Welcoming a Traveller Home

~ in honour of Mirkwoodmaiden’s birthday ~

I feel a stranger in my own land, thought Éowyn. ’Twas her first visit to Edoras since marrying Faramir and settling with him in Ithilien – though he’d have preferred to cleanse the land of lingering dangers before welcoming his bride home. She’d had to convince him that, as a former shieldmaiden of Rohan, she could protect herself. 

Now she held out her hand to a fellow stranger – a battered black horse who’d seen better days. ‘You too have found your way home,’ she whispered. ‘Through what horrors?’ 

He cautiously whuffled her fingers. 

‘No matter.’ She stroked his nose. ‘You’re home.’

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A/N: This snippet came about from a conversation: In the chapter “The Riders of Rohan” in JRRT’s The Two Towers, Éomer told the Three Hunters that plundering Orcs had carried off Rohan’s black horses to the Black Land, so many that few black horses were left in the land at that point in time. Did any of the Black Riders’ horses survive the War of the Ring? What happened to them?

(Also reflected is Éowyn’s vow that she would be a shieldmaiden no longer, but a healer.)

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