“She was black – shiny, velvety black – and sleek, and so smoothly muscled she moved as though the ground was not there.  Every line of her shone with pride and courage and a fire burned in her eyes like the lightning of summer storms.  She was as different from my dear round dappled Fân as the wild winds are from a playful puff of air… and I wanted her desperately.  Never before had it mattered if Boromir had more than I, but now I could barely face him across the breakfast table.”

Faramir paused and looked somewhat shamefacedly at his wife.  She smiled at him over her stitching and said, ‘Well, such a horse…”

Faramir shook his head.  “Still it was foolish beyond excuse.  Boromir was fourteen, long-legged and strong of arm - ready for a man’s horse.  He needed such a horse to train with him for battle.  I was but nine and still needed the aid of a barrel to mount even Fân.  Still, I wanted Alagos ….  I dreamt of her when I should have been studying, spent time petting and feeding her whenever I could escape unnoticed into the stables, and watched Boromir ride her with envy so bitter it burned.”

Éowyn bit off a thread.  “So what did you do?”

Faramir looked at her and she saw a glimpse of mischief lurking at the back of his usually sober eyes.

“I stole her.”

“Faramir!”

“Crept down in the early morning, fed her my usual tribute of sugar, and then mounted her from the third railing of the fence.  Once she had decided that she would allow me to stay in the saddle we rode off into the dawn mists just like any of the noble robbers in my storybooks.”

Éowyn’s needlework lay disregarded in her lap.  “Éomer would surely have beaten me if I had ever taken his Firefoot.  Indeed I believe he would have near murdered me – and I him if he had touched my Ladyheart.”

“Boromir certainly threatened to do so if ever I did such a thing again.  He found me that day around noon, half a dozen miles up the river.  He called me almost every name he had learned at arms training and told me that he would flay the skin from my body if I ever again touched one of his horses without permission.  Then he bathed the graze on my head where I had fallen off the first time, bound up the collarbone I’d broken the second time I fell – and let me ride her home.”

“And did you ever take her again?”  Éowyn asked.

“No.  I still loved her and cried as bitterly as Boromir when she died in a wild battle, but somehow the bitter envy was gone.  Boromir was my brother and he rode her with the grace of a young lord.  That was what she deserved, my beauty.  When I was almost a man, as my brother seemed to me, then there would be such a horse for me.”

“And was there?”

Faramir smiled.  “Indeed.  Boromir had been sent home a month earlier with a slow healing arrow wound to his side and on my fourteenth birthday, he took me down to the stables and led out Gwaew.  She was half-sister to Alagos and just as beautiful and proud.  I rode her until she grew as weary of war as I was and then I brought her back to Gondor.  My Ross is her foal.”

There was silence then as Faramir watched the glowing coals shift and fall in the fireplace.  Finally he stirred himself from his thoughts and looked back at Eowyn. 

“Foolish, really,” he said softly, “ – to care so much about a horse.”

Her stitching put to one side, Éowyn rose and, stooping over her new husband, kissed him.

“To love the beauty of a horse is to love the beauty of the world,” she quoted.  “And we ride the wind who ride a horse we love.”

***********************************

Author’s Notes:

*This was inspired by Pippin’s Lass’s request for a birthday drabble – it just grew a little.

*All Sindarian words came from  Hiswelókë's Sindarin dictionary

ross – rain

gwaew- wind

alagos – storm

fân - cloud