Learn who you speak to

While it understandably was too early to celebrate this victory over Sauron which had happened yesterday, the mood in all of Minas Tirth was a completely different one compared to just twenty-four hours earlier.

"It is regrettable that we could not slaughter those fallen horses for their meat and hides, but the risk of the orc arrows being poisonous is too great. Would not be good if there was an event of mass food poisoning which could result in more deaths by mistake."

"Exactly. That was why we buried them instead, alongside those of our landsmen who died in battle eleven days ago."

Some of the Rohirrim had been too injured and even too near death at first to join the Army of the West to the Gate of Mordor, so now, when a number of them were better compared to a couple of days ago, they walked outside the walls of Minas Tirith to get a better look on the Pelennor Fields now when it no longer was looking like a battlefield. Éowyn joined them, after promising Faramir that she would be back as soon as she could.

"Ah, here is where Snowmane lies."

The horse of Théoden had been buried in a hollow on the place where he fell, and yet, despite having mortally wounded his rider when Snowmane fell upon him, the Rohirrim was not angry at the royal steed for it. As a culture of horse-riders, they all knew that Théoden was not the first case of finding his death by his horse being frightened and somehow losing balance which resulted in the horse falling over, especially not when Snowmane had been struck by a black dart by the Witch-king and thus becoming a lifeless body of flesh and bone which far outweighed his rider.

"The stone-carvers have already made this, great to see."

A stone had been erected upon the hollow, with the words:

Faithful servant yet master's bane,

Lightfoot's foal, swift Snowmane

"Thank you for serving your master until your last moments, Snowmane."

Since Théoden was no longer alive, Éowyn gave the stallion the last respects to the steed of her uncle in his stead, because all Rohirrim had close bonds to their own horses, and her own steed, Windfola may have survived the battle but became lame in a back leg due to most likely stepping on a sharp stone at some point during the battle chaos and thus currently needed to be treated for abscess-related lameness in that back hoof.

"My fedra would be sad for losing Snowmane if he was still alive, for they had a close bond. Even if we have several different horses during our lives, each horse is special in their own way."

~X~X~X~X~X~X

When they came back to the Houses of Healing, the midday meal was being served. Except that there seemed to be a rather loud quarrel from the nursery where the royal children and their cousins were being served their share of what food the White City could offer for now.

"It looks like…the foreign soldiers are worried about the food?" Faramir wondered as he and Éowyn found it difficult to ignore the racket as they walked past.

While Suleiman had brought along the surviving Haradrim and Easterlings to the Gate of Mordor, not all of the Westerosi soldiers had been able to join King Robert Baratheon on that march, and it seemed to be those who threw a fuss. Or rather, the ones in white armor who seemed to be tasked in protecting the royal children.

"Seriously, what do they expect in times of war? A banquet for those with the highest rank, while the common soldiers only get rations to eat?" Éowyn wondered in distaste, recalling what Prince Oberyn Martell had told her about the nearly year-long siege of Storm's End during Robert's Rebellion, where Lord Stannis Baratheon and the garrison had been forced to eat their horses, dogs and cats due to the castle's granaries and storehouses were only half full at the start of the siege. All this, while Lord Mace Tyrell and his bannermen feasted within sight of the walls. Some confirmed rumors even said that the people trapped inside Storm's End had nearly been forced to eat their own dead if their food ran out, if it had not been for a smuggler who had managed to sneak in a ship loaded with onions and salted fish for the starving garrison. A smuggler who Stannis had taken into his service, now known as the landed knight Davos Seaworth.

"Lady Éowyn!" Tirwald called as he limped towards them as quickly as he could while supporting his broken leg with a crutch, a injury he had gotten in the last hours of the battle eleven days earlier, "As you know, I have learned the common tongue of Westeros though Lysa being my wife, and I believe that you are needed out in the old nursery where the children are. Their bodyguards are wasting the Rohirric efforts to prevent Gondor from starving, by acting like our brought-along potatoes in our rations are an unknown poisonous food!"

"...what?" Éowyn asked in a flat voice, feeling insulted on behalf of her cousin, the current King of Rohan. And she could almost hear Elia mutter under her breath that the Westerosi were ungrateful for the generosity in sharing the food.

"Are the children hesitant to eat the potatoes?" Faramir wondered, just in case it was something like that.

"Actually, quite the opposite once tasting them, my lord. It is the bodyguards who pulled away their plates from the children while saying that they needed to be checked for poison first…" Tirwald started, only for Éowyn to walk past him with a cold look on her normally fair face. Realizing what risked to happen, Faramir had a servant bring him a empty parchment and a quill with a inkwell, quickly drawing up the current family tree of the House of Eorl, with a crown above the family tree to mark them as royalty in their homeland, also taking care to make out his own family tree with Boromir as the current Steward, to explain that while their betrothal was not yet openly known, Éowyn was his fiance and that if she was disrespected, those Westerosi risked to disrespect both Rohan and Gondor.

"Since I am not sure if they will listen with you as a translator, I will show this to them and point between her name and my fiance to show who Éowyn actually is. Maybe they will shut up at the understanding that they risk insulting a lady of royal lineage, who also happens to be connected to House Martell of Dorne though the wife of her royal cousin."

Faramir also sent the same servant to bring him a map over Rohan and Gondor, just to prove that he was not lying about her lineage for the Westerosi knights.

Inside the nursery, the royal Baratheon children were very displeased with their bodyguards acting like this due to not knowing what sort of root vegetable they had been served. It was not Brienne who was causing this fuss, but rather Ser Boros Blount of the Kingsguard who was not too pleased with being tasked with "babysitting" the royal children alongside Ser Meryn Trant while the rest of the Kingsguard were away with Robert and Stannis at the Black Gate. And when Éowyn entered, standing tall and regal in a manner which would have made her grandmother Morwen proud if she had seen it, she made a point of speaking in the common tongue of Westeros as Elia had taught her just like the Rhoynish language, despite having her native Rohirric accent which made some words sound slightly different:

"My lords. Are you seriously that IGNORANT of what sort of place we are in?! This city shows all signs of having been under a siege! A SIEGE, in the late winter and early spring months of the year when there is no growing crops out on the fields or anything else which could be used as food for the people under the siege! You are honestly lucky to even be allowed to have a share of the food rations! And you are wasting this food by throwing it down on the floor like it is not fit for humans? Food, which MY people brought with them when they arrived to break this siege, which our allies were under?"

The royal children and their cousins seemed to be the ones who snapped up her actual meaning the quickest, compared to their bodyguards in white armor who did not catch the hint fast enough. Then again, Elia had mentioned the Kingsguard members to not exactly always be the heroic "knights in shining armor" of legends, whatever that meant.

"We can not risk the royal children being poisoned by strangers without their fathers, or usual servants around to act as food taster…" Meryn responded in a dismissing manner, as Éowyn noticed a few plates with potatoes on the floor, looking like they had been flung across the table and onto the floor.

Only for Lyonel and Argella to cut that short:

"What is the point of poisoning the heirs of an unexpected ally who showed up to aid in a war?"

"Yes, when that scenario would only result in more unneeded distrust when there is a bigger enemy to defeat?"

This seemed to not warn the two Kingsguard members much, as Boros said:

"We still do not know if this food is even meant for humans…"

And then Merry showed up in the nursery door after having run there from where he had been eating his share of the lunch himself, with an very offended look on his face:

"What is this I hear about someone being such a fool as to openly waste previous food?!"

He may look like a child in size, yet Merry managed to give Boros and Mertyn a very angry look which, in combination with the steel-hard glare from Éowyn and the Baratheon children, seemed to actually unnerve them a bit. Hobbits did love food, but it was not this characteristic of his race Merry acted upon. Rather, the plain fact that those men did not seem to care for how little food there actually was in storage and rations was the only way to ensure that everyone got fed until the food issue was fixed in some way. This was not the time for those foreign men to whine about food which they were not familiar with.

"Esquire Brandybuck, Let me as the acting Steward and the Lady of Rohan deal with this," Faramir requested gently as he laid a hand on Merry's shoulder, addressing him as the esquire of the late Théoden as a sign of that Merry offering his service had been accepted by the former Rohirric King.

"I trust you on that," Merry muttered under his breath as he turned around to leave, not without sending one last glare towards the broken plates on the floor where a few of the boiled potatoes had been stamped underneath a foot.

"I will not repeat this again: You are wasting food which MY people brought to our allies, who have just undergone a siege. If you do not want to eat the food rations we are able to serve to everyone in the city until that more food has been transported here, then you are welcome to starve. Or I shall have to mention this to my cousin, the King of Rohan, as well to your King Robert Baratheon…or his heir as the new king," Éowyn said with a meaningful glare towards Lyonel, who understood those last words.

"My fiance is right," Faramir said as he laid down their respective family trees and the map of Gondor and Rohan on the table, "A siege, or any other place in a war where extra food is hard to come by, is not the right place to complain about what you are given to eat."

Judging from how the two Kingsguard members paled upon noticing on which names Faramir had placed his index fingers next to, as well their positions in the family trees, it seemed to finally sink into their heads that they very likely had shown disrespect towards two members of the most powerful families around.

"We hope that when the evening meal is served, you shall be grateful for having anything to eat at all," Faramir smiled dangerously before he and Éowyn left the nursery, leaving their guests in awkward silence.

"Sers," Lyonel finally spoke up to break the silence, "You both better start saving your annual salary as Kingsguard members and count down the remaining days to when I am a legal adult by law, because I refuse to have sworn-for-life bodyguards who prove to be a disgrace in situations like this."

Or as the unspoken words went: You will find yourselves kicked out from the Sworn Brotherhood of the Kingsguard the moment I am a legal adult on my sixteenth birthday and having sworn those oaths to serve in the Brotherhood for life, will NOT save you from dismissal. Unless you find another Lord to serve, you better be ready that your saved salary may be used for things you never expected to use it for, like buying food which is a far cry from what is being served in the royal court and a place to sleep while traveling on the road.

Boros and Mertyn were not given any chance to protest this threat to their livinghood, because as Éowyn had said, until they got news of whatever Robert lived or had died in battle, Lyonel could very well be the uncrowned underage second Baratheon King of Westeros. And with Faramir and Éowyn being close relatives of the rulers of both this kingdom and the neighboring kingdom…

Could Robert or Lyonel honestly even save them from facing punishment over disrespecting other powerful families in a time of trouble, like right now, when this had proved to be the final days of a massive war across most of Middle-earth?

~X~X~X~X~X~X

In the Temple of Shadows:

Visenya was still exhausted from yesterday, but today it was more a dumb feeling in her chest once the small part of her who had been Neith once upon a time, had been allowed to grieve the father who she had still loved despite him becoming a servant of Sauron and she could think a little more clearly.

"I better check on my cousins, just to see what they are doing…Lady is unlikely to leave Sansa alone for long, so she should be close to her."

It did not take her much magic to use the drinking water in her goblet as a miniature water mirror, and carefully search for where Sansa and Arya currently were in the south of Gondor. As expected, the children used in the Orphan Labour Force would most likely have been sent away from Minas Tirith during the spring anyway even without a war going on, because of that tradition of them being lended out to farmers during the most busy times of the year and other people who may need a pair of extra hand in their business, as well being able to clothe and feed that extra help as payment. It was a way to both keep the children away from a life on the streets and risk a life on the wrong side of the law, as well giving them a chance to learn a trade so they could have a livelihood.

"If things goes as I intend, both Arya and Sansa will have some character growth by the time uncle Eddard finally finds them again."

Arya would hopefully learn to pay better attention to the need of social manners as well to not always act as she pleased, or how her often ill-mannered behavior and lack of foresight for possible consequences could be harmful for both herself and others around her. Another bonus would be for Arya to learn how to see what sort of advantages she was already taking for granted, both as a highborn noble and how being the rebellious Miss Stark of Winterfell was also a kind of privilege resulting from her father's benevolence.

While Sansa would hopefully learn to see the people behind titles, social roles and professions. She was not doing that out of malice, far from it, but she needed to get far better at using personal names and connect with people as people because Sansa was not going to spend her daily life solely safely away from the unpleasant sides of life among fellow highborn nobles. Her bonus would hopefully learn to also no longer passively accept what was expected of her, and step away from spending her whole life being a people-pleaser because Sansa needed to start prioritizing her own needs before it was too late and set up boundaries in her relationships to others.

In fact, the Stark sisters ending up in the Orphan Labour Force of Gondor was even something they would have use for later, according to Visenya's view on things long-term, despite it not being part of her plan to force her female cousins out from their sheltered life previously: They would learn how daily life was for those of a much lesser social status, far away from the comforts they had as noble-born girls, seeing the sides and daily tasks of a household they had never done themselves in Winterfell, and better understand their roles as married ladies in charge of their eventual husbands' household and all the servants who worked for them.

Visenya was not doing any of this to be cruel, but rather to avoid her female cousins either finding themselves in a nasty situation where their social rank, gender or age would not save them from something really horrible happen to them. Or that a worst-case scenario did not always mean death.

And for Eddard Stark to realize that by not giving Sansa the same amount of attention, he had created a path for himself to be a stranger to her. As well that by first indulge Arya only to later reveal that he expected her tomboyish behavior to "just" be phase to outgrow as Arya no longer was a young child and then accept her expected role as a noble daughter with an arranged marriage as part of her adulthood without any protests, he risked to make Arya resent him as she grew older upon realizing that her brothers and her own possible sons would be able to do all the things she wanted, simply because they were boys and Eddard did not take the tomboyish side of her seriously.

~X~X~X~X~X~X

Author note: Éowyn not having a complete clear image of what a "knight in shining armor" is supposed to be, are a nod to that Tolkien based Rohan on Anglo-Saxon culture, while Gondor in its current state is reminding of the Byzantine Empire. With Westeros having a rather strong inspiration from the Middle Ages with their culture of knights and how the English Wars of the Roses was a big inspiration for the Westerosi War of the Five Kings in canon, it should be understandable that the riders of Rohan or the swan knights of Dol Amroth may be the first idea of a knight Éowyn may think about, but those swan knights may be closer to the role of Byzantine cataphracts than High Middle Ages knights, by being Gondor's elite cavalry unit, similarly to the Tower Guard for infantry and Ithilien Rangers for archers.

Lyonel making a clear warning about dismissing two of the Kingsguard members from a position they have sworn to serve for life, may seem a little extreme, especially when in canon Lord Commander Barristan Selmy was dismissed by Joffrey, and this event marked the first time this ever happened in the history of the Kingsguard, but Lyonel do remember history with how Kingsguard members Lord Commander Gerold Hightower, Oswell Whent and Arthur Dayne guarded the Tower of Joy with the pregnant Lyanna Stark instead of returning to King's Landing with Rhaegar as per the orders of King Aerys. However, in-story Jaime was dismissed from the Kingsguard as punishment for killing Aerys way back in Foreign Lands, and based on the plain fact that those three Kingsguard members remained at the Tower of Joy, Lyonel worries about the Kingsguard having a alarming habit of proving themselves unworthy of being called the best of the best knights found in Westeros, or thinking that they can be spared from consequences of their actions and how "just following orders" can become a rather serious problem

Visenya may have chosen a rather unique tactic to break the idealistic worldview Sansa and Arya have as a result of their sheltered life in Winterfell, but compared to what they face in canon, Gondor is not wrecked apart by an succession war with a years-long winter coming right afterwards. She is going to still watch over them from a distance and keep them safe from the worst harm, but the Stark sisters are gonna be VERY DIFFERENT in personality as a result of their time spent as "foreign orphans of unknown origin" compared to how they was when first finding themselves in Gondor, when Eddard meets his daughters again