Disclaimer: I do not own The Lord of the Rings. It is the creation of Professor J.R.R. Tolkien.
A/N: I came across the first three sentences in an old notebook and this was born. It's a weird one-shot about a homesick Eowyn. Basically I'm trying to see if I can do the angst and keep The Love in. A little loose, but it's intentional, I was trying something, it'ssomething like a crack in the ground that grows. Any way read, enjoy, let me know what you think.
She misses the wind.
Ithilien has no real wind, only heavy air that is scented by green and different hued flowers and rain.
Rohan has wind she thinks desperately at times as she leans out her chamber window, the heated summer breeze wrapping invisible fingers around her pale neck, assaulting her and leaving no mark for her lord to find on his return.
Rohan has winds and open plains…in the North she can breath, the earthy scent of hay and horse and worn leather, rustic and primal, reminding her of her first home, with a mother by the hearth and a father at her side as she laughed atop her first pony.
But she is not in Rohan, she reminds herself sternly even as she fights against the phantom hand, swallowing thick mouthfuls of sickly sweet air that sticks to the insides of her lungs. Ithilien is her home now and she must learn to make due with rain and flowers and looming forest and white marble.
She must adjust once more, and accept these things hoping for a time when she will return to the open plains and scent of hay and leather and find herself missing the smooth stone beneath her palm, the closeness of the trees, the air that never quite fills her lungs, air that does not allow her a proper breath.
She will do so without complaint or open sorrow for love of her husband. She will smile and sit in her garden and not ask leave, not abandon her post as she did once before. She will remain by his side so long as he will have her and quietly await the day when this foreign land is finally as much a home to her as it is to him.
"You are home." She sighs into his tunic, inhaling deeply from the woven fabric the aroma of the city.
He is solid beneath her hands and when she cannot breathe it does not matter because she knows she will give her every breath to this man so that he might return to her always. Rough hands cup her face, grey eyes searching, tracing every line, mapping and remembering, cherishing.
"Are you well?" He asks softly, thumbs sweeping across her cheekbone.
"It is nothing Faramir. I simply missed—" you she means to say but his eyes lock on hers and she finds she cannot lie to him. She does not want to waste away among the flowers and crowded forest, does not want to shiver in his arms in the middle of the summer heat when nothing can warm her, the ache in her bones to deeply set to cure. She does not want to become another phantom he cannot bring himself to speak of. The silence she realizes as she presses shaking fingertips to the corner of his lips will not save her anymore than it will him. "the Mark."
She finishes in a half whisper, his eyes still locked on hers. Suddenly she feels exposed to him, wanting almost desperately to pull away from his gaze, his touch, the very scent of him, all of which wrap around her as surely as the unseen hands of Ithilien's breath. She is lost to him, bound by more than marriage, and it is at times like this when it frightens her, when she knows that he sees, knows all of her too well, better than herself, while he remains as elusive as the memories of the Riddermark.
"Then we shall go." He says as last, before the silence has grown too long, catching the tears that leave her eyes with his lips, his thumb, "we shall go together, Eowyn," he breathes against her flesh. "return to the North and hear the song of thundering hooves once more."
Bitter are memories of longing he thinks as she breathes from him. He gives her every breath of him until his lungs burn. For I will have her still, too dear she is to lose to longing…He fights away the ghost of his past and holds her closer still.
She dreams of the wind that night, though no wind enters the open window of their bed chamber. She dreams of golden fields and open sky that meet on the far horizon. On her tongue the taste of the air, like hay and leather and home. Behind her, he stands; steady even as the wind blows away the sun in the sky, leaving only him and her and the song of swaying grass.
She falls into him and together they listen.
Fin