49 |
Return of the King |
The exiled Eldacar contemplates his duties as a king. MEFAwards 2008: 3rd Place – Races: Men: General Drabbles |
“I don’t want to return.” Vinitharya – Eldacar – sat cross-legged before his kinsman’s hearth, staring bleakly into the fire. “But you know you have to.” A deep sigh. “Yes.” “Your folk – your land – needs you.” “Is Gondor my land, though? The people who have driven me out ‘my folk’?” His eyes were captured by an implacable if sympathetic gaze. “You are their rightful king. Wishes don’t matter. And not all of them have betrayed you.” “...And are persecuted for it!” “So...?” Another sigh, resigned and determined at once. “So it’s high time to march south and fulfil my oath of protection.” |
A/N: - “But Eldacar eluded his enemies, and came to the North, to his kinsfolk in Rhovanion... Thus he [Castamir] had been king only ten years, when Eldacar, seeing his time, came with a great army out of the north, and folk flocked to him from Calenardhon and Anórien and Ithilien.” (RotK, Appendix A I (iv)) 14.07.07 B-drabble for Marta, who asked for a story about any "ruling family" in Gondor's or Dol Amroth's history, where they have to make a decision where there were larger political concerns in addition to what they might have wanted to do, especially for a story set during the Kin-Strife. |