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Chapter Text

3003 T.A.

The young lieutenant nestled down into the soft rushes of his pallet, set aside the precious book, and snuffed out the tiny candle in its cage.  At last it was time to rest.  This day, his first at their furthest refuge, had been so long--too long in truth, with two patrols attacked, a wounded man to tend, and then a furious chase across the higher slopes.  He had slid and slipped on unfamiliar muddied trails, climbed past glossy ilex and mounds of blue-fringed juniper, until the Rangers burst through the heinously thorny higher bushes to the barren, windy carapace of Ithilien’s weathered hills.

Valar his muscles hurt.  They had, at last, cornered the Yrch on the hill top and dispatched them quickly; returned through the wet and wildly sodden night to mercifully warm stew and dry, warm socks.  The Captain had been pleased--at the briefing and the lack of casualty.  Now it was time to lay aside the jangling nerves and put the day away. 

This was not easy.   Somewhere high above the grotto, the wind-whipped spray of the Window’s stream trickled down behind the rocks, followed the high keening whistle that danced and played in the crevices, teased them like a ghost-- now moaning, now sighing.  Away at the refuge’s sparkling curtain edge, the thunder of the waterfall was all, but here, behind the rough linen of the sleeping curtain, its song was muffled-- let in the eerie noise of the unsettled night. 

And the beats of Damrod’s droning snore. 

Oromë’s blessed horn.  The Sergeant’s nightly cacophony could do service to a growling dog.  An unfortunate reality  only further amplified by the close quarters in Henneth Annun’s embrace.

Faramir sighed and punched down his pillow, pulled up the grey blanket and turned to lie on the one shoulder not bruised by an errant branch. He willed his mind to still--to ignore the wind and warbling.  And the niggling headache that began to crawl with twisting, craning fingers up over his neck and head.

Please no.  Not tonight. 

Rest was an absolute necessity.  He could ill afford a broken sleep, but with sick certainty he cataloged the signs.  The stomach that fluttered wildly.  The stealthy, creeping headache.  The dull, leaden, heavy feeling behind his eyes.  The Dream had come too often, too strong and relentlessly, for him not to recognize the aura that presaged the Waves. 

He lay down his head and sighed.  Tried to breathe a futile calm into his aching limbs and then gave himself to the green. 

It began as always.  A great emerald wave towered up from a lashing sea, gobbled the island’s sandy shore and moved heartlessly, inexorably, over the verdant land.  It smashed the grey stone of the city, swept ships and people, trees and animals ineluctably before it.  Roiled and boiled.  Devouring all, and in its wake a great brooding darkness rose up.  He was drowning.  His perch was gone and the dark green was everywhere; eerie and merciless, with the wind’s cry and the caw of eagles.  He could not catch his breath; he could not keep the shattering sea from rolling in, and his mouth was full and his feet unmoored. He was choking, sputtering; desperate knowing there was no….

 “Ow!”

Faramir awoke in a heaving, gasping rush, felt the warmth of the blanket fall away and tried to reconnoiter the situation.  He was awake--that much was clear.  He was in the refuge and outside he could make out the snuffling and sighing of sleeping men, the dim roar of the waterfall and the nearer annoying drip, the wind still protesting its lot. 

No sound was out of place. There was no call of alarm or scrape of hastily assembled weapons.  All seemed well, but for a slight throbbing of his knee.  A new hurt, not something from their day, and most certainly not the Dream whose tendrils were finally, blessedly letting go.

How odd.  Reluctantly, he sat.  Fumbled for the matches, relit the runt of candle wax with shaky hands and took stock of his tiny space.  This far back, past the few torches for the watch and well away from the Window’s shimmering reflected moon, the refuge was black as pitch.  He held the little wire lantern up and took in the one thing new: the broad pale face and haphazard stubble that peeked around the curtain anxiously. 

The young soldier (from Anorien if he remembered Captain Eldacar quite right) was dressed just the same as he.  Regulation undershirt and thin trews, light socks to go inside the heavy outer ones.  By day the garb went underneath their uniform--- at night it could pass for sleeping wear.  Seems they’d both been too tired to take them off after ten miles in upland ground elder and Morgoth’s club.

He rubbed at a still stinging scratch on his cheek and with an effort retrieved a name.   “Private Mablung is somewhat amiss?”  

The dark shape materialized out of the gloom and gave a hasty bow.   “No, Sir.  Sorry Sir. Begging your leave.  I thought as you were someone else.” 

 Faramir held the lantern higher and took in the man’s ruddy flush.  There was chagrin and embarrassment there, but no evidence of sudden lunacy.  “Pardon? Who else would I be?”   

“I thought that you were Geraint, sir,”  Mablung whispered anxiously.  “I would never have done it had I known t’was you.”

Done what?  A muzzy moment of puzzled blinking passed before he could process what the young man meant. 

The throbbing.  The sudden wakening.  The clutches of the dream.  Some thing had been thrown to stop him crying out and now it was Faramir’s turn to flush. For the first time in the weeks since Ithilien’s company had begun their farther sorties, he had slept, not in a private room in a wooden hut, but in a mostly open cavern.    

Where his Dream could wake others up.  

“What was it?” he asked weakly, passing a tired hand across his face.  

“M’boot.”  

Faramir shook the last vestiges of foaming wave from his sight and turned to scan his kingdom.  The light flickered about fitfully but he could spy every crowded inch. The pile of books.  The small serviceable chest. The scabbard with its blue-gemmed ancient sword.  Sure enough, on the far side of the little alcove a flask was tipped awry and a tawny leather boot lay upended on the rough grey rock.  It had the beginnings of a hole in the worn, pitted sole and a split across the toe. 

Praise Lorien for a Ranger’s aim.  It could have hit him in the head. 

“Do you want it back?”    

 “Aye, sir. Tis my only spare.”  

Reluctantly, Faramir rolled out of the bedclothes into the chill of the mid night air, took one pace and reached down for the errant dart, passing it back to its owner with alacrity.

It reeked.  A gamey, entirely familiar smell compounded of swamp-soaked leather, sweat and well-rotted leaf mould. 

His own were likely worse.

“I’m sorry, sir,” offered Mablung, clutching the offending item to his chest and still trying to apologize. “I thought you were the Sergeant, sir.   We always throw t’boot when he has his dreams.  You were shoutin’ just like him.”

“I was?”  Faramir ran a hand through sleep-tousled hair, somewhat relieved to find he’d not be dodging missiles inside the haunt—the ones outside were quite enough-- but still puzzled by the coincidence.  It was not uncommon for nightmares to be part of a soldier’s lot: a veteran who had seen too much could suffer so.  Or a greenhorn taken by the fear that stalked the night before a battle.  But his were quite another thing-- as much a part of his Dol Amroth heritage as sea-mist eyes and fine, high cheekbones.  They were visions.  Sometimes portents.  But most often the Great Wave--terrifying when it was dark, hopeful when green and lit by sun. 

It was always the surest sign some new turn in his world was bound to come.

“My apologies for disturbing you Private,” he said, clearing a bark-dry throat.  “It happens.  But not often.”   Or not often, depending on the Enemy.   

Faramir might have learned to listen to these moments, but his Men were yet wary of their odd Lieutenant.  Sudden glassy stares and a tendency to ‘see’ Orcs behind his back or just around a bend made them twitchy. 

And more than a little superstitious.

Mablung seemed to be thinking of just that.  He held his superior’s gaze for a longer moment, finally nodded once, and reached to pull the curtain back. “That’s as well,” he murmured, looking out over the sea of huddled blankets.  His own pallet lay rumpled and empty not a few feet away.  “I’ll be going then, as I’ve first watch.  Night, sir.”

“And you. Sleep well.”

If Faramir thought the adventure might go unremarked, he was mistaken.  Over wooden spoons and bowls, small beer and the great scrubbed table top, the men were in high spirits in the morn.  They ribbed Mablung for assaulting an officer, declared it a marvel that the lieutenant had found anything in his already famously cluttered space, and almost, almost, began a bet on who owned the worst footgear.

(The Captain’s eyeroll had swiftly put a stop to that.  T’would take too long.  There were too many candidates.)      

Through it all, Faramir blushed furiously and let them take their fun, found himself looking again and again curiously down the board to the man he’d been mistaken for.  Geraint, the youngest of their sergeants, was a dozen years older than he; a veteran with flecks of grey scattered in a tawny beard and the burly, barrel-shape from far Langstrand.  A nasty scar ran under his nearer ear to meet a habitual resting frown.  Faramir found him brooding and diffident, not one inclined to be particularly friendly with the Men or officers, but for all his few words, he was one who said exactly what he meant.  Always.  And would never leave a man behind.   

His platoon adored him unreservedly.     

Faramir watched, wondering what experiences the man had had; why he too woke shouting from his sleep?   'You were shoutin’ just like him' said Mablung.  Did he mean that literally?  Shouting of drowning and darkness inescapable?  Or was it purely the act: thrashing and yelling while riding a dark nightmare? 

He rather doubted the laconic sergeant would take to publicly quizzing, and so Faramir waited for the hubbub to die down, mesmerized by the man’s facility with a knife.  Geraint’s nicked and scarred broad hands were peeling an entire, blessedly unwithered apple in the round.  The green skin coiled neatly to fall in an entire spiral onto the smoothed pale wood.  Once done, Geraint expertly tipped back on his makeshift stool, set his knife aside and drew breath to speak. 

Every eye turned his way.   

 “Bit a shouting here and there is nothing next to a warg's mad howling every flaming night.”

The cavern erupted into gales of laugher.  Damrod, victim of this pointed jibe and never a shrinking violet, shook his head theatrically and slowly,  proceeded to most menacingly lick the last bit of butter from his own weapon before setting it in its sheath. 

He rose halfway.  Turned to Geraint and then to Faramir, and flashed a crooked grin.  “Aye.  Well.  Sergeant, I appreciate the Lieutenant’s maiden effort, but I suggest ‘ee keeps it that way.  Last thing I want is competition.” 

Of course that set the catcalls going.  The men were stamping and clapping; yelling ridiculous odds on Faramir's 'performance' until the moment Eldacar’s fuzzy brows crashed together and his fist met the table.  Once.    

The company instantly fell silent.  They looked to their commander whose head was cocked and listening, and to their new lieutenant who was already on his feet.  Faramir had abandoned his cooling porridge, caught Mablung’s widening gaze and reached to shoulder the quiver that he’d left balanced behind his stool.   

Then it came: the high piercing double whistle of the rare thornbird, passed from crouching scout to dawn patrol to waiting guard. 

Yrch. 

He never got the chance to ask.  In an instant Eldacar was barking orders to scrambling men, weapons were hastily strapped on, and Faramir was plunged into the role that never became routine.  Though near a score of years would pass.

3019 T.A.

It was not out of the ordinary in the King of Gondor’s short experience of his Steward to find the younger man lost in thought, a cup of tepid tea forgotten at his elbow and a mess of papers all around.   

Faramir could be remarkably focused when chasing a wayward, intriguing thought. Neither food, nor music, nor even open speech could distract the man from that state—a trait that Thorongil-that-was would have recognized as just the thing to prick his Lord father’s famous sense of order.  Denethor, son of Echthelion, had been nothing if not punctual.  And tidy.  And immaculate.  His younger son was none of these things, and Aragorn, by nature not inclined to make a fuss himself, found it entirely refreshing.  And endearing.  And occasionally, as now, exasperating.  

He pushed wide the study's carved oaken door and padded in, wondering what of the many possibilities had captured his friend this eve.  Tricky points of diplomacy?  Appropriations for the treasury?  The wedding in Edoras to be planned?  The latter would lately have been his surest wager, but then a good deal of loopy grinning into the distance would have been involved.

This looked different. 

He avoided the first two floorboards that always creaked and paused in middle of the thick, riotously patterned rug.  The once perfectly ordered space had quickly taken on an entirely different air.  The high bookcase shelves bulged with well-thumbed tomes and half-rolled maps.  The desk held tottering spires of scrolls weighed down by bits of Osgiliath masonry and possibly a mumak tusk.  A blue jay feather sprouted from a crystal inkwell. 

It looked every inch the illicit offspring of Rivendell’s soaring archive and a rag-and-bone shop from the 4^th .  He loved it.  Every bit.         

“A castar for your thoughts?”

A scroll and quill and tea took flight.  

Yes, oblivious.  Boromir’s fond description of a young pupil flying from Minas Tirith’s archive, juggling sword and scabbard, and hopping on one foot to pull on a boot, sprang to mind before Faramir's customary dexterity reined in the flock.   He dabbed at the only slightly damp seat before finally looking up.  

“Sire?  My apologies. I did not see you there!” 

 “I noted.”  Aragorn’s mouth quirked wryly.  He could, when desired, be utterly silent, and surprising another Ranger still brought a little thrill. “What has you so engrossed when you should be in your bed?”

Grey eyes rolled.  They did this, the two of them---the King playing the patient collie dog and his Steward the errant sheep.  Two months had not entirely erased the strain of nearly twenty years.  And Faramir could, if left to himself, work the night right round.  

Aragorn shifted a tunic, a plate, and three books from off the adjacent armchair and sat waiting patiently for a response. 

The one that came was a pleasant surprise. 

“A mystery,” answered Faramir, smiling a little sheepishly and tapping an ink-stained finger on the letter in his lap.   

“A mystery? How interesting.”  Aragorn sat back in the deep leather of the chair, stretched out and crossed his ankles.   Much more fun than correspondence.  And, right then, a month before his Evenstar arrived, a welcome distraction from Hurin’s endless lists.  

“Can I help?”   

“I am not sure.”  Faramir purloined a decanter of oak-coloured brandy from the table behind the chair.  “No glasses. I didn’t want to wake the servants,”  he explained, passing another teacup across. The letter soon following suit. “I am not certain what to do.  You see, I do not wish to dredge up a past that will distress my Aunt, but neither do I wish ignore a long-standing wrong.”

Ivriniel?  What could distress a woman with a tongue famed for keeping cowering deckhands in their sickbeds?   Aragorn took a gulp of ‘tea’ and scanned the letter penned in the sort of immaculate tengwar only purchased from a scribe.   It was from the widow of one of Boromir’s lieutenants.  Caerlin by name.  She thanked the Prince and Steward for his letter of sympathy on the loss of her Geraint.  Insisted that she would be well in time and would put the kingdom’s small gift of mirian to good use for their boy. 

One of literally hundreds the new Steward received after the daunting stack that he had penned.  Why should this one be remarkable? 

Faramir went on.  “Geraint served with me briefly in Ithilien when I first joined.  A veteran.  He’d had enough of wet bedrolls and chillblains, I think.  Soon shifted to Boromir’s company.  He was a fine bowman and skilled tracker.  Eldacar considered it something of a loss, though what Geraint thought you could never tell. He rarely said a word to anyone, though I had the feeling he did not like me over much. He said he had no time for gabbing like ‘a useless lordling.’”

Aragorn raised his brows.  An intensely private man who disliked nobility on sight?  There was a story there.  But not one that would be easy to suss out. “What happened to him?”

“He served under my brother's lieutenant, Toric.  Steadily and well to all accounts.  He was promoted for bravery on the field after Osgiliath, but then fell at the Pelennor,” added Faramir, sadly.  “I confess the letter is a surprise.  I did not know that he had a son.”

So many.  And so many hardships rippling on.  “How old is the lad?”

“Twelve.”

 “Are they in great need?  Would you have me bring him here?”

Faramir shook his head.  “No, it is not that.  They have a small holding near Belfalas Bay.  But I do think I owe it to the boy to find out.”

“Find out what?”

“The dream,”  he answered, rubbing absently at the now healed collarbone.  “You see, I never got a chance to ask.  Geraint left right after.  Yet Mablung still swears it was the same.  And the apple peels,” he added, faintly. “An entire round.  It was all so strange and now I see....” 

The words trailed off. 

“Faramir.  Faramir,” called Aragorn, gentle but firm, alert to impending vision, for the Prince was no longer seeing them and his eyes were wide and nearly black. “You speak in riddles, my friend.  Come back.”

A heatbeat passed.  The candles blurred and finally Faramir shook himself, the sprigged teacup rattling in his lap.  “Forgive me.”

“There is nothing to forgive.”

With an effort. the younger man dragged his gaze back from the unlit hearth and took a steadying breath.  “It has taken me twenty years to remember where else I’d seen them.  Grandfather Adrahil.  He always peeled apples in the round. I remember as a child sitting on the terrace with fall’s first pickings, entranced by how he did it.”

Aragorn nodded slowly. “And your great Aunt Ivrenna.  I believe she does it, too.  With a wickedly sharp fish gutting knife.”

A small half-smile appeared.  “That would be exactly her." 

"And the nightmares?"

"Another family trait.  Grandfather dreamed of the fall of Númenor.  He bequeathed it to Uncle, and to Elphir and Erchirion.  And me.  Though I regret I did not speak out at once, this way, now, is likely for the best.  Afterward Geraint and Toric had their hands more than full and I think he would not have taken it well.”

More riddles.  Aragorn tilted his head.  “What well? And what does this have to do with your redoubtable Aunt?”

“His parentage.   I think he is related to my family.”

Chapter Text

Faramir decided it was indeed a pleasant thing to stand on Dol Amroth's fabled quay and watch Tirith Aear glinting gracefully in the sun.

It was an almost perfect day. The high bright blue sky at summer's close came down to kiss the gentle waves; the wind was easy and the air just right. Overhead the kittiwakes dipped and dived and out in Belfalas bay the shipfish leapt. The whole of the Bay it seemed was smiling in delight—a summer of rare beauty and abundance was sliding into fall, and as was fashion all over Middle-Earth, young folk freed of shadow were getting wed.

The Steward of Gondor stood on Dol Amroth's quay in his finest black and silver and watched his sixth?-tenth?—twelfth? ceremony of the year. It had started with the King's of course: midsummer's high excitement had been glorious and gay—a sight to delight the heart of a young man who had once dreamed of Elves. And peace.

This day's affair, in contrast, had none of the Firstborn but was entirely magnificent. By tradition, Swan Knights and their brides were joined by Prince Imrahil himself. Six couples had been wedded, feted and fed under the morning's shining sun, and now they had one blessing left. The Rîuil. A gift for Uinen, the Lady of the Sea.

He watched as the beaming. happy couples trod light and quick below a sabre arch held high by the honour guard, ran hand in hand and stopped at the quay's very edge. There each bride took off her flower crown and cast it, spinning, into the sea- white rose and olive leaves, oleander and knight's lily— graced with the tiny nodding heads of shy lantan to bring luck and fair winds and seas for their life together.

When the last crown drifted in the waves like a blue and white, beribboned jellyfish, Faramir sighed and thought it was time he turned his thoughts to other things. It had been, he would allow, a tiring summer. There had been heady weeks that saw the King and Queen safely wed, months of rebuilding and reconstruction, work at Emyn Arnen of his own, and then the utterly blissful, swift whirling days in Edoras with his shieldmaiden.

They passed too fast. The return to Minas Tirith with Aragorn and Arwen had been entirely sobering. After the work and buzz and day after day of too-much-to-do, once there, he had rattled around unmoored in the Steward's Palace. Missing Eowyn. And Boromir. And his father.

A certain melancholy began to stalk the slowly waxing nights.

Bless his Aunt and Uncle. Their invitation to spend the fall harvest time in a sunnier, drier clime came at his lowest ebb. The first two weeks in Dol Amroth he had done nothing of note at all and simply relaxed in the familiar warm embrace of his mother's family.

Elphir took him hunting. Amrothos sailing. Mareth and Lothiriel recommended books from the library and Aunt Ivriniel nearly made him cry with an entire tome of her recipes and herb care for Eowyn. They were spoiling him. Even Imrahil was taking days out of his busy schedule to distract his nephew: on the morrow they would ride to see his mother's dower lands, the working vineyards prized for their frothy wines made from Befalas' famous green-white grapes.

It was all to the good. So much that he felt rested and light and energized enough to turn again to Geraint's niggling mystery.

Uncle could be hours yet quaffing many goblets with the Knights, but Aunt Iviriniel he suspected was at liberty.

"Aunt Ivriniel may we speak?" he asked, of the dainty, bird-like woman who stood at his elbow resplendent in a gauzy gown of silver-blue and a silver circlet in her cascade of white-streaked, raven hair. "Are you still needed here?"

The lady looked up and smiled. "Not now. The serious, non-official celebration is about to begin, and I, bless Estë, have no pressing cases at the moment."

Excellent news. Ivriniel, as a noted healer and herbalist, assisted the Dol Amroth's Healing House on any day she could.

"Shall we take a walk?" he asked and politely held out his arm for her to take. They wandered away from the noise and music of the throng, past Imrahil's flagship bobbing at anchor to the southern arm of the quay. The grey rocky schist of Dol Amroth's headland stood sentinel and glinted in the sun.

"There is another wedding to be planned," mused Ivriniel, looking up and gracing him with a small knowing smile. "I am quite certain that Eowyn will have many hands to help and Cahil, your Seneschal, is remarkably efficient. But if there is anything that we can do, you have but to ask. Your celebration may not involve all the United Realms but it is still no small affair! The Steward of Gondor and the King of Rohan's sister are to be wed!"

Faramir laughed and shook his head. There was rarely a moment that Cahil let him forget it. "I confess I am very relieved official negotiations for the Bride Price are done! Uncle was a superb help in that. But as for the day itself, I would be happy with just our family and my beautiful bride shining more radiant than the sun. We did speak of it, Eowyn and I, and much hope for something smaller and more personal than the King and Queen's. At least as far as we will be allowed."

"Which is to say, not much," Ivriniel snorted, eyes glinting. "Eomer will be the one to marry you in Edoras?"

"Yes, and then we shall have another official blessing with the King in Minas Tirith."

"And then your face will hurt for weeks, so much smiling will you do!" His aunt sighed and a small wrinkled palm patted at his arm. "It will be grand. And there is time through the long winter months to plan. I shall look forward to learning all about Rohan's exotic traditions."

Faramir groaned. "Not I. I must win a race to set the morning price! And devise a way to spirit her out from under the nose of an entire soused eored. They aim to put to us to bed. Officially. All of them." He shuddered. "I shall need one of Gandalf's magic tricks."

"You are the one who lost your heart to a maiden from the North!"

"Yes! And I am truly blessed however hard the trial!"

They strode along at Ivriniel's customary brisk pace, halting when they reached the flowerbeds that marked the small crescent beach before the next quay down. The summer's searing heat that had bleached the colours of the shore had begun to fade and left in its wake a new crop of bloom. Pink cyclamen and white caper. Her favourite. For its delicate purple stamens and use as a vermifuge.

He remembered walking these very shores to pick the flower buds almost thirty years before. Her knowledge was formidable. But it had come about from loss.

He took a breath, knowing sometimes the only way to sail was to plunge in and steer carefully past the shoals.

"Aunt Rini I wanted to speak with you about a new effort I have taken on. It concerns the family of one of Boromir's lieutenants. He was lost on the Pelennor and I have exhausted all I can learn in Minas Tirith."

A look of puzzlement was swiftly replaced by curiosity. "I presume his a Belfalas man or you would not be asking here? Have you tried the palace. The archives?"

"Not yet. I will. But before I do I wished to ask a bit of family history."

"Ours? Why?" He hesitated. She saw it, and ever shrewd, swiftly understood its import.

"Something of this discomfits you?"

"It does," he admitted. "Geraint, the man, would have turned fifty next spring. He was born in 2970. A year I know brought sadness to you. I would not speak of it but Uncle does not know the family tree so well as you."

A tree that was like to a great oak. His mother had but two siblings but their father was one of five and his father five before. "True. I have always been the cataloger and my brother the rough gardener," she said, speaking of the grand gardens begun by her grandmother. "Why this man? And why our family?"

"I believe he had the Dream."

A pair of fine black brows flew up. "The Wave?!"

"Yes. And now his son has been left fatherless."

"And you are concerned our family has a duty by him?"

"Yes," he admitted reluctantly. "He was clearly a son born on the wrong side of the mast. I wrote first to Great Aunt Ivrenna in Tolfalas. She told me cousin Galathon does not have the Dream but her Mirenna does, though none of her children. Her elder sisters did not, nor Great Grandfather Angelimir's one brother." He paused, heart beating hard, coming to the crux of what worried him. "Of Grandfather's line, I know that Uncle does, and Mother did, and so have I from her. But Boromir did not. It was not in him to dream and cross the twilight." Except once and that lead him to his end. He swallowed hard around a sudden lump in his throat. "I wondered…"

"Which of us might have had a by-blow?" Ivriniel finished for him. He winced to hear her use that word. "Do not blush dear boy," she scolded mildly. "I may not be wed, but I have tended seaman and soldiers for far too many years." "It was not a precocious Imrahil I can tell you that much. He was 15 that year, a little early for even him to sow wild outs. And what is more, he spent it out at sea. As a rating. Worked to the bone swabbing decks and setting and sewing sail."

Faramir chuckled. "I have heard of the escapades."

"As has all of Arda!" Ivriniel ruefully shook her head. "They are embellished by now, no doubt. But even then, he was careful. None ever came forward to claim a child. And if they had, we would know about it. Neither Imrahil nor Father would ever have spurned a child of theirs. Grandfather Angelimir made sure that all knew that this was true."

Faramir looked down, deflated. So it was as he had feared. None of the men had unacknowledged children and that left the women. He had hoped it might be his dashing uncle. T'was far easier a thing to consider than his mother or his aunt.

He looked up and out to sea. A great brown pelican was fishing in the waves—diving like a thunderbolt and bobbing up again. He watched it for a while, until a slim hand tugged on his sleeve.

"You have always been good at sums," announced Ivriniel, remarkably light of tone. "You have correctly calculated that Finduilas and I would have been young women when he was born."

He felt his cheeks flame up. "Do you have the Dream?" he asked gently as he could. "I know that there was someone you loved very, very much…"

A grey veil of sadness came down across Ivriniel's gaze. "Rorend. His name was Rorend. Let Manwe's airs hear it on this day."

He nodded sadly. It was not a name he had ever known—he had had only the barest frame of the tale. His aunt's young love had been first mate on Dol Amroth's swiftest ship. A commoner, but a good man she truly loved. One who had died of an ague caught somewhere on Harad's shores.

He felt a heel for speaking of it. When at last Ivriniel looked up, her lashes glistened with unshed tears. "To answer your question, I have my mother's green thumb but not my father's Dreams. And from what I have learned of it—nursing father in his decline and Imrahil at times, it is often strong. And does not skip generations."

"I am so very sorry if I have hurt you speaking of it."

She squeezed his forearm gently. "Do not berate yourself. It is an old, long callused pain; it has lost its capacity to wound. Or at least for very long. A brief stab—no more." The princess with a spine of steel wiped delicately at her cheeks; put her sorrow away and tilted her chin up. "My Rore and I did not have a child. And if we had, I would have borne him and raised him up with pride, no matter the flapping of gossip's gums. It would have been too much a blessing to have a piece of him." She sighed and reached to cup a hand against his cheek for his was also wet. "Be not distressed. It was fated I think, for I believe I do know who it would be."

"You do?!" Faramir's stomach plummeted suddenly.

She saw it and was quick to allay the last possibility. The one he both dreaded for his mother's sake and desired now that Boromir was gone.

"Is it not that you have a half brother we have kept from you for fear of Denethor. In those years when Finduilas had not yet met your father there was no swain who caught her eye for long—she was immersed body and soul in her art."

Relief, tinted with a wash of disappointment, poured down his veins. "Then who?"

"Another we lost in darkening days. One you are forgetting." She pointed to his hip. "Whose sword do you bear?

"Aglamir!" Faramir looked down in surprise at the well-used blade slung low. It's great blue-violet ijolite shimmered in the sun, its ancient tengwar flashed still bright upon the tang. Bright as the day his grandfather bequeathed it to him—the sword of another beloved younger brother.

Dead in his prime without any children to come after him.

"Speak before doing; come before need, peace before living," Faramir murmured softly, remembering the rhyme Adrahil had given a very nervous cadet on his oath-taking day. "Could it be him?"

"Yes. I think so." Ivriniel replied. "He had the Dream and very strong. It once woke us up, Imrahil and I, napping with him in a hammock slung in the orchard."

His great-uncle! He had never thought of that. It made sense, in retrospect. The pirate and wandering Prince known as the 'Curse of the Corsairs' had been larger than life-a rakehell and a feared warrior. "What happened to him?"

"He died the same year Geraint was born. Of the same malady that took his valiant First Mate."

"Rorend?!"

Ivriniel nodded. "Yes. The very same. Together they sailed so far, to so many unnamed shores, I have always thought there could be a child. Father searched in the dark months after his untimely death for they were all so very grieved. Ivrenna was closest to him in age, but Aglamir was very much the baby of family. Grandmother Fana doted on him the few days he was in port. We all did," she added, looking up to catch his gaze. "I am afraid that is as much as I really know." Her mouth quirked wryly. "You will have to suffer the trial of exploring in the archives. His ship's log—the Minuramar- will be there. But not for her last sail."

"Why not?" Were his hopes rising to be only dashed?

Ivriniel spoke again and her eyes went dark with memory. "We shall never know where they were those final months. Minuramar came in to port running the black flag for contagion. Two-thirds of the crew succumbed. Inside a week all were gone."

"All!" echoed Faramir, shocked to his very core.

"Yes. They burned the ship…and all that was on board."

Chapter Text

Dol Amroth, T.A. 2970

"Ada? Ada are you there?"

At the soft knock and worried words, Adrahil, Prince of Dol Amroth, looked up to the bedroom's door and spied the dark head and delicate features of his middle child peaking around the door.

Her bright grey eyes were somber; her usual gay, hummingbird smile was drooped into a frown, like wax that had overrun itself or rime on a winter's eave.

It had been so for days, held fast by toil and sorrow, anxious waiting and heart-felt grief.

A frown looked entirely wrong on his pretty, vibrant Fin. As did the utter stillness of his brother's limbs upon the bed.

"Come in." The wave was brief. The callused seafarer's hands that had now two full years of governing had not turned too soft-they dipped the cloth back in the cool, herb-scented water in the bowl beside the bed, shifted the already dry compress on Aglamir's flushed brow. A little febrifuge was dribbled between parched, cracking lips.

He had been doing this, doggedly, since the noon bell chimed from Tirith Aear's lofty height and now the moon had set.

Finduilas slipped in and silently shut the door behind. She took the empty chair next to his and reached out across the pale blue silk of the coverlet to take her uncle's hand. It was paper dry; like a leaf leached of all vitality, and the sight of them together so-Mir a fevered shrinking husk held desperately, silently, by his adoring 'little Fin'- made Adrahil want to howl.

He did not. Every ounce of energy was needed for this fight.

A second cloth was dipped to wipe sweat from ribs that now jutted sharply against pale skin. "Does Ivriniel finally sleep?"

"Yes," Finduilas sighed sadly and took over the little spoon. "Naneth gave her Istan's sleeping draught. She sits with her for now. We shall both go back to the Healing Houses in the morn."

"That is for the best. Sleep now is a blessing." So much was true. He knew this, felt relief pour down his veins that his eldest would be spared some hours of her heartbreak but he could not do it for himself. Every minute now was precious. Grey-faced, impatient with fatigue and worry, he had sat for the past five days tending to his brother's sickbed, suffering none other to serve. At first it had been for fear of the fever's spread but then, as he came to understand the fight, it been because of an endless clawing dread.

It is not my time, but it could very well be his.

The gift that was both blade and haft told him so. It lent a surety that he would not sicken from all these hours, but, ever fickle, it had been mute on this. He could not say his beloved 'little one' would not succumb.

Once that seemed impossible. A man full in his prime; famed for an almost Eldar strength; one who took life and fortune in his great hands and beat the odds with every cast could not be scythed by an ague. Not Aglamir. Or so his heart had said at first.

No more. Half of Minuramar's crew were dead. The first mate. The galleymen. Even the cat that kept the rats away.

"I can sit with Uncle for a little while," Finduilas offered, setting a pale hand on his arm but Adrahil bent forward to brush a little salve on parched lips that once smiled wider than all the Bay. It was his duty. Their parents had passed. Their sisters were scattered to the winds: Ivrenna to Tolfalas, Alaynne to Pelargir's foggy banks and Sulriel to Lossarnach's bursting groves. They could not come in time, even were the city not now closed.

He shook his head. "Nay my dear. I will not now leave him unless the fever breaks. Or he takes a step on the Road himself."

Finduilas looked stricken at the thought. Ivriniel had said that very thing the lifetime ago that was the early morn. "But his will is so very strong!"

'So was Rorend's' he thought but wisely did not say it loud. If only will could heal-they would be safe, Mir would be safe, opening his blue-black, great cat lashes and demanding to be let up. Announcing that there was work do and who could lie for long.

The image made Adrahil's heart skip a beat. He had dreamed this. This exact moment. About another Mir. Another fine-featured man, raven-dark disheveled hair unbraided, drenched in sweat, so still he almost seemed not to breathe. Wandering in endless fever. Murmuring Finduilas' name and another's he could not catch.

It was her son. He knew this, now, after the dreaming veil had left, when his sight was clear and true as crystal. That Mir, that man with his mother's smile and narrow brow, his fate had not been woven yet. The day had not come when Vairë's blessed hands would set it on the weft.

And all that they could do was wait.

"Strength is not enough." The truth slipped out like a dark will o' the wisp. Finduilas shook her head, hands clenched, the knuckles white. She hated impotence more than any other single thing.

"No! Ada, there must be something we can do! Some trader with a herb or portion. Some merchant who knows where they were? Who can say how this is…."

Fought? Oh my child. If only you were right. He set down the latest cloth and pulled her close, tucked her head underneath his own and willed his calm take root. They had searched. Even as the ague felled man after man, officer and swabbie alike. 'East', said the second mate, 'past' Khand' said another, to a place where the stars stood on their heads.

"Brother where did you go?" he whispered, the deep voice that got attention against a running gale or amidst the clang of clashing swords, rough with climbing grief. "Where have you been that you brought more than birds and new maps to our shores?"

In the first, pained, restless days before the fever's fire sapped everything, a raving Aglamir had spoken here and there-just fragments, snatches of familiar orders, bits of sea shanty, and even battle cries. As the hours slipped with each day's westering sun the words had grown less and less. Their father's name. Their mother's. Once an apology for his wandering. Once, a gentle smile and a fond meleth.

And last: 'Brannie'.

It was a name Adrahil did not know. "Little queen' it meant and oh but he wished to know its source. Who was she? What siren not of the waves could make his little brother's famous roving heart admit to love, want settle for a while, but then, there was no time.

Aglamir spoke no more. Sometime, after his own beloved Firiel took her sleeping daughter Finduilas from his arms, the Kindler's stars began to wane. And the ghost quiet, bare steady breaths became a hollow rattling.

~~~000~~~

Lofnui, T.A. 2968…

'There's a new ship limped into t'port."

A flutter of excitement raced about the Bluebell's battered walls with Larick's nonchalant announcement.

The ex-seaman with the missing ear propped up the bar with a knowing grin, took a swig of his foaming mug and puffed out his chest, waiting with quite evident anticipation to be asked for more.

'Limped' meant damaged and obviously so. A damaged ship could be work for the blacksmiths and the lumbermen who rode the vast booms that sailed down river out of Gelin's timbered hills. Good news if true. Better if not exaggerated.

The details could encourage the curious (or the enterprising) spot the bearer a pint or two.

Larick grinned and turned about to face outward to the audience. He scratched at his scar and waited for the first question to break the dam.

"Been drinking Lar?" "Seen a mermaid, too?" He let those pass. The boys who thought themselves a funny lot would come to no good for sure-they were already pickling their insides six nights of the week.

"Any cargo to salvage now?" A sensible question from Malik who traded tools and crockery and bits and bobs to the lumberers upriver.

Larick frowned. He'd only stumbled upon the sleek dark hulk coming back from rifling the beach's nightly wrack, but he needn't tell them that. "No. She wasn't taken at the water line."

A third of the audience turned away and so it was left to old Tom Bolgen to ask the question on all their lips. "What's 'er name?" he growled amiably enough from the fireside.

"Don't know," admitted Larick, mulishly, "but she's a beaut. Brigantine with twelve oars a side."

This was more useful. Behind the nicked and scarred bar of lacquered pine, Alain, the barkeep, raised a shaggy brow skeptically at the news. Larick was known to be lightfingered with both coin and truth. The rest of Bluebell's denizens-sailors hoping for some warmth, hard bitten merchants and the young bloods who rolled the logs, shrugged and went back to their games of dice and cards; nursed their resentments and their beers.

The Bluebell was not old, nor was it delicate like its namesake, named for a flight of fancy by Alain after his Lizel's favourite bird. It was a boxy place-weathered on the outside by Langstrand's relentless rain, but inside a simple open square with all of the draftiness but none of the more intriguing hidden corners that gave the town's other fine watering holes their air of dangerous authority. Beyond the low stone lintel, the ceilings fairly soared and the great hearth took the edge off winter's chill; dispensed the gloom that could struggle through the endless cloud.

Next to the Drake, it was the most welcoming and reputable spot in Lofnui's modest jumble of old houses that clung like barnacles to its rocks. Welcoming up to a point. Alain, barrel-chested and proud of his place and carefully selected kegs, let no girls in the upper rooms and suffered no fights on his flagged stone floors.

A body came to Bluebell for drink or talk or games, sometimes a little harping of a rainy night, or even to forget.

Larick polished off his first and banged the glass jar back down with enough force to make the nearby drowsing oldsters jump. "Oi, Branwyn. Fetch me another."

The young woman he addressed ignored him, refusing to be rushed. She shook out and retied her linen apron, pulled up her chestnut hair and wrapped a piece of linen round. Three years and many, many jars had taught Branwyn of Lofnui to take no guff, to be mouthy when she had to be and sweet when a man was truly low. She knew the lonely ones who tipped for a sympatheitc ear and the angry ones who railed at being thrown up on Befalas' bleakest shore.

Sometimes drink made them easier. Sometimes it did not.

"Give it here." She sidled up to the taps for Alain had gone to fetch the night's batch of wine-dark, steaming stew, deftly refilled the jar in question and neatly wiped the drips for twas a waste to clean more than she already did.

Larick pulled it in, noisily slurped without acknowledgement. She hadn't expected any. The man could be as a sour as his smell.

Branwyn pulled another larger jug, set it on a clean cloth on a tray and jutted her hip just so, taking a turn about the room. This was the part that she enjoyed the most. Catching the patrons' stories; hearing their tall tales from other less misbegotten ports; dreaming of markets piled high with spices and exotic fruits coloured like a rainbow fell to earth.

She was a dreamer. Her mam always said it would never do her any good but still she couldn't stop.

Across the nearest table a short man with a scrap of Dol Amroth flag twisted round his fair greying hair looked up from casting dice, rattling the bones in a scarred meaty hand. "'ere Brannie, blow on 'em for luck."

With a smile and wink she complied, shaking her head fondly at Kale who had dared to ask and pocketing his surreptitious tip. A good man. And one who took his luck more seriously than most.

Their empty jars were swiftly filled and the dust and spills swiped at, but still she lingered just a bit for old Wordan was on a winning streak.

That was when the normally lugubrious mariner spoke the most.

"No name. No introduction. Summat's off, " he announced with authority as the table groaned. Malik had lost the roll and Wordan, eyes glinting, scooped his winnings up. "Takes men to man a brigantine. T'was one in Cobas afore. Dark sails and a crew could pinch a Corsair's wheel before the captain had time to piss himself. What colour are her sails?"

This last was addressed to Larick sitting high on his stool to nurse his third. The tharni that joined his few greasy coppers wasn't going to be enough. "Couldn't see. Were dark. And they hungs in rags."

The room whistled low. A bad run gone afoul of Ossë's rage. The first gale of winter's start had been particularly fierce—blowing washing and folk about, keeping the ragtag fishing fleet in port. A few made the sign of the Lady of the Sea to ward off any splashing of ill luck.

Larick, knowing when he had caught the room, opened his mouth to give them more, but then a gust of wet and cold blew his chance away.

The tavern door banged open and a knot of men walked in.

"Close the door!" boomed Alain into the sudden suspicious quiet. He set his pot to swing on the firehooks, hastened to the front and waved the newcomers inside, shutting out the night's unpleasantness.

The new crew, or so Branwyn assumed, for there were no other strangers at harbour and they rolled with a seafarer's easy grace, stopped in the mellow lantern light and looked curiously around.

They were tall; so tall that the sweet cicely hanging from the smoked stained rafters brushed the tops of their sodden kerchiefs. Their wet coats were dark as the night outside; their jaws unshaven and high hobnailed boots scuffed and worn.

Seaman most definitely, but no everyday traders who plied Langstrand's long half empty coast. There were thin swords swinging easily at their hips and wickedly curved daggers tucked into heavy leather belts.

"Good man, have you food and whiskey?" asked the eldest, politely enough, shaking the streaming wet out of hair brindled black and grey and tied with winking shells and beads. His vowels were long—the sound of Dol Amroth or the farther sunshine shore. But that was not unusual enough to count.

"Aye, we do, if you have coin," answered Alain. His eyes were wary but his shoulders were down and loose. He was always a good judge of men- and for some reason Branwyn couldn't see he liked the look of them. For all they looked fierce enough to out the entire patronage.

The man who spoke looked down a long, somewhat Numenorean nose and shrugged. "We do. Castars, or coppers if you prefer."

That was good enough. Alain saw them to an empty table not too far from the fireside and served them himself, asking Branwyn to fetch the screech, the raw, pine-scented, mouth-seering spirit that passed for whiskey in those parts. She was quick about it, excited by the thought of something new in an otherwise humdrum night. This time of year, once harvest was taken in, all the traders went home to port; took their wheat and barley and heavy logs back to bigger Lefnui or Cobas, sometimes even Dol Amroth's shining, bustling docks.

The thought was dizzying. Maybe they were from Pelargir up Anduin?! Or Lebennin? Or Harlond?

She shyly set three glasses down and poured the amber liquid in. "Thank you mistress, we've needed this," said the youngest cryptically, raising his in toast, tossing it back in a single gulp.

He choked on the prodigiously lethal stuff. His seatmates burst out laughing, thumping him hard upon the back. "Ror, that is exactly what you need!" teased the tallest who sat his chair turned back to front, one long leg vibrating like a saw. "Cough up some sea water while you're at it!"

They laughed some more and the young one shook his head good naturedly. Branwyn marveled at the sight. The little winkle shells rustled in his hair-they were pale green and shining, like none she had seen down on their golden sands, and what was more his blue kerchief was indigo, not Dol Amroth blue like a Prince's man.

Indigo was said to grow in Khand on a precious and rare bush worth its weight in gold. His was stiff and salt-stained from many weeks at sea.

Valar.

She heart yearned to listen in, to strike up a conversation, and mayhap get their names, ken something more of where they'd been, but that would be surely wishing on a fleeting star. If the men had not offered their names by now, nor their ship's, nor their home port, they wouldn't once the hooch seared their speech.

And more sobering, they might be brigands best left alone. Not every ship plying the Strand's sleepy shore was honest, though Wordan might say even a pirate had a code of honour. There were many many coves in the tawny limestone past Edhelhond. And many ships that did not want to draw attention.

Alain caught her gaze and jerked his head back toward the taps. Branwyn followed suit, taking in the empties, tidying as she went, sneaking back looks when she could. They looked very odd indeed. Once they'd unwound their wet caps and removed their sodden coats their straight locks shone with elvish braids at temple, tied off with more beads and even golden clips. Haradi ones. Of gold that shone brassy in the firelight. They were fake of course- but twas a funny thing to affect.

Branwyn puzzled as she went about her work. The wind brought in more folk wishing for a warming jar and soon she was run off her feet- swaying neatly between the crowded tables with tray held high, pouring ale and wine and even the spiced mulled cider that Alain kept to warm a body up when the stew ran low.

By the time bell for last call rang, her feet were sore and her apron was creased and stained. She wiped a hand across her brow as she pulled the last few taps.

"Get me another one, Branwyn, there's a girl." Larick desultorily shoved his empty jar across the bar, leaving a trail of wet behind. The coins were gone and his bleary gaze was focused somewhere on her bodice top. She'd long got used to wanting to yank it up.

When she didn't move he blinked a little muzzily. "Come on gell. Ye, know I'm good fer it." A roughened hand shot across and grabbed at her own. "Branwyn. Yer tha pretty and I'm a good man. A braw man. Do me right and I'll make you a fine husband."

She shook him off and rolled her pretty green gold eyes. If a barmaid poured another pint for every sot who propositioned her, she'd be a bigamist thrice a night. "That is your seventh Larick," she said flat and firm. "You'll get no more from me. Get your coat and take yourself on home."

He didn't like it. She didn't expect it, and of course he'd make a scene. Larick had come thinking he'd drink on others coin and now had none to show. This time when he caught Branwyn's thin wrist, his eyes darted about the room, daring anyone to react. The thrill of a new and possibly rougher audience had put some steel in his normally willow-waving spine.

Branwyn did her best to stay still and calm and drawl from the depths of a bottomless boredom. That usually did the trick. "Don't make me bother Alain to put you out," she warned, reaching with her free hand to pass Malik his allotted change.

The trader raised his brows in query but she swiftly shook her head.

"Another!"

"Nay, you are cut off." Branwyn was finally losing patience. She tugged hard and fast and the jar shot straight out of his fingertips.

Malik laughed has he turned to go. "When you're weaker than a tiny lass, my friend, tis time to seek yer bed."

"You little slat!"

"Enough!" Alain's broad palm smacked down on the bar. Larick jumped. Those busily pulling on coats and hats eagerly stilled, wondering if there would be an entertaining scene.

Alain jerked his head toward the door, brows crashed together like a thunderstorm. ""Out! You do not speak so to anyone, you hear?"

Larick opened his mouth to protest and but another heavy smack had him backing down like a beaten dog. The drunk slunk from his stool, grumbling about how the beer was watered and the dice loaded bad. He'd tell folk so. He'd have the council down on Bluebell's head but none took it seriously.

Tomorrow it would be the same again.

Branwyn forgot all about the tustle as the last patron wobbled out into the night. The rain had stopped but the night was starless. A whip cold wind was blowing heavy cloud across Ithil's brighter face and she'd have a cold walk home.

Once the tables were wiped and chairs flipped up, she shrugged on her cloak and pulled it closer like a blanket, bidding good night to Alain. There was one last chore to do. With expert hands she rolled the last pair of empty casks beside the shed, set them lying down.

Done. She could go home to the rooms she'd rented since her da had passed and mam had followed him of heartbreak. They were small but warm. And hers. No sharing. A careful eye to saving and scrimping had allowed her to make her way, to turn down the smug idiots and older earnest sailors who assumed she'd jump at the first man.

Her heart was not for sale.

She turned the latch upon the gate but then something shot out of the dark. A hand. It reached over and clapped hard upon her mouth while a familiar warm stinking breath huffed against her ear. Larick. It had to be, and now a tendril of cold fear like rain trickled down her neck.

"Nowt so brave now are ye, lass?" he hissed. "Not when your boss isn't looking." The other hand pulled her roughly back against his heavy chest, pinning her in place.

Branwyn squeaked but did her best to conquer the fear. His hands were surprisingly strong for one three sheets to the wind-she couldn't break his iron grip, couldn't get a bite of his palm or an elbow to his gut, and so she played along, tried to sooth his pricked and wounded pride.

"I'm that sorry I spoke ye wrong Larick," she mumbled, muffled in his grip. "I'll not again, I promise. Let me get…"

"Shut yer trap, ye bitch!" The hands shook her hard and rough, his lips brushing her chilled cheek this time. The bastard. He wouldn't would he? Larick was a coward. He was, every soul knew it so, but sometimes that made it worse.

She whimpered, now truly beginning to doubt what he could do. Inexplicably, hideously, that calmed his rage right down. "Aw Brannie I didn't mean it. I know you. You're a fine maid. As pretty a piece of tail there is round here," he purred. "Let's call us equal. You won't give me a drink, you can give me taste instead."

Yavanna's mercy! No!

She struggled in earnest then, writhing with all her might, twisting this way and that, trying to stomp his toes but her leather shoes were no match for his working boots. He had her pinned and fast. Hoarsely she cried into his hand, desperate to be heard, sobbing in frustration as it began to rain. Gods Alain, please come out. Please. Someone! But no one came. The light of the tavern had gone dark. Alain was in the back sorting out the take by candlelight and only a pair of rats nearby, nibbling at a slice of moldy bread, took notice.

Larick, emboldened by the silence but for the calling of the kittiwakes, tried to pull her deeper into the shadows. A foul-tempered curse burst from his lips as she landed something with her flailing, but he simply clutched harder, dragged faster, raking her shoes through the mud.

Just when she thought her luck run out and he gave a strangled cry. "Aihhh!"

The grip let go. Branwyn staggered and almost fell, pulled by sodden skirts caked with mud and wet from struggling. They dragged her down but before she could hit her knees another pair of far gentler hands caught her about the waist.

A smell of spice, and ship's tar, and a strange sharp earthiness coiled up. "Lady?!"

She turned, poised to raise her fists, but found she had to crane her neck. Her saviour stood all but invisible in the dark; she could just make out a furious glint in his gaze and a silvered dagger in his fist. It was the stranger. One of the three. The other two were at the shed making short work of Larick's coat, trussing him like a chicken with it inside out.

"You are unhurt?" asked the man courteously but her tongue was stubbornly stuck in place. From somewhere near the door a torch flared and she shivered, for though it had ceased to spit, the wind came whistling in.

The seaman reached slowly up to pull up her torn and ragged sleeve and carefully settle her cloak back in place. She let him. An impression of carefully coiled strength, of muscles sliding, sleek and menacing below skin, flared, but she was not afraid. In the wan light a short black scruff framed a proud and narrow face, unlined but for a spray of laugh lines about light eyes. The neck of his cloak lay open, his dark blue coat was worn and faded from many hours in the sun and spray; his glossy raven hair was tied in more braids than his fellows.

One of them was twined with a shell carved like a dolphin leaping in the waves.

"Lady?" he prompted once again, eyes widely worried. She nodded mutely through the sudden chattering of her teeth. "Uinen's mercy." The oath was low but earnest. The captain (for surely he was so) sagged a little in relief and turned to the youngest of his men who stood to one side with Larick pinned below his boot.

Apparently the swords were for far more discerning threats.

"Geroff, " wailed a sodden and suddenly sober Larick. He got another swift, ungentle kick. "You've broke my hand, ye bastard."

"No. It only feels like so. Be thankful that I took care."

The Captain looked back to Branwyn again. The wind had mercifully began to die but still little shivers ran across her skin. His eyes were beautiful. They were grey as morning mist and deep enough to drown in, fringed by lashes of the bluest-black. "Ror, what shall we do with him?" he asked over his shoulder, frowning with concern. "The bottom of a bottle is the surest measure of a man. I say that he is trash to be thrown into the sea."

"Aye, Captain, but I doubt the sharks would have him." With a laugh and a flick of the wrist his older mate had Larick up, held by the scruff, shivering and sweating in new fear.

"The lock-up then."

The two men nodded, began to melt back into the shadows of the lane, carrying their objecting prize like a fallen log. "Wait!" The word was out before Branwyn could hardly think.

Soon they-the strangers-would be gone and she would still be there and needed to think of all of the future consequences.

She shrugged off the warm strong hands that she had not noticed were holding her up, crossed the few feet of yard and without so much as a warning, swung and punched Larick full in the gut.

"Oof!"

He doubled over. The beer and rotgut that had fueled his rage came back, spewed liquidly, spectacularly, over his trews and shoes.

Served the bastard right. Branwyn defiantly pulled up her torn sleeve again and stood over the groaning wreckage, breathing in great draughts of freedom. Her knuckles hurt, but gods that had been satisfying. The two mates stood in admiring shock, mouths open and catching flies but behind her the captain began to laugh in great unfettered gusts. Tears rolled down, streaming from his eyes so much that he had to wipe his face; bending double to put hands on knees, wheezing all the while.

When he could chain his breath again, he looked up, eyes twinkling merrily. "Oh mistress. That was absolutely the best, bloody brilliant thing in a day of utter insanity." He shook his head, sending the shells and beads tinkling musically. "First the squall and then the mizzen mast. Bailing like lunatics before we sank and rowing two to an oar past your menacing rocks to make the breakwater. I never thought…." A tatoo'd hand once again wiped at his cheeks. "I never thought to see such a sight."

He held out his hand to shake. Waves and sea creatures and a curiously pointed star in blue danced about its sinews. "What is your name fair one?"

"Branwyn," she answered, blushing, thinking it would be rude to not accept a hand when he had possibly saved far more than her dignity.
The long fingers on hers were firm and gentle and scented with spice and salt and sweet remembered sun on sail. A new thrill of curiosity coiled not unpleasantly within her chest.

'Branwyn." He bowed, gesturing with an outstretched arm that bulged with wiry muscle honed by climbing rope. "Pleased to make your acquaintance. Tis a queenly name for a queenly lady. My name is Mir. My first mate over there is Carn. And my second is Rorend." The two men bowed over their protesting package. "May I escort you home?"

She hesitated. Her knees were wobbly as a newborn fawn's and her knuckles throbbed insistently. The idea of trudging up the narrow cobbled streets was uninviting. Alain would, if asked, let her pull up an armchair chair and blanket, safely locked in for the night.

She bobbed something like a curtsy. "I thank you, sir, for your kind offer and assistance, but it is an awful long ways up the hill. And I fear I need a drink." Lands, where did that bit of honest truth come from? She watched a wry half quirk play along his lips though the light grey eyes above were serious. She stood transfixed awhile, mouth dry and heart beating like a tambor while he searched for something in her face.

What he found she had no idea. "A good brawl does that to the best of us," he murmured at last, nodding slowly. "Would you, perchance, like some company?"

Did she? Shining sea and sun. Flashing swords and running gales. Wild jungles and prowling cats. Oh, the stories he could tell.

"Yes, " she answered. "Yes, I think I do."

Chapter Text

'A ship's in port.'

On a day warm and fine, bright as could be found in a land that greened from too much rain, the news ran swift as a water spout through Lofnui's jumbled streets.

"A ship's in port and Malik says it's Minuramar."

The welcome words caught Branwyn arms deep in the afternoon's napkin washing and she could not help but turn her head. Could it be? So soon?

The hope that she'd held so carefully in check set two spots of colour on her cheeks, made Alain chuckle as he rolled his eyes, leaning against Bluebell's door.  "What's to stop ye, lass? Go. Go!" he said, shooing her away. "Custom's light. If tis him, I expect I can spare you til the morrow. "

Calmly, pointedly, he took up a dirty jug of his own to clean, feigned annoyance at her ecstatic kiss, but his lips were pulled into the wryest of fond smiles and his keen gaze was approving. Another man might not have been so generous. Alain of Lofnui knew in every bone that chance oft came with the wind.

Branwyn quickly doffed her apron, flew threw the pining of the wet blue check squares on the laundry line and bent to catch up her satchel, frowning briefly at her dress. Her skirts were damp; her long sable hair was almost a bird's next, and her fingers were pruned and raw. Not exactly a queen, she laughed to herself, but there was nothing to be done-Minuramar might be here and she simply could not wait.

A rush of excitement propelled her to the greyed wood quay, oblivious to the hails of passing seaman and neighbour, by instinct avoiding usual obstacles of bales and ropes and barrels of fish. She did not see their smiles; her gaze was fixed on the sleek, dark shape that might be a brigantine anchored in the final berth.

Was it really? Could it be them? 

She drew close and Blessed Varda her heart gave a leap. T'was no mistake! The new ship that sat gently rocking in the farthest berth was no ordinary trading sloop; was not a ferry vessel or Prince's warship- the flag that snapped jauntily on the high main mast had swan-ship in silver on clear sea blue and her decks were not swarmed by navvies in smart uniform and smarter trims. This was a hunter; a fighter. Lean and fierce, with a hull of deepest midnight to hide upon the wide dark sea.

Minuramar, Wings of the Dawn. The most feared ship about the southern shores and east she had ever sailed.

Branwyn ran to the base of the gangplank and stopped, heart full but stomach all at once aflutter. It had been two moons since Mir had been last to port. Look for me when the shipfish return he'd said, and so she'd settled down to wait, be patient for summer's end, but here he was!

Early and unexpected.

Uinen's mercy let it be fair wind not foul that brought him here this time! Let him be well. Unharmed. Unhurt.

Every day that he'd be gone she had sent a prayer to the Lady of the Sea, casting her wishes like petals into the salty water, singing to let Ossë also speak them fair. It was rough magic—simple and seaweed-strong; of Langstrand's long wild shore, and it worked. She knew it would, for it was all she had to give.

"Permission to come aboard!" Branwyn called, all but bouncing on her slippered toes; raising her voice to be heard above the wild hammering of her heart, above the wind that set a moaning in the shrouds.

"Ahoy!" A tall seaman whose braids were decked with blue-green shells leaned nonchalantly against the gunwale and ran a hand thoughtfully across his chin. "Lofnui again?!" he chuckled.  "Can't credit it. Something must be wrong." He turned and called back toward the bridge. "Captain, there's a lass here looks like she knows her way around a punch! Not sure that we should risk her boarding. Dare we let her storm the ship, the way she's stormed your heart?"

The seamen scuttling on the deck, winding capstans and tightening ropes, let up a cheer. "Let her in!" "Don't keep her waiting," they cried but the big second mate with the kind smile and kinder heart shook his head, crossed his arms and planted his great trunks of legs athwart the open hatch.  "Not sure we dare," Rorend laughed, eyes glinting mischievously as the First Mate joined him in peering down. "She's dangerous this one. Bewitched us far off course and Valar knows where else we'll fetch up? Mr. Carn what d'ye thi…. "

"Ror! you bloody, great…..!"

Rorend was shoved summarily aside and all at once he was there. Mir.  His long locks were bound in a leather tie; his shirt was open at the neck and his ragged cuffs were all undone. The hand that poised almost languidly on the starboard shroud was a little thin, dark circles were smudged below his mist-grey eyes, but otherwise he looked himself.

Sleek and dark as the ship that he commanded.

Yavanna's mercy.

"Brannie!?" With the prowling grace that ever sat easy on his skin, Mir stalked down the narrow, jouncing gangway; stopped so close she could smell the scent of spice and sea; could see the deep breaths of his chest she had come recognize were tension held in check.

Was he nervous? As she? The hand adorned with ink-blue waves reached out to touch a loose swaying tendril of her hair as if she were a siren about to disappear.  "May I? Come aboard?" she breathed over the cloud of butterflies dancing in her chest. Even after this year, a half dozen visits clustered in spring and fall, each reunion felt new as the first—hesitant, unsteady---and she as skittish as a girl at her first Midsummer dance, waiting for the starfired magic to come down.

"Oh, lass." A rush of emotion played across Mir's face like a breaking wave and then a smile as wide as Manwe's air sky shone out. "How could you ever doubt it?"  All at once she was lifted up and off her feet. "Carn you have the wheel!" Mir ordered as he bounded back up the plank and past his grinning crew.

"Yer welcome, captain," the first mate grumbled half-heartedly and Branwyn turned her head back to yell an apology, but Carn was already moving, shouting orders to the men. Blessed Lady. This dance, this unorthodox courtship was now almost routine for them. The men were already swarming the mid-deck, bringing down the stays and scurrying up the rigging, readying for the heavy work of furling the square mainsails. Mir ignored them all. He swept them past their bemused audience, made straight for the quarterdeck where Branwyn's skirts swished against the wooden panels of the passage, her shoulders brushed at drops of sea salt and wet.

"Mir put me down!" she laughed, almost giddy to be in his arms again. The leather of his baldric was rough through the thin cotton of her dress, his hands so warm they almost burned.

"As my lady commands!"

The cabin door was banged open so abruptly it bashed against its stop. Tinker, the everyday denizen of Mir's bunk, meowed and leapt in protest. "Out of the way Tink!" Mir ordered, and the grey tabby sought the safest perch---the desk, this time piled high with dark blue log books, its inkwell secured to the top. Branwyn had no chance to peruse the new and intriguing contents, she landed down on her back, softly, dead center of the tidy blankets, and heaved a sigh of longing as she welcomed Mir's warmth and weight. Eager hands wound into the lose ebony strands that framed his handsome face.

No braids or beads or dolphin this time but she had not the focus to wonder why. "You're here."

"I am."

He nestled closer. She felt his surrender, felt the focus, the attention on Minuramar fall away and let him melt a first gentle kiss of re-acquaintance onto her lips. Once. Twice. Then he was pulling back; the great grey eyes with their blue black lashes devouring every inch of her face as if committing it to memory again. "Branwyn, meleth. By Ossë's sacred music, every day since we last met has seemed like half an Age."

Oh but he was not playing fair. To set the fire flaring up again and then to pull away. "Sixty-three days," she noted precisely, careful not to chide. Each one was crossed off in chalk upon lintel of her little cottage, would have continued on the appointed plan. Why now? Why so early? Surely this un-looked for visit came after Minuramar had broken off some arduous hunt: Mir felt more wiry, seemed more weatherbeaten. His eyes were shadowed by heavy smudges of fatigue.  His face looked older, sterner beneath the smile.

She raised a hand to caress a new surprise- a beard that had begun to fill in the hollows of his cheeks.  "Are you quite sure you are the same pirate that has carried me off before?  I wouldn't want to be thought free with every devastatingly handsome man who scoops me up."

Mir chuckled and ruefully shook his head. "You have caught me out fair wench! Twas a fight to finish for he was canny bastard, but I murdered the rogue and threw him overboard."

She grimaced at his truly ridiculous, vicious scowl. "Pity. I was rather fond of him. Let me see if you truly taste as well."

It was the right thing to say. Mir made a low growl of longing and dipped his head, devouring her mouth with an almost searing kiss. Blessed Lady. Tendrils of need flew to her fingertips, her heart thudded with a different tide and there was a melting in her core.  Just as their first. That hesitant, awkward press so many months ago had set a spark of wonder flaring—lightening and moonstruck--and each time after it was the same: she was a firefly, the night-shining foam, a phoenix; wreathed in light but whole. He consumed her and she him.

She never wished for it to end.

"Mir, how long…?" do we have…she began to ask, trying to reach her practical self again, but already the ridiculously elegant, long fingers were unlacing her bodice top, seeking the milk white skin below the tan. Hot fire spilled across her breast and she gasped, dizzy with it, unable to decide if he sought to still the query poised on her lips or truly could not wait to pull forth the tiny mewling sounds of need? Or both.

Both.  

Thoughts of time, and distance, and cool nights alone and sorrowing flew off, like the great cranes at summer's end. His fingers were a cinder coal, teasing, torturing; mapping every inch of her until liquid warmth replaced the jitter of the need, made a haze without sharp edges or shadows. She had been a little chilled in the breeze, in dampened lap and skirts, but it mattered not.

Fire. Ice. Today. Tomorrow. All of it slid together for he was there.

Later, after the sea's rocking lulled them to sweet slumber and before the pink light of coming dawn bled morn through the porthole, as he sometimes did, Mir awoke, shaking and crying, gasping out of green water.

"Mir! Mir! You are fine. And here. Come back to me," she crooned, running gentling hands down the corded muscle of his back, holding him closer until the heavy shudders passed.  

When they did, he raised a shaking hand to wipe the cold sweat from his brow. "The same..?"

 He blinked the vision out of eyes narrowed and almost all of black, the grey just the merest sliver of silver stream. ""Aye.  A great boiling wave was flecked with foam. It climbed over the green fields, up and up to the mountain top. Greenlit this time, not dark.

Bless Lorien. "Then fortune smiles," she said for sailors were a superstitious lot, anxious to hold the good. She reached unfailingly in the half light for the flask of water that always stood tilted against a pile of books, passed it to his still shaky hands.

He drank like a drowning man. "If it only it felt like so. I try to think that green is good, but green can be an angry sea."

It hurt to see him doubt. "Could speaking of it not rob it of it any agency?"

He frowned, slowly stopping up the flask.  "You may be right. Perchance… "  And for a moment Branwyn thought he might say more but then she saw him put the thought away; still his face to calm like a drawer being closed.  No answer then.. 

Instead he hugged her hard, drew her back down to the bunk and spooned up behind, heaving a small sigh. Minuramar rocked, swayed in the southern wind, and both listened for a time, soothed by the quiet sussuration of rope on rail and mast, but questions bubbled still.

"How long do we have?"  Her voice, she proudly noted, was a steady as it could be.

She turned to catch the sunlight throwing greying shadows across the familiar planes of his striking face. Now it was still and calm.  Blank sail. Fresh canvas.  Of course she would not plead; she was too proud for that but.... 

Each time the visits flew on eagle's wings.

When she did look away, a finger smoothed the frown line that gathered between her chestnut brows. He sighed, sorrowfully. "A week at most."

"Oh" So little. His kiss was gentle once again but the smile was a little wan. "And after?"

"After harvest time. When the winds begin to change…"

So far? For a few moments she had recklessly allowed herself to think they would see each other soon again, but then Branwen shoved it hard away. She had promised herself to not be that kind of woman. She was no child. No teenage lovelorn lass. She had came to him willingly; at first for the excitement in her dreary humdrum world, for the stories of flying battles and strange curious shores. And the sweet stolen kisses.  Later she came because her heart simply flipped at the thought of him; and if it wondered through this year who he really was, well she, Branwyn the barmaid, was smart enough not to ask.

Ships bring goods and gossip. Rumors ran wilder than a summer storm each time Minuramar came to port. He was a Black Númenórean seeking to snatch unwary souls for Umbar and its shadowlands. He was a smuggler. A trader. A brigand. A Prince. She'd scoffed at that. Mir was no dashingly elegant Prince Adrahil and there was no swan upon the prow. Nor could it be his famously rakehell of a little brother.  It was well known that Adrahil was the soul of patience with that dandy-the spoiled baby of the family who drank like a fish and vanished for months at a time from Belfalas shores; gambling away his fortune in Minas Tirith's least desirous gaming dens. That was not this man.

Once she'd made a mistaken turn below, saw swords brightly keen, oiled and ready next to the grappling hooks and had shivered thinking of the mystery ship, the hunter said to the harry Corsairs at every turn. Please let that not be him.  Twas danger at each cast--risk with little reward and only the promise of another fight. 

Let that not be him, let him come home from the sea. 

But that was a foolish hope.   Branwyn had spied the longing, the twitching unsettledness in every limb the first weeks of their meeting. Minuramar was too long on shore. Mir would stand face to the wind that blew from the sea wherever that he stood, eyes to the white gulls crying overhead. And Wordan, wrapped in a long grey cloak against the wet, one who had plied the Bay for five decades on the Lord of Anfalas' swiftest ship, would watch and mournfully shake his grizzled head.

"Be steady lass. Tis the Unquiet of Ulmo that drives him. Blessed are they that hear the Ulurmuri call, but ever after they will follow the white gulls crying and the bright foam flying. The music of the deep sounds within his heart."

Valar that was true.  And she knew not how to keep him safe. "Where were you this time?"

"Everywhere. Nowhere. Destinations of delight."

All his sailing stories were stripped of names, like branches without leaves. East. South. Far as we could go. Still they entranced her. "You should see it Brannie," he would say. "I can stand on her high prow and almost catch the Gates of Morning. At night the sky is a dark vault that robes us like a mantle; ink-black and studded with a myriad white and sparkling jewels. Ithil will shine above, his light streams down to kiss the churning sea and set endless swirls of shimmering green and blue dancing on the waves. And low in the sky, the brightest star of all the dawn will lead us on: bound to Vingilot who sails the heavens round."  This time, as always, his arms were strong about her heart but he did not quite see her as he spoke.  Starfire was in his eyes. "One day, when the thrice be-damned dogs drop off their hunt I will take you out onto the Bay, my love. The glory of it never leaves. The fall and rise and raging wild. The gull's cry and the wind on the waves, slicing like a whetted knife. In it sometimes I think I hear just an echo of Ulmo's voice."

Branwyn bit her lip. The tempest of words had drifted down, thrilled her but also made her ache. "Wordan says our ships are guarded and that other hands than ours guide them on."

"Perhaps."

Another answer without answering.  They nestled together once again, chest to chest; and for a while she drew lazy circles across the perfect fineness of his hip.

It did not help. Once again, she did what she had promised herself she would not. "Can you not…?"

The words were stopped by a finger's tip. "Meleth. Hûn nín." A strong hand reached up to hold the wood above their heads. "She is my life. And my first love."

And Branwyn would always be second. "She is jealous lady, your ship, to lead you always back to this vagrant gypsy life."

His smile tickled against her neck. "If it is any consolation you are not the only female exasperated with my wandering."

He was always one to tease. "A dog?"

"Nay. My mother. She hates it. A woman of earth, of roots and shoots and all green and growing things. Wise and very beautiful. But not so beautiful as you." A flight of kisses swirled lazily across her skin. "Branwyn. My lady. Your eyes could steal a sailor from the sea."

Could. For another man perhaps but never Mir.  He shivered a little then and sat, setting the blanket falling askew as he reached to a little drawer set in the bunk. A small bag of green-gold silk came out and from it, a flash of argent so bright it almost hurt.

"You have me so dazzled I almost forgot your gift," he murmured, letting the necklet fall gently down, spreading his arms to lay it at her throat.  "It is Elvish work. From Lórinand."

"Ohhh, Mir." It was a locket. Chased with the finest filigree and hung on flashing braids of silver set, like his, with beads and creatures of the sea. Inside his likeness was painted perfectly—proud and strong and smiling, because of course he could not keep a somber face through hours of sitting still.

Foolish tears threatened to tumble down. She had asked him for an image-to prove in the long watches of the night that he was real.

"Thank you. Thank you so…" She kissed his cheeks and eyes and lips, touched and thrilled, but then all at once her heart began to chill.

Why now?  Why a piece so very fine?  Surely even Princess Fana in Dol Amroth's ancient palace had nothing so very perfect. Surely it cost half a hoard. Surely…it was…

Goodbye.

She breathed through the sudden shards of pain but he read her heart as he always did; quickly set a hand to cup her cheek.

His eyes were dark. Storm tossed, but filled with only her.  "Brannie. Nay. Do not think so." He softly brushed a thumb against the sparkle on her lashes. "I cannot promise when, but I promise I will return.  I will.  For if my heart has a home at any other port it is here within your arms. My love for you is boundless as the sea."

But she was first.

Branwyn bent her head. The men said 'A ship was safe at harbour but that was not what ships are for'. She had known this. Forever. And he had always told the truth.

And she had promised no regrets.

Greedily she let her soft lips seek his-demand the fire flare up again and he groaned; winding his fingers into hers, pulling her down across his chest to let his hands and arms and need show much more than he could say.

It was enough. Despite the blazing pink of dawn, soon all she could see were shining pools of grey.

Chapter Text

When Imrahil sought out his nephew just after the next day's dawn he was utterly certain he knew where Faramir would be.

On a morning hugged by mist, with the wind singing in the sheets and the white sails shaking, the prince's heart tugged toward the docks and the sea's grey face, but he forced himself to turn away.

At the steps to the lower shore, he strode quickly to Dol Amroth's forward wall, for Faramir had always loved Dol Amroth's archive. Less grand than Minas Tirith's monolith of quiet stone, the quiet curved room tucked into a lower story of Tirith Aear was all light and elegance, a space of high ceilings and seaward views. The shelves bulged with music sheets and poetry, scrolls of sea lore and shore remedy-and the log books of Dol Amroth's storied fleet.

The prince slipped into the gleaming, tidy space and nodded to the archivist; padded forward softly, scanning the soaring stacks until he paused, smiling at what he found.

He had been right. Faramir was there. Not draped, limpet-like, across the deep armchairs as in his memory, but standing upright: a more purposeful stance with volume in hand and dark brows furrowed in concentration. The gangly teen of long ago was gone; replaced by a man in his prime who had weathered far too many slings and arrows of late.

Imrahil eyed his quarry carefully. The constant lines of shadowed strain that had stalked his nephew's handsome face months before looked gentler, softened by a much needed extended rest. And another thing he remarked. A thin silver band of promise, Gondor's ancient tradition for the betrothed, glinted on the finger where soon a wedding band would be.

More than any other single thing since the King had come into his crown, this made Imrahil's heart swell with hope.

"Éomer tells me Éowyn practically accosts the messenger each time he arrives so much does she want news," he announced, amused and gratified when a dark head snapped up.

"She does?"

A smile like sunrise crested on Faramir's face and Imrahil could not help but grin.

Oh, he remembered well those days when just to hear a new beloved's name set a pounding in the heart. For him it had been many, many moons ago; for his nephew it was scarce the span of a season. The thrill would not wane until the bride and groom were set hand in hand, but that was to be almost a whole year yet.

He crossed the small space between them and offered out his hand, pulled the bashfully blushing younger man into a swift, sure hug. "Yes indeed. Although her brother also mentions she has some project that involves an archive?" A curious brow raised up and Imrahil pulled back to peruse a tottering stack of scrolls. "Your influence perhaps?"

A quirk tugged fleetingly at the corners of Faramir's mouth. "Perhaps. But you shall have to be patient, Uncle. Wait and see what comes when we fulfill Rohan's Bride Price."

But that was ten long months away! Imrahil rubbed thoughtfully at his chin. They were so much alike Faramir and Éowyn: duty driven, but also unconventional; bright and imaginative and quite ready to break the rules for the greater good. Not a team to underestimate, and thus the part of him that simply had to know exactly what was happening with all his boisterous brood itched to enquire more.

What were the two lovebirds concocting? From the glint in the young man's eyes he had definitely hit the mark (and Éomer should be warned), but a wise sailor knew when to try a different tack.

Best let it lie until another sortie could be essayed.

"I see you have something to keep you occupied," he said, gesturing toward a pale blue leather notebook. "Is this to do with your correspondence of this morn?"

"Yes," admitted Faramir, looking entirely relieved to be let off the hook. "I pine less if I have a project."

Imrahil nodded sympathetically. It was a trait all of them shared. He pushed aside the remains his nephew's first breakfast and mid-morning tea to sit at the working table and pour himself a small cup of kahva. The lad would have been up with the birds but he had gone to bed with them.

He took a bracing gulp. The strong brew and sweet pastry from the tray should help his faintly pounding in his head. "Ivriniel tells me you are chasing a mystery concerning our uncle and I must ask you about it myself. What is it? Why is the White City's library not enough that you must seek for yet more dust and history?"

Faramir sat himself and snagged a pastry of his own. "I am afraid I have exhausted all leads at home and there is more here. I seek the birthplace of a soldier—a man who served under Boromir and fell upon the Pelennor. Aragorn and I could find only the record of his enlistment, but no other details of his parentage." He paused long enough to take a deeper breath. "I have reason to believe he might have been our kin."

"Our kin?!" Imrahil sat straight up, blinking in surprise. "You mean a near relative? A cousin of some sort?"

"Of a sort, yes." Faramir nodded slowly. "I spoke first to Aunt Rini. She set me straight that he could not have been a child of hers or Mother's. And certainly not yours."

"Absolutely!" Imrahil set down his cup, glowering at the thought. "By Tulkas, I would never dishonour a woman so; beget a child and leave it unacknowledged. That may happen in other courts, but never here!" He and Faramir exchanged a look. Minas Tirith and the rest of Gondor under Denethor's stiff formality might have pretended no child was ever born out of wedlock, but not the line of Imrazôr. "My grandfather's brother, your great-granduncle Amras, sired one son before he married. There was no great shame in it."

"But it has not been common in our family?"

"No, not common at all," agreed Imrahil. "I have long thought that it is a part of our Silvan blood. An inheritance from Mithrellas. They say the Eldar choose when to bring an elfling into the world. That none is born that is not wanted. Perhaps it is somewhat the same for us. For five hundred years there have been three sons every generation back to the rule of Galahil, but only been a handful of byblows." He shrugged. "Elphir has none. And Erchirion, however much he tries."

Faramir's mouth quirked. His middle cousin's reputation as a dashing sea captain, coupled with a wicked sense of humour, made many a lady swoon. "I think that that could be true. For all the years of Boromir's wandering, none has ever made a claim." His gaze grew somber. "And though I suspect Father would have sent a woman away, quietly provided for but hidden, I do not believe he would have had the heart to keep the knowledge of it from my brother. Boromir adored children. Always. Even if in these last few years his heart had darkened so."

"We would all find it a solace were there a piece of him to love," said Imrahil sorrowfully, giving the younger man's shoulder a gentle squeeze. "But I fear we are a people not waxing like the Rohirrirm. Yavanna grant that you and your lady remedy that soon."

That happy thought succeeded in chasing the sudden cloud away. "It seems a very long way off," Faramir murmured gently, a smile gracing his lips again, but then he shook himself. "Aunt Rini says the man could be Aglamir."

Aglamir? His long dead, swashbuckling uncle? Imrahil's brows flew up in surprise. "It seems most unlikely. Grandfather would never have suffered either of his sons to abandon a bastard to their fate."

"But if they hadn't known?"

"Well, it is possible, I suppose, but why then would any woman hesitate to come forward to make a claim? Especially once he passed. It was common knowledge that Amras's eldest followed his father into the fleet; became first mate on a fine, tight ship." Imrahil shrugged. "What do you know of him?"

Faramir pushed aside the light blue book and picked up a smaller one, flipping to a page covered in his tiny, efficient scrawl. "He was a dozen years older than I, born in 2970. A sergeant with the Rangers and then the Guard. A great tracker and excellent soldier who refused all advancement-though he would have been made an officer for his bravery. He claimed his father was a sailor whom I had assumed to be a rating or a mate, but now I wonder. He wore his bastardy as a badge of honour."

"And resented those of noble birth?" Imrahil nodded, for that fit. A lad who grew up unacknowledged could well chafe at such treatment. "And his looks?"

"Nothing like you or I. The tawny hair of Langstrand. A bear of a man with a largish nose and light grey eyes."

"That could be half of Gondor."

Faramir chuckled ruefully. "All too true. He was a private man. Said little of himself, but he had the true Dream of the Wave. A great green wall climbing over the land…"

"and the peak of Meneltarma in gathering darkness." Imrahil finished instantly, in shock, for that changed everything. "Only the children of the first Prince of Dol Amroth dream so!"

"Exactly." Faramir ran a hand through his hair."I confess at first I was stunned. I had never known anyone but our house taken so. And then this month I learned he has a son."

And that put another entirely different light on the situation. Imrahil felt a first flickering of excitement. "Did you tell him of the Faithful?"

Faramir shook his head. "I never got the chance. It was during the long, hard lead-up to the War. I was new to my commission and Geraint was not one for words. I did have the impression that his mother suffered from this man's neglect and that made him fiercely independent and no little resentful of the sea that took his father from him."

"Well, that would be most unlikely in my uncle's son. He lived at the devotion of the winds and waves." Imrahil ran a puzzled finger across his lip. "Aglamir died young safely in his bed, though not for a lack of effort by every Corsair between Umbar and Andrast."

"Corsairs?" Faramir cocked a brow.

"Yes. He had the true sea-longing of the West and Grandfather turned it to Dol Amroth's benefit. It was given out that Aglamir was a sot, a spoiled baby who spent every minute in selfish pursuit. A helpful cover for his extended absences. He appeared in Minas Tirith just enough to give substance to the lie. In the spring and summer Aglamir hunted the Enemy relentlessly, berthing Minuramar past Edhelhond in Belfalas' most dangerous rocky coves, but come fall, he would be home; bearing trinkets and treats, and sporting a rakish beard and yet another new expensive coat." Imrahil chuckled, plucking at his own elegant tunic. "I rather think I got my style from him."

"Another way he lives on!" Faramir grinned before looking thoughtful once again. "If he had had a sweetheart in port, where might it have been? We know Geraint signed up in Cobas Haven."

"But not his birthplace. That makes it rather harder," reminded Imrahil.

"Yes. He certainly had the build of the fishermen of Langstrand's shore, but I am afraid with both Toric and Damrod gone, there is no other who knew him well. I did ask Captain Eldacar," Faramir added. "He remembered Geraint saying once that he grew up in a bar and carried pints before he could hardly walk."

Sadly that anecdote brought little help. Checking every bar frequented by his uncle in Belfalas Bay would be a proverbial search for a needle in a haystack. Imrahil explained, "Aglamir did his level best to live up to his cover. He was into and out of every tavern in the South. And once told me that what he loved best, next to being on the sea, was finding an out of way spot to sit with a jar and his back to the wall."

"Another feature you share with him!"

"In my salad days, yes!"

Both men smiled. It seemed there many traits passed down the Dol Amroth family line besides fine hair and narrow brows. And a tendency to Dream.

Faramir stood and stretched, pulled another volume from the pile, frowning thoughtfully. "One thing I do not understand. I have searched the records and Minuramar's old logs. There is no note of them landing anywhere near Langstrand. And in mid-year of Geraint's birth the records simply end."

"Because they were destroyed when Father ordered them to burn the ship," Imrahil explained. "You need the unofficial-official logs," he added, and his nephew looked entirely perplexed.

"Unofficial?"

Imrahil motioned Faramir to speak softer in the circumstance. "I know where those are kept, but it is never advertised."

He arose and lead the younger man unerringly through the great maze of mahogany stacks, past ancient pillars carved with vines and gull wings and symbols of Edhellhond to a small anteroom graced with tables and large paintings of Belfalas' rocky shore. From his robe he pulled a ring and a small silver key. It slid with ease into a hole that looked rather like a shadow in a rock and there was a quiet snick.

Faramir's eyes grew wide. Behind the painting was a hidden room, filled with cases of dark blue leather logbooks and flat trays of charts and maps.

Imrahil beckoned him inside and pulled shut the door, lit a small oil lamp for the secret room had no windows or other source of light. "I trust Gondor's Steward to keep this secret safe. Every prince back to Amroth himself has diaries or logbooks here. The light blue logs are to conceal their course if boarded. These darker blue give the fleet's true movements." He ran a finger along a row of spines. The ships' names were stamped in silver Tengwar. Palarran. Eämbar. His own Seastar-Elinaear and Erchirion's Windhunter. From a higher row he pulled: Minuramar.

"Here," he said excitedly, opening the weathered volume. T.A. 2970 was scribed in a cramped, slanting script that owed more to hurried stealth than form. He flipped pages as Faramir looked on with a furrowed brow. "Winter and spring they were in to half a dozen ports."

"Ivriniel said Aglamir died late summer," said Faramir. "If he knew not of any child by that time, surely visits in the spring would be more relevant."

Imrahil nodded. "Agreed, and if it were a sweetheart, he might have been there more than once." He squinted at the log for Gwirith and Lothron. "Two trips to Anfalas town, one to Haronen and two to Lofnui. Let us consult the chart."

He pulled Faramir by the elbow over to one of the open tables. On it was a large engraved sheet made of solid bronze: a perfect replica of Belfalas Bay with indents for sea channels and pitted oblongs for sandy shoals.

"Why, this is beautiful!" exclaimed the his nephew, setting his palms flat on either side and bending to admire the intricate detail. It was elegant but accurate to the finest feature. Even to the far reaches of Umbar and Harawaith.

"We do try," smiled Imrahil with pride, pointing to the coast of Harondor. "See here, Haronen is the only deeper inlet along that whole east coast line. There are few places there to hole up if chased by Umbari ships. I cannot imagine Uncle would have lingered there willingly." The Prince pulled thoughtfully at his lip. Anfalas had a thriving fishing fleet but Lofnui saw little commerce in these latter days. "Minuramar was not small. Anfalas could take her and Lofnui also, though Anfalas has the deeper bay. Either would fit with what we know."

"Yes, but both are many days away." Faramir looked frustrated for neither option was easily investigated. "I have promised Aragorn to be back in the City for fall's first council session."

"When Éomer-King is in town? No other reason?" Imrahil teased, slipping the logbook back into its allotted slot.

"Yes." Faramir blushed briefly and the Prince smiled to himself. More good news. There was clearly a good chance his lady would be visiting.

"Let us start with what can be achieved."

He shuttered the lamp, letting the room hide in gloom again, and ushered his nephew before him and locked the painted door. "Where does Geraint's widow live? Not Minas Tirith or you would have spoken to her ere now."

"When the city was evacuated she went home to her people's village on this shore. Fornoth it was called."

"Excellent." Imrahil rubbed his hands together at their first stroke of better luck. "I promised to take you to visit your mother's Dower lands. Fornoth is on the way!"

~~~000~~~

Warm sun and wind chased them down the coastal road. Faramir's grey Mithros and Imrahil's own roan champed at their bits, in high spirits and eager to have their heads, but the Prince kept them to an easy pace.

It was the first time in many years the new Steward had toured Dol Amroth's countryside and Faramir looked about with keen interest: there was industry around the smallholdings and neat farms, folk bustling everywhere, bringing in the day's catch or harvesting rye and barley, and the light green grapes Cobas was most famous for. Soon it would be time for winter planting. Imrahil knew he was thinking of Emyn Arnen and what might be suitable to harvest there.

Vegetables and herbs and healing plants, of course, but Ithilien's rocky soil might just support some salt-shy but dry-loving vines. He rather thought he would enjoy inviting the White Lady to raid his best vineyard for a different type of exotic transplant.

After an hour's steady ride they pulled into Fornoth's central square and stopped at the village square; were directed to the seaward shore. A stone cottage there stood back from the grassy dunes, its door freshly whitewashed and bright curtains fluttering above windowboxes bulging with seaholly and pink thrift.

Imrahil left their small retinue of guards to enjoy the sun, dismounted and Faramir followed him up the path. When he knocked on the door it opened slowly. A woman in apron and rolled up damp sleeves stood there, mouth open, blue eyes wide in a pretty, heart-shaped face. Her long hair, pinned and coiled behind her head, was the red mahogany, almost Silvan, colour that sometimes came out around the bay.

Imrahil gave a brief bow of greeting. "Good day, mistress. Is it possible that we might come in?"

His words went unanswered. The lady was pale and clearly shocked, undoubtedly recognized who they were—Belfalas folk well knew their lord, and Faramir and his Lady were famous from one end of Gondor to the other. It was not in her experience to be visited by two Princes on a windy washing day.

"Don't just stand there, Caerlin. The Prince is a body like any other. Needs a seat and cup of tea after a windy ride."

A twinkling, sprightly older woman with snow white hair joined her daughter at the door. The resemblance was uncanny—the same face and lovely cornflower eyes sparkled as the door was pulled wide and a polite curtsey was quickly bobbed. "My Lords, I am Liswel. Please make yourself welcome to our home."

Imrahil inclined his head in thanks. Faramir followed, and they both ducked beneath the low lintel into a sparse but perfectly neat space. A pair of armchairs rested plump and cosy beside the fire. Rows of fragrant herbs hung from the smoke stained rafters A well scrubbed table held produce and ingredients for an evening pie. .

"It's a lovely home you have," offered Imrahil, settling himself where directed in the bigger of the best chairs. Faramir gingerly took a stool beside, folding his arms close and perching so low that Imrahil had to hastily hide a laugh. Tall and thin, long in leg and body, his kinsman looked like a gangly grasshopper in the tiny sitting room.

"Thank you, my Lord." Liswel busied herself with swinging the kettle on its hook back across the fire and poking the coals awake to bring it on. She was smiling, humming a tune to herself- the sort who hummed or sang throughout the work day, and Imrahil took an instant liking to her. No doubt the news of her Prince's visit would trump any other at the village well, but for the moment their presence was treated with something approaching ease. By the time the tea was ready and a tray of truly wonderful lemon bars was offered, the daughter of the house had begun to look a little more at ease. Caerlin sat on a hard backed chair beside a waiting loom while her mother took the armchair Faramir had politely left.

When both women had finished their steaming cups, and Liswel had taken up her knitting bag, Faramir, by previous agreement, cleared his throat, brushed a few stray shortbread crumbs off his lap, and carefully caught the widow's curious gaze. "You might must be wondering why we are here?"

"Well, yes.. I mean, no." Caerlin's cheeks blushed bright pink. "T'is not necessary to have a reason, my Lord Steward. We are honoured by your visit, but this is…"

"Unexpected?" Faramir noted gently, cocking his head and settling his long fingers in his lap. "I received your very kind thank you letter."

The one after hearing about her husband's death. Caerlin looked out the window to the sea. Her view had changed, along with the shape of her world. She sighed before she turned back. "We were so very grateful, my Lord, for your gift. Geraint's pension goes not so far some months."

Not so far and not long enough. That was something Imrahil knew the King and his Steward wished to rectify in council. Faramir's gift of mirin to the widows of the men under his command—from his own family's purse—was a start, but all those who fought on the Pelennor should be provided for.

Especially the families left behind. He had done something similar himself, but the need was always more.

"It was the least that I could do to honour your husband's sacrifice."

The heartfelt words met with a snort from the direction of the armchair. Liswel's busy fingers stilled. "Begging your pardon, my Lord. Fiddlesticks. Welcome but not expected. I know your Lord Father, Eru rest his soul, would have had far mightier concerns to mind. It helped my Caerlin move back home and put aside for schooling for the boy."

The grandson. Imrahil leaned forward, eager to get to the topic of their hunt. "Where is the lad? Is he home this day?"

"Down by the jetty," answered his mother. "I had thought he might miss Minas Tirith's grand thoroughfares for there there is so much more to do, but he loves the Bay."

The proud Grandmother beamed. "He's doing just as you and your brother 'Lin. Mucking about with weed and sand and shells. Catching minnows and crawdads. T'is new to him and he has the long shore to freely roam."

"Just as I, and my sisters, and children did," added Imrahil, reminiscing.

"And I and my elder brother."

Faramir's words slipped out on instinct before considering their import, but the affect was immediate. He tried to hide the swift arrow of sudden pain in the half-full tea cup but their hostess knew it well.

Grief was swift and all too accurate. And could not be halted however much one wished.

"We are so sorry for your loss, my lord," offered Caerlin shyly, her eyes dark with sympathy. "Geraint's letters were ever so full of respect for your Lord Brother. He loved serving at Osgiliath. Was proud to know so fine a man."

"Thank you." Faramir bit his lip and nodded once, but then, as he had done so many times in those months, Imrahil watched him put memory firmly away. "We are here chasing an unusual puzzle, mistress. About your husband's birth."

Caerlin's brows shot up. "Geraint's?"

"Yes," answered Imrahil warily, not wanting to distress her. They could not bring her man back but at least they would help the boy. "Do you have any information about who his father was or could have been? We know the man did not make claim for him, but something relevant has come to light."

Caerlin shared a quick glance with her mother. The old lady huffed and shook her head, making her derision plain. "A son of old Lord Langstrand's eldest we've always thought. A famous skirt chaser he was- the way that cats will chase after mice. He would play with them, do his damage and then turn tail, no never mind for the rest."

That much was sadly true. Imrahil remembered him. The man's reputation had been appalling. A coward who met an ignominious end by falling drunkenly from his horse. "Why should it matter now?" asked Caerlin looking puzzledly to them both.

Imrahil took a steadying breath. "Because we have reason to believe his father might have been my kin."

Thank Nienna Faramir was still in possession of his archer's reflexes. He leapt up to catch the woman's cup before it hit the floor.

"Truly?" Caerlin looked pale as the apron on her lap.

"Truly."

"Your kin?"

"My uncle."

Liswel let out a long low whistle as Faramir did his best to explain. "I served for a time with Geraint as you know, and have always wondered at some odd similarities. And with a son to think about, I thought it even more important to be sure." He looked between the two startled women. "What knowledge of his father have you for certain?"

It was the grandmother who answered first. "Geraint said his ma'am didn't really know. Branwyn, that is, and I've never heard her speak of it. She's always been a strong one, unashamed to raise a bastard."

"A sailor," added Caerlin quietly. "One who loved the sea more than her, though I will say I thought that sounded a little like a tale. What makes you think they could have been related?"

"His dreams."

"Of Westernesse?"

They knew! It was no mistake! Imrahil set suddenly trembling hands upon his knees. "The dream is unique to our family. A true dream. A memory of the destruction of Númenor, of a great green wave rising up to swallow the land and sweep everything before it. I have it. And my late sister Finduilas. And Faramir through her."

Caerlin's eyes grew round with shock. She was holding her arms about herself, fiercely; as if trying to hold on to a sense of self. "Gerwin has it, too. I've called them both back many times. From the choking and the dread."

"That is exactly how it comes to me," said Faramir softly, and Imrahil nodded.

"We know Geraint could not have gained it from any of my other family. But my long parted uncle Aglamir, the youngest of my father's siblings, he had the Dream. It could have come from him."

As this startling admission the old woman shook herself. "Bless me. What am I thinking? We have a picture of him! A miniature in a locket." Liswel's pale eyes were bright, turning from Caerlin to Imrahil and back again. "Branwyn gave it to Geraint. T'is said to be a gift from him."

A painting!? Blessed Ulmo then they could really see! Imrahil was about to speak but Faramir excitedly cut him off. "I remember him wearing it! An oval on a braided chain. It would be a miracle to be yet intact after so many years of wet patrols. It is here?"

Caerlin nodded quickly. "It came home with his sword and scabbard." She rose and went to a far box bed, pulling out a drawer and rummaging inside. "There was writing, runes on one side and the other held the painting. I don't know what it said."

"Have you seen the likeness?" asked Imrahil curiously whilst blankets and spare trews were pushed aside.

Caerlin stilled. "I couldn't bring myself to open it."

"I did. Once." Liswell tutted at her startled daughter. "Now don't be offended, lovey. I showed Gerwin. Of course the boy is curious about his father's family." She turned to the Prince. "The paint was worn but you could see plain as day Geraint was all Branwyn. Tawny. Anfalas born."

About the Bay, 'Anfalas born' meant tall and ruddy; stalwart like the famous buff stone sentinels that graced the promonitory's farther shore. Edain. Men of the Twilight, who mingled little with the Númenóreans who settled the deep sea ports.

"But the man in the locket had black hair like you, my lord," Liswel went on. "T'were faded, but he had grey eyes. And the inside is covered in the older runes."

Tengwar. And silver. A costly piece obviously not bought some nameless mate.

As Faramir and Imrahil exchanged a look, there came a quiet cry of dismay from the sleeping alcove. The muted blues and greens of a shawl were quickly pushed aside and a battered metal box emerged.

"It is not here! It's gone!"

Caerlin's face was stricken but her mother swiftly rose, reached out a gnarled warm hand to a trembling wrist. "Child." Liswel's sigh was tender and sad at once. "Do you not remember? You could not bear to look on it. You asked me to send it away."

"Where?!"

"To Branwyn. For it was hers afore."

Caerlin took a shuddering breath. "I had forgotten."

"Of course. Never you mind." Liswel hummed consolingly. "These last months have been so fraught t'is a wonder any of us can dress or speak, so much have we seen. I'll just ask the boy to get her shall I?"

"She is here?" blurted Faramir.

"Yes, my Lord. Branwyn has a dozen years on me and she has the rheumatism. Far easier to help her here, though she is an independent sort. She has her own cottage down the beach."

The old woman strode to the door and threw it wide, let fly a piercing whistle that was entirely still formidable. "Gerwin! Gerwin! To home!"

Faramir and Imrahil rose and joined Liswel at her side. And Caerlin. Along the dark, damp line of tide, a thin lad in rolled up trews straightened and gave a wave.

The boy's mother stood and sighed, hand to brow, shielding from the westering sun. "The Sea," she muttered. "It's all he wants, that boy. Exactly the opposite of his da. Geraint took to soldiering for he said the sea had stolen his mother's happiness, would not hear of Gerwin playing on the river but the boy badgered and cajoled. Would sneak down any chance he got to Harlond to see the boats at the riverbank. Geraint thrashed him for it once when he wasn't where he was supposed to be."

Hearken still unsated to the voices of the Sea, and yet know not for what they listen. Another trait that ran down through the lines of Westernesse.

Imrahil waited with baited breath and, at long last, the running figure of sun-kissed, pale skin and fine raven hair pulled up at his mother's elbow. "Ma, what is it?"

"Manners Ger," murmured Caerlin swiftly. "Will you welcome Prince Imrahil and the Lord Steward?"

"My lords!"

The boy's bow was swift and perfectly correct. He straightened up, shoving his wind-tangled hair off his brow, blinking into the strong sun, and then they saw.

Mist grey eyes and narrow brow.

Blue-black lashes thick as a jungle cat's.

For Imrahil time swam away. He smelled tar and spice and sweet apricot petals fluttering in the wind. Tattooed fingers gripped a salt-skimmed halyard and a fair, tan face raised to the seaward wind.

Aglamir's edaid. Through and through.

It fell to Faramir to speak.

"Master Gerwin, if you would be so kind. We would ask you to give us help."

"Anything my lords!"

"Could you take us to your grandmother's home? We would like to see her locket."

"We would." Imrahil nodded, voice rough with swelling wonder. He longed to reach out and hug the boy, feel his warm blithe energy but there would be time. Years and decades to know him well and the older man did wish to startle him.

"We should be very grateful for you to make us an introduction. We have a question for your Gran although I do believe we have our answer."

"Answer, sir?"

The light grey gaze was bright. "About who your granddad was."

"Grandad?" Now the boy was fairly bouncing on his bare, sandy feet. "Oh, Gran has ever so much to tell! About Carn and Ror. And Minuramar! And storms and pirates, and Uinen and Ossë. I asked her just last week, for my new tutor asked me to make a family tree."

Imrahil held his breath. "What did she say?"

"That he was a pirate. Or a smuggler. Or even possibly a spy. And that his name was Mir….!"