His Brother's Heroes

All the myths and legends are of luminous elves and fair-complexioned Numenorians - one of myriad silent snubs offered a quiet boy with olive skin, but in Faramir, whose world pooled like still water in his brother's strong dark hands, its thistle-claws found no hold. Let the storytellers keep their pale elven saviours. His brother's heroes were olive-gold like him, or dark brown like their Easterling great-grandmother (and, while some were fair, that bore no more comment than that the Anduin was wet.) His brother's heroes were not just kings wielding big swords all tangled in their own names, but farmers bearing plows and goatherds with their crooks, were bookish children with no tool save wits and kindness, were floury-handed baker women who rescued themselves and need no "-ine" to their "hero" and would have rolled their plain brown eyes at the languishing elf-princesses.

His brother stopped telling those stories, over the years. Later, Faramir couldn't bring himself to say "as we grew up" after Boromir gave up his own childhood in story after story, in all the hard lessons and the words of comfort their father never gave, in years - started far too young - as their people's shield.

Rant/Lament

Apparently, you aren't supposed to be human.

If there are elves, please be an elf; they are so very lovely

and quite untouched by mortal foibles such as passion;

Or be a hobbit – after all, it's easy to forgo temptations such as power

when all you really want is to go home and tend your garden;

But don't be human, please, or if you must,

be the special kind of human, with elf blood somewhere up your family tree,

with two hundred years life expectancy

(so you can spend the better part of half a century running away from responsibility;)

Just, for god's sake, don't be an ordinary human,

worn out from forty years carrying the world on your back,

keeping it turning, with broken ribs and bloody elbow grease;

this makes it very hard to say no to power, not for its own sake, certainly not for yours,

but for your people's -

For the tired women keeping their chapped noses to the grindstone, fishing and farming,

buying and selling, weaving and spinning and dyeing, working stone and steel and working

to keep their world working while the men are off at war, working

through their sorrow for their men who are off at war;

For your brother, a sweet kid (of thirty-five) who only wants your father's love,

For the strong, tired women's men who fight and die at your command,

For your grandfather, who wore himself to old yellow parchment

For their sake, alone, until the wind wafted him away -

Just don't you fucking dare be human, because humans fail sometimes, and that, it would appear,

is unforgivable.