" And they stood looking at each other, grey eyes on hazel, and she felt as though the rest of the world had dropped away. He was very close, so close she could feel his breath, so close she wondered what his beard might feel like, so close that she was opening her mouth, her eyes threatening to fall shut, waiting, just waiting, for the press of his mouth -
And then another of her cousins - Harthon - interrupted to say that it was his turn to dance with Lothíriel, and they drew away, Lothíriel flushing, tingling, every inch of her alive.
Éomer had stayed for two weeks in Lossarnach. He could not solve her grief - no one could. But he made her laugh. And being with Éomer made her realize there was more to life than grief, and some sort of false penance.
She wondered, sometimes, if she had imagined that evening, when they had stood close enough to kiss.
For those memories, if nothing else, as they rode through the shadows and deepening perpetual twilight in the place called Lossarnach, she felt hope.
.
.
.
But the bad news continued.
"Prince Faramir is fallen," ran word at the next town. "His Highness the Prince Imrahil rescued him; the Swan Nights of Dol Amroth, with Gandalf and their prince rescued Faramir and his company - all that there were left. And the siege of the City continues. The Rammas is broken. The Pelennor is abandoned to the Enemy. There is no news of the Rohirrim. Any men found outside the city walls are cut down."
Even Galcherdir, usually touched with a faint bit of humor, was utterly without hope.
But Lothíriel said, "I know the Rohirrim will come."
The men looked at her with faint hope, some with dismissal. But she insisted. "I know the Rohirrim will come."
"We must not go to Minas Tirith," murmured one man. "Else we will be slaughtered by the enemy outside its walls."
The next morning - for morning was all relative here - they found worse news. Hard riders from near the city had arrived with more tales to tell. Their news was several days old, of course, but they all could feel the truth of it.
"The Nazgul have arrived," said an innkeep with whom they spoke. And they could all feel it: the growing dread, thickening with the darkness.
Lothíriel kept her chin up. She had survived fire and smoke and death, and no dark tidings would cow her, not anymore. And strangely, people seemed to respond to it. One woman in the inn looked at her oddly, and finally, when Lothíriel explained she was a lady of Dol Amroth, looked satisfied.
"They say the family of Dol Amroth has Elvish blood," she whispered. "They say Nimrodel dwelt there long ago. I can feel it, my lady."
"Feel what?" Lothíriel asked, curious.
"It lightens around you," the woman said, ambiguously. Lothíriel found herself looking at her hands before she laughed it off as pure legend. It was unsettling.
.
.
.
.
Somewhere, in the dark morning: a rooster crowed. And that day, the sun broke upon the world.
The darkness had not gone, but it had lightened, and a blood-red sun broke upon the sky, stretching across the vast horizon like a crimson flood. They were two days' ride from Minas Tirith, and everyone in that little town agreed that something had happened, something momentous, but no one knew what, for it would take at least a day if not two to receive word.
The men with whom Lothíriel has traveled murmured amongst themselves. Galcherdir sat, face dark, unspeaking. Finally he stirred. "I am loathe to risk our lives in a slaughter."
For a long moment, silence reigned. They were camped in a field beyond the town walls; just beyond, flickering lights speak to the presence of the villagers. The sky was drifting plumes of smoking clouds, grey against velvet black.
Then one man said, "I would give my life for Gondor. I care not what we face."
Then someone else chimed in. "That is rank foolishness - but I will not stand by while my country burns."
Another man agreed. Another voice. And Galcherdir listened to them all, arms crossed. Lothíriel looked at him, watching thoughts scuttle across his face in the blackness.
"Aye," he said, finally. "I feel it, too. This is no time to turn back. Even a single man may turn the tide."
.
.
.
The stench of war is unmistakeable: smoke, death, burned flesh, metallic blood.
Lothíriel's home had been raided by Corsairs when she was young; that was, after all, why she and Amrothos had been sent to Minas Tirith in the first place. But she had never seen war like this.
They smelt the devastation from tens of miles away. The closer they drew the harder their horses shied and fought.
"Clever beasts," one of the men commented. For they could all sense it.
And then, from a distance, they perceived it: the city of Minas Tirith. Gone was the ageless perfection, the graceful rising city, impeccable rings and gates. Instead the Pelennor Fields before the city lay wreathed in smoke, piled with bodies and heaps of charred wood.
"Lady Lothíriel," said Galcherdir, as they rode closer, "Princess." He was pointing, his face set in muted anguish.
She followed his pointing finger and saw the fallen banner: a white horse, upon a green field, and out of the mass of incalculable destruction she began to pick out individual bodies and horsemen.
"You were right," he said. "The Rohirrim came."
The Rohirrim had come. And the Rohirrim had fallen. She felt dizzy, but kept her seat - no mean feat, considering she'd more or less spent all of the last two weeks in the saddle.
There were men at work amongst the great expanse of destruction, and she noticed that a path - a road of sorts - had been cleared through the debris. They rode up this path towards the shattered remains of the city she had known.
Here the stench was so thick that Lothíriel had to dismount to vomit. The men looked away, pretending they could not see. Lothíriel was not the only one; at least two others - hardened veterans, both, including one who had served with Erchirion for several years - stopped to do the same. On and on they ride up towards the city.
While Lothíriel got to her feet, wiping her mouth on the corner of her tunic - one of the men politely offered her a handkerchief - Galcherdir collared a man walking through the dead.
"What has come to pass here?"
"You mean you don't know?" the man said, voice layered in disbelief.
"We are just come from Tolfalas, come to join the host," Galcherdir told him.
"Tolfalas?" the man asked. Lothíriel got to her feet in time to see his face change suddenly. "By the Valar! You are the men who held the fortress against the men of Umbar!" He looked so delighted, Lothíriel thought he might just embrace Galcherdir.
"Yes, and we men who held the fortress wish to know what happened," Galcherdir said testily.
The man was so excited, his words practically spilled over themselves. "That is great news indeed! We have heard talk of it - we heard it called a miracle. Not two days hence, when all hope seemed lost, the city besieged, Lord Faramir fallen -,"
"Yes, yes," said Galcherdir, "we heard all the hopeless stuff already. Can you skip to the part where there's good news?"
The man continued on, determined, "And just when we thought there no hope - the Nâzgul sweeping the sky, the Lord Steward gone mad, and it was all Mithrandir and His Highness Prince Imrahil could do to keep calm in the city - ,"
"By the Valar," someone muttered. "Why did we find the only man who makes speeches on a battlefield?"
"At least he hasn't started talking about the Glittering Caves," said another one. "I hear that's even worse."
"And then," the man said, "the Lord of the Nâzgul himself appeared, and he raised his sword! And none stood in his way except for Mithrandir upon his great horse. Mithrandir cried out to him that he could not enter, and to go back to the abyss! Just as the Shadow Lord laughed at him and raised his fiery sword, we heard the horns of the Rohirrim.
Thêoden of Rohan rode as bravely and nobly as any of his forefathers! He rode far ahead of his men, his nephew the Lord Marshal Éomer beside him -,"
Lothíriel promptly lost the battle with her knees and slid to the ground. Her left knee made contact with an unidentifiable puddle.
" - and the spear of this great son of Rohan killed the Southron leader dead and drove his calvary away! But no sooner had this foe been vanquished when the shadow of the Lord of the Nâzgul came upon him, even as he called his men to him, and he was flung from his horse -,"
Lothíriel felt her head buzzing. "What happened to him? Was he saved?"
"No, lady," said the man, looking at her curiously. "He is gone now. But he has gone in great glory to to the halls of his forefathers."
She cannot speak. Cannot breathe. The man went on speaking. He told of the Lady Éowyn's slaying of the witch king, of the arrival of the remainder of the enemy's forces. The king of Rohan himself rode against them in all his fury at the death of those he loved -
Lothíriel could not quite bring herself to breathe, but she somehow managed to choke out the words. "Who is the king?"
"Éomer King, of course," said the man, turning to look at her curiously.
"Of course," she said. Her world shuddered and resumed. But something had changed for her in that moment. Her heart thumped out a strange beat. And she thought of Éomer, black words on parchment, tawny hair and his bright face, always lit with some great emotion, big hands at her waist, the heat in her stomach when he touched her.
The man resumed. "The men of Rohan stood on the brink of doom! And then the cry was taken up. The Corsairs of Umbar! The Corsairs of Umber! So Belfalas is taken, and the Ethir, and Lebennin is gone. The Corsairs are upon us! It is the last stroke of doom."
He stopped, staring at them. Then he grinned. "And then! From the foremost ship, what did we see, but a great standard - the Standard of the White Tree, and the Seven Stars for the line of Elendil. And we men of Gondor knew: the garrison of Tolfalas had not let the Corsairs pass."
But we did let them pass, Lothíriel thought numbly. We did let them pass. But - we gave them enough time. Enough time, that they were met at Pelagrir.
"I heard it said," the man went on, "that two hours earlier, and the Corsairs would have sailed past Pelargir and onto Minas Tirith, and the man who calls himself Elessar could have done naught. You will be heroes! May I shake your hand, sir?"
Galcherdir allowed his hand to be shaken; when Lothíriel was introduced, the man bowed so deeply, his nose made contact with the ground.
They proceeded in silence to the city.
.
.
.
If they had hoped for a hero's welcome, though - or really, any kind of welcome - they were out of luck: the hosts of Gondor and Rohan, Lothíriel's father and brothers among them, had ridden out just that morning for Mordor. The men left to the defenses were numerous - the lords had left the city well-defended - but there were no familiar faces there.
Her father's steward explained as much to Lothíriel. She listened blankly. He said something about the Ringbearer, and going to assault the forces of Mordor - she heard and perceived only a little.
"And my brother Amrothos?" she asked. "He has - he has gone, too?"
The man's face went still and quiet. "Yes, Princess. He -," he hesitated. "Your father tried to forbid him, but he would not go."
"But his leg," she tried to protest, "surely he cannot ride."
The steward looked at her solemnly.
"And - the lord of Mandolin? Have you heard talk of him?" she asked, hoping against hope that the man her brother loved had not gone away, too.
"Only that he too has ridden out," said the steward.
The house of Dol Amroth gaped empty around her, but on her second day home - bathed three times over, every inch of road dust and blasting powder and gore gone from her skin - she walked to the Houses of Healing.
"What shall I do?" she asked calmly.
She was in the kitchen scrubbing when someone cleared a throat. It was the girl Lalaith, who smiled at her.
"Lalaith," Lothíriel said, a little warily.
Lalaith nodded to her. "Well met, my lady Lothíriel. You have done all I saw, and more besides." Then she turned away.
.
.
.
War is glory; war is legend; war is song.
Utter nonsense.
In those interminable days after the hosts left the city, Lothíriel spent hours a day in the Houses of Healing. Never blessed with a strong stomach, she did not bother volunteering for anything remotely medical. She simply passed her time doing the menial work that needed doing, and there was a great deal. The beds were so full, they began placing bodies in hallways, opening up nearby houses to hold more wounded. And still, on came the wounded.
The women and children had been evacuated from the city before the siege, but plenty had remained - most of them working class women who formed the skeleton of the great city: washerwomen, laundresses, shopkeepers, food-vendors - all the people who were absolutely needed to run a city, and all the people needed to tend to the armies of wounded. Lothíriel, simply by virtue of her work, spent a great deal of time with these people, and again she found something odd in the way they responded to her - a kind of relief, as though something she said or did was a reassurance.
Battlefield medicine was an exercise in further brutality; men had lain for too long on the field, wounds festering, blistering in the faint sun and the nighttime chill, surrounded by the rotting corpses of beloved comrades and enemies alike. Lothíriel put her head down, grimly, and helped launder and change sheets, clean bedpans, cut and roll bandages, carry stretchers. She did not go anywhere close to amputations, and with this, she was content. Each had their own place in the fine intricacies of the world. She had seen death; she had held it in her own two hands. She knew her place in the world now, and many more things besides.
The healer Ivorel caught her one afternoon, placing a hand on Lothíriel's shoulder. "You've done very well."
"I'm only happy to have been of service," she said. "You look wearied, Mistress. When did you last sleep?"
Ivorel laughed, hiccuping a little. "When the king was here. I could sleep, knowing it was his hands who bore my wounded. You ought to have seen him, Your Highness. He was - magnificent."
"Did you see my father, by chance? Or my brothers?"
"Your father, yes. It was he who saw the lady Éowyn - but I forgot," said Ivorel, just as Lothíriel opened her mouth to ask of Éomer's sister, "I had a question for you, my lady. Do you, by chance, speak Rohirric? I ask because we have a great many Rohír here, and some do not speak the common tongue, nor, of course Sindarin, and there are few here who can speak to them or give them comfort."
She stands still for a moment. "I speak very little, and that very poorly."
Ivorel said, "That is more than most."
So now, when her hands became raw and swollen from the buckets of washing water, she took turns passing through the wards to speak to the men. Her Rohirric, learned at her father's knee in preparation for his long ago diplomatic mission to Meduseld, alternatively grown rusty and nurtured over the years - nurtured, that is, by Éomer's letters, which usually contained some sprinkled vocabulary, and nurtured by the interest they tended to kindle in her for the language - was poor, but not so poor as she had feared, and as she spoke longer, it sat more easily upon her tongue.
Some men asked her to write letters for them. She wrote the letters, hoping to keep the tears from wetting the paper, for the letters seared at her heart. The men asked her to write of love and loss, of family left far behind.
"Your Rohirric is very good," one of the men tells her - Wulfric. He was a young man, no more than fifteen, with a lightning-quick smile and a missing stump of a leg that Lothíriel could not look at lest she lose her dinner. "How did you learn?"
"I went to Rohan when I was a girl," she explained. "Meduseld. My father brought me - it was the first time I'd ever traveled with him!"
"What did you think of my country?" Wulfric asked her. "We don't have cities like these, but - ," he broke off, panting, face beaded in sweat, "- but I find it the most beautiful place, you know."
She scrabbled for a topic to distract him. "Tell me of your family," she suggested. "Do you have children?"
This drew out a laugh, as she had intended. "No, not yet. Fair Freya will not accept me yet! But you see, when I return with my stories of gallantry, she and the other lasses will fight over me. Don't you think, Mistress?"
"Oh yes," she assured him. "Have you brothers, or sisters?"
He shook his head. "No, no. I'm an orphan."
Valar, she would choose the most possible painful topic of conversation. What else could she ask him about? Panicking, at a loss for words, she teetered on the edge of lunacy - the weather? Dancing?
"- as good as family to me," Wulfric was saying. "Pardon?"
He smiled up at her, mistaking her confusion for astonishment. "Yes, I know! Hard to believe, isn't it. I wouldn't believe it of Gondorian royalty, Mistress, although I've heard very good things about Prince Imrahil and Lord Faramir and their king, too. No, Marshal Éomer was like - like an older brother to me. My parents died in a Dunlending raid, years ago, and we were brought to Edoras, my sister and me. Lady Éowyn took my sister Seledrith as her maid, and Lord Éomer made me his squire. He didn't need me of course, but he pretended he did, and he was right kind about it, too."
She was suddenly desperate to learn more. She leaned forward. "Truly?"
"Oh yes," said Wulfric. He looked delighted at her interest. "I've been at Lord Éomer's side for years now. A better man you couldn't fine. He fed me, clothed me, and saw I got the best training." His face fell. "Much good it'll do me now."
"You must have been very brave," Lothíriel said stoutly. "What man can say they scarified themselves in a cause?"
Wulfric looked at her hard. "I think that too. But sometimes - I wish I had my leg. I shouldn't think it - but I do." He turned away, and Lothíriel understood he could no longer speak, but she still sat with him, an ache in her chest, until he wiped his eyes and asked her for something to drink.
She liked Wulfric a great deal, and so came to speak to him often. He seemed to enjoy talking to her: he told her of his sister and of growing up in the king's household.
"Prince Théodred, he was never much one for humor, but he was always kind enough to me and my sister," Wulfric told her. "Lord Éomer, though! He was never too busy to play a joke on someone. He and his officers, the mischief they get into! One time they filled Lord Elfhelm's flask with swamp-water instead of ale. You should have seen his face! Of course, don't mistake me. They would never joke when serious fighting is upon them."
"You speak so highly of Lord Éomer," Lothíriel said. "What is he like?"
"The best man alive," said Wulfric, eyes aglow. "Although your king is very impressive, too."
Lothíriel smiled.
"He's fierce clever," Wulfric went on, "and the men say, there's no commander like him. He has power over this men. They listen to him, you know?" He looked up at her; she nodded to show she understood. "They say he's reckless sometimes - but I don't believe that! A warrior shouldn't care about his own skin. He's a - a very kind man. If I could be like anyone, I'd like to be like Marshal Éomer. Éomer King, that is." He beckoned her closer. "All the girls say he's the handsomest man they know in Edoras or Aldburg besides."
She blinked at him. "Do they, now?"
"Aye," said Wulfric happily. "But, most importantly, he's a fearsome warrior."
A Rohír, she reflected, would say that. It occurred to her faintly that of course Éomer would be surrounded by women who wanted him. He was, after all, a king's heir. She concluded that it was dangerous, perhaps, to ask Wulfric so many leading questions.
"I grew up by the," she stumbled on the word in Rohirric, "how do you call it? The - um. It's a large - thing - of water -," And so they passed the time speaking of the ocean, until Wulfric fell into slumber. Then she moved on to another Rider, learning from him the name of his wife, the names of his children, and of his farm outside of Edoras, until she too felt that she must sleep.
.
.
.
Every so often, she saw the Warden of the Houses of Healing. He was a grave man, polite if a little stuffy. Amrothos had once asked seriously if he'd been born unable to smile, and Lothíriel, in a life before this, or so it felt, had scolded him roundly for the impropriety of it. In these days though, she thought of it and stifled a giggle, and thought with a pang of her impossibly kind older brother, who had been handed so many challenges, and had subverted them all without once losing his stride.
One day the Warden came to her where she was working in the kitchens, sleeves rolled to her elbows, red-faced from steam from the kettle of boiling sheets.
"Princess," he said, bowing deeply. "I have a favor to ask of you."
"I am happy to be of some service," she said.
"You know that the Lady Éowyn is with us here," he said. "She is healing in body, but not in spirit. Perhaps you could visit her."
Lothíriel followed him upstairs.
What struck was the pale of the room, and the paleness of the lady propped on the pillows. Lothíriel had never thought of light as the absence of something, but here it was so: the absence of color and life itself. The Warden, clearing his throat, said, "The princess of Dol Amroth, my lady -,"
"I wish to see no one," said the lady Éowyn, "and I have no patience for princesses."
"Thank you, Warden," said Lothíriel, and moved past him. She did not move to sit.
Lady Éowyn turned her head and looked at Lothíriel with cool level bleakness. For a moment Lothíriel thought her made of stone. And then, something about her face, tugged at her mind, and Lothíriel realized: it was not that she felt nothing, it was that she felt so much.
"It is as I said," said Lady Éowyn. "I have no patience for princesses, nor the weeping of women. I am no soft-hearted girl in need of comfort."
Lothíriel wanted to snap. How dare she? But she felt strange stirring pity, not anger, and she knew instantly, she must cloak this, for it would infuriate the White Lady only a little more.
"Well," said Lothíriel cautiously, "I have no weeping to impose upon you, which is just as well. I am not afraid of much, but angering the Slayer of the Witch-King is not something I should like to do."
The lady Éowyn looked at her faintly. "Go away, Princess, before I lose my temper."
Lothíriel said, "Is there anything I can bring you?"
"Peace and quiet," said the princess.
Lothíriel stared at her. "Did you need a sword for the Witch King?" she asked. "Or did you just use your tongue?"
Lady Éowyn turned her head. "Go away, Princess," she said, but Lothíriel spotted a quivering at the corner of her mouth.
"I'm in the kitchens all day," Lothíriel said, "waging war with bed linens. I am only recently returned from Tolfalas, where I watched many men die. I came here to occupy my mind, but it plays tricks on me - my mind goes on thinking when I wish it would not. If you wish for company, I would be glad to sit with you, if only to relieve my own troubles." She bowed a little, and went away.
When evening came, Ivorel stopped by. She drifted through the women, touching shoulders, speaking to them softly. They brightened in her wake.
"I hear you spoke to the White Lady of Rohan," Ivorel said to Lothíriel.
"Not all nine-fingered ladies play with hatchets," said Lothíriel, wryly. "Some of us just stick our fingers into crevices where they don't belong."
Ivorel said, "We are glad to have you back, Lothíriel. You are... much changed."
"Aren't we all?" she asked Ivorel.
Ivorel laughed at that. "Change is the prerogative of the young."
Lothíriel lowered her voice. "Have we news?"
"None that is new to you or I," said Ivorel.
The waiting was the worst part, she reflected. They were unable to do anything: constantly suspended, waiting on the valor and bravery and sacrifice of their men. No wonder the lady Éowyn had rode out.
That day was full: more laundry, more letters, and even a visit to the perian called Merry, who spoke to her of the man they called king. She pressed him for news of Rohan, and he told her more tales of Marshal Éomer. Listening, she felt something tighten in her stomach. Éomer. She needed to see him again. He had been her friend for so long - had stood by her at her darkest hour. They had been stretched thin by words on parchment, but now that life had become so dear, she needed to see him again.
Tired as she was, something told Lothíriel to see to the White Lady before she left for the evening. And so she climbed the stairs, lead-weight in her every step, and behind her eyelids danced the dead.
"Come in," called Lady Éowyn. Lothíriel pushed open the door.
"It is you again," said the Lady Éowyn.
"Yes," she agreed. To her surprise, Lady Éowyn looked - calmer. There was color in her cheeks. "Me again."
"Do you know the Steward?" Lady Éowyn asked her abruptly.
She could not help but smile. "Yes, of course."
The lady looked at her sharply. "What do you mean, of course?"
"I mean that he is my cousin," said Lothíriel, and watched, to her surprise, as the lady seemed to relax, just a little. "You have met Faramir?"
"Yes," said the lady Éowyn. "Yes, earlier today... he has promised to ask the Warden to move my chamber. I wish to see the sun."
"You have no fear on that account," Lothíriel assured her. "Faramir is a man of his word - always."
"He seems," Éowyn said softly, "very kind."
"He is," Lothíriel agreed, carefully. "But he is not soft, my lady."
Éowyn's head jerked up. She stared at Lothíriel who tucked away a smile, pleased that she had been right. She leaned over to pat the other woman's arm.
"You need not worry for him," said Lothíriel. "Faramir has seen much, and it has only tempered him."
"That is," said Éowyn finally, softly, "a gift."
.
.
.
Faramir himself sought Lothíriel out the next day.
"Cousin," he said. "They say you spend nearly as much time here as I." Smiling grey eyes invited her to join the joke.
"You seem... happy," Lothíriel ventured.
"Happy?" He looked away. "Perhaps not that. Perhaps... hopeful."
"And - what has the White Lady of Rohan to do with that?" she asked.
Smiling, he shook his head at her. "You, my dear cousin, are incorrigible."
"Quite," she said drily.
"When did you get so wise?" he asked her.
She looked out at sky. At Tolfalas, she wanted to tell him. There was a time before, and a time after. There had been Lothíriel the girl, and Lothíriel the woman, and in between the two halves stood Tolfalas and Dánaron and the man of Umbar she had murdered. But she did not tell him this. Faramir carried enough on his shoulders.
"You remind me of your mother," said Faramir finally. "Aunt Hosna was - lovely. She had a way of speaking that reminds me of you."
Her mother had spoken with a faint accent of Harad. Was that what he meant?
But Faramir said no. "She always saw people for their truths," he said. "As your father does. It is a gift. And she was never scared of anything."
She shivered a little. "I'm scared still. I have - ," nightmares, she didn't say.
"Everyone is frightened still," said Faramir. "It is in growing older that we realize, we must press ahead all the same."
.
.
.
And on the twenty-fifth of March, the darkness shattered, and the shadow vanished.
The war is won.
.
.
Lothíriel was at her family's house in the city, not at the Houses of Healing - she was exhausted from four days of working there - but she walked to the Houses if only to be among people who were celebrating. News had been trickling back all the while, of the vast armies moving towards Mordor, calling out for the enemy to come and fight, but she knew nothing of her family: her father, all her three brothers. It had occurred to her at some point on her ride back from Tolfalas that, as she had mourned her mother for so long, that she had forgotten to celebrate and cherish those she did have. And what family did she have! Her father, ever patient, ever kind; Elphir, with his rare kindness and perceptiveness; Erchirion, the sweetest of her brothers; Amrothos, her beloved perpetual jokester. That day, she vowed she would cherish what she had, more than ever before. Please, she prayed, let them just come back to me.
At the Houses of Healing she met her cousin, and with him the lady Éowyn.
"Oh, I am sorry," she said, "forgive me, I did not mean -,"
"No," said Éowyn, and her smile was thin but there. "I am glad to see you, Lady Lothíriel. Come sit with us, will you? Faramir has told me a little of your story. I would be glad to hear it all."
"You are kind," said Lothíriel, through choked lips. "But I would rather not speak of it, if that is all the same. It is still too fresh."
"Of course," said Faramir, and Éowyn, to Lothíriel's immense surprise, reached out and took her hand.
"I understand," said Éowyn. "I understand very well." And her smile to Lothíriel was shy and kind. When Faramir finally left them, claiming duties of office, Éowyn said, "I would have us be friends, my lady, if you will."
Lothíriel looked at her, startled.
"I know," said Éowyn, "I was not very kind to you. It was - very dark. Where I was."
It was Lothíriel's turn to say, "I understand that very well, too."
They sat together for a long time in comfortable silence. Somehow there were a great many things to be said that did not need saying.
The world felt turned upside down, and somehow more beautiful than ever, and in the days that followed, Lothíriel received a letter from her father.
Daughter, it read. Your brothers have all acquitted themselves nobly, and have survived the greatest battle of our Age. There is nothing missing from our joy except you, and I hope you may join us as quickly as possible for the victory celebrations at the Field of Cormallon. I am most eager to present you to their Majesties King Elessar and Éomer King of Rohan.
Your loving father
She set aside the letter, and called for the maid.
She was to see Éomer again. She put a hand to her mouth.