A Face in the Crowd: Faramir

Chapter Seventeen - Rohan

"Thank you, sir, but – "

"And we will miss you," he went on, interrupting. "Ten years you have called these Houses home. I cannot understand what has brought this on. Are you unhappy here?"

"The Houses are my home, sir," she said. "I've not always been entirely happy here, but that's nothing to do with my position, or the work, or any of the people."

"Then what is it?"

"I just feel it's the right time to leave, to... to try other paths," she said blandly. "Even though I don't know what I shall find, I'd forever regret it if I don't try something new. I have a strange yearning to see new places and learn new things, even though I know it means leaving home."

"But where will you go?" he asked.

"Dol Amroth." She had plucked a place of Gondor from thin air, for if she mentioned that she was travelling to Rohan she thought he would question her sanity even more than he already was.

"Well there is work to be found there for healers, to be sure," he said reluctantly, "but I would worry for your safety. How would you travel?"

"A friend of my father's wishes to visit family there," she lied, easily. "I'll travel with him and his wife."

"And how long will you be gone for?" He was becoming exasperated.

"That I cannot answer easily, but... I'm hoping to return. My family are here, I couldn't be parted from Palen for too long."

"What does she say to all this?" he wondered.

"She doesn't wish to hold me back."

He sat silently, his hands clasped before his lips, elbows on the table, with his dark eyes looking at her shrewdly. He sighed, and seemed to think a while before speaking.

"I do not know what to say to you, Keren," he finally said. "You wish to go, and indeed I can't force you to stay, I'm not a slave driver. You chose to come to us as a child, and now you are grown you are choosing to leave. I am... sad that this is what you wish, but I have to accept your choice, as imprudent and unwise as I believe it to be."

Keren felt a lump rise in her throat at the disappointment from the strict, stern man she liked and respected.

"I'm sorry, sir," she said quietly. "I will be very sad to leave, and I know that it's maybe too much to ask but – "

"Our doors will always be open to you Keren, should you return," he said. "Just stay safe."

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"You'll not be going north?" was the first thing her father had said when she told him.

"I will go north-west as far as Edoras in Rohan," she had replied. "It's a great honour that I've been asked."

"And from there? You'll be coming back here?"

"I don't know. Eventually, yes. But perhaps I'll travel further north first."

She did not realise until the moment she said it, but once it was out of her mouth she knew that that was what she desired to do. It would never come to pass, for she knew no-one to travel with, nor had any knowledge of the lands beyond Gondor other than what the hobbits had described to her. To venture past Rohan on her own would be certain death. And yet something within called her to dare, or at least acknowledge her desire to see the wider world.

"No child of mine is going beyond the Entwash, nor do I even want you in sight of it," Malerond said quickly.

"But my grandmother was from the north!"