Work Text:
Éowyn had never felt at home as either sex. No matter how much she trained in arms, she was never one of the men. She was not even a man when she was Dernhelm, for everyone knew her secret, though they pretended they did not. And when she was a woman, she never felt like she was enough. It was remarked that she was beautiful, but her hands were ungentle. She was tall and queenly but cold, and she was well-spoken but lacked the zest that made people listen.
When she met Faramir, he loved her in spite of the buts, and she forgot them for a while. But then a guest came to Ithilien: Lothíriel, Faramir’s cousin from Dol Amroth, and she opened up old wounds without even knowing.
Lothíriel was everything Éowyn was not. She was small and fine-boned where Éowyn was tall and well-grown, and beside her any man looked like a hero. She was dark-haired where Éowyn was fair, and her skin was untouched cream where Éowyn’s was burnt by the sun of the plains.
But most of all, she was sweet, well-mannered, graceful as flowing water. She was beautiful like the porcelain figurines Gondorians kept under glass, and her eyes were often lively, sometimes demure, and always enormous.
Everybody loved her, especially Faramir, and Éowyn found herself fading into the spirit world again.
That morning, on the third day of Lothíriel’s visit, Éowyn pushed apart the tall double doors and joined Faramir and Lothíriel for breakfast on the balcony.
The table was laid with all the good things the land had to offer: berries, pears baked with nuts and honey, molded pâtés and freshly layered dough.
“Oh, my goodness, oh, my goodness, you need not remind me!” Lothíriel was laughing softly, her lily-petal hand hovering in front of her mouth.
Though barely open, her mouth was mirth incarnate. Her dress was a confection of pale, pearly pink and ruffles, and a lattice of bows ran down the bodice.
“I recall you hid under the merchant’s stall, and would not come out for an hour,” Faramir said, his eyes wrinkling at the corners.
“Well, I knew what would happen when I came home. Mother would lament her poor, poor nerves and father—”
“Yes, but it did not deter you from doing it again.” He smiled, leaning back easily in his chair.
“Of course not. Perhaps the market was forbidden, but no one said anything of the coast. So that is where I ran.”
“I remember. Your tenth summer, when we visited, you kept running down the coast. And Boromir and I kept getting roped into the efforts to find you.”
“Yes—except everyone liked to rest until the sun was up, and by then I could make it a league away to my cove with the blowhole.”
“And when that was not enough, you swam…”
“Yes, and I only rue that I never saw the fear on your faces—how you and Boromir must have danced about on shore shoving each other—‘no you’—‘no you swim after her!’”
Faramir chuckled in his way, his lips together and the sides of his mouth curling upward. Then his dark almond eyes turned to greet his wife.
“Good morrow, my love.” He rose and pulled out a chair for her, his fingers brushing her shoulders when she sat down.
“Good morrow, Faramir, Princess,” Éowyn said quietly. She raised her hand and he kissed it slowly—all the public affection they were allowed, even if the “public” was family.
He sat beside her, leaning on the armrest closer to her.
“We were just reminiscing.” He winked at Lothíriel and smiled in his tender way, with just the corners of his mouth. “This one has never been content to sit still. Running from her tutors, the guards, our parents. Escaping into the city and dodging among the market stalls. Running off over hill and dale, over cliffs and beaches. Once she was found at a village twenty miles away, watching the Water-Walking Festival in winter…” (1)
“I am quite ungovernable, what can I say.” Lothíriel shrugged her lovely, rounded shoulders.
“So we were saying how difficult it was for her to stay within the city walls, when the war came home.”
“Yes, so it was. But I contented myself with running about the palace grounds, again and again. I wore out all my shoes, so sometimes I ran barefoot.”
“Barefoot?” Éowyn gasped.
It was hard to imagine the princess being such a rapscallion, and it was even harder to imagine her doing it barefoot, and to this day.
“Why, of course,” Lothíriel’s eyes fluttered to her cousin-in-law. “Indeed, some might say it is the best way. I especially love to feel the earth and grasses between my toes, and I find that a foot uncushioned grows all the stronger.”
“I see,” Éowyn said slowly. She picked up her fork, and Faramir gently served her a glazed pear.
The breeze meandered from the garden, the sweet voices of grass and herbs braiding in the wind.
So too had the grasses smelled and sounded in Rohan, in spring on the cusp of summer when the sun and rains finally let them grow tall. They flowed as far as the eye could see, making a veritable ocean, and there were all kinds. Some, as she recalled from running with Éomer on the banks of the Aldburne, were soft like moss, and others long and hard and cut you like blades if you were not careful. But she and Éomer never cared. It was always a question of how far they could run and how fast, and how the horizon ran away from them so unfairly.
Looking up now, she saw her husband’s smiling eyes, and Lothíriel, looking at her in her restrained, pink-smiling, curious-eyed way.
And what if they were friends?—she thought. There was no reason against it. The Princess had things about her that nobody could guess unless they knew her. She was nobody to resent, however lovely and well-loved she was, and perhaps she was born for a journey, same as her.
Éowyn smiled without restraint for the first time she had come out onto the balcony. Gingerly, she pressed her fork into the yielding skin of the pear and nodded to her cousin-in-law.
“Princess—Lothíriel,” she said. Though the name was awkward in her mouth, she made a point to use it. “I think—if I could propose something, perhaps it may be to your liking. In three weeks’ time, I plan to visit my brother again, and what if you came also? How would you like to meet the King of Rohan?”
(1) This goes back to a Dol Amroth headcanon of mine, inspired by a tradition seen in the show Blue Eye Samurai. In the depths of winter, the small towns on the coast have a curious tradition. A local healer or other respected community member recites a blessing to the sea, and then the entire adult population goes into the water nude, creating a path of raised hands for the blessing giver to walk to an island or manmade structure off shore. The blessing giver then throws a token into the crowd of bathers, and everyone rushes to claim it. The person who catches the token is considered blessed, and their wish is expected to come true. This activity is fun because it combines a nature-bound ritual, competition, and bathing in very cold water. But it would certainly be shocking for a young princess to watch it without supervision. Back