LOTR Ficlet: Love Letters

[martasfic]

Title: Love Letters
Summary: Faramir learns that he does not know Éowyn quite as well as he thought.
Word Count: 300 + Notes
Characters: Faramir/Éowyn
Timeline: Fourth Age, bookverse
Rating: Teen, for (implied) m/f erotic content
Beta: just_ann_now
Notes: Written for rakshathedemon, who requested Faramir and Eowyn.

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Faramir stood at his desk, thumbing through the stack of missives left for him. A petition from one of the White Company, a report from his bursar, and... a sudden smile crossed his face. The next note was folded and sealed with wax, but his name was written on the outside. He recognized that flowing script; it was Éowyn's hand.

Pulling the paper from the wax, he opened his wife's letter - and nearly dropped it at surprise from what he saw. The letters were not the script used to represent Westron, but were instead the certh type fashioned by Daeron in ages long forgotten. Faramir had learned them in his youth, but even those Gondorians who spoke the Elven tongue rarely used that ancient script.

Faramir read the note more carefully. Éowyn had often written him letters, which his chamberlain slipped in with more official correspondences. Éowyn was not unlettered, a remarkable fact, for she was both a lady and of the less learned Rohirrim. Those words had been less impassioned than what she would whisper behind closed doors, but they had always warmed his heart. Yet always they were written in Westron.

But this.... Faramir ran his finger over the symbols, as though he was caressing his wife. He had traced every inch of her skin, knew every scar and every tender spot that made her breath catch in her throat. Yet he did not know all of her. He noticed a wobbly branch, a transposed letter, but such errors only endeared her efforts to him. Éowyn was strong, yet it seemed she would also brave vulnerability to more fully join her husband's world.

Faramir set the papers on his desk and made for the door. Such matters of governance could wait; for now, he sought his wife.

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Notes:
Everything I know about Middle-earth languages and alphabets, I learned from a brief scan of the "Of Elves" and "Of Men" section of Appendix F. Anyone interested in the specifics of the language issues I discuss here can read more about Elvish and Mannish languages there. The ninety second version, as I understand it:

There are two Elvish alphabets. One (developed by Fëanor) was used by the Noldorin Elves to write Quenya. (The Noldor are Elves who went to Valinor and returned to Middle-earth - Galadriel, and to some degree Elrond and his family are good examples.) Tolkien describes Quenya as "Elvish-latin," and by the Ring War it's rarely spoken and written even by the Dúnedain. Then there is Sindarin, which was spoken by the Sindar elves (who traveled into Beleriand but never went to Valinor - Celeborn, Legolas and Thranduil are all examples of this type of elves). It was the language spoken by the "elf-friends" on Númenor, and it is what the more "cultured" Gondorians speak. But Tolkien admits that it was rarely spoken and even more rarely written by Gondorians.

Westron is something wholly different. It grew out of Adûnaic (the language spoken by the King's Men of Númenor), and was also influenced by the (non-Dúnedain) men of Middle-earth - people like the Breelanders. Tolkien doesn't (to my knowledge) say that they used a different alphabet, but it makes sense to me that they would. The Númenóreans would have likely been reluctant to export Elvish culture to the men of Middle-earth; and those Men would probably have developed their own letters anyway. When you consider the diacriticals used by Tolkien to express non-Westron languages, it seems like there are significant differences between Westron and the tongues written in Elven script.

(It should be noted that by the Ring War, Westron had been "ennobled" by the importation of Sindarin terms, similar to the way words cross over from one Romance language to another today. But this would not have affected the question of whether the languages had different alphabets.)

Anyway, I think that explains a bit of the language issues I was trying to hint at in this ficlet. And I shall stop this note now, before it becomes longer than the piece! Really, if this stuff interests you, go and read Appendix F. It is fascinating once you get into it.