Middle Earth || OS

61. Boromir | A Bad Weave

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Boromir asking you if he can braid your hair and being extremely proud of the mess he's made, but you have no heart to tell him the truth, so you go around all day with terrible hair, while all your friends try not to laugh

*

Your first clue that something was amiss should have been how lopsided your head felt, as if your right side were being pulled down by an invisible hand.

Your fingers investigated. It was a very thick, tangled damp braid, oblong like a pickle, sticking out like a branch, flapping like a falcon's wing as you walked behind Boromir from one pathway to the next in Rivendell, toward breakfast.

Second clue: The hairs at the nape of your neck and from your left side were pulled tight into another so-called braid. The pads of your fingers traced it.

This "braid" was gathered into a snaking lumpy pattern, up the back of your skull, bound by a loose strip from Boromir's sack that for some reason, he'd had in his pocket.

It wasn't the cleanest hair tie he could have wrapped the end of your freshly-washed, hyacinth-scented hair with, but hygiene was the least of your troubles.

No, you didn't find out the easy way that you looked like a cross between a starfish and a yak.

It was only through utter humiliation that you realized Boromir had paid little attention to what he was doing when he offered to braid your hair.

You thought he knew better. As children, when the two of you weren't playing monstrous pranks on one another, Boromir had watched you braid your hair countless times. He'd seen you interlock the strands into one braid to hang in back, or with two at the front near your hairline, on either side of a center part, and joined in the back with a shiny clip. He'd witnessed any of the thousand ways that a young lady experiments with the mane she's been dealt.

"Your hair looks and smells wonderful," he said once, after you'd washed it in the small creek behind your home and looped it into a messy rope, held up with a pin. Both of you were around 12.

"Want me to wash and style yours, Boro ol' boy?"

He nodded and smiled eagerly.

So, after urging him to close his eyes and relax his hair into the water, you covered his head in mud, then twisted it in tight, every-which-way cords, and took off running.

"THAT'S FOR PUTTING CRICKETS IN MY SOUP, YOU DOLT!" you cackled.

He swore revenge for a month, but never got it. All it took was a few homemade honey cakes to hush him, and to end your prank war once and for all.

You had been invited to a wedding in Imladris that was still three months away when Boromir informed you he was heading to the valley for a meeting. For safety and other practical reasons, it made sense for you to travel with him rather than wait.

Perhaps it was the impending farewell that possessed him to rap on the door to your quarters earlier that morning and ask if he could assist you in any way as you prepared for breakfast. You were on a maplewood chair, dressed in your pale blue long frock, running your brush through your wet hair. There wasn't a mirror in sight in the basic room.

"You look like you're struggling," he teased, flashing a bright smile as he approached.

"I am! The Elves' hair cleanser -"

"Smells wonderful," Boromir said, standing over you, inhaling the floral scent.

"Yes, it does. But it's made my hair extra slick. I can hardly grasp it to make my braid."

"I can do it for you," he said.

You could have heard a pin drop across the valley. In Gondor.

"You?" Rotating in your seat, you looked up at him dubiously.

"I have watched you for years. I'm a good observer."

"Of braiding?"

"Of anything. It's a bit like weaving a reed basket, wouldn't you say?"

Your brows collapsed. "And what do you know of weaving, Boro ol' boy?"

"Just let me. You'll see. The style will be the talk of the breakfast table."

More like the joke of the breakfast table.

——

Boromir sat beside you and dug into this food, occasionally smiling lovingly at his braiding work. You returned the grin, and resisted excusing yourself to loosen your hair and return to the land of the well-groomed.

It was hard to be cross with him. Poor thing. He'd never done this sort of thing before and you hated to burst his spirits. He looked so proud.

Merry was the first to scrunch up his nose and snicker behind his hand. Pippin's very cute, giggly face looked like it might burst. Sam's beet-red, puffed-out cheeks and shy glances screamed 'shameful.' And Aragorn's frozen, bucked eyes wandered warily in your direction every few seconds.

Everyone else looked down at their plates, their shoulders quaking. Frodo was trying and failing so hard to keep his laugh inside that a line of drool hung from lips to lembas, a predicament that of course got him and the Hobbits beside him riled up all over again.

Legolas cocked his head as he stared, trying to decide if he should release one of his arrows and put your hair out of its ugly misery. Gimli only grumbled and rolled his eyes.

"Neither Men nor Elves can light a candle to the hair care and styling of my folk," he muttered to himself.

Elrond's tight-lipped grin was so intense that his cheeks became deep streaks of creases and his eyes were mere slits. He could barely sip his water, his mouth was so stretched and clenched.

"Do you require assistance, Frodo?" you snapped, watching him try unsuccessfully to wipe his drool.

He shook his head, and Merry and Pippin, who were sitting on either side of him, snorted with amusement.

"How about you, Ranger?"

"I require no assistance, my braidy. My lady!"

You asked the same question in a different way all the way down the table and got nothing but shaking heads and shaking shoulders.

You left Elrond and your Elf friends alone. They were hosting you for another good while, after all.

Finally, Boromir, whom you thought was oblivious to the sneering and your questioning, gently coughed into his fist, pushed his chair back, and stood.

"I just want everyone to know," he said, looking grimly at you for a second, then back to the group, "that I have heard every whispered remark about our dear friend's braided fashion. And I just want to say..."

Boromir moved from the front of his seat and stood behind it, pushing on the top wooden edge of the chair until it was close to the table.

You watched as he started to take several backwards steps and pointed at you.

"....I TOLD YOU I WOULD GET YOU BACK!"

You still didn't get what he was talking about until he reached into a recently-watered flower filled planter on the terrace ledge and grabbed a handful of wet dirt. He tossed it at you, and the clump landed in your laughable hair.

"RRAAA!!! Boro ol' boy, you'll regret this!!" you shouted as you stood and took off after him, the others at the table chortling away as you took up arms - two handfuls of soaking dirt from the planter - and raced off after him, your bouncy pickle-branch-wing braid flapping in the wind.