(no subject)
The Lyric Table
Title: The Painted Butterfly
Fandom: Lord of the Rings
Characters: Faramir, Eowyn, Denethor/Finduilas, Boromir
Prompt: 32. I lock the door and lock my head, and dream of butterflies instead
Word Count: 580
Rating: G
Summary: Faramir cannot help but compare them.
Author's Notes: Not my characters. It just wouldn't be a proper Den/Fin ficathon without a reference to The Blue Cloak (TM).
There are times when I cannot properly remember the details of my mother’s face. Blonde hair I remember easily, and clever fingers that could turn a piece of cloth into anything. But the curve of her lips when she smiled or the shape of her eyes in repose are blurred to me, for a five year old child does not take note of these things. He never worries that it will be his last chance to do so until it is too late.
There are pictures of her: official portraits done by artists who barely knew her, and the drawings Boromir and I created as children with a great deal of love and a great dearth of skill. None of these catch her in flight, though. The woman in the pictures looks as flat and dead as a pinned butterfly, all delicacy and brittleness under her sweeping bright blue raiment. The mother I remember best was delicate, yes, but charming, capable of lighthearted whimsy and a certain stubborn strength when her city needed it of her. A young boy sees the motion of the wings, not the fraility of the creature itself.
Minas Tirith, I should say, was never her city. The White City was Father’s, and in later years, ours, but Mother was Dol Amroth’s. She came to my father’s city out of love, but it was Father she loved, not Minas Tirith. The love of a man might have taken my mother from her homeland, but I do not think it ever replaced her old home for a true new one. I do not quite understand just what it was that tied her so tightly to Dol Amroth, but sometimes, when the wind blows the smell of death away from me and the leaves rustle in the forest, I think I get a glimmer of the strength of her feeling when I rove through Ithilien.
The love that might take her away from Dol Amroth is easier for me to understand. My father does not reveal his affections to all and sundry, but he looks after his own. Even when it seems as if he does not want them, I think I know my father well enough to say he does care about his duties, his people, his family, and himself. It is simply that Father is very strict with himself about the relative importance of such cares, and my mother, a proud woman in her own right, did not like being relegated to third place in his heart, no matter how deserving the other two loves might be. She had risked all her affections upon him, and was not strong enough to take flight a second time.
The creature alighting before me, blown by the new breezes from the battlements, was no butterfly, but I found myself comparing them nonetheless. Blonde hair whipped in the winds, and the same blue cloak was clenched about her shoulders. The form was stronger, straighter, lacking my mother’s gentle curves, but equally shaken by Mordor’s shadow and equally determined to silently bare the burden of a broken heart. Duty, I decided, could be set aside for her. After all, was my strongest duty at the moment not to her? The king would return, and he might ease my other duties, but this one was mine alone. I heard the click of a lock as I shut the door behind me, leaving the White Rod to stand with her in the wind.
Title: The Painted Butterfly
Fandom: Lord of the Rings
Characters: Faramir, Eowyn, Denethor/Finduilas, Boromir
Prompt: 32. I lock the door and lock my head, and dream of butterflies instead
Word Count: 580
Rating: G
Summary: Faramir cannot help but compare them.
Author's Notes: Not my characters. It just wouldn't be a proper Den/Fin ficathon without a reference to The Blue Cloak (TM).
There are times when I cannot properly remember the details of my mother’s face. Blonde hair I remember easily, and clever fingers that could turn a piece of cloth into anything. But the curve of her lips when she smiled or the shape of her eyes in repose are blurred to me, for a five year old child does not take note of these things. He never worries that it will be his last chance to do so until it is too late.
There are pictures of her: official portraits done by artists who barely knew her, and the drawings Boromir and I created as children with a great deal of love and a great dearth of skill. None of these catch her in flight, though. The woman in the pictures looks as flat and dead as a pinned butterfly, all delicacy and brittleness under her sweeping bright blue raiment. The mother I remember best was delicate, yes, but charming, capable of lighthearted whimsy and a certain stubborn strength when her city needed it of her. A young boy sees the motion of the wings, not the fraility of the creature itself.
Minas Tirith, I should say, was never her city. The White City was Father’s, and in later years, ours, but Mother was Dol Amroth’s. She came to my father’s city out of love, but it was Father she loved, not Minas Tirith. The love of a man might have taken my mother from her homeland, but I do not think it ever replaced her old home for a true new one. I do not quite understand just what it was that tied her so tightly to Dol Amroth, but sometimes, when the wind blows the smell of death away from me and the leaves rustle in the forest, I think I get a glimmer of the strength of her feeling when I rove through Ithilien.
The love that might take her away from Dol Amroth is easier for me to understand. My father does not reveal his affections to all and sundry, but he looks after his own. Even when it seems as if he does not want them, I think I know my father well enough to say he does care about his duties, his people, his family, and himself. It is simply that Father is very strict with himself about the relative importance of such cares, and my mother, a proud woman in her own right, did not like being relegated to third place in his heart, no matter how deserving the other two loves might be. She had risked all her affections upon him, and was not strong enough to take flight a second time.
The creature alighting before me, blown by the new breezes from the battlements, was no butterfly, but I found myself comparing them nonetheless. Blonde hair whipped in the winds, and the same blue cloak was clenched about her shoulders. The form was stronger, straighter, lacking my mother’s gentle curves, but equally shaken by Mordor’s shadow and equally determined to silently bare the burden of a broken heart. Duty, I decided, could be set aside for her. After all, was my strongest duty at the moment not to her? The king would return, and he might ease my other duties, but this one was mine alone. I heard the click of a lock as I shut the door behind me, leaving the White Rod to stand with her in the wind.