Leofric,
In light of the recent death of your father I have done some thinking. It occurs to me that you shall never truly know him except in tales told by myself or others. Tales are often embellished or even completely falsified and I find it an awful thought that you will have to rely on only these to have even an inkling of who the man truly was.
With that in mind, I realised that you will never truly know me either. Oh, you will grow up with me and know what I wish you to know, as do so many others. However, I will never be able to tell you the complete truth for one does not lead a life like mine and survive by failing to lie.
However, I think it shameful that you be kept in the dark forever thus I shall at least enter a compromise on the matter. In this book I shall write the truth of the days of my life; no lies, no half-truths, no embellishments. I shall arrange for it to come into your possession after I am dead and gone. Read it at your leisure but beware; much of the tale I lay before you will be less than savoury.
Whilst I know that I will long have passed into the Halls of the Ancestors, whether or not they deem me fit for entry, still I hope that you will remember me fondly after you have reached the conclusion of this personal history. I am, after all, your mother and I will always love you dearly my son.
Blessings eternal upon you,
Lady Cyre of Rohan.
***
I am reasonably sure that I was born in the summer, the second child of Aldred and Ellewyn and the younger sister to Brinnulf. I was, back then, named Eacanwyn. We lived in a small village just east of the Gap and west of the Fords of Isen. It was not a rich village nor a very prosperous one but, for the first five years of my life at least, it was home.
I remember my mother fondly, albeit as a vague womanly shape who always smelled faintly of flour and soap. I do not remember her face, but I do remember that she had the most beautiful auburn hair and eyes as green as grass. She worked for a baker, if I recall correctly, and as such spent the vast majority of her time away from the house, leaving me in the care of Brinnulf.
My brother, ten years older than I, doted on me. He would take me daily to play in the fields or at the pond about half a mile away from our tiny house. In the summer the tall grass would turn to a bright burnished gold and the pond itself would dry up a little. On days such as those, Brinnulf and I would fashion little castles and statues out of the mud. His were wonderful constructs and mine were little blobby lumps with twigs sticking out but he would always, without fail, tell me how amazing they were and what a talented little girl I was to make such wonderous things. Naturally, we would end up caked from head to foot in the sticky brown dirt and our mother would be angry when we went home, but Brinnulf insisted upon taking the blame.
Our house, as I said, was a small thing. It consisted of the main room, containing a small area to seat ourselves, the firepit and a table upon which mother would prepare our meals. Aside from that, there were two rooms, one of which Brinnulf and I shared and one for our parents. The walls were thin rickety affairs made up of wattle and daub for we could not afford anything bigger or more fancy. Most nights, the parchment-like quality of the house was not a problem for us. It was only when our father returned home that it became an issue.
Father, an alcoholic by trade, was far from being a pleasant man. I do not recall a single day upon which he was sober. In fact, I do not recall a single day upon which he was at home. Rather, he would spend his days at the tavern and most of his nights face-down in a ditch somewhere. We liked those nights, Brinnulf and I, for they were peaceful ones.
Things would change drastically when he would come back, however. Usually it was not until after sunset when Brinnulf and I would be in our room. Generally speaking, I would be asleep at the time and my brother still awake, reading by candle light. The first we would know of his arrival would be the crashing of the furniture as he stumbled over something and subsequently broke it on purpose, seeming to blame the chairs and whatnot for his own drunken clumsiness. My brother, knowing what was to come, would lay aside his book then and come to sit with me. He would take me into his arms and stroke my hair comfortingly whilst quietly counselling me to silence.
It never took long for it to begin. We would hear the murmur of our mother and the slurred ranting of our father, then shortly afterwards the first of the heavy thuds and her cry as he struck her. Sometimes it was over shortly, but other times it would seem that hours passed before all that could be heard was the quiet sobbing of Ellewyn. Come morning, father would be gone and mother would claim that she had simply tripped over whilst getting out of bed during the night or had not been paying attention and walked into a door. We did not believe it for a moment but we never pulled her up on the matter, perhaps sensing her unfounded shame at being so terribly treated.
Mostly life was good for all the perpetual fear that father might remember our existance and decide to visit his wrath upon us children for a change. Every now and then when we were out playing and then shadows began to lengthen, I would become fearful of going home just in case that would be another night during which he would visit the house. At times like that Brinnulf would hold me close, drying my tears with his shirtfront as he spoke the words that have stayed with me since.
"It's just a game little sister," he would tell me with all the conviction of his youth. "That's all life is; just a game. Games have to come to an end sooner or later though, so let's go home now and I promise we'll play more tomorrow."
Those words, spoken in innocence to calm an upset child, have defined my life. They became first my mantra in the bad times and later expanded into a philosophy by which I have always lived.
Life is a game; one that we can never win but that we cannot refuse to play. Games, by definition, are supposed to be fun therefore so is life. It is of the utmost importance then that we strive to enjoy every day in every way that we can and be damned to anyone who tries to stop us.
