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Old 08-13-2008, 12:22 PM   #213
Feanor of the Peredhil
La Belle Dame sans Merci
 
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Feanor of the Peredhil is a guest of Elrond in Rivendell.Feanor of the Peredhil is a guest of Elrond in Rivendell.Feanor of the Peredhil is a guest of Elrond in Rivendell.
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After walking many steps in silence, Degas said quietly, "My mind is in turmoil. I know not what to think, and therefore I know not what to say."

Eodwine favored him with silence, but that he was waiting patiently for Degas to speak again was plain.

"You know of my love for Linduial. You know of my mission to her home to inform them of her kidnapping because that was on your order, and was my duty as the one who lost her to that fiend, and you remember my time here under the eye of her brother. And you remember my departure, when I left for the sea to learn to please Lin's people, and to learn what it takes to be a husband worthy of such a wife. With Saeryn's blessing, at the time...

"Lin stayed, as you know, as the voice of the south to our beautiful queen, her cousin, and King Eomer. She was here, and I left for her home, to win the approval of her kinfolk and those who love her as their lady."

Their walk was slow, deliberate, and Degas took in only so much of his surroundings as was natural for him: as a man of Rohan, he knew the sounds of nature as they should be, and no sense alerted him to danger. He let himself speak as the words came, and Eodwine listened. As a friend? A father, almost? An adviser, at least. A man who had never meant to be lord, but upon whom the position was thrust. A man, as it was, much like Degas in that regard. Perhaps the only man in Rohan who could now understand Degas's predicament.

"They taught me to sail." Degas almost grinned. "How long was I there? The weeks blur. Months? Perhaps, but I know not how many. My charge, Feo, was taken into the household of Linduial's oldest brother, Adragil. He works aboard Adragil's favorite ship, and loves every slogging moment of scrubbing decks and keeping bilge rats from the food stores. Perhaps it was as a right of passage into the family that I learned to work aboard a ship. And I returned, no longer sea sick, though with lightened hair and burned skin.

"And there, injured and unhappy, a man of my old home. A man of Rohan, a speaker of truth, a hard worker. A man of my father's household, who had been relegated to who knows what position under my brother's," Degas spat on the ground, "care.

"He was there, waiting for me. To tell me in person of what had transpired."

They walked along the Scar now, and Degas looked at Eodwine, seeing the older man's careworn shoulders. A smile would lighten his face, make him younger, but the frown hurt Degas's heart to see.

"I bade goodbye to Lin's family, taking my leave of them, promising to send word once I had it. And I traveled. Have you taken the road from Dol Amroth to Edoras? It is long, around the mountains, and I rode swiftly. Yet how could I arrive here any sooner? Even if the messenger had taken a ship to find me at sea - and how could that occur? It could not! How could I be here sooner?

"Eodwine, she knew! She knew where I was, she knew where I was going to be, and she kissed me farewell and told me to be happy, and with a laugh she told me to learn to be a man, and I kissed her and told her that all I wished in the world was for her to be in love as I was, and to find a place where she was loved, and needed, and that wheresoever that place was, I would help her as much as was in my power to stay there.

"Friend, I left her with the queen, though I cannot deny I would have prefered to leave her with you as your wife."

Eodwine began to speak, but now Degas hushed him and continued, "I do not know what clouds her thoughts. I do not know what has changed her heart. She has changed, that is apparent. When she left you, I do not think it was because she did not love you. I think, perhaps, that she may have loved you almost too much. I think, perhaps, that love terrified her. She has lost every person she has ever loved. What if she lost you as well? I wonder if she left first for that reason; I wonder if she turned from you to save herself from later pain. But now... now I do not know my own sister. I do not know her heart. I do not know her mind."
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