Post by Admin on Jan 9, 2021 1:29:06 GMT
Author: Ragnelle
Ranking: 1st place
Summary: "Never had I thought one child would bring such joy. So small, and yet he holds my heart in a grip too strong for me to break."
Rating: K+
"Mother?"
He stood in the doorway, a black figure against the light outside. She looked up at the sound. His voice was different, and it nagged at her. She could not place the wrong.
"Estel?"
He did not answer.
"What is wrong, Estel my son?"
"That is not my name."
And with those words, she realised. He was speaking the tongue of Men.
She put her sowing down. "Lord Elrond told you," she said. She did not need to ask.
He nodded.
"He should not have done it." Her voice was more bitter than she had thought. He startled at the tone, or the words, unprepared, it seemed, at her reaction.
"Did you not wish me to know?"
His voice was hurt. He half turned in the doorway and stepped back, into the hallway. No longer seeing his face, she found the heart to speak the long-forgotten name.
"Aragorn."
He stopped, and turned back, but she turned her face from his. Her eyes sought the blue sky outside. The sunshine and the white clouds of summer. The old grief too much to bear, too much to speak the name, and see her grown child's face.
"Sit by me, son of Arathorn. I am your mother, and the lady of the Dúnedain: your father's wife. My claim outweighs the lord of Rivendell's, be he kin and wise beyond mortal years."
Aragorn entered her room, and closed the door behind him. For as long as he could remember, his mother would fall silent at this time of year, when the apples blossomed and summer had began. Then she would turn her face away, as if she could not bear to meet any eyes. Not even his own. She sat like that now, but her silence was broken.
He sat down beside her. His own hurt still fresh, but he sensed in her a hurt no time would heal.
"Mother?"
She turned to look at him. There were tears hidden in her eyes, but her cheeks were dry.
"The tale of your father was mine to tell," she said. "For years I heeded Lord Elrond's words, for they were wise, and said nothing. And now he has told you, and never thought to speak with me first." She lifted her hand, and softly stroked his cheek, the back of her fingers hardly touching his skin. "So often I longed for him, grieved that he was not here to see you grow. To speak his name, and hear your voice echoing it back. Lord Elrond knew the Chieftain, but I knew the man."
"Will you tell me of him, mother? Or would you have deemed it too soon, had Elrond sought your council?"
His cheek was soft and beardless, but his voice was not a boy's; he was a man. She shook her head.
"Aragon, my son. I would have told you sooner."
And speaking his name was right. It was right. She swallowed, and spoke it again. "Aragorn," she said. And again: "Aragorn, my son." Light burst around her, flooding her room with golden sunlight: stars and moon and sun battled within her, and the sun outshone them all. As when the first sun rose, Gilraen woke, and her heart beat strong.
"I am here, mother," her son said. "And I know my name now."
He knelt before her chair. His hands were strong and broad upon her arms, and still she could not bring herself to cease speaking his name at last. She smiled, and kissed him and held his head.
"All is well, Aragorn," she said. "All is well." And she laughed.
He laughed with her, the sun in her voice chasing all shadows away.
"You have his laughter," she said as she released him.
He rose, and took his seat beside her again. Her sewing, dropped from her lap, he brought with him up, and placed it on the table.
"Tell me more."
And she did. She spun the tale of their meeting: she far too young, and still she caught his eye, and he hers. She spoke of his smile and laughter, and of his joy when her father accepted him.
"Too few years we had together," she said. "But I saw both his sorrow and his joy. His grief at the death of his father. His joy at the birth of his son. He cared for his people, but after your birth, his care grew deeper. His joy stronger. 'Never,' he told me, 'had I thought one child would bring such joy. So small, and yet he holds my heart in a grip too strong for me to break.' And his eyes shone with joy at his own words."
She paused her words for one moment. Her heart was too full, and the words he had born so long threatened to spill out of her mouth; too many to be contained. Yet she waited, that they would not run from her and the tale be lost to confusion.
"He worked hard, your father, to keep our people safe, and above all to keep you, his son, from harm. 'The duty to me people I have always known,' he said. 'But that knowledge, hammered in from birth, pales to ash when I hold my son. Now I see his eyes in every child, and so I must keep every child from harm and grief. Is that not a wonder?' Such words my husband would speak, and I loved him for it. My father's misgivings seemed to me void and my joy, I thought, would last forever."
Aragorn said nothing while his mother spoke. Elrond's words had been of destiny and deeds, and long trials. Of heirlooms and promised greatness. His father's name had spoken of lineage and noble birth, but his mother, who had not spoken his father's name but once, brought to life a man he wished he could remember.
"Do you have something of his?" he asked when she paused again. "Elrond gave me Barahir, and the shards of Narsil, but...they were my sire's. Have you something of my father's?"
She smiled. The day had grown old during her tale and the sun had wandered across the sky to cast her reddening rays through the window. When Gilraen rose, her face glowed in the light. Aragorn waited while she crossed the room to open the chest beside her bed. It was carved, and paint still coloured the carvings, but compared to the splendour of the elven craft around them, the carvings seemed childish and rough.
"This was my wedding-chest," she said. "My father carved it when I was a girl, and my mother spun and weaved and sowed to fill it. As did I when I grew old enough to work."
"I did not know that," Aragorn said. "You never told me what it was."
"You never asked."
"I learned early not to."
"That is true," Gilraen admitted. "And I was glad of it. I did not have to guard my words then, for my heart has been full of him since before we wed. The words would spill beyond my will, had they been given a chance."
She took her seat beside him again, and looked at her sowing lying on the table. "That was to be a new shirt for you," she said. "A gift for Midsummer. But now you should have this instead." She gave him a bundle of clothes, neatly folded. "I made it for our wedding day."
Aragorn unfolded the cloth slowly, carefully opening one fold at a time. It was a shirt of a deep dark-red silk, the fabric finely woven. Around the collar and on the sleeves intricate patterns of leaves wove their way, the tread the same rick colour of the shirt. At a distance, it would not even show, but Aragorn could feel the pattern under his fingers.
"Far too fine for common use," he heard his mother say. "He never asked how I got my hand on the silk, but we both knew it was not easy to come by. Lord Elladan brought it for me in secret, but the dye and cut was mine. Both he and his brother scoffed at me for it. 'You should have made him an underskirt of it,' they told me later. 'Silk can prevent the wounds of arrows from becoming too severe.' But I was a girl in love, and he the Chieftain's son."
"It is beautiful," Aragorn said.
"Yes. He bore it on the second day of our wedding, and until the feasting ended, and he took care to never spill on it, no matter how much wine he drank. After, he would wear it at feasts, but never in between. Not until your birth. He wore it when he declared you name."
Aragorn curled his hand around the sleeve. The silk was cool in his hand, winter-light and spring-air, not cloth at all. He lifted it to his face and felt the coolness on his skin. Smelled the scent of silk and dye, and more.
"I don't recall his face," he said. "But this smell..." He drew it in again. "I have smelled it before." He looked at his mother. "Have you given this to me to smell before?"
Grief and gladness warred in his mother's face. "I feared his scent was but a memory, that I deceived myself to think that it would linger still." She smiled, and gladness won. "My fear was the deceiver."
Smoke, and pipe-weed, he discerned, faint and faded with the years, but the scent of a man was still strong.
"It smells of... safety." He could give it no other word.
"When he was away, I would lay it in your crib to soothe you when you dreamed. I would never wash it until he was home again. And even when we first came here, it would soothe your night-fears the first year."
They sat in silence for a time. Twilight came, but Gilraen lit no lamp in the greying light. Not until the grey grew too dark for mortal eyes, and the bell heralding the evening meal rang. Then Gilraen, lady of the Dúnedain, rose and lit the lamps. She looked at Aragorn, her son, who still sat in deep though, clutching his father's scent in his hands.
"I will go and tell that we will take our meal here," she said.
"Elrond said something about guests. Or something like it. Elrohir and Elladan were most joyful at the news. Elrond would wish for us to be there." Aragorn had lifted the shirt to his face once more, and spoke through the folds of silk. The fabric fluttered with his breath.
"Lord Elrond will not deny me. There will be other meals."
Aragorn did not answer. At her return, she found him as she left: holding the shirt as if he could wrest answers from its scent. She let him be until the meal was set and the servant left.
"Eat," she said. "Hunger brings no answers."
"My hunger is not for food."
She shook her head. "I am your mother. I learned to read your hunger before you had words to speak."
He ate. Though he might not have felt the hunger, yet his body did. And the hunger spoke for both as they consumed the meal, for neither had eaten much that day. But when the hunger fell silent, and the sun's last rays had left the sky, Aragorn put down his knife and wiped the fat from the corner of his mouth. The shirt lay on the chest, safe from stains, but his eyes sought it, and his fingers curled.
"Go wash your hands," his mother said. "And we will speak more before we sleep."
"Yes, mother," he said, and his voice was that of the boy he had been before this day. She put the plates away, and placed all the remainders of the meal on a table outside her door. Let none disturb them until Aragorn's other hunger was no more.
But he did nothing to still it. Once he had washed, he picked the shirt up, but he did not speak. And so Gilraen spoke in his stead, letting loose the words still locked in her heart. And while she spoke, she watched her son to see if any of her words would still he hunger of his heart. They did not, though she spoke until her words slowed and dwindled to a halt.
"Ask."
He looked up at her. "I do not wish to cause you pain."
"On these shores all pain and joy is mixed. Even in blessed Valinor, sorrow finds it way, if the stories are true. But it does not pain me to speak of Arathorn, whom I loved. That pain was of the silence, and the words that could not be said. Speaking of him brings me more joy than sorrow."
"Do you not miss him?"
"Every day. But now I do not have to keep him secret from you, his son."
He nodded, and looked once more on the shirt as if to find the words.
"The shirt will fit you," she said, unable to wait.
"I cannot wear it. His scent would fade."
"I need not his scent."
"But I do." Aragorn held the shirt up before her. "I can't recall his face. This scent is all I know."
"Aragorn," she said. "It should not lay waiting any more. Like all my memories and words, it has been locked up in my chest. I do not wish to open it and find that it has faded without use."
He hesitated, and she spoke on.
"When your father left the last time, you cried for him, and he held you in his arms and threw you into the air until you laughed. 'No leave,' you told him when he put you down, and when he said he had to, you said: 'A'go'n go with.'
"'Aragorn must stay here,' he said. 'This house guard the greatest treasure in all the world, and I must keep it safe.'
"You nodded, and then you ran into the house. Arathorn smiled at me, and kissed me as he always did. 'I will return before Midsummer,' he said. Before I could reply, you returned, running at us as if you feared he would leave before you got there. In your arms, you clutched his shirt.
"'Keep safe,' you said, and held it up for him to take. He lifted you instead and hugged you thigh.
"'Little heart of mine,' he said, 'all of mine is safe in your hands.' And he did not put you down until he had dressed you in his shirt, much too big. He put you carefully on the ground and bent down on one knee until he matched your height, or as close as he could get. 'Now my heart is safe,' he said.
"He rose, and held me close once more. 'It will suit him even better than me when he is grown,' he told me. And with those words he rode away."
Aragorn looked down on the shirt one more time. Carefully he put it on the bed. Gilraen waited, but he did not speak. Instead he began to unclasp the fasting of his tunic. He pulled it off, and then his shirt underneath.
"Will you help me, mother?" he said, and Gilraen picked up the silken shirt and helped him dress.
He left shortly after for his bed. In the doorway he turned, a dark figure against the light.
"Elrond said my father was killed by an arrow. Would ...?"
Gilraen shook her head.
"He was shot through the eye," she said.
He nodded.
"But if you would let it ward you..." The word would not come. "I would rather have you whole." She hugged him close. "No shirt is too fine, Aragorn."
"I will bring it to you to wash and mend, with my own hands."
"I will hold you to it, son of Arathorn." She let him go. "Now off to bed, young man, or you will miss the break of fast as well. And Lord Elrond will not be pleased, nor will his children."
"I will remember it," Aragorn said.
But he ate his breakfast in the kitchen the next day, and did not see Elrond or any of his children that whole day. Not until he walked under the birches at dusk, and the red of his shirt matched her silver and blue.
Ranking: 1st place
Summary: "Never had I thought one child would bring such joy. So small, and yet he holds my heart in a grip too strong for me to break."
Rating: K+
"Mother?"
He stood in the doorway, a black figure against the light outside. She looked up at the sound. His voice was different, and it nagged at her. She could not place the wrong.
"Estel?"
He did not answer.
"What is wrong, Estel my son?"
"That is not my name."
And with those words, she realised. He was speaking the tongue of Men.
She put her sowing down. "Lord Elrond told you," she said. She did not need to ask.
He nodded.
"He should not have done it." Her voice was more bitter than she had thought. He startled at the tone, or the words, unprepared, it seemed, at her reaction.
"Did you not wish me to know?"
His voice was hurt. He half turned in the doorway and stepped back, into the hallway. No longer seeing his face, she found the heart to speak the long-forgotten name.
"Aragorn."
He stopped, and turned back, but she turned her face from his. Her eyes sought the blue sky outside. The sunshine and the white clouds of summer. The old grief too much to bear, too much to speak the name, and see her grown child's face.
"Sit by me, son of Arathorn. I am your mother, and the lady of the Dúnedain: your father's wife. My claim outweighs the lord of Rivendell's, be he kin and wise beyond mortal years."
Aragorn entered her room, and closed the door behind him. For as long as he could remember, his mother would fall silent at this time of year, when the apples blossomed and summer had began. Then she would turn her face away, as if she could not bear to meet any eyes. Not even his own. She sat like that now, but her silence was broken.
He sat down beside her. His own hurt still fresh, but he sensed in her a hurt no time would heal.
"Mother?"
She turned to look at him. There were tears hidden in her eyes, but her cheeks were dry.
"The tale of your father was mine to tell," she said. "For years I heeded Lord Elrond's words, for they were wise, and said nothing. And now he has told you, and never thought to speak with me first." She lifted her hand, and softly stroked his cheek, the back of her fingers hardly touching his skin. "So often I longed for him, grieved that he was not here to see you grow. To speak his name, and hear your voice echoing it back. Lord Elrond knew the Chieftain, but I knew the man."
"Will you tell me of him, mother? Or would you have deemed it too soon, had Elrond sought your council?"
His cheek was soft and beardless, but his voice was not a boy's; he was a man. She shook her head.
"Aragon, my son. I would have told you sooner."
And speaking his name was right. It was right. She swallowed, and spoke it again. "Aragorn," she said. And again: "Aragorn, my son." Light burst around her, flooding her room with golden sunlight: stars and moon and sun battled within her, and the sun outshone them all. As when the first sun rose, Gilraen woke, and her heart beat strong.
"I am here, mother," her son said. "And I know my name now."
He knelt before her chair. His hands were strong and broad upon her arms, and still she could not bring herself to cease speaking his name at last. She smiled, and kissed him and held his head.
"All is well, Aragorn," she said. "All is well." And she laughed.
He laughed with her, the sun in her voice chasing all shadows away.
"You have his laughter," she said as she released him.
He rose, and took his seat beside her again. Her sewing, dropped from her lap, he brought with him up, and placed it on the table.
"Tell me more."
And she did. She spun the tale of their meeting: she far too young, and still she caught his eye, and he hers. She spoke of his smile and laughter, and of his joy when her father accepted him.
"Too few years we had together," she said. "But I saw both his sorrow and his joy. His grief at the death of his father. His joy at the birth of his son. He cared for his people, but after your birth, his care grew deeper. His joy stronger. 'Never,' he told me, 'had I thought one child would bring such joy. So small, and yet he holds my heart in a grip too strong for me to break.' And his eyes shone with joy at his own words."
She paused her words for one moment. Her heart was too full, and the words he had born so long threatened to spill out of her mouth; too many to be contained. Yet she waited, that they would not run from her and the tale be lost to confusion.
"He worked hard, your father, to keep our people safe, and above all to keep you, his son, from harm. 'The duty to me people I have always known,' he said. 'But that knowledge, hammered in from birth, pales to ash when I hold my son. Now I see his eyes in every child, and so I must keep every child from harm and grief. Is that not a wonder?' Such words my husband would speak, and I loved him for it. My father's misgivings seemed to me void and my joy, I thought, would last forever."
Aragorn said nothing while his mother spoke. Elrond's words had been of destiny and deeds, and long trials. Of heirlooms and promised greatness. His father's name had spoken of lineage and noble birth, but his mother, who had not spoken his father's name but once, brought to life a man he wished he could remember.
"Do you have something of his?" he asked when she paused again. "Elrond gave me Barahir, and the shards of Narsil, but...they were my sire's. Have you something of my father's?"
She smiled. The day had grown old during her tale and the sun had wandered across the sky to cast her reddening rays through the window. When Gilraen rose, her face glowed in the light. Aragorn waited while she crossed the room to open the chest beside her bed. It was carved, and paint still coloured the carvings, but compared to the splendour of the elven craft around them, the carvings seemed childish and rough.
"This was my wedding-chest," she said. "My father carved it when I was a girl, and my mother spun and weaved and sowed to fill it. As did I when I grew old enough to work."
"I did not know that," Aragorn said. "You never told me what it was."
"You never asked."
"I learned early not to."
"That is true," Gilraen admitted. "And I was glad of it. I did not have to guard my words then, for my heart has been full of him since before we wed. The words would spill beyond my will, had they been given a chance."
She took her seat beside him again, and looked at her sowing lying on the table. "That was to be a new shirt for you," she said. "A gift for Midsummer. But now you should have this instead." She gave him a bundle of clothes, neatly folded. "I made it for our wedding day."
Aragorn unfolded the cloth slowly, carefully opening one fold at a time. It was a shirt of a deep dark-red silk, the fabric finely woven. Around the collar and on the sleeves intricate patterns of leaves wove their way, the tread the same rick colour of the shirt. At a distance, it would not even show, but Aragorn could feel the pattern under his fingers.
"Far too fine for common use," he heard his mother say. "He never asked how I got my hand on the silk, but we both knew it was not easy to come by. Lord Elladan brought it for me in secret, but the dye and cut was mine. Both he and his brother scoffed at me for it. 'You should have made him an underskirt of it,' they told me later. 'Silk can prevent the wounds of arrows from becoming too severe.' But I was a girl in love, and he the Chieftain's son."
"It is beautiful," Aragorn said.
"Yes. He bore it on the second day of our wedding, and until the feasting ended, and he took care to never spill on it, no matter how much wine he drank. After, he would wear it at feasts, but never in between. Not until your birth. He wore it when he declared you name."
Aragorn curled his hand around the sleeve. The silk was cool in his hand, winter-light and spring-air, not cloth at all. He lifted it to his face and felt the coolness on his skin. Smelled the scent of silk and dye, and more.
"I don't recall his face," he said. "But this smell..." He drew it in again. "I have smelled it before." He looked at his mother. "Have you given this to me to smell before?"
Grief and gladness warred in his mother's face. "I feared his scent was but a memory, that I deceived myself to think that it would linger still." She smiled, and gladness won. "My fear was the deceiver."
Smoke, and pipe-weed, he discerned, faint and faded with the years, but the scent of a man was still strong.
"It smells of... safety." He could give it no other word.
"When he was away, I would lay it in your crib to soothe you when you dreamed. I would never wash it until he was home again. And even when we first came here, it would soothe your night-fears the first year."
They sat in silence for a time. Twilight came, but Gilraen lit no lamp in the greying light. Not until the grey grew too dark for mortal eyes, and the bell heralding the evening meal rang. Then Gilraen, lady of the Dúnedain, rose and lit the lamps. She looked at Aragorn, her son, who still sat in deep though, clutching his father's scent in his hands.
"I will go and tell that we will take our meal here," she said.
"Elrond said something about guests. Or something like it. Elrohir and Elladan were most joyful at the news. Elrond would wish for us to be there." Aragorn had lifted the shirt to his face once more, and spoke through the folds of silk. The fabric fluttered with his breath.
"Lord Elrond will not deny me. There will be other meals."
Aragorn did not answer. At her return, she found him as she left: holding the shirt as if he could wrest answers from its scent. She let him be until the meal was set and the servant left.
"Eat," she said. "Hunger brings no answers."
"My hunger is not for food."
She shook her head. "I am your mother. I learned to read your hunger before you had words to speak."
He ate. Though he might not have felt the hunger, yet his body did. And the hunger spoke for both as they consumed the meal, for neither had eaten much that day. But when the hunger fell silent, and the sun's last rays had left the sky, Aragorn put down his knife and wiped the fat from the corner of his mouth. The shirt lay on the chest, safe from stains, but his eyes sought it, and his fingers curled.
"Go wash your hands," his mother said. "And we will speak more before we sleep."
"Yes, mother," he said, and his voice was that of the boy he had been before this day. She put the plates away, and placed all the remainders of the meal on a table outside her door. Let none disturb them until Aragorn's other hunger was no more.
But he did nothing to still it. Once he had washed, he picked the shirt up, but he did not speak. And so Gilraen spoke in his stead, letting loose the words still locked in her heart. And while she spoke, she watched her son to see if any of her words would still he hunger of his heart. They did not, though she spoke until her words slowed and dwindled to a halt.
"Ask."
He looked up at her. "I do not wish to cause you pain."
"On these shores all pain and joy is mixed. Even in blessed Valinor, sorrow finds it way, if the stories are true. But it does not pain me to speak of Arathorn, whom I loved. That pain was of the silence, and the words that could not be said. Speaking of him brings me more joy than sorrow."
"Do you not miss him?"
"Every day. But now I do not have to keep him secret from you, his son."
He nodded, and looked once more on the shirt as if to find the words.
"The shirt will fit you," she said, unable to wait.
"I cannot wear it. His scent would fade."
"I need not his scent."
"But I do." Aragorn held the shirt up before her. "I can't recall his face. This scent is all I know."
"Aragorn," she said. "It should not lay waiting any more. Like all my memories and words, it has been locked up in my chest. I do not wish to open it and find that it has faded without use."
He hesitated, and she spoke on.
"When your father left the last time, you cried for him, and he held you in his arms and threw you into the air until you laughed. 'No leave,' you told him when he put you down, and when he said he had to, you said: 'A'go'n go with.'
"'Aragorn must stay here,' he said. 'This house guard the greatest treasure in all the world, and I must keep it safe.'
"You nodded, and then you ran into the house. Arathorn smiled at me, and kissed me as he always did. 'I will return before Midsummer,' he said. Before I could reply, you returned, running at us as if you feared he would leave before you got there. In your arms, you clutched his shirt.
"'Keep safe,' you said, and held it up for him to take. He lifted you instead and hugged you thigh.
"'Little heart of mine,' he said, 'all of mine is safe in your hands.' And he did not put you down until he had dressed you in his shirt, much too big. He put you carefully on the ground and bent down on one knee until he matched your height, or as close as he could get. 'Now my heart is safe,' he said.
"He rose, and held me close once more. 'It will suit him even better than me when he is grown,' he told me. And with those words he rode away."
Aragorn looked down on the shirt one more time. Carefully he put it on the bed. Gilraen waited, but he did not speak. Instead he began to unclasp the fasting of his tunic. He pulled it off, and then his shirt underneath.
"Will you help me, mother?" he said, and Gilraen picked up the silken shirt and helped him dress.
He left shortly after for his bed. In the doorway he turned, a dark figure against the light.
"Elrond said my father was killed by an arrow. Would ...?"
Gilraen shook her head.
"He was shot through the eye," she said.
He nodded.
"But if you would let it ward you..." The word would not come. "I would rather have you whole." She hugged him close. "No shirt is too fine, Aragorn."
"I will bring it to you to wash and mend, with my own hands."
"I will hold you to it, son of Arathorn." She let him go. "Now off to bed, young man, or you will miss the break of fast as well. And Lord Elrond will not be pleased, nor will his children."
"I will remember it," Aragorn said.
But he ate his breakfast in the kitchen the next day, and did not see Elrond or any of his children that whole day. Not until he walked under the birches at dusk, and the red of his shirt matched her silver and blue.