This was originally a beginning for a fanfic, that didn't work out, but I thought I'd post the opening as a one shot. And yeah, LOTR is still not mine.

The Statue

Faramir had no idea how long the statue has stood there. As long as he can remember, that he is certain of. He had always known it was special somehow. The statue is as perfect now as it was the day it was carved, every feature clear and real.

The statue is of an archer in the act of releasing an arrow. The skill of the sculptor was so great that he could see a sliver of light between the bowstring and the archer's hand. He climbed up to check once when he was young.

The arrow is a breath away from flight, frozen in that fragile moment when an archer finds out if the shot is true. Faramir had no doubt that this shot would have been true if the archer had been allowed to let go.

The statue had made him decide that there was a balance to things. He saw art and war merged in the archer. There is grim acceptance and hope on the archer's face. It is a young face, and is definitely not a man. A raised scar is visible on the archer's face and while he was caught in wonder at the sculptor, he also felt slight dismay on the archer's behalf that the woman would be marked forever as a soldier.

Faramir remembered a time when he was small enough to sit at her feet and be sheltered from the rain. If someone was looking for him and gave the courtyard a brief glance he was left in peace. He'd wanted to be left alone then and the archer had protected him. An odd playmate for a little boy, but at the time irreplaceable. When he'd finally felt better the statue wasn't big enough to hide him anymore. At the archer's feet he had decided that he'd rather be like her, more skilled with a bow than a sword, accepting that he belonged on a battlefield, but feeling no joy in the death that was thereyet still managing to have hope in his heart.

When Faramir was made a Ranger, he came out to compare himself to her. At first he seemed too clean, too new, too shiny. Her boots had mud on them, the hem of her cloak was ragged. There were mends in her uniform, but none on his. But they both had the breathtaking embroidery, though their emblems were different, the archer not wearing the white tree.

He towered over the archer by then, she was unusual for a Gondorian statue, she was to scale. Everything about her seemed as real as she did now, from the stray locks of hair escaping from a slightly askew braid, to the folds in the material of her surcoat. Faramir believed she had been real once, though the sculptor was obviously a genius he could not have made this up, he must have known her, crafted the entire statue from memory or from watching her. Some of his earliest attempts at poetry and tales had been about the sort of person the archer was once. She would have been the sort who was able to see the light in the dark. He was glad she'd survived the siege, now she could endure for many more years, poised for the perfect shot.

An arm slipped around him and Eowyn was there, the other woman he was eternally grateful had lived through the battle.

Read and Review if you have time. Ta very muchly.