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| 6 Fourth Age: The Promise; [Aragorn & Gwenneth] | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: 22 Oct 2008, 10:37 PM (384 Views) | |
| Deleted User | 22 Oct 2008, 10:37 PM Post #1 |
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Rath Dínen. The Silent Street. Gwenneth stood before the intersection of it and another road, realizing that she had never been down it before. Naturally considering her sheltered life it made sense but still she couldn't deny a certain tinge of sadness grip at her heart because of it. These were the fallen, where they lay peaceful after whatever death had come to take them. Surely they deserved visits? The right to be remembered, even by those that did not know them. Today, she wore a dark plum purple cloak that was in fact so dark it almost seemed black. What she wore beneath it became lost to the suffocating length and shadow of its cover. Her dark hair falling from her crown in loose sable curls until they struck her shoulders and spilled only another few inches from there. Her fingers clenched and straightened, anxious and nervous about the reason she had come. The King had sent word that he would see her this day and if that were it, Gwenneth might have been a little less tense. The messenger had been insistent that the Kings words were to meet him here, at the crossroads of Rath Dínen. It hadn't sat well with her since the moment she'd heard of it and had spent the day pacing, knitting frantically and keeping herself otherwise occupied until the time for the meeting had come. The Chamberlain had been tending business, researching the sudden sickness that had overcome the city and she'd managed to slip away without questioning. Of course she had also arrived a handful of minutes early, which gave her plenty of time to pace back and forth over the road, smooth out her hair and dress, realizing she'd ruffled it and attempt to guess at what possible conversation they would be having. It also brought her back to the beginning, where she had originally been standing at the center of the mouth of Rath Dínen. Large steamy blue eyes tracing down the way that led deep along the silent road. Only it wasn't silent was it? Suddenly more observant and astute than she had initially been. She could hear the tinkering of another tomb being worked on or possibly sealed and the song of lament for the dead that was barely just a whisper on the wind. Had someone of the Kings house died? The road after all had been made the resting place for a majority of fallen Kings, Dunedain and Stewards of Gondor. Had the sickness taken a life she wasn't aware of? She couldn't escape the natural chill that seemed to ghost about the roads entry, shivering beneath the thick cloak she'd worn as if suddenly it wasn't enough to keep her warm anymore. |
| Deleted User | 23 Oct 2008, 01:10 PM Post #2 |
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The entourage set out from the Citadel five minutes before the meeting Elessar had arranged with Gwenneth. The crowds parted as their King walked by, though he did not see wonder or reverence in their eyes today. Aragorn saw questions and sorrow. Nearly everyone in the city had a loved one in the Houses of Healing. He kept walking, however, when normally he would have stopped to talk to them. The Elven jewel tied around his belt drove him forward. He would have enough discussion of death and legacy today with Gwenneth. “Lady Gwenneth,” he greeted solemnly. “Walk with me.” The King led the path down the Rath Dinen. In the distance, he could hear the stonesmiths hammering at a slab of rock. With a motion of his hand, he sent one of his pages forward to inform the men to cease their work and leave the tomb for awhile. “Tragedy has fallen on the House of Telcontar. One of my own kin has been slain on the Pelennor. We will celebrate her memory in two days here in Rath Dinen. With her dying breath, she asked a favor of me. I have brought you here to fulfill that promise.” Aragorn paused before a pointed arch formed of two stone trees with entwined branches. He stepped through into a round, domed room. The ceiling was carved with intricate mallorn trees, and the wide trunks descended to the floor. On each trunk was chiseled a name and epitaph. One engraving to the left was not complete. Only the name stared out at the room. Aragorn paced the floor to stand before the stone sarcophagus where Leoynna would make her final resting place. He gazed silently at her name for a moment, then turned to Gwenneth. “She asked that I tell her history and pass down her legacy to her daughter.” |
| Deleted User | 23 Oct 2008, 06:19 PM Post #3 |
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~"Lady Gwenneth, Walk with me."~ His sudden approach had caught her off guard but she managed to turn to face him without showing it and curtsy with her head tilted down. It was difficult not to burst out in question, as tended to be her way most of the time, so nervous and uncertain what all this was about but it changed when she looked up to meet his eyes. In their steadiness, the Kings eyes seemed as somber and weighty as his voice had. Gwenneth did her best to smile, a small show of hope that was challenging to do and very brief in its existence. With all the sickness she supposed it shouldn't have surprised her, undoubtedly the King and Queen had been working endless hours to try and provide a cure or if nothing more; answers to their people. Aragorn led the way with Gwenneth no more than a shadow as his side listening and glancing remorsefully towards her King. So someone had died, albeit not by the way she had suspected from how it had sounded. The Lady had been killed on the Pelennor and somehow that didn't seem to fit with death from the sickness. She followed diligently until Aragorn past beneath the archway, pausing her steps as she took a single few inside as well but seemed to linger there just inside the entry. Her eyes lifted towards the ceiling and spiraled ever slowly downwards towards the walls, taking a moment to reflect on each of the trunks and their names. Her eyes, just as Aragorn's gaze had been, fell lastly to the unfinished carvings and the lonesome name that had been scribed. It spoke Leoynna and Gwenneth recited it in her head a few times before Aragorn gave his intentions away. Immediately her attention shifted back to the King. The clean lines of her brow knitted together in confusion and her face obviously struggling with the contemplation and meaning of his words. Her eyes danced back to the name, focusing on it as if it held the secrets she suddenly wanted to understand but only found herself pulling away. Swallowing back the grief that threatened her composure. She shook her head, refusing for her sanity and her heart that he could have possibly meant her mother. "My King?" she demurred quietly in a way that she hoped was not insulting. "There must have been some, error?" The sight of her eyes was the worst of it, heartbreaking to say the least to any human that had a soul and could easily witness the hope inside her trembling eyes that there had been some kind of misunderstanding. That he and Gondor had all been misinformed. "My mother, she does not live here. I've never known," Her voice cracked as her eyes peeled away and turned back to the single name upon the wall. "her." Gwenneth had spent her life dreaming of her mother, hoping one day the woman would ride back into Gondor and embrace her daughter for the first time as her child. She stared harder at the wall, trying to decipher the weight of the name carved into it. Trying not to believe it as her mother's name upon it. |
| Deleted User | 27 Oct 2008, 01:48 PM Post #4 |
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Aragorn peered down at Gwenneth with empathy in his eyes. His own sorrow at the loss of his friend was great, but it could not compare to a girl losing a mother she had never known. His voice was kind when he spoke again. “There is no error, Gwenneth. Leoynna was very certain about your identity. I knew her for her whole life, although I did not know every detail. She lived apart from the Dunedain, with the Elves as was the custom in her lineage.” The Elven jewel hanging around his belt tapped against his hip, but Aragorn did not remove it from its waiting place yet. He would let Gwenneth recover from this first shock. It would not be kind to overwhelm her. “I know too well the pain of losing a parent. My father was slain while hunting Orcs, and my mother is interred in Rivendell. If you want to be alone, we can finish this conversation later.” |
| Deleted User | 30 Oct 2008, 04:42 AM Post #5 |
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Gwenneth stood for a few moments, going over this information and staring at her mothers name. She hadn't thought the hollow place that her mothers absence created could ever have felt worse. But now, without any remnant of hope to cling to, the space seemed deeper and rawer than before. She had to clench her teeth and swallow a few times. Fighting back the tears of grief that wretched over her body and threatened to flood the little tomb, her sagging head slowly lifting with a feigned strength and a quivering breath that battled to keep her composure in front of the King. "Forgive me." going no further than that to explain the words, certain that the King would understand it was for the insult of questioning him and the weakness she was undoubtedly showing before him. When her eyes lifted, the very same eyes as her mother had had, she did her best to focus on Elessar. He'd promised after all to deliver, well, something to her and she refused to be the reason why that promise lingered incomplete. Her mother was gone but the man before her held the last and possibly only bit of Leoynna Gwenneth would ever know. It meant more now than ever to listen and understand. It was sacred. "Please, won't you continue? My moments for privacy and solitude will come but not before I know everything you have to tell me." Impressively, she managed the entire sentence out without having her voice crack, though her eyes did not shine with life as they normally had. They had dulled in their colour a great deal and were polished with a shimmer of tears that had yet to break surface. |
| Deleted User | 31 Oct 2008, 01:15 PM Post #6 |
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For a moment, the King said nothing. He gazed at Gwenneth imperiously, judging her true condition. He would not continue with the story if he felt she was unfit to hear it. Aragorn was impressed with her composure. It was befitting of a Lady of the Dunedain and member of the King’s House. “Very well. I will tell you all that I promised to reveal.” He turned to the unfinished tomb, as if silently assuring Leoynna their bargain would be kept. When he began, he did not face Gwenneth immediately, but continued speaking to Leoynna’s name. “First, I must tell you something about the Dunedain. There is a falsehood spread in some parts of Middle-earth, Gondor included, that we are all meant for great destinies. This is not true. Like any people, the Dunedain have some great men and some common men. Your mother was one of our great women.” Now Aragorn turned to the young Lady. There was something shining within his eyes, a light which only shone forth when the long history of the Numenoreans returned to him. The old words: Out of the Great Sea to Middle-earth I am come. In this place I will abide, and my heirs, unto the ending of the world lilted through his mind now. Gwenneth was part of that legacy, as Leoynna and all the Gray Witches before her had been. “And so are you, Gwenneth.” Credit: “Out of the Great Sea to Middle-earth I am come. In this place I will abide, and my heirs, unto the ending of the world” – J.R.R. Tolkien |
| Deleted User | 3 Nov 2008, 03:54 AM Post #7 |
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The sensation spreading inside her chest was a wildfire of grief and Aragorns words seemed more and more the accelerant as he spoke. She knew it wasn't his intentions and that if she showed the pain, he might have felt guilty for choosing to continue which, in truth, was part of how she was able to keep herself together. Physically, she wrapped her arms tightly around her torso and just held on as firmly as she could to herself so that she wouldn't fall to the ground in pieces. He told of a people she didn't know outside of her books. He spoke of their legends and then of their truths. Then, he talked of her mother and how she had been one of the rare and the few with great destinies beneath their feet. Gwenneth kept her stare steady when the King turned his attention back to her and met it with an unbroken stream of contact that lingered there between them. She could see something surface inside of his gaze but concentrated the utmost on the last words he had shared. ~"And so are you, Gwenneth."~ It was a minute later when she could no longer hold her stare with his and let the weight of everything sink them towards the floor. Was it right that this was so hard for her when the grief wasn't truly hers to bare. Surely there were others that had loved the woman more, known her better and befriended her during her life. It was hard to accept that, despite knowing this, she still felt robbed of something far more precious than the rest of them had been. Was it selfish? Greedy? Qualities which Gwenneth had never been known for her entire life but in that moment could not honestly say if it still rang true. She wanted her mother and more than just a name. But her mother was lost and she would cry longer and harder than any of them would for her. "You seem certain, Majesty" she said still speaking to the floor. "that I would share a similar destiny of significance as my mother or these other great Dunedain. What makes you believe so? I've never shared a single path with her my entire life. Why now in death would you believe this to be different?" |
| Deleted User | 5 Nov 2008, 05:13 PM Post #8 |
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Now was the time. Aragorn reached to his belt and removed the jewel. As he held it up, the stone caught the shafts of sunlight that penetrated this deep place in Rath Dinen. The gray gem flashed in the light and sent a prism dancing over Leoynna’s name. “This jewel was given to a woman of the Dunedain generations ago. It has been passed down mother to daughter, and every woman to wear this stone has shared a great fate. To outsiders, the woman who wore the jewel was called the Gray Witch. As with every gift crafted by the Elves, the magic in its element is passed on to the bearer.” The King lifted a finger and touched the Elfstone on his brow. The green stone was smooth and cool under his rough fingers. “As human bearers of Elven jewels, your mother and I understood one another very well. The Elessar is a Healing stone, and therefore, different than this gem that your mother wore. Nonetheless, it is a gracious gift, and a tremendous burden. So too will this jewel become to you.” Aragorn placed the gray stone in Gwenneth’s hand. “You were born Nihdira and became Gwenneth. Now you are also the Gray Witch.” |
| Deleted User | 12 Nov 2008, 05:00 PM Post #9 |
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The dance of light casting from the stone caught her eye and drew it towards her mothers name upon the wall. There was a brief sensation of serenity that flickered through her eyes as if somehow, Gwenneth had been momentarily touched by her mothers very hand and soothed. It faded too soon into nothing as did the shimmer in her eyes. What replaced it, as Gwenneth stared upon her King, was a rush of panic, fear and disbelief. Such a gift, such greatness and responsibility, was to be left in her hands? In her care? It was a hard thing to understand and wrap her thoughts around but she knew Elessar told no lies here. It was scary to stare down destiny and meet it eye to eye. In just one single conversation, her life had seemed to blossom and expand in many ways. Fate had been hand delivered in the form of jewel and it's messenger rode in on the news of her mothers death. If ever she had thought her life had tail spinned before, how gravely mistaken she had been. The names he spoke, all of them, felt as a comfortable second and third layer of skin that could keep her from the cold. Nihdira, although she had never heard it before, felt like her hearts name and the Gray Witch seemed to fill a part of her she hadn't known was missing. "You've done my mother the greatest service, my King, and me as well. I'll not easily forget this." Gwenneth spoke after a few moments of having the stone in hand. Her fingers spreading out to curl around it completely, feeling out for its edges and familiarizing with its weight. "I owe you more than words could express, truly. My loyalty, my friendship, my life is yours, Aragorn King, until death takes me as well." She clutched the stone with two hand, the last remnant of her mother, and pressed it against her breast above her heart. Her skin tingling in acknowledgment of the invisible power the jewel hummed with. She didn't understand it yet but Gwenneth was nothing if not an immaculate student and she would learn. "My King? I'd ask you but one thing more and it may be outside of your answering..." her voice hesitant with the words. "Would it be your belief, that my....father, is aware of this? Has been, aware of this?" |
| Deleted User | 13 Nov 2008, 02:04 PM Post #10 |
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Elessar waited from a short distance away as Gwenneth took in this newfound identity. He knew more acutely than perhaps anyone else in Middle-earth how Gwenneth felt at this moment. His life had been an endless cycle of shedding one identity and finding another. His memories were bittersweet. The terrible burden of being the last of his line, and the tremendous glory in victory mingled together in his mind. The King’s face settled into solemn lines as Gwenneth addressed the topic of her father. He had never been overly fond of the Chamberlain, but until Leoynna’s death, had no reason to think truly ill of him. Aragorn knew better now. He was reluctant to shatter the image of a father, but it was necessary for Gwenneth to take her rightful place in history. “I am without doubt in this, Gwenneth. Your father did know.” He paused, letting the words sink in, but continued before the silence could become a stinging insult. There was more Leoynna had told him, and he would impart the whole story now. “Your parents met in Rivendell, and there you were born. You were stolen from your mother and brought to Gondor where ever since you have been cloistered away on the seventh level. From there, you could not learn of your true heritage. Not until now, that is, when your mother’s kin sat on the throne, and she could gain entrance into the city without the Chamberlain being any the wiser. Alas, she did not make it to the gates of our city.” Aragorn gazed at Gwenneth, judging her mood. She had been told so much today, and in such blunt terms that many others would have buckled under the strain of it. Maybe his approach today had been wrong. He had taken his cue from Elrond, who had told Aragorn of his great destiny. For the mighty, there were no words to soften the blow. “Is there anything else you would know? If it is within my power, I will tell you now.” |
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