A Monday offering...

I'm not sure you'll like it. I'm not even sure if I'll get into trouble for it... so I will state:

'The Gift'

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction, a tribute to the Lord of the Rings.  I acknowledge I have no rights of ownership to the characters or the settings and that I only own my original content and interpretations.

And this is just the first chapter... I may or may not post more depending, Dear Reader, on you.

Chapter One: An Early Present

A gift, it is said, is always a sacrifice. The one parting with the gift no longer has it in their possession once it has been given. Or it has cost them money or time or trouble.

I reminded myself of this as I looked at the offerings spread for my forty-second birthday. 

There was a tapestry for the wall of my bedchamber, portraying the historic moment when I formally signed the treaty to bring my lands under the aegis of King Elessar.  The craftswomen had made me slenderer than I had been then, my hair longer and brighter.  But they had got the king’s nose wrong.

It made me smile.

I had seen him, once, before he came to fame, sitting outside a tavern with his cloak folded around his shoulders and his long legs crossed at the ankles.  A passing pot boy had stumbled and would have fallen, but that the king had reached out to stay him.

So when I saw the king, and realised he was the same as the man outside the tavern, my mind was made up; a king who cared about a pot boy’s welfare was the sort of man I wanted on my side.  We have many pot boys in my poor lands.

As well as the tapestry, there were sweets and dainties – it didn’t matter now, what I ate, so I could forget the need to be sensible.  A bowl of fruit held apples, grapes, and even a kovalia fruit, a local delicacy, precious and rare, with a tough hide to protect its tender centre.

It was years since I’d eaten kovalia.

My son and his wife had given me a selection of needlework supplies – needles and fabrics and bright coloured thread and all one could need to occupy oneself without getting up.

Because soon I would no longer be able to get up.

I am only forty-two, but I am not expected to live until I am forty-three. It is sad, but it is how it is.  The hot, dry air that sweeps over the passes burns holes in our lungs, so they say, and we fail. That I lived this long, to raise a son to follow me and see him married and with an heir, is a huge achievement, especially as I was widowed at nineteen, just months after my marriage.

I found I was smiling in spite of the nagging pain in my back and chest as I struggled to breathe.  Not because I was widowed, but because I survived my widowhood for so long.  My people had liked me, and try as he might, my brother could not oust me. The best he could do was insist that if I were not present during council meetings, then the council would decide policy without my presence.  I made sure never to miss a council meeting, and I had made sure I paid attention. I noticed everything; who was absent from the council meeting, who slept with whom, who the spies were. I listened, and I heard, and I pondered, and I gathered all the information I could to keep my people safe.

I had not had a realm, or a kingdom. I had the fiefdom of a few scattered villages and small towns, but we held the mountain passes on the main road to the Southron lands and as such, we had a strategic importance to both Gondor and the South. My brother favoured the south, but I did not believe their promises, nor their threats.

It had come to be a pattern from Briot, my brother, that the night before a council meeting there would be a distraction for me.  He would insist on a large state dinner in the hopes I would overindulge and sleep late to miss the meeting.  Or he would bring the time of the meeting forward by an hour and forget to mention it.

One particular year, on the eve of my birthday, he left me a gift in my bed; a pretty young man to keep me warm and content and perhaps very busy. I enjoyed the night so much that I told Briot he could give me one of these every year.

The night before my twenty-second birthday, I excused myself from the celebrations early.  The next day heralded the most important council meeting in our little fiefdom’s history; the ratification of our decision to join with Gondor. Once we had done this, our neighbours would follow suit, and we would be in a far better situation politically and economically.  I had already made it plain that Gondor was the future for our country and most of the council was behind me, only Briot and his few supporters holding out for a Southron alliance.

I did not fear murder.  I had made it perfectly clear that on my death, or if I were not seen for more than two days, my lands would be ceded to Gondor, and the relevant documents had already been lodged in Gondor, Ithilien, and Rohan.

No, I did not fear assassination; I feared distraction.

Oh, and such a distraction waited for me!

I could see from the doorway that there was somebody in my bed.  Having determined it would be wiser not to indulge, still, I would allow the poor man to stay there and rest, since to throw him out of my room might have earned him a beating.

My maid set down the lamp on the side table, a smile tugging at her mouth, but she managed not to giggle until we were in my dressing room.

‘It would seem Lord Briot had gifted you early for your birthday,’ she said as she helped me off with my robes of state, leaving me wearing the long linen shift I would sleep in.  ‘Should I still call you at seventh hour, my lady?’

‘Make it sixth hour,’ I said.  ‘And good night.’

She curtseyed her way out and I was left alone with my present.  I had slept alone for the last year, and I was rather looking forward to peeling off the wrappers of bedding and seeing what was inside, my resolve not to partake already faltering.

The figure in the bed twitched.  Had my gift been asleep? It made me smile, to think that Briot had found me a less-than-alert plaything. Unless the poor wretch was exhausted from someone else trying him out first, which would not have been good manners.

But I was lonely and three years widowed and the simple comfort of warm arms would be welcome.

I brought the lamp to the bedside table so that the light fell on the bed. The bundle under the bedding twitched again, and I carefully drew down the covers to better examine my gift.

He was utterly beautiful. His hair was that shining golden brown so rare this far south and his skin was creamy and flawless. Strong, dark eyebrows framed the eyes, currently held closed; no – clamped tight shut as if in fear, or as a child does when feigning sleep. The nose was straight and in perfect proportion, the cheekbones sharp enough to cut yourself on, the line of the jaw so defined and pure that I ached to trace it with my fingers, with my tongue. The lips were luscious and tempting and I caught my breath at the sight. He smelled of fresh air, springtime meadows full of flowers, grass after rain, and I filled my senses with him on every level that I could, delighting in the looks of him, savouring the sweet, soft fragrance.

I had uncovered him only to the neck, seeking to gently wake him, but knowing he was awake, his eyes screwed up, I felt a brief impatience, pulling the covers down to his shoulders.

And then I noticed several things in such close succession that I was forever afterwards unable to tell which I had seen first.

On my moving the covers, he had flinched, and his throat convulsed as he turned his head away from me. I saw, then, from the way his hair fell away, that he had delicate, pointed tips to his ears. Gazing in astonished wonder, I gently brushed the hair back from his face to tuck it behind that elegant ear and he gave a soft whimper, but more distressing even than the sound of his fear was the leather collar around his neck and I thought my heart would break.

This was no hireling, here to serve his lady’s pleasure; this was an unwilling guest.

And, what was more, this was an elf.