shieldmaiden_rohan | Walking on the Beach

Her nightmares had increased in intensity and number until she slept no more than a few hours a night. When she woke, she knew she would not sleep again that night, even had she wanted to close her eyes and once more see those images of pain, loss, blood, and suffering.

She did not wish to see them even once more. She wished to never see them again, but some small part of her wondered whether she must see them because they were her fate and her people's fate. Aragorn spoke of their progress to defeat the shadow and she had discerned that she had a part to play in it, though he respected her wishes not to know more. Still, though, she wondered if these nightmares were true dreams and if the progress he knew would fade in comparison to the death that came after it.

This night had been particularly bad and she could not stay within her chambers any longer, with the walls seeming to close in on her as Grima had once taunted her. She slipped a long, comfortable dress on and then covered it with a cloak that would not have been out of place in the Mark. She had had the cloak specially made and it gave her comfort to wear it and to be reminded of her people and her land.

As she walked slowly along the beach, she breathed deeply of the clean salt air. She did not know the meaning of her dreams, but she prayed to all the gods there were that they were not true dreams. She was not certain she could bear it if they were.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Aragorn nodded without hesitation, glad for the company. His own thoughts had brought him little comfort tonight, and a walk along the beach would do him good, he suspected. Better still in the company of Eowyn.

He did not know whether it was thoughts of her uncle and brother that upset her so or something more, and he did not wish to push her. Still, perhaps she would appreciate an ear to listen while they walked, and he would be glad to provide one. He did not doubt she would do the same for him, if he asked.

"I would be glad to," he agreed, nodding his head and falling into step beside her. Perhaps they could not return to Middle-Earth, but he was glad to have her company, that of someone else who understood the world he came from. "What troubles you, my lady?"

She considered whether to tell Aragorn of her dreams. He would not mock her nor belittle her, she knew, but all of her dreams were of the future of her land and she worried that they were true dreams. If they were, the events they portended would be ones Aragorn would not wish to speak of, even if she had not requested that he not do so.

"My dreams were dark and full of pain and misery for my people and all free peoples," she finally replied. "I awoke with the taste of ash in my mouth and knew I would not sleep again this night."

It was a curious thing, to hear his own dreams voiced back at him. It might not have surprised him if not for the fact that he had heard of strange goings on in this city. It would be one thing for both he and Eowyn to dream a similar fate for Middle-Earth, quite another for the same images to wake them both the same night.

"I dream it too," he said gently. He knew it would bring her no comfort to know that her pain was shared, but at the least he could show he understood. He too, dreamed of darkness and the free peoples being enslaved, but he had faith that it was not so. He had to believe it, else he would go mad. "The Shadow stretching across Middle-Earth and further, even to this land. But it is a dream, Eowyn. Nothing more."

She was startled to hear that Aragorn had the same sort of dreams, but perhaps she should not be. Strange things had occurred in Darrow recently, even stranger than usual. Perhaps it was not so impossible that two people from the same land would have the same sort of dreams.

He tried to bring her comfort and assure her that it was a dream, but she was not comforted. He could not know that it was only a dream.

"You arrived from a battle, but not one that had been enjoined," she pointed out. He had not said much of the battle he would have fought, but he had been far too clean for the battle to have begun. There had been no blood on his blade.

"If that battle was lost, how can you know that the Shadow would not have spread?"

What she spoke was true enough. Perhaps he did not know for certain that the War of the Ring would be won, but it did them no good to remain in Darrow worried for what might have transpired. Galadriel had spoken to him of Gondor however, and though she had been wary of revealing too much once she realised he did not share her memories, he had gleamed a small amount of knowledge from their conversation.

Eowyn was similarly perceptive; she proved that even now, guessing from the state of his arrival that the final battle had not yet begun.

"When the Lady Galadriel arrived upon the shore she spoke to me in brief," he admitted. She did not want to know what he knew of their homeland, but he could share this small amount of knowledge with her, and she would take from it what she would, the same as he had done. "She said I remained in Gondor last she saw of me. If the Shadow had spread, I do not believe the White City would have remained."

Nor would he be alive to be seated there. He had intended for his fate to be decided at the Morannon, one way or another. If Sauron were to win the war, Aragorn would certainly have lent his final breath to the fight.

"This I cannot refute," Eowyn replied after a moment of thought. Surely if the Shadow had spread, the forces of Mordor would have pulled the White City down stone by stone. Indeed, the Uruks and orcs would have found sport in it, since they enjoyed destruction of all kinds.

"It must be near as strange for you to know that the Lady Galadriel knows of your future as it is for me to know that you know of mine."

Though she accepted the apparent truth of his words, they did not seem to comfort her. He had not altogether expected them to. There was much they did not understand and while they remained in this city he doubted they would ever learn the truth. Whatever knowledge Galadriel held, she was not forthcoming.

He nodded, for that he could not argue. It was unsettling to say the least, but it was also not unfamiliar to him. For as long as he had lived he had been around Elves who knew more than what they spoke, particularly of his own destiny. "I cannot pretend it does not irk me a little," he admitted, giving her a soft smile that was about as close to sheepish as Aragorn ever came. "Long have the Elves known more about my own fate than me, however."

When he was a younger man it had frustrated him more, living with Lord Elrond and his gift of foresight. He was accustomed to it now, and it did not cause him the same irritation any longer.

There were times when a flash of humor showed through Aragorn's usually solemn demeanor, and she was always pleased when she saw such things. She was pleased that he trusted her enough to show them to her. Her own sense of humor was somewhat wry and she had hidden it carefully when he had known her before. It might have been used against her by Grima Wormtongue and so she could not show it.

"Long have the Elves known more about all fates than those who bore the fates," she agreed, allowing some small amount of that wry humor to show.

Walking on the Beach

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject