Many Updates! Bonus Poem!

Oh man, I've updated The Long Twilight two days in a row! It's like it's summer and I'm working on Friendship is Revolution again or something. I can't promise this rate will keep up, but I'm getting on to stuff I've already outlined or written some of, and I have some vacation coming up starting at the end of the week, so I'm hoping I'll be able to get a lot out over the next few weeks.

It doesn't hurt that I've been re-reading The Lord of the Rings, which serves as significant inspiration for this tale. This both filled me with newfound fervor towards writing it, and also inspired me to write a poem about Eowyn, who is my favorite. Find it below the line if you like. I suppose it might be construed as slightly spoiling a 50 year old book that was also an absurdly popular movie franchise so uh, beware if somehow you care.

---

Edoras
"No living man am I," said I so long ago.
A man might live an age or more
With even one such deed,
Riding forth a thousand times, banner and horn
A welcome comrade, a great lord
Great as my princely husband who
Now too is no living man.

But being I, as man I could not live
Not even thus, and so my banners and my spears
Were blossoms, and asparagus.
To hack the soil, not the foes,
The work of my still-strong arms.
And the earth, indeed, brings forth
A sweeter harvest than any battlefield,
Even that one.
I cannot say that living I was not,
To raise up more life, if less glory.
Nor loving less the work of hands
On spades, and intertwined,
Than on sword-hilt and shield-strap,
Locked in mortal strife.

Indeed a life I've had in truth, for all
That on that day I felt no more living
Than I did man, a shade
No less than he, drifting
To death from lack of life.
Perhaps shorn of body I could pass
Between the bars.
But the death I chose fled
Before a life I chose not, though loved no less.

They have gone now, all I've known,
All save the king and queen,
All across the great sea, or the darker
Waters beyond even life:
Ring-bearer, servant, wizard,
Brother, husband.
Even Gimli, neither elf nor bearer but
Beloved of both, had his swan-ship.
My gulls call now, but yet
Are songbirds on the wing, and
The sea that calls me home
Swells in summer-green flecked
With pale blossoms, my white ship
A dappled mare, bringing me to sunset
Behind the golden hall.

I felt the trees my fortress,
Strong as loving arms, perhaps
Strong even as my own.
But here lies fade into the too-large sky.
Were they wooden bars, not walls
At all?

No man picks his path, say they,
But still no man am I, and once I rode
Heedless of command,
On paths I chose, and came upon my life
Unlooked for, not unwelcome, but still
No choice of mine.
Had I ridden on, what ocean
Now would wait for me? What gull
Might cry me home, to what forgotten shore?