View Single Post
Old 05-09-2006, 09:35 PM   #302
littlemanpoet
Itinerant Songster
 
littlemanpoet's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: The Edge of Faerie
Posts: 7,072
littlemanpoet is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.littlemanpoet is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
It was well past dark. Eodwine was sitting in the kitchen, nursing a half a mug of ale, his chin in hand, elbow resting on the table. It had been a day worth forgetting. But that must not be. All had gone well until Linduial had gone missing. With Lothiriel's appearance at his front door, Eodwine's day had become the second worst in memory. Worst had been the windswept day he had finally come home from war only to find his farmstead burned, the bodies of his wife and children burned husks in the middle of it all. He shook his head and felt his throat tighten and his lips quiver. This will not do. He furrowed his brow, wiped his eyes on his sleeve, and pulled an angry pull on his ale, spilling some down his chin as he filled his mouth with the nectar. Think! Linduial must be found. He didn't need Lothiriel to tell him that. He was a little irked that she had taken over the task of finding her, as he was the princess's guardian; but he understood that Lothiriel took special interest, seeing as they were related.

Eodwine looked up. There was someone moving quietly in the shadows just beyond the kitchen door.

"Eodwine?"

It was Saeryn.

"Can you not sleep, d-" There I go again. "-dead of night and all that?"

Saeryn rubbed her eyes as she slipped into a seat beside him. She yawned. She was exhausted, yet awake. She was quiet for a moment before responding, her voice little more than a whisper.

"Dreams. When my mind lets me sleep, the dreams wake me." She blinked away worried tears, ignoring them. "I take it you are much the same?"

The smell of her filled his head. His arm wanted to curl around her slender shoulders. So easy, so likely on a half drunk night like this. Nothing but empty air separated her leg from his on the bench.

Stop it.

"Aye." He sighed. "Would you like something to drink?"

Saeryn usually avoided spirits, disliking the fuzziness that took over her senses. Tonight though... with thoughts of Linduial already clouding them, she just wanted to sleep, to forget her worry. She remembered the last time she drank anything stronger than cider... she'd been recovering already from an injury and had stood, head reeling. Unsure whether it was injury or alcohol, she'd gone to bed, excusing herself early. Now, health regained, memory returned, in the latest hours of the night, she wanted her cares to dissipate. Saeryn wanted, just for a little while, not to think of Linduial and Degas, of Fenrir, of Caelyn. Of the hurt young man healing in a room nearby. Of her place in the world, or even merely in Eodwine's Hall. Of Dunlendings and the Rohirrim, of every little thought that plagued her as she tried to sleep. Sitting beside a friend; she couldn't sleep anyhow...

"Something. Anything."

Something in her tone woke Eodwine out of his preoccupation with his own battles. He looked at Saeryn's face and could see from the dim firelight, the tears collected beneath her soft eyes.

"Saeryn," he said, his throat catching, "I'm sorry. I have been thinking only of myself." Regardless of his worries over attractions and age difference, regardless of his dream, he gathered her to him and held her close, and it seemed good to him.

Saeryn relaxed against Eodwine for a moment, gathering herself.

"I am just worried about Linduial. Eodwine... we will find her again, won't we? I'm so worried for her. I feel so guilty when I am in Marenil's presence. I cannot help but feel like if I had not been cloistered in the cellars, I would have been with her and this may not have happened."

Eodwine's head jerked in startlement. Saeryn looked up, wondering. He smiled.

"You are not to blame, my l-" he paused, thunderstruck at what his tongue had been about to slip out of his mouth. He started over. "You are not to blame. My lacking as a lord is to blame. I should have sent Garwine with Lin. She shall not be unaccompanied away from the mead hall once we have her back. And we will have her back." Eodwine's voice had strengthened, his final words spoken as if day could hold off night.

"No." Saeryn pulled away from Eodwine, startled. "You can't blame yourself! If anybody is to blame..."

Saeryn stopped, unwilling to betray Degas. She had already forgiven him in private, knowing that there was nothing he could have done. He'd explained how they had been separated. He never could have guessed...

Eodwine read the look on her face when she stopped speaking.

He hung his head and sighed. "'Tis a tangle of blame, enough for all to go around." His eyes came up, suddenly fierce. "But there is one only who is blameworthy. That one holds Linduial for ransom. He shall pay for his crime. I will see to it."

Saeryn nodded, accepting this. She sipped Eodwine's drink, searching her thoughts for something unrelated to Lin's disappearance.

"Eodwine... your dream. What was it?"

Eodwine looked suddenly at Saeryn as if she had trapped him against a wall and was threatening his life.

"I forgot."

Eodwine knew he was a bad liar, and from the sudden look in Saeryn's eyes, she apparently knew it too.

"The dream, Eodwine. What was it?"

"You don't want to know", he mumbled, pulling the drink out of her hands and sloshing some liquid more or less in the general direction of his mouth.
Her curiosity was made stronger than ever by his refusal.

"Eodwine... please?" It took conscious effort to avoid batting eyelashes or pouting lips. She really wanted to know.

Eodwine looked at her sidelong. "I warned you, you don't want to know." Her face began to look as if she could not decide between begging and throttling. Eodwine raised a hand. "All right!"

"Shhhh! You'll wake the others!"

Eodwine nodded absently. "All right. He stared at his mug. "I dreamed that-" his voice caught in his throat. He did not want to say this to her, but he had to and knew it. "I dreamed that- No. Let me say it aright. My wife came to me in a dream while I slept last night. She said to me, 'Eodwine, I am not dead. Come find me'."

He turned to her, his eyes intent to read Saeryn's face, to see how the dream affected her. He did not know for what he hoped.
She could not remember him ever having mentioned his wife before. She searched her memory for a story, or even a word or two in passing, and found nothing. She knew that Eodwine's wife and children had died, but she could not remember where that knowledge had come from... and she knew very few details.

"Go on..." she urged tentatively, her voice no louder than the slight breeze through the kitchen window that played with her hair.

Was that fear in her voice? Kindness? Eodwine began slowly. "I found her and the children, blackened husks in the remains of our house. At least, I had always thought that; now I am not sure who or what those husks were. Kéðra. 'Heather' in the Common speech, you know. What if she is still alive, captive-wifed to a Dunlending who has no right to her? Should I go find her? If I did, where would I look? How would I find her? She would be so changed." His speech had quickened with each new thought. "But maybe the dream was no more than a dream." He paused, his head hanging over the table, staring vaguely at the table top. "Little I can do about it until Linduial is found, though that may be too late."

He turned to Saeryn, searching her face to see what she made of his strange murmurings.

She did not know how to respond. How long had it been? Could he be right... But she had had much the same dreams, her parents calling to her from a distance, bidding her to follow them. They had died on the road, or so she had been told. She had been young... how could she be sure?

She looked away, staring dismally at shadows. Dreams were only ever just dreams, she wanted to tell him, yet that would make a hypocrite of her. She had never meant to stay here... she'd merely been passing through, following the road her parents had taken, following the road Caelyn had already treaded upon. She'd wanted to know... to see the last sights her parents had seen, to meet with her sister and to escape her brother.

She hadn't planned to settle at the Inn; she hadn't planned to become Eodwine's hostess. She meant to leave the Inn with the coming of spring to follow the voices in her dreams. She'd been travelling north by a roundabout way. She failed to notice Eodwine looking at her as she fell into her own thoughts.

How could dreams so similar come to such different people? When Degas had found her with news of Caelyn's death, Saeryn lost her nerve, afraid now to follow. Her attention wavered and she looked back at Eodwine. Time, she thought, to be honest once more. With no light and a bit of ale to loosen inhibitions, Saeryn spoke quietly, half hoping Eodwine would forget by morning.

"I followed dreams. My parents called to me. My sister called. I wanted to follow their path, to see what had become of them, or at the very least, to see what they had last seen. My dreams brought me here, Eodwine. I never meant to stay. I cannot fault you for taking such dreams as you've had so seriously when it is because of mine own, not just because of Fenrir, that I ever left home at all."

Eodwine had watched her face work, biting her lip, frowning, wondering what these signs meant. Then she had spoken, revealing yet another kinship between the two of them. Maybe she was half his age, it did not matter. Soul-friends they were meant to be, it seemed to him. He smiled affectionately.

"Maybe-" He, or maybe the drink in him and the late hour working, chose to allow his tongue to speak more of its want. "Maybe, sweet Saeryn-" he reached down to her hand and found it pliable "- lovely Saeryn-" he raised her hand "-after we have found Linduial and brought her back to safety-" he closed his other hand over hers "-you and I can go on errand to help each other find those we seek."
littlemanpoet is offline