Skipping way ahead here, to the "Oaths" prompt.
400 words.
Oaths
He leaves the house with the lady's token—furled and faceless and weighty as a thousand years of wandering—tucked beneath his arm. Theirs had been a brief interlude. He finds her difficult to look upon. Not as a boy besotted and afraid his passions show starkly on his face, but as a man uneasy in the company of one who plumbs his heart so easily. Hearts are hers to understand, though he knows she guards the knowledge faithfully. Still in her company he waits, not as friend nor kinsman, but as vassal waiting to be bid.
Her charge had been simple. "Bear my blessing to him, Dúnadan, and if he so wills, bear it further."
But then her head lowered, her gem-fretted hair a plunge of shadow on her shoulders, across the carven hollow of her throat. Her voice when she spoke again was not that of a queen, but of a woman whose beloved has ventured into deadly toil. He recognized it without thought; it nipped into his chest and made him long, suddenly and sharply, for Thaliel.
"You claimed what would be, and not what was," she said. "You named him king before even the wise could see clearly that this hour would come upon him…."
A pause. Her fear ghosted between them. For the first time he looked her squarely in the eye.
And her voice grew level again, fortified into a clear and certain chord. "Go now to him, Halbarad, now when his need for a brother is greatest. My long labor I commend to you. I can do no more for him."
His breath had caught. Can do no more? You who cast your strength across him like a shield, wrought your will into his own, into his breath and blood and bones. You fettered him when else he would have flown; you drove him to his labor when he would have returned to it no longer. I know the thing you have lain down for him, lady. I know the weight of it that wracks him in the night. In this we are alike. You, a daughter of kings and legends, and I, wretched vagabond of a ruined house. Into whatever doom we will bear our love for him, into whatever sorrow. In this we are alike.
Aloud he answered only, "By my life or death, tarinya, it shall be as you say."
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