![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
gratefulundead.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
remixredux08Title: Come True (The Star-Flower and Evermind Remix)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
vulgarweed
Beta:celandineb
Summary: Across a crowded room, they know the old stories again through each others' eyes.
Fandom: The Lord of the Rings (bookverse)
Pairing: Elanor Gardner/Éowyn of Rohan
Disclaimer: It was J.R.R. Tolkien who passed the stories down to us first.
Original story: Come True byhyel
Uncle Merry wasn’t really Elanor’s uncle, not by blood, but that hardly mattered. He truly was, by something deeper. It was rarely spoken of, but Elanor had somehow always known that her father had come from a place that most folks in the Shire would have said he ought to remember, meaning, not to get above his station and think himself as good as folk like Uncle Merry and Uncle Pippin and Uncle Frodo.
Well, if he’d remembered his place and kept to it, if half the stories were true (and Elanor knew they all were), the world would be a dark and unrecognizable place. Elanor’s mother would have no flush on her cheeks and no dancing in her feet, and Elanor would never have been born.
That was why the shadow came into their eyes, why she’d had to beg them to tell all the stories, really, she was old enough, she wouldn’t be afraid. It was one of those lies that weren’t really a lie because she wanted it to be true so badly she made herself believe in it. She hadn’t fooled them.
But it was Uncle Merry who gave in first, and told her the full story of the White Lady of Rohan--all of it that he had seen, trying not to be quite so vivid and descriptive when the parts about the blood and the grief had started, about the death of King Théoden and the thing that brought the terror and the chill and the cold, and how she had faced it, so slim and small but strong and lithe as well-forged steel. And how she was a great warrior for not fearing death, but there was something fey in her that courted it, like it was the rightful suitor of her fate.
Elanor didn’t understand that part, and Merry would not explain further. “You won’t ever need to know, pet, and that’s a blessing.”
When Elanor first was old enough to have her own grownup-sized mug of ale with the feast, she tried again. Uncle Merry was by then enough in his cups to shiver and let his eyes go far away and speak of a terrible cold wound that spread through the body although there was no mark to be seen on the skin, and then he forced himself with great relief to be jovial again and confessed, conspiratorially, “She made a fine lad. She could have danced with you at the harvest and none would have been the wiser.”
“Wouldn’t she be a bit tall to dance with me?”
“Not with you as light on your feet as you are, Miss Elvenflower. Three steps to her two and you’d make a pretty pair.”
Elanor had tucked away that strange new thought to bring out later when perhaps it wouldn’t muddle her mind in such odd ways, and begged for more tales of the Big Folk and their horses. (She couldn’t quite muster up the same fascination for oliphaunts. They were too big to wrap her mind around. Horses were somehow attainable. At night her dreams were of galloping speed, and meadows and mountains that she had never seen racing past her in the starlight and sun.)
***
Elanor never did tire of such tales.
Later on, her father taught her to curtsy like a Big Lady before he introduced her to King Elessar, and the King bid her kindly to never bow, to do him honour only by being herself, and she was determined to keep her awe in check and never shame her family by acting like a rude yokel among the heroes—and heroines--of her cradle-stories. By trial and error, Elanor learned the niceties and courtesies of which tales went well with which halls and which feasts.
The grand ladies of Gondor, to Elanor’s disappointment, seemed to have few tales to tell that were of adventure and the Old Days and wild hopes and fell fears. But Queen Arwen had many such from her people, richer even than those in Great-Uncle Bilbo’s book, and she told them in the grand style with many songs from her language, sometimes to an audience of one. Yet Elanor could never forget for a moment that these were not only Big Folk stories, but those of the Elves – remote and proud and immortal, unspeakably beautiful and now passed away, for the most part, and gone. Even the Queen herself, while undeniably present in the present, had a way with her joys and her sadnesses that Elanor would never presume to attempt to touch.
***
Lady Éowyn first sees Elanor from afar across the hall, out of the corner of her eye, when she is deep in conversation with the man she hasn’t quite yet learned to think of as King Elessar. Once again she feels that strange disorientation, that a person she thinks quite naturally to be a child is not.
Elanor is shy, at first, and only the Queen can assuage her fears. Éowyn wonders why, and then remembers that is often the way of her people. But then there is wonder and merriment in her eyes.
Elanor is the first young Halfling lass Éowyn has ever seen, and at close range her beauty is breathtaking. Not like that of a High Lady of the Elves, no—more like that of a lovely small creature glimpsed in the woodland. The ringlets on her head and her feet are purely golden, like sunlight.
Éowyn wonders if all children born in joy and peace after a long and cruel war are so beautiful. All the ones she has seen are so. Not for the first time she wonders how she herself might have been, had grey and red death not been such frequent visitors to the halls of her youth. Quickly she banishes such dark thoughts and subsumes them in her delight, a skill she has come to cherish.
At first there is the gentle and politest of rivalries. Éowyn wants tales of the doings of the Shire. Elanor wants tales of battles and of horses.
Late at night, Éowyn speaks of Théodred and Théoden without tears. She speaks of running over the green fields like little heathens with her cousin and her brother, and the day she wore the borrowed helm of another little boy so well her uncle once addressed her as Éomer for a full afternoon. She speaks of the great horses so tall that the three children would take turns climbing on each other’s shoulders to mount them. Little did they know that if these horses had not had the wise blood of the meara, they might have killed them all with a stray hoof and a thought.
Tucked against Éowyn’s lap beneath rich blankets by the fire, Elanor shivers with a little thrill of harmless fear.
One night she notices that the Lady favours one arm slightly when she tucks up the fur mantles. It is not her shield-arm that was broken that still pains her in the mild winter chill of Gondor; it is her sword-arm that flashes weak from time to time as Uncle Merry’s sword-arm does when the fog comes to the Shire. Elanor resolves not to ask her for stories of the War, but instead, to her own surprise, she asks for a tale of love. And Éowyn tells the one she knows best, which includes the story of the shield-arm and the despair that lay upon her heart, and then she and the Prince of Ithilien found each other in the shadows and led each other out of the dark hand in hand, blind leading blind.
Elanor will not find the same kind of love in the same kind of way.
Sometimes, on their stolen nights, Éowyn speaks of the icy dread that still takes her when Faramir rides away to see to the affairs of Ithilien. She feels remorse for this, that Elanor’s innocence should hear so much of war and terror. But she feels that Elanor should understand that not only were sacrifices made, but in the days of the Shadow, the heart fought for itself with valor. So she steels herself anew and speaks of the day she first saw the man who is now King, when she thought of him as but the Ranger Aragorn, and what rose in her then, and what later quailed and nearly died. She speaks of Elanor's “uncle” Peregrin and how he grieved to leave the side of Meriadoc. At last, she speaks of Elanor’s own father, and the way he clung to his Mister Frodo like a shadow – as if, even in the days of joy, he feared that the sight of him alive and whole but for that finger was but a dream that would vanish on waking.
And one day, Éowyn decides that Elanor deserves to know her own girlhood’s greatest joy. They have ridden the grounds before, on a lady’s palfrey and a delicate pony, and made such conversation as ladies do in times of ease. But this time, when they go to the stables, Éowyn winks, and leads Elanor by the hand to other horses. There is a chestnut-gold stallion of Rohan, the son of her own Windfola, who snuffles in greeting, and Éowyn saddles him with the light tack of a Rohirric messenger. Once again, she lifts a Halfling to the front of her saddle beneath her cloak, and holds on to her tight as their steed mounts the wind.
She rejoices to hear Elanor’s glee as the swift hooves breach the gates and devour distance. In the brisk spring breeze they gallop over the waking grass of the mottled ground of the Pelennor Field itself, now partly blossoming with elanor and symbelmynë, partly still black and barren where evil things perished and burned. Éowyn feels barely a twinge as they ride through the bare place of her greatest deed of renown, where she courted fell Death himself as a suitor, and he rejected her.
Later that night, small and gentle in Éowyn’s arms like a pet or a doll, but far more keen and wise, Elanor tells tales of the Fell Winter in the Shire. Such stories had been childhood terrors when Samwise was little, but now they seem quaint. Éowyn replies with a tale of Thengel and young Thorongil and a farce of reclaiming stolen horses.
Elanor is alert and trembling by the fading embers, as if some great glory dangles just within her reach. It does. It is near. She tastes.
~end~
Author:
vulgarweedBeta:
celandinebSummary: Across a crowded room, they know the old stories again through each others' eyes.
Fandom: The Lord of the Rings (bookverse)
Pairing: Elanor Gardner/Éowyn of Rohan
Disclaimer: It was J.R.R. Tolkien who passed the stories down to us first.
Original story: Come True by
hyelUncle Merry wasn’t really Elanor’s uncle, not by blood, but that hardly mattered. He truly was, by something deeper. It was rarely spoken of, but Elanor had somehow always known that her father had come from a place that most folks in the Shire would have said he ought to remember, meaning, not to get above his station and think himself as good as folk like Uncle Merry and Uncle Pippin and Uncle Frodo.
Well, if he’d remembered his place and kept to it, if half the stories were true (and Elanor knew they all were), the world would be a dark and unrecognizable place. Elanor’s mother would have no flush on her cheeks and no dancing in her feet, and Elanor would never have been born.
That was why the shadow came into their eyes, why she’d had to beg them to tell all the stories, really, she was old enough, she wouldn’t be afraid. It was one of those lies that weren’t really a lie because she wanted it to be true so badly she made herself believe in it. She hadn’t fooled them.
But it was Uncle Merry who gave in first, and told her the full story of the White Lady of Rohan--all of it that he had seen, trying not to be quite so vivid and descriptive when the parts about the blood and the grief had started, about the death of King Théoden and the thing that brought the terror and the chill and the cold, and how she had faced it, so slim and small but strong and lithe as well-forged steel. And how she was a great warrior for not fearing death, but there was something fey in her that courted it, like it was the rightful suitor of her fate.
Elanor didn’t understand that part, and Merry would not explain further. “You won’t ever need to know, pet, and that’s a blessing.”
When Elanor first was old enough to have her own grownup-sized mug of ale with the feast, she tried again. Uncle Merry was by then enough in his cups to shiver and let his eyes go far away and speak of a terrible cold wound that spread through the body although there was no mark to be seen on the skin, and then he forced himself with great relief to be jovial again and confessed, conspiratorially, “She made a fine lad. She could have danced with you at the harvest and none would have been the wiser.”
“Wouldn’t she be a bit tall to dance with me?”
“Not with you as light on your feet as you are, Miss Elvenflower. Three steps to her two and you’d make a pretty pair.”
Elanor had tucked away that strange new thought to bring out later when perhaps it wouldn’t muddle her mind in such odd ways, and begged for more tales of the Big Folk and their horses. (She couldn’t quite muster up the same fascination for oliphaunts. They were too big to wrap her mind around. Horses were somehow attainable. At night her dreams were of galloping speed, and meadows and mountains that she had never seen racing past her in the starlight and sun.)
***
Elanor never did tire of such tales.
Later on, her father taught her to curtsy like a Big Lady before he introduced her to King Elessar, and the King bid her kindly to never bow, to do him honour only by being herself, and she was determined to keep her awe in check and never shame her family by acting like a rude yokel among the heroes—and heroines--of her cradle-stories. By trial and error, Elanor learned the niceties and courtesies of which tales went well with which halls and which feasts.
The grand ladies of Gondor, to Elanor’s disappointment, seemed to have few tales to tell that were of adventure and the Old Days and wild hopes and fell fears. But Queen Arwen had many such from her people, richer even than those in Great-Uncle Bilbo’s book, and she told them in the grand style with many songs from her language, sometimes to an audience of one. Yet Elanor could never forget for a moment that these were not only Big Folk stories, but those of the Elves – remote and proud and immortal, unspeakably beautiful and now passed away, for the most part, and gone. Even the Queen herself, while undeniably present in the present, had a way with her joys and her sadnesses that Elanor would never presume to attempt to touch.
***
Lady Éowyn first sees Elanor from afar across the hall, out of the corner of her eye, when she is deep in conversation with the man she hasn’t quite yet learned to think of as King Elessar. Once again she feels that strange disorientation, that a person she thinks quite naturally to be a child is not.
Elanor is shy, at first, and only the Queen can assuage her fears. Éowyn wonders why, and then remembers that is often the way of her people. But then there is wonder and merriment in her eyes.
Elanor is the first young Halfling lass Éowyn has ever seen, and at close range her beauty is breathtaking. Not like that of a High Lady of the Elves, no—more like that of a lovely small creature glimpsed in the woodland. The ringlets on her head and her feet are purely golden, like sunlight.
Éowyn wonders if all children born in joy and peace after a long and cruel war are so beautiful. All the ones she has seen are so. Not for the first time she wonders how she herself might have been, had grey and red death not been such frequent visitors to the halls of her youth. Quickly she banishes such dark thoughts and subsumes them in her delight, a skill she has come to cherish.
At first there is the gentle and politest of rivalries. Éowyn wants tales of the doings of the Shire. Elanor wants tales of battles and of horses.
Late at night, Éowyn speaks of Théodred and Théoden without tears. She speaks of running over the green fields like little heathens with her cousin and her brother, and the day she wore the borrowed helm of another little boy so well her uncle once addressed her as Éomer for a full afternoon. She speaks of the great horses so tall that the three children would take turns climbing on each other’s shoulders to mount them. Little did they know that if these horses had not had the wise blood of the meara, they might have killed them all with a stray hoof and a thought.
Tucked against Éowyn’s lap beneath rich blankets by the fire, Elanor shivers with a little thrill of harmless fear.
One night she notices that the Lady favours one arm slightly when she tucks up the fur mantles. It is not her shield-arm that was broken that still pains her in the mild winter chill of Gondor; it is her sword-arm that flashes weak from time to time as Uncle Merry’s sword-arm does when the fog comes to the Shire. Elanor resolves not to ask her for stories of the War, but instead, to her own surprise, she asks for a tale of love. And Éowyn tells the one she knows best, which includes the story of the shield-arm and the despair that lay upon her heart, and then she and the Prince of Ithilien found each other in the shadows and led each other out of the dark hand in hand, blind leading blind.
Elanor will not find the same kind of love in the same kind of way.
Sometimes, on their stolen nights, Éowyn speaks of the icy dread that still takes her when Faramir rides away to see to the affairs of Ithilien. She feels remorse for this, that Elanor’s innocence should hear so much of war and terror. But she feels that Elanor should understand that not only were sacrifices made, but in the days of the Shadow, the heart fought for itself with valor. So she steels herself anew and speaks of the day she first saw the man who is now King, when she thought of him as but the Ranger Aragorn, and what rose in her then, and what later quailed and nearly died. She speaks of Elanor's “uncle” Peregrin and how he grieved to leave the side of Meriadoc. At last, she speaks of Elanor’s own father, and the way he clung to his Mister Frodo like a shadow – as if, even in the days of joy, he feared that the sight of him alive and whole but for that finger was but a dream that would vanish on waking.
And one day, Éowyn decides that Elanor deserves to know her own girlhood’s greatest joy. They have ridden the grounds before, on a lady’s palfrey and a delicate pony, and made such conversation as ladies do in times of ease. But this time, when they go to the stables, Éowyn winks, and leads Elanor by the hand to other horses. There is a chestnut-gold stallion of Rohan, the son of her own Windfola, who snuffles in greeting, and Éowyn saddles him with the light tack of a Rohirric messenger. Once again, she lifts a Halfling to the front of her saddle beneath her cloak, and holds on to her tight as their steed mounts the wind.
She rejoices to hear Elanor’s glee as the swift hooves breach the gates and devour distance. In the brisk spring breeze they gallop over the waking grass of the mottled ground of the Pelennor Field itself, now partly blossoming with elanor and symbelmynë, partly still black and barren where evil things perished and burned. Éowyn feels barely a twinge as they ride through the bare place of her greatest deed of renown, where she courted fell Death himself as a suitor, and he rejected her.
Later that night, small and gentle in Éowyn’s arms like a pet or a doll, but far more keen and wise, Elanor tells tales of the Fell Winter in the Shire. Such stories had been childhood terrors when Samwise was little, but now they seem quaint. Éowyn replies with a tale of Thengel and young Thorongil and a farce of reclaiming stolen horses.
Elanor is alert and trembling by the fading embers, as if some great glory dangles just within her reach. It does. It is near. She tastes.
~end~
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-20 12:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-27 12:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-20 03:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-27 12:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-20 04:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-27 01:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-20 11:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-27 02:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-20 03:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-28 05:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-21 07:13 am (UTC)Two fics! Two! Oh, glee.
I love Samwise to bits, and that early bit about him not keeping to his place already made me melt. And this is beautiful and just right, and I love how real you managed to make Éowyn's world - part of why I write about hobbits myself is because it's hard to get a grasp on great lives in great halls, to describe them so they feel like places, as you did. This is just wonderful. Thank you!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-29 04:51 am (UTC)Your stories tend to run short, and they're like potato chips - I couldn't take just one! I wish I'd been able to find more of a place for Sam in this story, but I figured Elanor would go to her "uncles" to learn about things her father might not want to talk about. Getting the truth out of his war buddies. I know what you mean about the "great lives in great halls" - it's why I'm never at ease the few times I've tried to write Elves or Gondorians. But the Rohirrim are kind of in-between to me...certainly a heroic culture, but also very human to me, especially Éowyn, who I think is one of Tolkien's most multi-dimensional and rounded non-hobbit characters. So it was a delight to get to write her again. (I also have a story from way back about something that happened between Merry and the boy he thought Éowyn was, so that was in the back of my mind as some of the subtext in his part...)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-29 08:05 am (UTC)<3 Sam, but you do sort of associate Merry and Pip more with heroic tales - and especially Merry with Eowyn. They were there for the big battles, Sam was just there alone with Frodo, feeling small and making history. He would have had stories about the before and after, but considering what it was like for him in Mordor, it would be no wonder if he wasn't inclined to talk about it.
I see what you mean about the Rohirrim. I've always found Éowyn a hell of a lot easier to write than Arwen, at any rate.
If you wrote that fic about Denethor, it would be wonderful if it could fit in with this one, at least partly. I love it when a ficverse flows together (not that mine ever does). ...You know, I have read Merry/Éowyn-Denethor fic! Though he knew she was a gel, all right. It was by Singe and perfectly marvellous. I aped some of it in my own 'The Way Home'. I think it's a pairing just ripe with possibilities.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-23 10:00 pm (UTC)Later that night, small and gentle in Éowyn’s arms like a pet or a doll, but far more keen and wise, Elanor tells tales of the Fell Winter in the Shire.
I love this line so much. Your turn the "tiny hobbit" syndrome on its head here. It works perfectly.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-29 04:54 am (UTC)Also, I would not be surprised to learn that in addition to her work on the Red Book, Elanor was also the editor of a compilation of creepy campfire stories of the Shire.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-30 08:23 pm (UTC)Elanor knows where all the bodies are buried ...