Rapids of Kaink

Dwilly brushed her long black hair back, gazing at her reflection in the mirror her mother had made long ago. She made comical faces, twiddling her short mustache from side to side on her face—she looked like one of the great beasts that lived on the icy northern coast, a place she had gone with her sisters once to escape for a few months from the white city of Ellassar. Although she missed the look a bit, she didn’t have the long teeth of the creatures. Fynnar, who had never left the citadel, said he was glad she didn’t when she’d told him of her journey. 

Absence

They had been so quiet about their affections that the rest of the now broken Fellowship didn’t notice her pain. Gimli’s heart constricted as she picked up the cloven horn, the horn which Boromir had carried with a loving sort of awful duty. Aragorn was searching the loam, trampling spring flowers as he searched the footprints left by the Uruk-hai—while Legolas proclaimed softly that no living creature could have lost so much blood after such a struggle. Gimli knew this to be true as well, in her bones she knew that Boromir, son of Denethor, was gone. He had been taken from her. 

“All this comes from one, not many—the halflings may yet be alive,” Aragorn said, kneeling at the bridge where it appeared Boromir had made his last stand. His fingers trailed through the dead leaves, scanning them once more for clues about what had happened. Gimli bit her lips, the motion concealed by her beard, and she vowed on the blood that welled up from them that she would look after the little ones as Boromir always had. They had been his sons in a way, children in age and demeanor to a man so torn by war as he. She would carry on with the raising of them, for him. She would never have children of her own—she and Boromir had spoken tentatively of perhaps a life together, and she knew he was the only one for her. Dwarves were rash with their affections, but unlike with other impulsive creatures, Dwarven rashness led to lifetimes of loyalty.

“Then what are we waiting for?” she groused, wrapping a length of belt around Boromir’s horn—she would keep it and return it to Gondor, return it as Boromir never would. But first she had a couple of wayward, kidnapped children to find.