Like a Blade Forged in Fire

Epilogue

The Eastemnet, a year later

"You're not drawing my brother again, are you?"

Lothíriel looked up to meet Éowyn's amused eyes and felt a flush rise to her cheeks. "Just a sketch for my next painting. It's important to get the composition exactly right." It was her newest project, showing the meeting between Éomer and Aragorn on the plains of the Riddermark.

"You've already done a dozen drafts for that," Éowyn pointed out. "You can't possibly need any more."

"It's not so easy, depicting the line of mountains correctly and the different greys for the horses."

Éowyn peered over her shoulder. "That doesn't look like mountains to me."

Lothíriel resisted the urge to snap her sketch book shut. "I'm simply practising to get his hair right, to make it fall naturally." And the colour would be difficult too, ranging from pale wheat to a deep, rich gold. She loved running her hands through it.

Éowyn chuckled. "Of course, just practising."

Lothíriel bent over her work again. "Exactly."

"I bet that book is full of sketches of my brother and nothing else. Admit it, Lothíriel."

"Not at all. Tarcil's in there and...and Shirram."

Éowyn ignored her. "It's a mystery to me what you see in him. Doesn't it get boring to draw the same person over and over again? Why not try somebody with dark hair, Faramir for example?"

Lothíriel was in fact working on a portrait of her cousin, meant as a surprise for her sister-in-law, but she wasn't going to tell her so. "Oh, but I like a subject with some expression on his face. Faramir always looks so reserved."

"No, he doesn't," Éowyn fired up, only to break into laughter. "I suppose I deserved that for teasing you."

Lothíriel grinned back. "You did."

She straightened up and stretched, only then realising how much time she had spent bent over her work. It was very easy to get lost in her drawings, especially with such an engrossing subject. Ruefully she smiled to herself. Éomer had indeed taken over her sketch books, but it seemed as if every day she discovered a new facet to him that she wanted to record.

Only that morning he had discussed the finer points of horseback archery with Faramir at the camp fire, waving his spoon of porridge about, eyes alight with enthusiasm, that particular crease of concentration on his brow...

"Oh, Lothíriel, you're so smitten," Éowyn interrupted her train of thought in a pitying voice.

Following the other woman's eyes, Lothíriel found that she had begun to sketch out the scene on the margins of her page. She coloured.

Éowyn shook her head. "But then I knew as much when I saw that very first picture you sent me, of Éomer sleeping in the grass. I said to Faramir at the time that all we had to do was to wait for the invitation to the wedding."

Sometimes it seemed to Lothíriel that the only person unaware of her feelings had been herself. Well, and Éomer. What a spectacle they had made of themselves – apparently Éowyn had received a running commentary from her correspondents in Edoras.

But who cared. She went back to drawing. "As Éomer has told me, I cannot dissimulate with my pen."

Éowyn dragged over a chair, sat down and stretched out her legs. Lothíriel had set up her table under the awning of their tent, where she was out of the sun, but could still observe the goings-on of the camp. The others had gone riding that afternoon, but feeling unusually tired, she had excused herself.