Chapter Text
North of Minas Tirith there are a series of interconnected ponds, fearsomely ringed in fog, Boromir was taken to them as a child. They were foriegn to him, at the time, only eight years old and uncertain. He gripped the pommel of childish sword as his father led him away from men and horses into mist.
It’s a lesson , he explained to Boromir. An important one. You will learn it here, from me, and when you have your own son you will teach it him. Though, may your days be not so dark as these and may the lesson be allowed to be delayed to an older age.
And Faramir?
He will learn it from you, Denethor decreed.
The pond edges cloaked in thick grasses silver, green and faded brown. But in mist, everything was drowning and dreamlike.
Egrets dipped elegant bodies into water. And loons and herons and waders moved through the stillness. Wondrous creatures. Denethor named them in Westron then repeated them in Sindarin, bidding Boromir to do the same.
Bones cluttered along the edge of a desiccated log. Boromir worryingly peered at them asking, Who are they?
The dead.
The dead of who?
Denethor motioned to the birds. More chicks are born than take flight. That is the way of nature, that is the way of the world. The dead here were taken by carnivorous turtles whose mouths could bite off a finger, so mind you don’t put hand or foot in water. They lie in wait then, when fleshy foot of baby bird plunges in —
Denethor clapped his hands, fingers lace. There goes the chick that was never intended to fly.
That day the fog did not burn away. It followed them along low fields back to white, marble city. It clung with hunger to muted land.
Boromir lies in the grasses of Rohan’s plains, a healthier green than those by bone filled ponds of childhood. He had attempted to find them again, when he was older, but could not. Therefore, a part of him always wonders: was it a dream? It feels as one would, the way childhood memories become gauze, obscuring all those sharp edges.
He had not passed the lesson on to Faramir, mostly because he was never sure what it was his father was attempting to tell him. Something about wyrd, fate, about laene, transitory things, about strength and honour and cunning and death. Maybe Denethor didn’t know what he was trying to teach. This occurs to Boromir as wind rustles grasses so they sway above his head. They seemingly brush stars and moon and inky sky. But that isn’t like Denethor, he is a man who knows himself and what he wants to say.
Rolling over Boromir attempts to make himself comfortable, curses the dirty great rock that seems to follow him wherever he has the misfortune of sleeping rough. Since he is going to Imladris for wisdom perhaps he could ask the elves about his father’s attempted lesson. The thought amuses: ‘My Lord Elrond, you who have fought the Dark Lord, seen many Ages of Man, known the likes of Isildur and Gil-Galad, wise and noble, can you please explain the cryptic messages passed down from father to son? My father gave them me without explanation and somehow expects me to intuit them, as if I can read his mind.’
Faramir would know. Or would be able to hazard a guess at interpretation.
But he isn’t going to take his brother to some filthy pond to point out bird bones — as if his brother doesn’t know what death is.
Let us think happier things. He ponders the list he has been making of sights to tell Faramir about. All the little things his brother would have liked had he made this journey north to mythical elvendom. So far, the list could be summed up with: ruins Faramir would wish to write a poem about.
His brother, being far greater a wordsmith, would make much more meaning from this trip than he. If their lives were different, if the world were less black, if time was less pressing, if the sun did not rise red each morning speaking of Gondor’s spilt blood, it would be both of them on this journey.
Then again, if that were so, if the times their lives existed in were calmer, a milk blue horizon striped purple, there would not have been the Dreams and therefore no need to quest for aid so far to the north.
Baby birds appear in his mind before slipping beneath oily surface of calm lake. Maybe the lesson is about how grief and rage consume the mind. If grief were a country, Denethor would be lost in it and unwilling to ask for directions home.
Boromir considers it a failure on his side, that he has not been able to coax his father back to how he was before death graced the family. He, who knows how to read his father’s moods, who knows how to best please him, best soothe him, keep him even keeled as a fine boat. He is the one who ought to be able to guide the man back to their world.
His father’s happiness, as much as Gondor’s, is a labour he willingly undertakes. He does not allow Faramir to point out: Father thrust it on you. He gave you no choice but to manage him and his emotions.
I am the eldest, Boromir always replies when the circular argument begins, this is my duty.
The grasses hush and sigh. The land seems to breathe. It rocks him to sleep.
New days bring new wonders, but such is the way of traveling. There is order in it, and disorder. He packs his bags a certain way but cannot know what is about to come in the next minute or hour. He wears his cloak about his shoulders at a certain angle, adjusts sword in just the right manner, but cannot know what is behind a tree or rock. He makes predictions based on shadows, stars, moon and sun for something to do but they are rarely right.
Today is a day to stare at the crumbling decay of a Numenorian king. When Boromir awoke with frosty joints from cold ground he did not guess it to be a Numenorian king sort of day. But here he is.
Boromir adds the statue to the list of ruins Faramir would write a poem about. Brushing ivy back from weathered face, he traces nose and chin. The faded features make identifying the aged ruler an impossibility. But looking at the lonesome figure friended only by rain, vines, earth, Boromir feels a stirring.
This is what the stories mean when they speak of the fall and disgrace of Man.
Boromir has seen dissolute land and buildings crumbling before eyes. He knows ruins. What is his life but an endless attempt to clutch the remnants of Gondor together so she may yet survive for another generation? Boromir will ensure survival so someone else can build.
Which is to say, he knows active, ongoing falls.
But this statue’s isolation. Without compatriots or caretakers. Delivered up to the wilderness to become part of it. Reduction from art to mere stone beneath foot. This sort of fall haunts him. The falls that result in forgetting and unraveling and the ending of knowledge of names and deeds. Who was this king? How did he sit? How did he breath? What did he call himself? What did others name him? Did he have preferences for what he broke his morning fast with?
Faramir would laugh at that moment. What a way to ruin a grave scene, brother-mine.
'Well', Boromir says to calm forest, 'it’s worth knowing. I would argue breakfast, and how one takes it, says something about a man.'
He continues the tenderness that is removing vines from noble visage. Thunder rolling calls him back to the present. There still remains a long journey before him. He takes up his bag, adjusts it on his shoulders, and walks on. Rain washes his face the same as it washes the unknown king left alone amongst trees.
Time takes on a different meaning as he travels through forest and dale, cliff and valley, field and fen. What does time matter when you have passed the millionth tree? The millionth scattering of tumbled boulders? The millionth view of the shifting sameness of the Misty Mountains? The sky is the sky, the sun the sun. He is no poet.
It is all beautiful. It is all sweeping his heart away. But it is all the same, after a while. He never knew a person could become oversaturated with beauty.
Walking becomes meditation. The longer he is on foot, the further north he goes, the more he feels that his breath, and the breath of the trees, echo one another. In turns he is restless for company yet desperate for this calm solitude to never end.
Did he pity that lonesome king whose statue is dissolving into earth? Now, part of him wishes for that life. The other part says: this is why you should never go without company for more than a fortnight. It has you becoming one with dicky-birds.
The only time keeping for Boromir is the moon and her cycles. Also the stars, their positioning that changes with the weeks. He can, if he must, count the days it has been since he set out from Gondor.
[It was a Tuesday when he set out from Minas Tirith with early, grey slits of clouds lining the trail northward. He set out with a thought to get an answer to a riddle. Which is a small thing to ride out for. To leave brother, father, city for. But small things are accumulating to build the future and he isn’t sure he knows how to turn off the trail now that he is on it. Even if an avalanche of small things comes down upon him.
He said to Faramir, I’ll be safe. Don’t worry. Take care of yourself and our people. I’ll be back before you know it.
He left city gates with their intrepid, bold whiteness. Their stalwart starkness, sheer breathtaking size. He left and a silver trumpet called out the departure of a son of Gondor. He remembers that sound as he looks down into the depths of a granite valley peppered with gnarled chestnut trees. The memory of the trumpet sings to him. He wishes desperately to be home.]
When he sleeps it’s uneasy - because of the dirty great rock that follows him and always seems to hit the lower part of his back - but also because he dreams of walking. He dreams of forests and fields and mountains. White Mountains, Misty Mountains, Blue Mountains - so many mountains! And the endless river he criss-crosses over. He’s been in Eriador for several days now and is beginning to believe Imladris made up and the Dream he and Faramir had a nothingness. This errand is fool’s work.
He could count time by dreams. Dreaming is intimate in the way counting time is intimate. Each person has their own way of being and doing.
To Boromir’s luck, there’s been little activity aside from himself and the expected animals. Tracks of deer, boar, goat and wild cattle. Occasional print of fox and wildcat. He knows there to be foul things afoot in the north but hasn’t seen anything to warrant concern. All signs of Orcs are weeks old. All signs of human activity, he’s seen markings of a small contingent of horses, no more than a dozen, are also weeks old.
The only thing he marks as strange was the flying shadow that moved in daylight. It was a few days past when Boromir stopped to take rest at the fork in River Greyflood. He was pondering where to ford when a great shadow passed before him. Coming along with the shadow was a sound that hurt his teeth, scraped itself along his skin, down the back of his head. His blood froze, his heart at once silent and very loud. He thought, That thing must be able to hear me breathing I am so loud and the world so silent.
Everything became ice became blue became grey turning darker and darker then the world blotted out so the only thing that existed before him was a shadow that crawled through air. No rushing river, no howling crash of water on rocks, no creaking trees, birds alighting from branches, the hiss of wind in brush. Only the shadow and the shadow looked at him and through him and it knew him and it laughed and he was more terrified than he had ever felt before. It had no eyes only dark holes and no mouth only smiling darkness and a thought of teeth and no body only dark shapes of cloth. The orcs taking Osgiliath were child’s play to the fear that stripped him bare in this moment.
Then: gone. As if it had never occurred. Sun returned and Boromir again knew warmth.
Thinking on the event, which he hasn’t been able to put from his mind, he considers himself lucky that whatever phantom that was had not wished to stop for a chat. How it seemed to turn him inside out makes him squirm. How it knew everything in his mind and was amused by it makes him nauseous. He dislikes that this creature is wandering the world carrying his secrets, such as they are, with it.
And, generally speaking, his secrets are limited. Family related, personal. Certain truths about self he pockets away and ignores because they serve no purpose to inspect let alone speak of. But, as paltry and simple as his secrets and truths might be they remain his and he does not like that they were known and he had no ability to stop it.
Slowly, Imladris becomes tangible. In that, it’s nearing. He walks through night as long as there is moon to see by in order to speed up arrival. Signs begin to show themselves: kept paths, hunting trails, markings in stones of Elvish design. Each one he gathers up thankful and exhausted.
It is in early morning light of an October Wednesday in 3018 when he comes upon a half-hidden arch, covered in vines, copper leaves curling inward. He sags against the carved stone, wipes a hand over his face, and says to the bridge before him, ‘Oh thank the fucking stars.’