It is a piece of history!” Faramir often said of the horn, when Boromir received it from his father.

Boromir would shrug and affect a look of long-suffering amusement, as his young brother would wonder aloud about the tale of the horn that had become the mark of the eldest son of the Stewards’ house.

“It’s just a horn,” he’d say dismissively, as he’d polish the silver that bound it.

“It’s from one of the wild kine of Araw that Vorondil himself slew!” Faramir’s young voice could get almost tinny when excited.

“Yes, yes and he brought the horn back for Mardil, and –“

“And it has been passed down year after year to the eldest son and -”

“It’s quite old,” Boromir would say critically, “I hope it works.”

"It’s not old! It's an heirloom!" Faramir would repeat, insistently, quite horrified at what seemed to sound like irreverence but surely couldn’t be, for Boromir would often wear the horn on his baldric and look at his reflection in a looking glass when he thought no one was watching.

***

It took Faramir two weeks searching through dusty journals in the libraries to find the account of the hunt of the wild kine of Araw as written by Vorondil in an aging journal, barely held together now. It was not a very detailed account.

An entire morning of hunting and two arrows to the neck served to bring the “fool of an animal” down, Vorondil had written. The huge ox had strayed into their oliphaunt hunt and disrupted it. It was their only kill.

“Kine? What does one do with Kine?” Vorondil’s friends had asked, “The meat is too tough, the hide too rough and surely we cannot carry this huge animal till Minas Tirith. ”

But Vorondil had slain the beast, huge as it was, and huge enough to boast of it somewhat and their only kill, and some token of the hunt must be taken.

“So the animal has some use after all,” the friends had said, pleased, when the silversmith finished his work with the horn, “’Tis a fine toy for Mardil to play with. A tad large though.”

Some histories, Faramir decided, were better unshared.

***