Tolkien Fan Fiction
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| All She Wants To Do Is Dance |
Day 3 prompt: Your happiest moment in the past two days - write something connected to it. Written because: every girl loves to twirl... Cue Don Henley, and go... |
| When she was a girl, she used to take the long way round Aldburg's ways, just because she could skip-hop her way down a lane a little longer. The Éorlingas were a musical people – they were never without the means for a song, and she would hum as she went, and step to the time, and if no one was around, spin and twirl down the walk. She learned all the maids' dances that were danced in the halls as quick as any would teach them, and when her tutors had exhausted their knowledge, she learned the ones that the kitchen girls knew, and the ferrier's wife – the ones that never saw the inside of a hall. Those she liked very well, for they were closest to the Spring dances that happened outside, where there was always the chance that one could legitimately kick dust at one's partner. All part of the game of it, to get away with it with grace, and it kept one quite literally on one's toes. Then there were the boys' dances – the ones they learned from the Riders and that they practiced jealously amongst themselves. Of course she'd badgered Éomer into teaching her. It had taken pleas and bribery and finally blackmail, but her pig-headed brother had relented at last to save his dignity, though he'd sworn her to silent stillness. "It is a sword dance, Éowyn – 'tis not for lasses, and the others wouldn't like it if they knew I taught you aught," he'd warned, then added, with all the arrogance of his thirteen years at the time: "You likely can't do it anyway, in skirts." She'd made him pay for that one, once he'd actually taught her, that is. And she could too do it in skirts, thank you very much, and gave him a stinging swat on the calf with them on one of the passes, just because she could. It has been some time since last she danced – misfortune and strife and the king's failing health and Wormtongue – Wormtongue above all – had leached all song from Edoras. She has been through war and despair, and felt the whole future fold itself up and fall away, and all her strength with it. But she loves to dance – loves to feel the air about her, and the song move through her, move with her, move her, and open the world, and it is a wedding tonight... So when the Rohirrim among the guests call for a dance – one of the Spring dances, at that – she seizes on the chance like a starveling on the offer of a meal. Turning to Faramir, she asks, "Does my lord know this dance?" Faramir looks with some doubt at the dancers – mostly soldiers – ranging themselves in their lines. "I do not believe so..." "Would my lord then care to learn?" There is only one right answer to this question, and he fortunately has the wit to give it, and with grace. Smiling at her smiling at him, he offers her his arm – and is swept away... |