Where would this ship deposit them, when at last they were aground again? She has shown him the maps, of course - he has studied them with a curiosity that waned for how far distant her lands were. He would concern himself with the make of her home only when they arrived there, for the seas and leagues they must cross were too many for him to hold in mind a diligent, anticipating tableau. There would be mountains, surely; there would be the same rolling green plains of the west when summer brightened the land to a certain verdant beauty. A land lush and pristine and heroic? Any lady would think in such glowing description of the home which she dearly missed, though he cannot know how dearly she misses it. She has, for the last two years, accepted that fate which was handed to her. Given all the many surly, resistant, caustic, disdaining women he could have wed, she has been dutiful and true in making the Rock her home.
Yet it is not a landscape of common supposing that they are turned loose upon. The hills are bountiful and green, that is so, and there are on the horizon the bladed peaks he had suspected might ring this place, and there is a proud valley and the blue of the sky overhead is so mightily encompassing that he thinks there may be some truth behind that old fable that all the known world is kept within the blue eye of a giant. He is glad to be rid of the ship - not because he suffers any sickness at sea and not because he failed to leap to the occasion of making himself a legend among their crew. (They would agree, wouldn't they? He'd volunteered himself without hesitation for the chores of scaling masts, clambering up the rigging, and engaging any sailor who matched him in wits in a good-natured spar.)
Is the splendor of this country a symptom, then, of how long they'd been at sea, for how long the pacing of their steps had been largely limited from one end of the ship to the other? Or does it strike him such vivid colors because he knows this is the honorable land from which his honorable wife hails? These are the hills responsible for breeding her stock; these are the mountains which had stood protective vigil until she'd been sent to a marriage she did not ask for but did not wailingly refuse, either. For how he reveres her, he cannot help but revere the plains she had once called home.
It is good to be astride his steed again, and he has tried to cajole her into giving their horses their heads and charging ahead to the limits of those equine hearts, which he haughtily presumes still to be of equal tenacity. She keeps them at a trot, a caution he does not deem necessary, but she rides with such thoughtless grace here, with such contented and trusting ease, that he does not oppose her for long. There is something to be said of this chastened pace, after all - while she is bathed in the cool winds, smiling as if she has shed the weight of so much smothering plate, he beholds her in turn. He must wonder again that she had ever come to him unwed; how blind must the valiant men of Rohan be to have never looked upon her and felt their hearts harpooned, irretrievably lost? This wonder grows tangled beside his greed, and he swells with pride to look upon her here and know she is his, just as he swelled with pride to spot her in the stands of any tournament and know she was his, just as he ached with pride in night's most hallowed hours, gasping her name against the side of her throat, to know she was his.
What is he to make of it, then, when she flies ahead at the sight of a gilded hall and billowing banners? They are the same green and white which she had worn when they'd stood before one another in the sept; the green against which the white steed of her maiden's cloak had reared. Now they are the colors of these pennants which claim the wind, and she proves in one heedless rush that his aggravated stallion cannot keep pace with her fleeter horse. Beyond the barrows she goes, leaving him with the vanishing glimmer of her hair and her crimson cloak, and that joyous cry which precedes her can only mean she has spotted some waiting kin. He must follow, and not swiftly enough to arrive at her side.
What he does arrive upon is the scene of a recently broken embrace, if he is to judge by the way the horses have been left unmounted, the two human faces resolving themselves into a riot of mirth and tears. Both cheeks gleam, his wife's and this man who has come to receive her. Her brother, Jaime is meant to understand, if the similarity of their looks could have failed to assure him. A man tall, taller than his sister, and of the same golden hair and the same unshaken composure. The gray eyes are ponderous clouds of the same storm. That golden hair is long, and kept only by a golden circlet, and not a scrap of armor is to be had. There is a sword, the length of which Jaime's sharp eyes take the measure of against his own, pleased to know his blade must be longer, heavier. Brighter, without a doubt; like his wife, this man seems to wear plainest steel.
He dismounts from his own horse, lathered upon chest and flank with sweat, and leaves the beast to graze among the others. Like his stallion, he feels that once he is upon his feet, he is similar but not entirely the same, and not arguably more: his own hair is golden, and he is tall and broad, but could it be that this man is even more so? His approach is marked for an audience with, if not royalty, then at least a person of some repute: he notes the crown and dips his head, one hand coming to sit at the pommel of his sword. He will not be slavish in his greeting, even if it is a king he greets.
And he has not mastered his wife's tongue (or, perhaps more truly, he has not mastered her language; he has spent a great deal of time learning the dance of her tongue sliding against his own), and so it is with no polite show of effort made that he first speaks her brother's name.
"Lord Elmer, it is an honor." He will not name it a pleasure, not when his wife is so clearly delighting in company not his own. But this does seem to be a man who has carried himself as a warrior, and for that he cannot be entirely without an assessing sort of curiosity. And even so, are those not tears upon the warrior's cheeks?
"Why do you weep, to have your sister before you well and unharmed?"
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sforzinda
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Date: 2021-09-18 08:30 pm (UTC)Yet it is not a landscape of common supposing that they are turned loose upon. The hills are bountiful and green, that is so, and there are on the horizon the bladed peaks he had suspected might ring this place, and there is a proud valley and the blue of the sky overhead is so mightily encompassing that he thinks there may be some truth behind that old fable that all the known world is kept within the blue eye of a giant. He is glad to be rid of the ship - not because he suffers any sickness at sea and not because he failed to leap to the occasion of making himself a legend among their crew. (They would agree, wouldn't they? He'd volunteered himself without hesitation for the chores of scaling masts, clambering up the rigging, and engaging any sailor who matched him in wits in a good-natured spar.)
Is the splendor of this country a symptom, then, of how long they'd been at sea, for how long the pacing of their steps had been largely limited from one end of the ship to the other? Or does it strike him such vivid colors because he knows this is the honorable land from which his honorable wife hails? These are the hills responsible for breeding her stock; these are the mountains which had stood protective vigil until she'd been sent to a marriage she did not ask for but did not wailingly refuse, either. For how he reveres her, he cannot help but revere the plains she had once called home.
It is good to be astride his steed again, and he has tried to cajole her into giving their horses their heads and charging ahead to the limits of those equine hearts, which he haughtily presumes still to be of equal tenacity. She keeps them at a trot, a caution he does not deem necessary, but she rides with such thoughtless grace here, with such contented and trusting ease, that he does not oppose her for long. There is something to be said of this chastened pace, after all - while she is bathed in the cool winds, smiling as if she has shed the weight of so much smothering plate, he beholds her in turn. He must wonder again that she had ever come to him unwed; how blind must the valiant men of Rohan be to have never looked upon her and felt their hearts harpooned, irretrievably lost? This wonder grows tangled beside his greed, and he swells with pride to look upon her here and know she is his, just as he swelled with pride to spot her in the stands of any tournament and know she was his, just as he ached with pride in night's most hallowed hours, gasping her name against the side of her throat, to know she was his.
What is he to make of it, then, when she flies ahead at the sight of a gilded hall and billowing banners? They are the same green and white which she had worn when they'd stood before one another in the sept; the green against which the white steed of her maiden's cloak had reared. Now they are the colors of these pennants which claim the wind, and she proves in one heedless rush that his aggravated stallion cannot keep pace with her fleeter horse. Beyond the barrows she goes, leaving him with the vanishing glimmer of her hair and her crimson cloak, and that joyous cry which precedes her can only mean she has spotted some waiting kin. He must follow, and not swiftly enough to arrive at her side.
What he does arrive upon is the scene of a recently broken embrace, if he is to judge by the way the horses have been left unmounted, the two human faces resolving themselves into a riot of mirth and tears. Both cheeks gleam, his wife's and this man who has come to receive her. Her brother, Jaime is meant to understand, if the similarity of their looks could have failed to assure him. A man tall, taller than his sister, and of the same golden hair and the same unshaken composure. The gray eyes are ponderous clouds of the same storm. That golden hair is long, and kept only by a golden circlet, and not a scrap of armor is to be had. There is a sword, the length of which Jaime's sharp eyes take the measure of against his own, pleased to know his blade must be longer, heavier. Brighter, without a doubt; like his wife, this man seems to wear plainest steel.
He dismounts from his own horse, lathered upon chest and flank with sweat, and leaves the beast to graze among the others. Like his stallion, he feels that once he is upon his feet, he is similar but not entirely the same, and not arguably more: his own hair is golden, and he is tall and broad, but could it be that this man is even more so? His approach is marked for an audience with, if not royalty, then at least a person of some repute: he notes the crown and dips his head, one hand coming to sit at the pommel of his sword. He will not be slavish in his greeting, even if it is a king he greets.
And he has not mastered his wife's tongue (or, perhaps more truly, he has not mastered her language; he has spent a great deal of time learning the dance of her tongue sliding against his own), and so it is with no polite show of effort made that he first speaks her brother's name.
"Lord Elmer, it is an honor." He will not name it a pleasure, not when his wife is so clearly delighting in company not his own. But this does seem to be a man who has carried himself as a warrior, and for that he cannot be entirely without an assessing sort of curiosity. And even so, are those not tears upon the warrior's cheeks?
"Why do you weep, to have your sister before you well and unharmed?"