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Year 11 of the Fourth Age
Edoras
The first noise that alerted the King and Queen of the Mark was a high-pitched shout, which was quickly followed by the thumping of bare feet from a nearby room. Lothíriel sought out her husband’s warmth in her state of half-wakefulness and pressed a kiss to his bare shoulder. Éomer hummed contentedly in his sleep and pulled her flush against his side but did not open his eyes.
“It sounds like our son is awake.” She smiled when she heard more thumping and excited shouting.
“Until the sun rises over the hillsides of the Mark, he is your son.” He tightened his arm around her waist, which was in contrast to what he had just suggested. He still did not open his eyes.
“Fortunately for me, the sun is already shining.”
Éomer’s eyes blinked open groggily. Sure enough, there was sunlight streaming in through the shutters. The thumping in the hall grew louder, as if the person attached to those feet somehow knew that he was fully awake. The door burst open and a young child ran around to Éomer’s side of the bed and started shaking him by the shoulder.
“Wake up, Father! Today is my birthday and you said I could pick my first horse! You promised!” Éomer grunted and clamped his eyes shut, pretending to still be asleep.
“Guards, help… I am being attacked by an intruder,” he moaned dramatically. “It seems to be a burglar.”
“What? I’m not a burglar! I’m your son!”
“Yes, a burglar, indeed. A burglar who has come to rob me of my good night’s sleep.”
“But Father, it’s morning already,” the boy grumbled. Éomer opened his right eye and glanced up at his son for a second before shutting it again. He emitted an exaggerated snore. The shaking resumed. “Come ooooooonnnnnnnnn!”
Whatever hopes the king and queen had of getting a few more minutes of rest went out the window when the wail of a crying infant reached their ears. Lothíriel entangled herself from her husband’s embrace and slipped on a robe. Although she had a wetnurse who saw to her daughter’s feedings, Lothíriel always became anxious when either of her children cried and insisted on calming them down, herself.
“While I am checking on our daughter, you can look after our son.” She crossed the room to where Elfwine stood with his arms crossed and a pout on his face and kissed the top of his head before she looked for a comfortable gown to wear for the day. She heard Éomer slowly start to move around, grumbling and grunting the entire time. “You would not be so tired had you not stayed awake so late.”
“I would have gone to bed sooner had you not kept me up all night,” Éomer answered as he grabbed his trousers from off the floor and tugged them on.
“You could have stopped at any time.”
“And admit defeat so easily? Besides, you make it too difficult to—”
“Gross!”
Elfwine clapped his hands over his ears and made gagging noises. Éomer raised an eyebrow and suddenly charged at his son before grabbing him and effortlessly lifting him over his shoulder.
“Alright you beastie, let’s go,” Éomer said with a growl in his voice and carried his son out of the room, who was wiggling in his hold but appeared to be enjoying himself if his laughter was any indication.
“Finally!”
~*~
After having a much smaller and much quicker breakfast than he would have liked, Éomer brought Elfwine to the stables with a few carrots that they had grabbed from the kitchen. The boy kept hopping up and down the entire time, unable to contain his excitement. They went into one of the stables that housed only the young horses, usually around three or four years of age, that were now old enough to begin training with a rider. While the groom pushed open the sliding doors, Éomer clapped a hand on Elfwine’s shoulder, keeping him firmly in place and preventing him from darting inside.
“Before we go in there, you need to settle down. We don’t want to spook the horses by making loud noises or approaching them too quickly. If a horse becomes frightened, he might not only hurt you but also himself. Everything must be done slowly and you need to adapt to their individual comfort levels, because each one might have a different temperament. So, no more of this jumping around, understand?”
“Yeeessss…” Elfwine mumbled while swinging his arms around. Éomer subtly tightened his grip on his son’s shoulder and he immediately stilled. “I promise, Father.”
“Good.”
Éomer nodded to the groom as he and Elfwine went inside. There were five stalls on either side and one at the far end. Most of the horses had coats of varying shades of brown—chestnut, bay, and one that was white with brown patches (or perhaps it was brown with white patches). While Elfwine fed a carrot to each horse, his father told him the horse’s name and what he knew of its personality and temperament. The stall on the end housed a black horse, and the last stall on the right side contained a white horse. As they approached, Elfwine’s gaze was immediately drawn to the white horse. It was hard to tell if it was how the horse’s eyelashes looked, but he seemed to be scowling. Elfwine giggled.
“I like him.”
Éomer turned away from petting the black horse’s nose to see which horse his son was referring to. It was not the one he’d expected.
“You do?” Elfwine hummed and nodded his head. Éomer raised an eyebrow and stared at the horse’s face for a moment. “Why this one?”
Éomer flinched back for a second when the horse looked at him. He could have sworn he narrowed his eyes in a sort of challenge.
“I like his face. He looks angry but he makes me laugh.” Éomer could see it now—his son leading an éored and facing down an enemy, astride a horse that looked like it wanted to challenge every single one of them to a fight. He also imagined this horse digging his hooves into the earth while facing a mûmak and the mûmak lumbering away with its tail between its legs and dragging its long trunk on the ground. It was quite an amusing image, now that he thought about it. Not that he would ever want his son to have to go up against one of those creatures, of course. “I also like his coloring. It’s different.”
From a distance, it had seemed that the horse’s coat was solid white. However, now that they could see it up close, they saw that the horse’s white coat was actually littered with what appeared to be tiny brown dots. He almost looked like he was covered in tiny bugs or someone had dumped dirt all over him. Éomer thought that this particular horse had a less regal appearance than the other ones, and he was certainly not the typical mount for a prince and future king. However, this was not his decision to make; it was all about what Elfwine wanted, since he would be the one riding the horse. All Éomer could do was advise him and teach him all he knew so that he would become a strong rider one day.
“Are you sure this is the one you want? You can still think about it and make a decision later.” It wasn’t that he wanted to discourage Elfwine from picking this horse; he just didn’t want his son to make a hasty decision, only to be disappointed if the horse did not respond to him well.
“I’m sure.”
“Very well. Would you like to take him outside for a bit?”
“Do I get to ride him?” Éomer snorted.
“Certainly not,” he said and lightly thumped the heel of his hand on his son’s head. “Before you put your behind anywhere near a saddle, you first need to earn the horse’s trust and allow him to become used to you. After that, you will also need to learn how to tack him.”
“Then what do I get to do with him?”
“You can brush his coat and feed him and talk to him. Form a bond with him. The bond of a horse and his rider is crucial.”
“Okay.”
Éomer grabbed a halter and a brush from the front of the stable and opened the gate. He handed the brush to Elfwine and slipped the halter over the horse’s head before leading the horse out into the yard. He brought the horse over to a row of water troughs and secured the halter to a wooden post.
“Alright, you can brush him, now.”
Elfwine grinned from ear-to-ear, and his hand shook in his excitement. Éomer corrected how he was holding the brush and showed him the proper arm movement and pressure before stepping back and letting his son take over. The crunch of footsteps on the ground drew Éomer’s attention, and he turned around to find his wife approaching, holding their daughter in her arms. Though she still looked a little cranky, Wynflæd was too adorable to resist in her frilly dress and matching white headband with bows. Recognizing the look on her husband’s face, Lothíriel came up to him and turned their daughter around so that he could press many sloppy kisses on her face. The little princess giggled and squirmed with delight.
“What brings you here?” Éomer asked.
“I wanted to see how it was done,” Lothíriel answered, nodding toward their son. “That is the one he has chosen?”
The horse lifted its head from the trough and stared her down. Éomer looked at the horse when he saw his wife’s startled expression and shrugged.
“Don’t mind him. Apparently, he always looks like that.”
“I see. Well, if Elfwine likes him and they seem to get on well, I suppose that is all that matters.” She adjusted her hold on Wynflæd and sat down on a nearby bench before setting the infant on her lap. Éomer turned away and went back to Elfwine’s side.
“Have you given any thought into what you want his name to be?”
“But I thought he already had a name.”
“He does. It was given to him when he was born, but as his rider, you have the right to give him a new name if you think that it is better suited to him.”
“Oh…” Elfwine paused in his brushing and cocked his head. “What should I call him?”
“It could be anything that describes him, whether it be his coat or his personality or his speed. My horse is named Firefoot, and your aunt’s is named Windfola. Your great-uncle, Théoden King, rode Snowmane, while King Elessar—known then as Aragorn—rode Hasufel, named for his gray coat, and Legolas the Elf and Gimli the Dwarf rode Arod, whose name means ‘Swift.’”
“Hmmm…”
Elfwine was silent for several minutes; it was probably the longest he had gone without speaking while awake. Occasionally, he would hum in thought, and the horse would pause in his drinking and turn his head around to look at him. Except for whenever he blinked, the horse’s expression never changed. Éomer heard Lothíriel begin to sing softly to their daughter.
“I think he should be called Sunspark.”
“Sunspark? And where did you find the inspiration for that?”
“Because his coat looks like the sparks that float above a fire, but they’re gold-colored like the sun.”
Due to the lack of sunlight in the stable, the spots on the horse’s coat had appeared brown. But now that he was out in the open with the sun’s rays beaming down upon him, they did indeed look closer to gold. Somehow, his young son had managed to take the horse’s unusual coat pattern and create a name that carried strength and authority. It made his chest swell with pride.
“I think it is an excellent name. A kingly name for the mount of the future King of the Mark. Hail, Sunspark!”
The horse whipped his head around, sending droplets of water through the air, and pinned Éomer with a glare, to which the King of the Mark responded with a roaring laugh. Ah well, he shouldn’t have expected it to be that easy.
