Chapter 2. A Silent Offering

Light of late morning spilled through the windows of the Golden Hall, gilding the stone floors and high beams with a quiet glow. Éowyn sat at the small desk in her chamber, her brow furrowed in thought. Before her lay a sheet of parchment, a half-spilled inkwell, and the first page of Morwen’s journal. Théodred had translated only a single line that night—but that line had opened a door she could not now close.

Since then, Éowyn had returned to the journal often—her fingers tracing the lines of ink, her lips shaping the sounds of a tongue still strange to her.

The King’s Minstrel and Scholar, Master Gléowine, had blinked in surprise when she asked for further lessons in Sindarin. “Most folk in the Mark have no use for Elvish,” he remarked, though with a curious smile. “Still—your grandmother spoke it well, I have no doubt. You may learn faster than you think, as the Prince once did—though not without much protest and complaint on his part,” he added dryly.

For a moment, Éowyn wished to ask him whether he kept any records of Queen Morwen—but she refrained. It felt like a quest of her own now. Besides, she would not be content with official notes and annotations: black ink upon yellowed parchment, or names embroidered on faded tapestries. With the letters and the journal, she felt she held a key to the lady who had once walked these halls—a window through which to glimpse a life truly lived. She longed to know her, not through cold description in books, but through her own hand and heart.

As the scholar had foretold, she learned swiftly. By week’s end, Éowyn could sound out a few more lines. Théodred helped when he could, though his duties drew him away more often than not—for since the troubles in Eastfold, unrest had begun to stir in Westfold as well. Erkenbrand had sent warnings to Edoras: the Dunlendings were growing restless once more. The King, too, was more burdened than before, often postponing his meals, his hours consumed by the rising cares of the realm.

She wished she could help, but she knew well that she was still too young, and too slight, to be of any true use—whether at the council table or upon the battlefield. She set the thought aside and fixed her gaze upon the page before her.

The journal was not in great shape. Some pages were missing; Éowyn could not tell whether they had been removed by the writer’s own hand, or simply lost over years of cleaning and re-storage. But for what it was worth, it seemed to begin not long after they had returned from Mundburg.

“I missed the scent of flowers in the morning.”

A simple line. Yet the hand—lighter, and more uncertain than before—together with the words, struck her.

She was… in her early thirties? Éowyn guessed. It was an age still distant, still unimaginable to her. But the thought of one—even a woman full-grown, with children already—who had come here, far from her home and kin, and must have felt alone at times…

Silently, a fear began to stir. She had seldom dwelt on her grandparents on her mother’s side; they had not been present in her childhood. There were only scraps of tale—of a love between two whose years lay far apart—seventeen years! More than her own age—and of a marriage that had bound Rohan even more closely to Gondor.

But was it true? Was their life together as blissful as that of her own parents?

Was she happy? Was she… willing?

Fortunately, the next line was a little more reassuring:

“But I grew to love the plains, though the wind whispered things I do not understand.”

Judging by the sun, Éowyn set down the pen and parchment and tucked them away among her things. She could not miss the morning practice with Elfhild.

Elfhild had been grumpy of late, with a growing need to adjust her gear—complaining that her mail across the chest never sat quite right, and that no smith in Edoras seemed to know how to shape armour for a woman’s form. Éowyn was not yet at that age—still lean and light, and spared, for now, the burden of a fuller figure—her own armour untouched by such trials. But she listened, and she learned.

Beyond such trifles, Elfhild had grown more preoccupied in recent days: training harder, laughing less. Curious of this change, Éowyn had once asked her why—and she had not been greatly surprised to learn the reason.

Elfhild had gone to her elder brother, Elfhelm—newly appointed as a marshal—and asked when she might lead her own éored. He had laughed, good-natured but dismissive, calling it folly for a seventeen-year-old maiden to dream of becoming a marshal of the Mark, and urging her instead to consider tasks such as tailoring, sewing, and cooking—pursuits, as he said, “more fitting to a young woman.”

Elfhild’s pride had been stung—but not broken.

“Many of his men are no match for me in the saddle already. They may best me on foot—but with spear and bow, in the saddle, we are equals. And I am less a burden to the horse,” she told Éowyn, her eyes gleaming. “The Éothéod once rode with shieldmaidens, yet they refuse to believe it now—even when they see one. One day, they shall see us again.”

Éowyn admired her spirit for it, as Elfhild’s frustration stirred thoughts of her own battles—quieter, perhaps, but no less true. The struggle was ongoing, and she had yet to find a clear road before her.

She loved Éomer dearly. Though not so perceptive as Théodred, he had been her shield and comfort since the day their parents passed. He was quick to speak, quick to laugh, and quicker still to defend her—her safety and her honour—often before she had even drawn breath. He did not always understand her, but he never failed to stand beside her.

Even now, as he pestered the King’s stablemaster about Frathwyn’s saddle-girth, Éowyn could feel his eyes flick toward her now and again, checking to be sure she was well.

The trouble was just that. He was ever eager to shield her—when she no longer wished for the shield.

That, she thought with a trace of self-assumed wisdom, sighing as Théodred sometimes did—with solemn exaggeration and no small measure of flair—was how love could both bind and blind. 

The next line she worked through from the journal took her the better part of two days:

“I did not love them.” It was the plains of Rohan—Éowyn recalled the line before. “Not at first. They were too open, too wild. I feared being swallowed by the sky.”

She could not help but smile at that. What a strange fear—no dread of boundless water, but of open sky? It made little sense.

But the next sentence erased her smile and stilled her breath.

“And I feared being forgotten.”

Éowyn trained harder than usual the next day in sword practice. Elfhild was absent, so she sparred with the young son of Háma, Captain of the King’s Guard. The boy was taller and stronger, but she was swifter—and more precise. In the end, he yielded, her sword-point poised mere inches from his throat.

“My lady, you have won,” he admitted, blushing—but without resentment. Perhaps he had seen how she had honed herself over the years—or perhaps he was simply too young to feel the bruising of pride. “A warrior of the House of Eorl, you are.”

She lowered her blade and gave him a nod—relieved, perhaps, but the weight in her heart did not lift.

I feared being forgotten. 

She returned to the barrowfield afterward. The simbelmynë still bloomed upon the graves—white as ever, silent as ever. In the tongue of the Rohirrim, its name meant evermind.

She had left a small offering there—a note, written in an unsteady hand, in a tongue she was still learning to wield. And she stood in silence, as though waiting for something unsaid to pass upon the wind.

The note stirred in the breeze.

You are not forgotten, it said. For I will carry your name forward.