Hey! I'm back. Sorry for the delay and the long breaks lately. Work and life have made it tougher and tougher to get my head in the game, but I am not giving up on this story, if that's what you might have feared.
I actually wrote this piece of text here as part of a much longer chapter, but when I realised that it was getting way too long, I decided to split it in two chapters. Here you're getting the first half. The second half will follow soon - probably by the end of January.
Thanks to everyone who is still sticking to this story - you're my heroes and my muses!
33. Smooth seas never made for skilful sailors
Éomer smiled; he simply couldn't help it. And why shouldn't he smile? The night had passed and all the shadows seemed to have passed along with it, and instead of darkness, a new day had dawned, to now shine surprisingly warm and brightly upon them. And as he looked at his wife and queen, and seeing her laugh in that quiet manner, that quiet manner that was honest and unguarded and real, it simply touched him beyond words of comfort or declarations of love or loyalty.
Of course, it would be bold to say that one night of passion had erased all the words and deeds between them that had come before, or the weeks of distance and distrust that had stood between them. But rather than address the bad blood between them, they both seemed to have come to a quiet, mutual understanding that, for now, certain things need not be spoken about, that, for now, all they wanted was to enjoy the happiness and intimacy that had returned to their relationship. They knew, naturally, that there needed to be a time to talk about it all, but, for now, they had decided that this time wouldn't be now. Right now, they surmised, was the time to reconnect, to regain their footing in this partnership they had decided to hold on to, to remember that their connection was build on more than just loyalty and trust, but on the care and affection they held for each other.
And Éomer tried, he really tried to make it work, and even though he sometimes felt like he was deceiving himself, that they were fooling themselves by acting as they did, he managed to hold on to the knowledge that they were happiest when they were together. It was this knowledge, this undeniable fact that helped him to ignore that nagging voice inside his head that called for honour and demanded justice, and instead compelled him to listen to the crooning voice inside his heart that reminded him why he loved this woman with every fibre of his being.
The king knew, of course, that she wasn't perfect; for what it's worth, he knew damn well he wasn't perfect either. But over the weeks of distance, he had begun to understand that she had never been that perfect being he had once idolised as – and never could have been – and that the pedestal on which he had placed her in the beginning of their marriage might have contributed to her downfall and the rift that had gone through their relationship like a knife, beautifully bright but sharp nonetheless. He knew that she had her faults, that she had done mistakes, grave ones even, and he even sensed that there was a darkness inside of her that he as of yet did not fully understand – and perhaps never fully would – and that it might never completely go away. But despite it all, it didn't change the fact that he loved her, and for the time being, he took comfort in that knowledge, allowing him, at least for the moment, to forget the pain and poison that had come before.
As for Lothíriel, she seemed to be of a similar mind.
After their tryst at the beach last night, his wife and queen seemed spurred on by the desire to let bygones be bygones and to look towards the future by cherishing the present. Why, she was positively giddy in her attempts to reconnect with him, and not just on a physical level. Ever since they had woken up, she had talked of returning home. Home, he thought, and the thought was warming his heart, because he knew she meant their home, back in the Riddermark.
However, and she had made that perfectly clear again and again, before their return home, there were two things she needed to do or else she would never be able to leave her past and old home behind. And thus it was that once again Éomer, king of the Riddermark and warrior of a hundred battles, found himself on yet another damn boat, holding onto the railing of the vessel while simultaneously trying to hold onto the contents of his stomach.
A part of him knew he should have declined when she had asked him to go sailing with her, to come up with a clever excuse, a white lie to not besmirch his honour or break her heart, but the enthusiasm shining in her eyes had been so addictive, the tone of her voice so inviting, that he simply could not have said no, even if he had wanted to. Too great was the need to be close to her, too great was the wish to make her smile, too great the fear to watch her fall apart in disappointment.
So, there he was, a man of the land in a tiny cockleshell in the middle of the fucking sea.
Closing his eyes, to try and calm his mind (and his upset stomach), just as she had shown him, Éomer was only half-listening to her telling her tales while she was navigating their little boat. He pricked up his ears here and there though, catching the gist of the stories she was spinning, but mostly listening to that smile softening every word she spoke, and he learned soon enough that this right here was her true home – not the palaces on the cliffs of the island far above the waters, nor the courts with their webs of gossip and intrigue to become entangled in. The wide open sea. Powerful and calm, treacherous and steady, mysterious and open, deep and comforting … just like she herself.
As she pulled the ropes and steered their vessel towards the horizon, farther and farther out, the words flowed from her, breathing life into tales of gods that ruled the waters, sea-daughters that swam with fishtails for legs and sung songs that made the waves dance to their tune and pirates that sought to brave adventures on islands moving on the backs of giant shelled creatures. And she also told him of the beasts that lived in the deepest depths of the sea – always lurking, always prowling, always hungry – that only rarely came to the surface, but whenever they did, there was always a sailor or two (or a dozen) that fell prey to them. Why, she added, her own brother Amrothos was said to have lost some fingers to them but earned a precious life lesson in return to never underestimate –
'You tell me this now? NOW?! We were in the water last night, we – ', Éomer shouted, alarmed, his voice breaking from the strain of trying to keep at bay the images of all the dangers they could have fallen prey to last night, only for his mouth to snap shut in an instant as entirely different images flooding his inner mind now, images that surely left him blushing – much to her amusement.
'Don't be afraid, my brave Northern king, I'll make sure to protect you!', she quipped back at him, laughing him off in the manner that only partners who are very close may be allowed to make fun of each other. But even though the king's pride might have been chipped off a little at her uncontrolled laughter, he did take it in strides, deciding that a king's pride was not so delicate a thing that it wouldn't be able to endure a joke or two made at his expense. So, instead of sulking like a wounded little prince, the king merely proceeded to roll his eyes at her in the most dramatic fashion, but he listened to her further explanation all the same, 'Usually, they only come out during dusk or dawn – that's their feeding time, that's when they like to hunt.'
After that, business, it seemed, went back to usual. He clung to the railing of the boat, holding on for dear life while simultaneously trying to hold on to the contents of his stomach, while his wife was pulling on the ropes, sometimes this way, sometimes that way, pulling tight and letting loose the sails as she saw fit, commanding the rudder according to her needs and effectively steering their vessel through the salty sea-winds. Of course, he had no real idea here what she was doing or how she was doing it, but whatever it was, it seemed to work and it was wondrous to behold. All the while she was telling him some more of her many stories of her god Ulmo, Lord of Waters, and how many of his bastards became heroes of even greater legends, most of them pirates even, up to no good but always with a cheeky smile, who always managed to somehow manoeuvre their ways out of many dangers and into many a fair maiden's bed.
'You know, for a people who suffered so much under the Southern pirates, you sure do seem to idealise them.', Éomer pointed out with a wink and an eyebrow raised in question, remembering fairly well the fleet of Corsair ships that had sailed up the Anduin river that day towards the Pelennor field, plundering and pillaging, murdering, up and down the coast, fully intent on unleashing their evil pirate ways on the White City of Mundberg. To him it seemed astonishing that someone like her – who surely must have lived in the shadow of constant threat from these pirates – would tell so many stories and tales that would paint these sea-thieves and cutthroats as anything other than what they really were. But, perhaps, that was just the way people around here dealt with any threat: by making light of it and pretending that it wasn't powerful enough to scare the mighty lords and ladies. Perhaps they thought fear of a thing would only increase its power over them; perhaps they thought to put it in songs and tales would make it less threatening and less powerful; perhaps them putting it in songs made them feel powerful too.
'It's just the romantic notion of a swash-buckling sailor rebelling against the pre-ordained order of things, the innate call for freedom against the rules of society and establishment. What's not to love about that?', Lothíriel answered with a wink of her own, and it was clear from the way she had worded her explanation that he wouldn't get much honesty out of her in that regard. Did she really feel about all of this the way that she had painted it? Doubtful, very doubtful. But for now she rather wanted him to believe the fairy tales she spun, or perhaps, she simply expected him go along with the spiel – an exercise, perhaps, in Southern manoeuvring. Well, if she wanted, he could do that. After all, he had been with her long enough to have learned a thing or two from her about the art of Southern conversation.
'Let me guess, when you were a child, all you wanted was to become a pirate?', the king asked his queen with a cheeky smile, and as he leaned towards her with a glint in his eye and flirtations on his lips, there was a moment when the old connection flared up between them, an invisible pull towards each other that was as natural and as inevitable as the current itself. He knew she could feel it, because he felt it too. But then the moment passed; he was painfully reminded of his sea-sickness once more and his queen sought to diffuse the tension by laughing off his assumptions – though she wasn't yet ready to be completely honest with him either.
'No, far from it.', she explained more or less matter-of-factly, though there was a little glint in her eyes that told him she took more pleasure in her words than she would have initially let on, 'However, there are many who whisper that my brother Amrothos is some sort of pirate. Never to his face, of course – no one would dare openly accuse a nobleman of such a thing. Although, to be perfectly honest, a lot of our noblemen trace the accumulation of their wealth back to supposed pirate ancestors. Or so they boast, when they are not feeling affronted by it. But for my brother, it's just a rumour – people after all here in the South have nothing better to do in the heat of noon than to gossip.'
'How does your father feel about that sort of rumour, I wonder?', Éomer threw in – when he felt there was a moment that opening his mouth did not pose an immediate danger to his pride – because, somehow, he just didn't see Imrahil, Prince of Dol Amroth, as a man who would take lightly to tongues wagging tall tales not in his favour. And indeed, his queen was quickly enough confirming his assumptions – with her eyebrows pulled together in conspiracy and her nose help up ironically high, 'Father would never stoop so low as to openly acknowledge it, though that particular rumour has irked him for many years – a tiny but nevertheless sharp stone in his shoe.'
After that, he left the talking to her again for a while. As she worked away on steering their vessel, she seemed positively flowing over with things to talk about, like a damn that had broken and turned into a veritable waterfall. As for himself, he thought it best to simply listen, allowing himself to keep his mouth closed and his pride unsullied by his own weak stomach. Of course, there were some things he listened to more closely than others, but he definitely got the gist of it.
Apparently, tomorrow would be a very special day for the people of Dor-en-Ernil, a day considered especially holy for all the faithful of Ulmo, Lord of Waters. The Feast of Waters, Lothíriel called it, and based on her initial descriptions, the term "feast" seemed more than just fitting for it. His queen told him that there would be a banquet in the halls of her father, which, naturally, would be held more as a demonstration of power in front of the richest and most powerful people in his princedom rather than in true honour of their divine patron of the seas. In a way, she added, it would also be a feast held as a parting gift, as they would be making their way home the day after tomorrow. To his surprise, however, she declared, without so much as missing a beat, that they would not be attending said banquet.
The Feast of Waters, she explained, was a holy day marking the return of the waters of life, which, of course, meant the beginning of the raining season. For him as a Northman it was almost ridiculous to celebrate the beginning of a whole month of raining, but for these Southerners-by-the-sea, rain – like any other waters – was considered life-saving and a blessing and, well, holy. So, naturally, she went on to emphasise with a nose held up high in barely veiled contempt, such an important religious holiday could not be celebrated up there in some mighty hall, cut off from the sea and from the rain. No, they would celebrate the feast outside, on the streets of Dol Amroth, alongside the hundreds of other people, under the rain itself.
Éomer, for his part, was glad for it, for the escape that had been provided and the excuse that had preceded it, because, Béma help him!, he didn't think he could have stomached another endlessly boring and stiff banquet or the tons of seafood they served at it. The very memory of the smell alone, or the sound of some old, fat lord slurping up oysters made his stomach churn dangerously, and he held on to the railing of the sailing boat all the more tightly, but the continuous rocking of the vessel gave him little comfort. He was a man of the lands; he knew how to ride, he knew how to fight and he knew how to drink – the sea wasn't for him.
'So, is this what we've come out here for? To plan our exit strategy?', he scoffed with some amusement, though without any malice, doing everything and anything so he wouldn't have to think about that queasy feeling in his stomach, though the act of talking, or rather opening his mouth to be precise, proved to be a rather bad idea. Turning away for a moment, to lean almost dangerously far over the railing, so he could discreetly and uninhibitedly throw up his fucking guts, it was more or less understandable that he was rather slow to comprehend her next slide-of-hand.
'No, we're out here for this.', was all his queen said, as she gave the rope a strong tug, turning the sail into the wind, and with a jolt the little boat they were in suddenly picked up even more speed, almost jumping over the waves as they came gushing towards them. And as she pulled at another rope, the vessel then suddenly surfed towards the right, rounding a sharp corner of a cliff … only to reveal the peninsula off Tol-en-Naur, now a fully-fledged island thanks to the high-tide of the waters.
At the sight, Éomer stiffened in response, his brain immediately, instinctively, flooded with the bad memories he associated with this place, and possibly forever would be, and they were enough to even make him momentarily oblivious to the nauseating feeling boiling in his stomach – although that did not last very long and soon enough he had to hold on to the railing of the boat yet again. To distract himself, the king looked over to where his queen stood, and as he gazed at her handling the ropes with one hand and the rudder with the other, eyes trained on something far off – or even something lost in the past – and he wondered whether she, too, was thinking of their time together at this place. Was she thinking back to the spectacle on the balcony or even her mourning performance at the beach? Was she thinking back to the bitter stories she had told him out of sheer cruel spite? Or was she even reminiscing the harsh days of her childhood and the heartless lessons she had endured there? Sometimes it was quite impossible to read her or her motives, even now, now that he had come to a much better understanding of who she had been as a person and who she was now.
Why had she brought them here? What possible reasons could she have that she would steer their boat towards these beautiful but nevertheless painfully treacherous shores? Had she decided that now was the time to have that dreaded talk, that talk and its foreboding promise that had hovered over them like a dark cloud (still far away on a beautiful summer's day, but slowly but surely brewing to be a massive storm nonetheless), that they had worked so hard to ignore ever since their happy reunion at the beach last night?
Somehow, it just didn't seem like her to force something like this, but then again, he was thinking of the shy princess here that she had been in the beginning of their marriage. Since then, he had come to learn that she could also be a woman who did not shy away from confrontation when push came to shove. After all, this was the same woman who had dictated their discussion about his bastard son, and this, too, was the woman who had not shied away from pointing out his flaws and mistakes and who had gone toe to toe with him over the wrongs he had done to her, unconsciously and unintentionally as they may have been committed. So, to be fair, he couldn't really put it past her to steal them away to a remote peninsula, cut off from the safety of the mainland by the mysterious powers of the sea, to corner him into a talk about love and loyalty and the treacherously tempting things that lay in-between.
However, just in the moment that he had believed to have gathered his courage to ask her these very questions running amok in his head, his eyes caught sight something small and quick moving along the beaches of the peninsula, and it was only when he trained the whole of his attention on it that he realised at long last what it was. No dragons of memories past awaited them at these not so distant shores, no monsters leaping up from the sea greeting them with green in their eyes and in-between their webbed fingers and in their hearts – only a pair of wild and bawdy children that seemed to have made the shoreline their personal playground.
It was a sight that surprised Éomer as much as it disturbed him – because, surely, he had known, by the stories his queen had told him, that there had always been children on yonder island, ever and anon, with some residing there longer than others, but still, to see them now, playing on the sandy beaches, he could not help the feeling of uneasiness that crawled up his spine; too great was the darkness that a childhood spent on this island must undoubtedly mean for a child and, later, a person. However, perhaps it was only his limited knowledge talking here, his own experiences drenched in personal bias stemming from his own personal connection with that god-forsaken place. Perhaps, if he had never learned of the childhood that his wife had endured here, he would not see the place the way he did now, and the sight of children playing on the beaches there could just be that: children playing.
Feeling the frowns deepening on his forehead and the feeling of queasiness return to torture his stomach, Éomer wondered how his wife was coping with the whole sight of it – because if seeing it was tough for him, then, surely, it had to be even tougher for her, with old memories being unearthed, memories of hard lessons and harsh childhood days that one would much rather forget. But as he looked over towards her – his mouth already opened to speak words of comfort, to ask for a change of scenery, for her to take them somewhere else (though him wanting to ask had less to do with his wanting to experience the Southern scenery on an even longer devilish boat ride and had more to do with his innate wish to try and spare her from any sadness or discomfort) – he was surprised once more to see that rather than stormy clouds darkening her face, a soft smile was brightening it up, as though the sight before her did not hold any bad aftertaste for her.
Immediately that left him thinking, wondering how she could smile in warmth at children being in the very place in which she had been forced to endure so much as a child herself. There was something going on here that he did not understand, Éomer mused, suspicions arising out of years and years of training, his senses of alarm going off, telling him that she was hiding something, though whether good or bad, he could not tell. Perhaps, that might explain why, against his better judgement, against the queasy feeling in his stomach warning him not to open his mouth too wide or too long, the king found himself talking all the same, asking his question with as much subtlety as he managed to muster.
'Who are they?', he asked, leaving the question vague in its intent, with no accusatory undertone detectable and no undercurrent that might suggest any preconceived notions.
'They are the Children of War.', his queen answered with a sigh as heavy as though she were carrying the wight of the whole world, and, in a way, he guessed, she did – on her shoulders she carried the world still that she had been born into, and now she also sought to carry the world she had decided to live in. But still, even though he understood the feeling that was weighing her down, he did not yet understand her meaning; his queen seemed to sense his confusion, and so she added, 'Orphans.'
Éomer nodded slowly, signalling his comprehension; and as he looked over towards the pair of children playing at the beach now, the scenery took on a whole new meaning: they were two children playing alone, with no parents to oversee them or to join in their games. It was a picture he had seen too often and knew well enough from his own home country. These days many a family was still left incomplete, and not much could be done to fill the void the loss of a loved one had left or to shake off the crushing feeling of loneliness. But, perhaps, he thought, as he looked at those children, yes, perhaps, there was hope that time could make the weight feel lighter and that the void left, even if it might never be filled, might still be bridged.
'The war left many families destroyed, and many children without families. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them, are roaming the streets and countryside of the South, though you would be hard-pressed to find any and you would be forgiven to think that they are none.', Lothíriel went on to say, following his gaze, feeling the same emotion of compassion, though there was bitter cold mixed with the warmth as she spoke, 'The mighty lords and ladies indeed worked tirelessly to restore the streets and countryside to its natural beauty and serenity.'
'Are you saying the elites made them disappear?!', Éomer spat out, dumbfounded, whipping around only to see her smile that typical smile she always had when he had just caught up to something obvious or when he had pointed out something that had been clear from the start.
'Oh, no. That sounds positively barbaric, my lord, and we here in the South are cut from finer cloth, or haven't you noticed?', she scoffed, sarcasm dripping from her tongue like poison from a snake's bite, but in contrast to any other viper, her bite was painful, yes, but it wasn't meant to kill, and the hurt that stemmed from it, was caused more by the pain of a truth that would have left a bitter aftertaste in everybody's mouth.
'All I'm saying is, we won the war and no one wants to be reminded that there were things we lost.', the queen went on to say then, and though the bitterness was still etched firmly into her words, the viciousness from before had long left her voice, leaving her to sound exhausted and weary … and old. Yes, she sounded old, like a mother who had buried each of her children, save one, and who was now sitting at the last child's deathbed, knowing what would come, as the outcome was always the same for a life that death could touch, 'You would be surprised how easy it is to ignore the small eyes looking up in need when you don't look down.'
Éomer frowned as he watched her gaze turn inward, a sombre expression on her face, leaving him to mull over her words. He believed to know her well enough by now to understand that while she was so very obviously treating her fellow noble peers with such contempt, she herself did not really exempt herself from that contempt. How often had she romanticised the court intrigues she had woven like a spider that spun her web? How often had she excused the viciousness with which she sometimes treated the people around her, with the harsh lessons she herself had learned? How often had she painted herself as a lost cause, given all she had sacrificed and given up on? In her eyes, she saw herself as neither better nor worse than any other noble politician of her kind, and whatever selfishness and conceitedness she could accuse them of, she herself was not free of these vices either. So, the real question here was not, if she had looked away like the rest of them, but rather why she would now choose to look closer and then some?
'So, why are they here now?', the king asked then slowly, leaving his question as open as he could but worded as directly as he dared, hoping to entice her to reveal her true motivations, but even as his eyes watched her carefully, looking for the smallest sign of emotion – the furrowing of her brows, the tightening of her jaws, the pursing of her lips – he knew that she would not so easily give up her secrets just yet. After all, she had never been a woman to disclose information lightly or without some intention of her own.
'They had no place left to go, so I gave them a place to be.', was all she said; a strategic answer, simple, clear but ultimately dodging the real question, and, in the end, an answer that wasn't a real answer at all. A year ago, such a response would have frustrated him – though he would lie, if he said that there wasn't even the smallest glimmer of frustration ignited by her choice of words now – but he had learned much and more in their one year of marriage, and not the least because her tendency for avoiding to answer direct questions … well, directly, had been a staple of their early stages of relationship. Now, however, he simply met her strategic avoidance with a calm and steady perseverance, 'Okay – so, when did you plan all of this?'
'The day my aunt died. The moment I got the news, I knew I wanted to do better with the assets I had been given.', she answered then, and to his surprise she did not evade his questioning now; instead she was as open and pliable as a well-read book – perhaps, even a little too open, 'I decided I would use my newly-attained estate not for myself, but for the people who really needed it.'
'Your estate?', Éomer repeated disbelieving, not sure that he had heard her correctly, and in his surprise his voice came out almost one octave higher than usual, though that only lasted a short moment, and after he had recovered from the initial shock (and after he had cleared his throat quite dramatically), he addressed the questionable subject once more, perhaps a little bit calmer this time, though it was hard to keep the disbelief out of his voice, 'Your aunt left all of this to you?'
'Of course.', his queen answered matter-of-factly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, though there was a certain edge to her voice, almost something like defiance, but it was quickly enough overshadowed by her good-natured attitude with which she chose to poke a little fun at him as she turned to him with conspiracy in her gaze, 'Not everything I told you was a white lie, you know? My father did have a thing or two to settle with my aunt the day your sister married.'
Well, and that was enough to shut him up.
For a moment, the king wallowed in silence, chiding himself for how long it had taken him to connect the dots. Of course, it all made sense, in a way. In many ways, Lothíriel was her aunt's true heir, as the lady Ivriniel had no children to speak of and no spouses to fight her claim. Still, even as a Northerner and with the limited amount of knowledge he had about the Southern laws of inheritance, it was remarkable to think that a woman could simply bequeath another woman like that, when usually such bequests and the like would fall to the next male relative of either family side. But then again, knowing what he knew of the lady Ivriniel, remembering what his wife had told him, it was not so hard to imagine that the feisty, old dragon had found a way around that. After all, who would dare to go toe to toe with a mighty Southern lady, reared in all manner of intrigues and scheming?
'So, you turned your aunt's estate into an orphanage?', he asked then, fighting hard and yet failing to keep the scepticism out of his words, though he was quite aware that his words probably reflected that nonetheless as he spoke, because he was not so sure how the old dragon would have felt about this whole thing. From what he knew of her, it was highly unlikely that the old dragon would have approved; instead, it was much more likely that she would have deemed this whole undertaking a tremendous waste of potential. After all, what profit was there in raising children to simply have a good life?
If that is indeed all this is, a suspicious voice inside of him whispered then, and the king knew the voice so well, as it had accompanied him ever since he had learned of his wife's betrayal; a constant voice of doubt in the back of his mind, questioning her every move and every intention, expecting a hook at every turn and ulterior motives behind every gesture. It was a line of thought he didn't want to follow, his very heart resisting against it, but his mind, embittered by recent experiences, told him to not outright dismiss even the worst of possibilities. After all, she was her lady aunt's true heir: reared with the same harshness, trained with the same brutal lessons, raised to be a manipulative and scheming politician. Who was to say that she could not also take advantage of these poor, unfortunate children in the same that she had been taken advantage of?
'In a way, yes, I did turn it into an orphanage – but it is also so much more.', his queen said slowly, almost hesitatingly slow, her brows furrowed in deep thought, and for a moment the king feared his dark suspicions would turn out to be true, threatening to destroy what little faith he had fought to keep in her and to sour the trust he had dared to place in her again. But then she cast away all his doubts and suspicions as she gazed at the children on the beach with such warmth in her eyes, leaving that same compassion to drive her words as well, 'They deserve a place to grow up in with no expectations other than their own. And whatever darkness I faced in my youth, I see no reason that darkness need only ever breed more darkness.'
Stunned into silence, the king was, for a moment, at a loss for words – and what could he have said at such an example of sheer selflessness, especially when it came from a woman who would cast herself in the least favourable of lights? What could he have said that would have convinced her otherwise, to see the good that she was capable of, the honour and integrity that she possessed and had maintained despite all the lessons trying to train it out of her? There were quite simply no words that could have encompassed all the ways in which she had proven herself to be a good woman despite all the bad choices and mistakes she had made, and most certainly no words that she would believe. So, not knowing what to say or how to say it, he simply said nothing, leaving them each to their own thoughts, in silence.
Éomer knew of course that she was referring to the harsh lessons and the cruel education that she herself had received here at this place as a child, leaving her to grow attached to her own darkness out of necessity, fearful of the light, because who knew what truths such bright shining light might uncover in the darkness she had cultivated over the years? Everyone would grow to love their gilded cage and the golden lock that held it in place, if that had been the only life one knew, and even if she had learned to see between the bars that held her in place and to understand that she was a prisoner of her own circumstances, she still clung to that prison out of fear that without it she could not become what she so desperately wanted to be: a queen.
But still, despite whatever bitterness and resignation she might harbour in her heart over the way her childhood had defined and shaped her life, she still managed to have compassion with those who otherwise might have been taken advantage of in no less heartless ways. Or, perhaps, it was even that same bitterness at the happy childhood that had been denied her that fuelled her very compassion now, leaving her to make the decision to not waste away at the pain and misuse she had endured, and instead to turn it into something that was wholly good. It made him wonder then, as he watched her focus shift back towards the steering of the boat (or, perhaps, so she would have liked it to appear), whether she meant to transform all of her darkness into something positive, and thus, acting on pure instinct here, he found himself asking, 'And what about that other darkness? From your past?'
It was a test, of course, to see how she would react, if she would react at all – it was a delicate subject after all. But in the spring of the moment, he could not have stopped himself from asking, even if he had wanted to, and that was just the thing – he had simply wanted to know, despite the insensitivity of it all, had wanted to take a closer look at that side of her she had tried to hide from him for so long, to see if it were still there, to see if it would stare back at him.
All too well the king remembered the look on her face, the burning in those sea-grey eyes, the night she had told him of her plan of vengeance; the tender passion and yearning that had shone through her words, to see her plan come to fruition. Would she give that up too? That darkness nourished by the darkness that came before?
But as he should have guessed, his queen only smiled after a thoughtful moment or two, before switching the subject and leading them back to the point where their whole conversation had started from, leaving the unspoken words to deliver her response for him. She wasn't perfect, he knew that now; he should have seen that before, and perhaps he should simply accept that now.
'Well, I'm a princess that turned queen, and I have a palace now I turned into an orphanage – so, there's that. But, my lord, why so surprised? Or are you perhaps simply bemoaning the loss of some valuable, high-end property rights?', she piped pointedly. A shrug and a wink was all she was willing to offer for his concerned musings, but if she wasn't ready to divulge the secrets she still held close to her heart – whether out of habit or survival instinct – then he wouldn't try to forcibly pry them from her. He had gone down that route before and it had ended in catastrophe. No, indeed, he had never been a patient man, but he was ready to give her all the time she needed; he would wait for her. In the meantime, he was sure, his pride could handle her trying to steer the topic of the conversation away from her own sore point by making light fun of him. And, who knew? Maybe there was a bit of fun to be made by himself?
'No, not at all. I'm just thinking it's all starting to make sense, you know? I mean, in a way, you are their patroness, so that would explain their manner of greeting.', he answered with a good-humoured chuckle of his own and nodded towards the direction of the children, and as his queen followed the pointing of his gaze, she could not help but laugh at the sight that presented itself to her then. The pair of children had long since caught sight of their boat and were now making their best impressions of a swan trying to take flight.
'Well, apparently, I'm not the only one they're greeting.', his queen responded in kind, giving back as good as she got, and it was her turn to nod her head towards the children and for her king to be surprised. And with a smile turning sour, the king saw that by now the pair of children had changed their play to a knight pretending to ride on a horse, giving off a whickering sound that could be heard well across the waters and that would have put any real horse to shame.
'Come on then!', his queen called out then under tears of laughter, as she steered their boat straight towards the shores, and as infectious as her laughter was, he could not help but join in, excitement tugging at his reservations, leaving him to momentarily forget even his queasy stomach in the rising spirit of adventure, 'Let's go meet them and show them the true colours of a horse-lord and a swan-queen!'
FUN FACT #1: I'm almost feeling bad for always putting Éomer on boats here in this story, but it does make for a fun setting to drop some character-developping truth bombs.
FUN FACT #2: My partner is an up-and-coming sailor himself and he was "gently" nudging my sailing descriptions in the more correct direction, i.e. I had to wrench my laptop from him so he wouldn't take over this story with sailor jargon. (Yes, I know, it's not rope. It's a line. Give me a fucking break, darling.)
FUN FACT #3: I enjoy complicating Lothíriel. She is hard and soft, cruel and compassionate, cunning and impulsive all at once. I think it's important to show that while abuse and trauma should not be seen as a "phoenix-birth-moment", I also think it's necessary to show that trauma need not be only defining in a negative sense. It's not a linear development.