Seeds of the White Tree

Chapter 1 - Days Renewed

Et Earello Endorenna

utulien

Sinome maruvan

ar Hildinyar

tenn' Anbar-metta

~

Out of the Great sea,

to Middle-earth I am come

In this place I will abide,

and my heirs,

unto the ending of the world.

OoOoO

His first memory of his father was of singing.

Both of his parents loved to sing, and they did so often. When the long days of faces, voices and duties were over, both his mother and father would sit with him and sing songs of times gone by. Sometimes they would recline around the hearth, the warm glow of the flames dancing across their faces. Other nights when the air was warm and the skies were clear they would carry him out onto a balcony and sing in the starlight. Thus Eldarion, Prince of the Reunited Kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor grew to love both firelight and starlight equally.

King Aragorn Elessar and Queen Arwen Undómiel were so much to so many people. To the soldiers of Gondor, Aragorn was their brother, their captain, their king. To the people of the realm Arwen was their beloved lady, the Star of the White City. To Eldarion they were simply Mother and Father, or sometimes Adar and Naneth, depending on which language they felt like speaking that evening.

It was something of a game their family played, to explore the many nuances of words and songs together. That was how Aragorn and Arwen taught first their son and then their daughters the many languages they would need in life. First came the easiest and most necessary; Westron, or the Common Tongue. Next was Sindarin, meshing swiftly and easily with the words of Men like strands of silver in a tapestry. After that followed the dictions of Adûnaic, Rohirric and Quenya as the children of the royal household grew up. Words were their toys, languages their games, all taught by the rich crooning voice of their father and the bell-like musical tones of their mother.

The children of Elessar and Evenstar grew swiftly and strong, known and loved by all the folk of Gondor. Eldest and the lone prince, Eldarion embodied all that was strange and beautiful in both his parents. From Aragorn he inherited the lean, coiled-wire frame of a Dúnedain ranger. That razor sharp readiness of a ranger was softened in Eldarion by a liquid grace that could only have come from a daughter of elf-kind. Likewise Eldarion took greatly after his father in shape of face and shade of hair. There was a light to the prince's dark grey eyes and a slant to his high brow that no man of pure mortal blood could have possessed. Eldarion may have been of the race of Men by all measures, but the mark of the Eldar still lingered as a ghost in his eyes and voice.

After Eldarion, Aragorn and Arwen had three shining daughters. First and eldest there was Eruthiawen, as noble as any queen even as a young girl. Only two years Eldarion's junior, Eruthiawen and her brother were near inseparable. She favored more their father in almost all ways, exempting her long wavy hair that shone like beaten copper and often prompted Aragorn to speak of his mother Gilraen. In manner however, Eruthiawen was indisputably the daughter of Arwen Undómiel. Always Eruthiawen seemed to understand things that many thought beyond her years, her clear grey eyes reading the character of all whom she met like the pages of a book. From time to time the queen would tease her husband that their daughter was better at diplomacy than he was.