Title: Tie Me to This Our Ancient Earth

Written for: March challenge at lotr_community

Rating: G

Warnings: none

Summary: Éowyn takes up her first sword.

Year after year, she ran wild. People shouted after her in the sunlit streets where she stirred up dust and tempers, leading a race or starting a wrestling match on the corner. The children of the town followed her, callused artisans' boys in work clothes and proud riders' daughters alike. Not her sharp-tongued brother or serious cousin, but Éowyn, the king's treasured niece, was their ringleader and the heart of their pack. They followed her lead and were a gleeful terror to their elders.

In the cool shadows of her uncle's hall, the servants would scold her afterwards, frowning over her dirty face and worn-down shoes. She tossed her head, haughty, in reply. They had no right to command her. She heard them murmur, sometimes, that Théoden was too indulgent, out of love for his sister; but they fell silent if they thought she was listening, and she escaped their civilizing hands all the faster when the guilt weakened their grip.

So the high, windy slopes of Edoras remained her eyrie, and the warm wood and gold of Meduseld her haven. When she rode out with her brother, she would look back at the city and feel how it waited for her, how it was incomplete without her. She knew all the nooks and corners, the bright-gleaming roofs, the grain of the stone floors and the heavy rafters. Everything she could see was part of her realm.

Then, in the changeable spring of her fourteenth year, when they were cleaning out the storerooms, Éowyn found a wooden chest she had not seen before among the forgotten heirlooms and spare weaponry in one of the king's cellars. She might not, perhaps, have opened it, but there was an air of familiarity in the curling clasps holding it shut, the dark knot emblazoned across the top like a banner.

She ran a finger along the edge; it came away thick with dust. With a feeling of foreboding, she opened the lid. Nothing terrible lurked inside, only a stack of fine, neatly-folded clothes. She pressed a hand down into the cool textures. It came up holding a shawl of pale yellow and a sudden memory tore through her: a corner of this shawl, fluttering in the night wind, a tall woman looking over her shoulder and down, smiling, reaching out a hand. She dropped the piece of cloth.

In the chest, she found a few dresses, a blanket, a pair of gloves, everything expensively though not extravagantly made. Nothing else loosed any more memories, but she knew what these things were. She had found something in Edoras that she had not already known, though she must have seen it before as a small child. She held the shawl to her cheek, then her nose. It smelled of nothing except wood and time, no traces of the owner remaining. She set it aside.

On top of the pile there now lay a fine green dress. She lifted it out and held it up against her body. The hem didn't trail on the ground; she had grown tall enough for the length to be right. As tall as her mother had been, perhaps even a little taller. She let her fingers explore the lightly embroidered waist. She could wear this. It would fit. The thought seemed wrong – she was too young, surely, to have reached her mother's stature.

The door of the cellar swung open, letting in sunlight, and she started. She received her scolding for getting herself underfoot and dusty without protest, for once. The servant, a young woman called Eda, took the dress from Éowyn's hands in ignorance of what it was and replaced it in the chest. Again she remained quiet, so much that Eda's face softened and she asked, full of care, what was the matter. Éowyn shook her head without answer and fled for the bright square of light that was the door. She didn't look back, then.

She knew already that she would return here.

She hadn't anticipated how strangely everyone would look at her. She knew some must recognize the dress, but there were others who simply stared at the sight of Éowyn in something clean and elegant.

"Have they made you queen?" her brother asked when he first saw her, passing in front of the stables. "Éowyn Queen, where is your crown?" He threw an old bridle he'd been carrying at her head in a mock coronation. She sidestepped with practiced ease and her best expression of boredom, but refrained from hitting him. She didn't want to scuff the dress.

"This was Mother's," she said. The waist was a bit too tight, forcing her to stand very straight.

Éomer's face changed, grew suddenly distant. "It doesn't fit right," he said after a moment.

"Well enough," she said.

"Oh, yes? I'll wager you can't run to the hall and back in it."

"Why should I run?" she said. "It's undignified." Her ribs ached lightly.

Éomer's coldness vanished and he laughed. "She speaks of dignity! The most famous rascal in Edoras! Who are you and where is my sister?"

She could think of no retort, so she merely continued on her way, heading down the slope into the town with her chin held high.

Her friends were no better. Wynn, a retainer's daughter, perpetually dirt-smudged and in boy's trousers, stared at the green dress as if it were a personal betrayal.

"What is that?" she said.

"You know what a lady's dress looks like, Wynn," Éowyn said. "You've probably even worn one before."

"Have not!"

"No, she hasn't," Wynn's brother Gaufrid said with a grin. "Mother tried to put her in one once, but she had a tantrum and almost tore a sleeve off."

"I did not have a tantrum!" Wynn launched a handful of dirt at her sibling's head and a brief scuffle ensued. Éowyn stepped back, careful to stay clear even as she laughed.

The movement made her bump into Aethelred, the blacksmith's boy, who blushed bright red and mumbled that she looked very pretty. Éowyn accepted the compliment graciously and tried to hide her disappointment. Pretty was not why she'd put on the dress. She wanted more: to capture some of the grace and gravity of its owner. To wear those qualities as she wore the garment, as her mother had.

An argument followed about what to do next. To her friends' dismay, Éowyn refused to race, wrestle, spar with sticks, or do anything else that might harm her precious new clothing. They were too much her vassals to start a game without her. So they stood, fidgeting, on a corner under the shadow of Meduseld and tried to carry on a conversation. It was far more difficult than Éowyn would have expected; only now did she realize how much she relied on action rather than speech to guide her time spent with her friends.

The talk hitched on half-heartedly.

"The weather's been bad lately," Gaufrid remarked. Wynn rolled her eyes.

"Yes," Éowyn agreed, rubbing her arms as the wind gusted. She looked up sharply. Clouds had rolled in, heavy and dark over Edoras like smoke stooping to smother the tiny golden spark of Meduseld's roof. A drop of water landed on her cheek. "It's raining!"

"I love the rain," Wynn said dreamily.

Éowyn's only reply was a hurried "goodbye" before she turned and ran back up the hill.

"What's the matter?" Aethelred called after her. Then the rain broke.

It was cold and sleeting and quickly soaked right through the dress to Éowyn's skin. Normally, she would've scorned any complaint about such a minor discomfort. But the dress, her mother's dress! The hem, heavy with water, dragged in the mud now no matter how she pulled at it. Running had caused a seam near the shoulder to split; she'd felt it give. She was fast, but not faster than the rain.

Scrubbing washed out the mud but left the fabric wrinkled. Drying only made the creases worse. She found that, in fact, more than one seam had split and a section of embroidery on the waist had become discolored. She had been too rough; the dress had been tucked away in that chest for a decade, taken out and worn by someone too big for it, drenched, and then dried secretly over a smoky fire. She had ruined it.

She didn't cry. When the rain stopped, she folded the cloth and carried it back to the cellar like a mourner in a funeral procession. The chest still stood in its corner. She knelt down, opened it, replaced the dress on top of the pile of abandoned garments. The color was barely visible in the dim light. It was only a heap of washed-out rags, remnants of a past she couldn't recall to life.

Éowyn put her head down on her mother's dress, trying again to catch some hint of scent, an impossible ghost of warmth. She let her hands sink into the layered cloth, feeling the different textures one on top of the other.

At the bottom of the chest, her fingers struck something cold. Metal. Her thumb slid to the left and found a sharp edge. She drew in a breath.

She removed the clothing carefully but quickly. From the dark depths of the chest, she drew a sword. It appeared small to her eyes, lighter than the weapons her uncle and his riders used. Her hand curled around the hilt in a perfect fit. The blade gleamed slightly as she turned it, looking over every inch. It was still sharp, easy and balanced in her hand.

She felt certain that this, too, had belonged to Théodwyn. But the sword, unlike the finery, could be Éowyn's as well. She could be what her mother had been and also remain herself.

She closed the chest on the past and took the sword.