Gifts - Pt. I

For his eleventh birthday, with some portion of the monies their father gave him or his sixteenth, his elder brother buys him a horse from Rohan – as if it is not enough simply to be there, the young general fresh back from a hard campaign with (somehow – he had always had a talent for miracles) stories to enrapture a child whose interests lay primarily between books' covers. As if it is not enough simply to love the second son, the extra child – as if it is not enough to stride in with the northeast wind of spring at his back and swoop up in strong arms warm as the wind is cold a boy few others even notice and wish him, quietly, in a voice so imbued with affection that the words glow softly golden in the boy's mind, “Happy birthday, little one.”

“'m gonna be taller than you,” Faramir mumbles, muffled, into his brother's cloak, which smells of dirt and blood and wet wool, scratchy against his face.  He wiggles outsize feet in mock indignation and squirms in delight at the gentle thunder of his brother's quiet laugh.

“But still my little brother.” He swings him down, with the ease born of such long practice that it seems effortless, onto the big feet which promise height to match their father's. So habitual is the gesture that Faramir doesn't notice his brother's pace has slowed so as to match his own, as yet shorter, stride. Besides, there is something else on his mind.

“Father says he has no obligation to acknowledge my birthday.”

“He hasn't.” The child starts to crumple, until a powerful hand lightly nudges his arm. He slips his own small hand into the callused palm and feels three long fingers curl around it; the fourth is splinted. “Nor have I. But I want to.”

This time, the lump in the boy's throat is of joy. He must have trembled, or his step faltered, for his brother's hand tightens gently around his. After a moment he manages, hoarsely, “thank you” and his brother spins him up into a tight, wordless hug and down again without breaking stride through the cobbled streets along the rim of the seventh terrace.

“Where are we going?”

“We are going to mysteries.”

“Mysteries...?” His heart races in excitement and, linked at the hand, he pulls the both of them forward eagerly until logic reasserts itself.  You can't lead when you have no idea where you're going. Sheepishly looking back, he meets his brother's grey gaze and feels joy swell in him at the empathic amusement he finds there.

Nothing, though, prepares him for sight of the handsome dun gelding leaning over the door of the box stall at the near end of the stable to whuffle his hair with a soft, sweet-smelling nose; less than nothing prepares him for the dawning realisation that the creature is his.

“You didn't spend it all on the aqueducts,” he chokes, scritching under the animal's long jaw and remembering the low heated arguments between his brother and father after the former's birthday.

“No.”

“Nor on hiring trainers for the infantry.”

“Nor that.” Faramir, enraptured, does not look away from the horse, but leans his cheek against his brother's hand, which squeezes his shoulder warmly.

“He's...he's from Rohan, isn't he?” He fumbles in his pocket for something to feed the questing velveteen muzzle. “That's...that's why you've been writing to them.”

Boromir's laugh is the vast murmur of sudden rain, this time. “Yes. Theoden's advisor is a despicable little hemorrhoid, but he knows better than to cheat at horses. Here.”

The boy finally tears his eyes away from the horse; his brother's scarred hand offers a slice of apple, slightly browned but still very pale against his olive skin. Beaming stupidly, Faramir flings his arms around him before offering his horse the treat. His horse. Boromir must have sliced the apple before he came up to the seventh terrace, for him to give to his horse.

His horse. Over the last two years he'd developed an affinity for the big creatures, possessed though they were of very hard feet and frequently baffling temper, a dangerous combination his brother swore had been invented expressly to break people's toes. But Denethor wouldn't deign to buy him a dog, far less so expensive a rarity, in their terraced city, as a horse.

Once the three of them have shared the apple, he hugs his brother tight again; the Steward's heir, a grown man of sixteen, kneels and holds him close and, in the protective circle of his arms, in the warm, dim, musty quiet of the stable, Faramir feels like he can fly.