Like trouble and failure, you fell. Toppled from atop Edraith - your own rescue, as you named her - you were helpless and homeless. You didn't know that mare Edraith then. Nor did you know me. Like a clumsy Eorling - a calamity who could not ride, is how you appeared.
My age; yet such a boy. you always seemed so much younger.
When I invited you to our camp, you spoke like a man from the high cities. A man of Gondor. Quiet and prickly, you reminded me of a pine cone. Benign but difficult.
The days passed and you would complain; you hated the wilderness. You hated camping. You hated that my company was not civilised; for we are all misfits, caught in the same currents of the breeze. You were the highest among us.
Highest birth. Highest roots. Highest knowledge. Yet just a malcontent boy. A bright garden bloom in a field of nettles and weeds with no name. Yet, the nettles thrived and the bloom wilted.
I was harsh with you; impatient. You kept everything in your life; given you by your birthright. By a family who mistreated you. I resented you for the gift that seemed wasted. Waste bothers me, and I didn't understand back then.
How could someone who had so much, speak and act like it was all worse than nothing? A plague to complain about?
You were spoilt. You were ignorant. You were every oppressor that I, as a boy, had known as my own curse. My enemy. The ignorant, indulgent, weak upper class.
... But you did not do what they would do. You did not peel back and find reasons to ignore causes or needs of the world, to return to your cushy, darling house in your cushy, darling bed.
You took in what you saw. My friends and their plights; the stories behind each and every one of them. Outside yourself, far away from the home you knew and the life you were given. I saw you become less selfish, I saw your self-pity turn into altruism.
You pried yourself open through time, and I, through unrelated circumstance, distanced from you. Not caring to see you the way I'd seen Aiden; even when you rose above all of us and showed that you were brave; that you would not hesitate when the time came.
You had never led away an enemy before, but upon Edraith you did so - and more. By your own will, when more than once I told you you could turn away. That mare seems to carry your spirit where it belongs.
In secret, maybe I wanted to leave you behind. Maybe I wanted to see you shy away. I did not want to care for the spoilt Gondorian scholar. A weak boy who couldn't fight; couldn't stomach physical hardship. Couldn't get past his ego to devote to teamwork; a clan.
Again and again, though, even against my judgment you acted. Every day, little by little. Donning armour, turning up even when you were terrified. Doing what the others asked you to do. Surpassing expectation, every time. Quietly, without ever drawing attention to yourself.
You and I fished together, and I taught you in that way, how to kill. How to process and consume; though it was nothing but a worm and a fish on a line. You were quiet, but you spoke with me. And it felt for a time like we were brothers; like Aiden had come to visit me in your presence.
... The most difficult thing for you, must have been the day you stood and looked me in the eye, and told me I should not have killed, when I chose in the moment to do so. I did what I knew, and you told me what you knew.
I was wrong. But you never mocked me for it, you never held your ego aloft. You stood your ground without resentment. In that moment you appeared to me like Aerluinil. Wise beyond our years. Sure of your knowledge. A wise man, a mentor. A scholar.
Any fire I had about it, you absorbed like it was nothing until it burned out. Strength. Bravery. Such things do not always need to come from a fight.
You taught me that ash can be peaceful, sometimes. I still do not agree with wallowing; and I never will. But sometimes you are still and quiet in your suffering, and there is something wonderful about that. Not happy, but right.
That day, you never made it about my worthiness to lead as so many others do. Cheap shots, judgments that have more to do with dismissal than observance.
You, instead, held me to direct, sharp account for what was done, and it was not until that moment where you taught me - even as horrified as you were - why I made a mistake, that I understood. I learned, and I will never forget your patience and presence with me in that moment. Respect is earned through such times.
Strange, that it took you of all people, to teach me about murder.
Again and again after that day, right when you were doubting yourself the most, you came through. Actions over words. Again and again, you were given opportunities to leave. To go home, to return to comfort. Again and again ... though some part of you wanted to, you didn't. By your will and stubbornness, you refused. A secret strength that emerges despite yourself. A love for those who also came to love you... Like what Eirik calls a clan. Like family...?
You never see your own bravery, but I do. So do all of the others.
After a year of separation, under the worst circumstances when you had suffered and taken much responsibility and suffering upon yourself, it seemed like I helped you.
But who really helped who in the end, Bryn?
... For you had resisted what almost ate me alive...
And it was your words, your eyes and your touch that pulled me free, so that we could walk out of that room to do what we needed to do.
"Don't give in. I'm sorry, too. I'm with you. We will face this together. Don't give in to it Ry."
You are the bravest of us all.
I cannot cure your fear for what is to come.
But I will fight for you like fire, and all of the others. With everything I am. I am yours, I am theirs.
I belong to my Family. I will serve you all to the end, and when we part ways by death or space, I will keep what you have shown and taught me in my heart, always, Brave Bryn of Rohan and Gondor.
My friend.
