Faramir Fiction Archive

I, Faramir: the latter days (R)

Written by Surreysmum

02 April 2011 | 14742 words

Part 3

7 Nénimë, 35th year of the 4th Age, Minas Tirith

After five days in this palace, I am feeling thoroughly spoiled. It is a novel experience to be a guest in a household you were once responsible for. I notice, far more than I ordinarily would, I expect, how little details have been cared for, and now and then I have to forcibly repress an impulse to make a suggestion to Orodreth, or the chief parlour-maid, or the cook! They are doing just fine on their own.

And the people are uniformly so kind. If I am sitting in a drawing-room feeling a little lonely or sad, someone is sure to pop in with an offer of a mug of tea and a sweetmeat. Eldarion and his wife have taken to inviting me down to their rooms of an evening after the twins are to bed, and filling me in on all the news of state (and some of the court gossip, too! It seems Gimli is planning to wed, though even Legolas’ persuasion has not yet extracted the lady’s name or whereabouts).

I headed for the library as soon as it was seemly for me to do so, of course. There I encountered a very pleasant Elf named Ana who looks after the upkeep of the place. She greeted me by name, and immediately opened up all the locked cabinets for me. She seemed very interested in the Second Age histories I have been looking into, and steered me to some new acquisitions about the captivity of Sauron in Númenor that I would otherwise have missed. And then she left me alone to immerse myself in the past. A decidedly superior Elf!

Today, noticing that there was bright sunlight coming through the library windows (for a change), I decided to take myself out on to the battlements for a break. Muffling myself up warmly, for the air was chilly despite the sun, I cleared a bench and sat for a few minutes enjoying the air. A sudden cheer from childish voices below interrupted my thoughts and, mildly curious, I stood and looked over the ramparts at a most unusual sight.

The children were playing upon a sheet of ice in the courtyard that looked as if it had been deliberately laid and smoothed for them. Some of them tottered around in their boots, while others had given up the battle against gravity and blithely slid around on their bottoms, bumping into each other and squealing. Most, however, had suspended their play and were watching, wide-mouthed, a certain tall, slender Elf from Mirkwood.

Oblivious to the chill, as Elves so annoyingly are, Legolas had come out without coat or hat and wore only his indoor slippers, which seemed to aid him greatly in making long smooth glides across the ice. As he discovered he could work up speed, he began to push himself to a terrifying pace and then freeze in some absurdly flexible pose as his momentum carried him half-way across the icy playground. Then he started to twirl himself in a single spot, the ice allowing him to go much faster and many more times around than on bare ground. Then it was back to the speeding and posing – in truth, if there had been music, you would almost have thought he was dancing upon that treacherous surface. His face was lit up with joy, and the breeze ruffled his long locks and plastered his already tight clothing to his body. He made a graceful stop in the centre, and the children (and some of their mothers!) spontaneously clapped for him, to which he returned a not at all modest bow. I snorted, in a mixture of delight and derision.

“You don’t care much for Elves, do you, Faramir?” said Arwen’s amused voice. I jumped; she was standing at my right elbow, and I had not heard her approach.

“I don’t think… I’ve never really understood Elves, my Lady,” I replied, flustered.

“My Lady? Come now, Faramir, you haven’t called me that for years.”

I shuffled my feet. “Sorry, Arwen,” I said. “I feared I had angered you.”

“Not at all,” she said, her eyes still following the blond figure below. “In fact, if you have questions about Elves and how they differ from mortals, I am the one to ask, since I am both. Mayhap I can clear up some of your confusion.”

I was embarrassed by her offer, but I am never one to turn down new information, and Elves are a subject that has perplexed me for most of my life. I decided to try to keep my questions very scholarly and impersonal. “The chroniclers say that Elves bond but once in a lifetime and care little for physical closeness; that they live chastely for all the centuries of their lives after their children are born, and are far more bound up in affairs of the spirit – the fea – than of the body – the hroa.”

A small smile curved Arwen’s lips. “These would be human chroniclers you have been reading?”

“Aye, Arwen. I have tried to find confirmation in Elven histories, for I do read Sindarin, and even Quenya after a fashion – but they are all strangely silent on the matter.”

“That they are, my friend, for these matters are considered extremely private and are rarely discussed amongst Elvenkind, let alone with other races.”

“Oh,” I said, colouring.

“Nay,” Arwen said at once, “I did not mean it that way. I am not offended. Ask what you wish to know.”

“Well,” I said, “how can it be that the chroniclers declare Elves so pure and fastidious, while folk wisdom amongst men, dwarves and several other races abounds with phrases like…” I paused, suddenly appalled by what was on my tongue.

“Like?” encouraged Arwen.

“Like ‘none lustier than an Elf’ or ‘slutty as an Elf’,” I mumbled.

Arwen chuckled, and patted my hand where it lay beside hers on the rampart. “As usual, there is a little truth and a great deal of dross on both sides of the matter,” she said. “I shudder to think what will be said of us in ages to come, when all that remains is the accounts of those chroniclers of yours. It is true that we Elves bond with one other for life. For most Elves that means a very long bond indeed; for me and for Estel, it will not be so long, but it will be nonetheless unbreakable.”

A knife twisted in my belly as she said those words, however much I tried to ignore it. Arwen continued, “But the chroniclers are wrong, and your country-folk right, in one sense. In all those long years of living, Elves learn to value all kinds of love, and all ways of expressing it. We have few children, for we need few in comparison to the second-born; and much loved as our elflings are, we have never fallen into the dreadful mistake of thinking that creating young ones is the only reason to be intimate with one another. What is more, intimacy can take many forms, of which the act of bodily union is only one. For some, it is the soaring together of the fear in the making of music. For some, it is the boisterous pleasure of a hunt with brothers or those as dear as brothers, followed of course by much drinking and swearing! For some, it is the sharing of a tear and a swoon over a book of romantic poesy, or the holding of hands and the listening to painful confessions. Each of these is a way of expressing a kind of love, and the joining of bodies is no better and no worse, no more right and no more wrong, than any of them.” She did not look at me as she pursued her thoughts, but continued idly to watch the children and Legolas sporting upon the ice. “And so, to your second-born folk, who have such scant years granted to them, the free ways of the Elves in the matter of bodily love may seem scandalous. But I think you must know, Faramir, or at least have guessed, that Elves are bound by two sacred principles. The first is that none of these kinds of intimacy must be born from any mercenary motive, indeed, from anything but true affection. And the second is that all involved must consent fully. There is nothing more abhorrent to us than coercion.”

From my memory came the sound of Aragorn’s passionate whispers in my ear, behind the waterfall at Henneth Annûn: You are always loved, my Steward, my Faramir. And you will be desired, always desired, as you have been from the moment we met. But never, never coerced. I swear it…

“Aragorn thinks as you do,” I blurted.

She cocked her head to the side and looked at me. “Yes, it would be surprising if he did not. He grew up amongst Elves.” She returned her gaze to the ice-sheet below and a secret smile showed for a moment on her face. “Would it shock you to know, Faramir, that in addition to my most beloved husband, I have had a constant lover for these past thirty years, and intermittently for three hundred years before that?”

My mouth fell open. “Who?” I asked.

“I will give you a hint,” she said, smiling fully now. “His hair is golden.”

I sat down suddenly upon the bench. Legolas … and Arwen. So that was why he was so often at Minas Tirith. And I had thought… I shook my head to clear it.

Arwen was looking down at me with a worried frown. “Faramir, mellon, are you well? Truly, I am sorry if I have distressed you.” She crouched down in front of me, trying to read my face.

“I am not distressed, Arwen,” I replied, and strangely enough I meant it. “I thank you, indeed I do, for your frankness and your confidence. You have given me much to think upon.”

What she would have said in reply was lost in a pair of rambunctious greetings from Aragorn and Legolas, who had just emerged from the tower stair. “Hurry, Arwen!” cried Aragorn, “we have arranged for a sleigh ride!”

“White horses and jingling bells!” exclaimed Legolas, sweeping back Arwen’s hair and wrapping her in a green velvet cloak that matched the ones he and Aragorn were wearing. His eye fell on me. “Faramir – would you like to come along? You would be most welcome; I’m sure we could all fit if we squeezed a little!”

I could not help smiling at their exuberance, but I shook my head. Aragorn caught my eye, and slowly extended his hand in invitation. “Not this time,” I said, and then added almost against my will, “but maybe sometime.”

“Very well then,” he replied brusquely, and turned to Arwen. He and Legolas laughingly swung her into a makeshift chair in their arms, and she squealed as they carried her back across the battlements before they all three clattered their way down the tower stairs to their sleigh.

And I? I returned to the library, where I sat all afternoon in front of my books, and did not read a word.

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