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“Queen,” Aragorn breathed. The King of Gondor sat back against a headboard forged from steel and pine, arms full of nauseated elf. “Tinúviel.”
Aragorn had not stopped calling her the old, storied name, even after all the time they had spent living their own legend. Arwen had used her power to great effect in defense of the kingdom only a day prior. Her efforts had met with great success, but they had taken a price, leaving her temporarily bedridden.
“Estel.” Arwen leaned her head back against him. Not many people still called him that. “I would feel much better with my hair pulled back out of my face, but I fear if it is done too tightly, I may lose the battle with this nausea.”
“Of course,” Aragorn murmured and kissed the Queen atop the head.
He brushed his hands carefully through her long, silken black hair. Elven hair might not be the silk of a moth, but it was just as soft as any mulberry weave and just as strong. He had never met a human with hair so soft and smooth; certainly, as a child, sometimes his own hair could be rough as tussocks. Likewise, only Shelob could compete with the strength of elven hair.
With gentle hands, Aragorn partitioned her hair carefully into three parts. He left aside the left and right sections of her hair, dividing the center piece into three smaller strands. He wove the left small strand over the center loosely, and the right strand over the new center strand.
He no longer had to focus on how to braid Arwen’s hair to get it right. He had been braiding his own hair all his life, and that of his wife for the better part of a decade. His focus was chosen, something nearly meditative to him.
When he came to the left strand, he pulled a little extra soft hair in loosely, dragging it almost carelessly over the center. It was a small matter to repeat the process on the right, and then through the rest of the braid, eventually bringing in all of her hair except for two small strands into the loose, black braid. As he wove the last left piece over into the center, he pulled a ribbon from his wrist, untying it with a smooth motion, and tied it around just beneath where he had last braided.
His wife typically wore her braids far tighter than this, but the Queen was no less majestic for the changed style. Ordinarily, he would have woven the last two strands into small braids to meet at the base of her larger braid, but tonight, he felt that those might be too tight. Instead, he twisted each of the strands loosely and tucked each into a side of her braid.
“A circlet for my lovely Queen,” Aragorn proclaimed in a low, warm tone.
“Indeed,” Arwen smiled, perhaps a little less queasily than earlier. “Thank you, my beloved star. I fell less unwell already.”