What Lies Behind

The bed was warm. Miriel sighed, and curled back against the warm body behind her. She felt his hot breath in her hair, and the weight of his arm pressed down over her shoulder. He felt solid, and real. More a reality than he had seemed these months and months past. She smiled, and turned in her sleep to face him, burrowing her face against his chest, and taking a deep breath, waiting for the smell of heady incense to fill her mind. But no… It was not incense which covered her, but the smell of horses and campfire. Miriel took in a deep breath; the air was cold in her lungs.

Miriel's eyes shocked open and she gasped.

“I did not mean to wake you, I'm sorry,” Faeldor whispered. “The air is so chill, I was checking Melian.” Miriel's head turned at her baby's name, and she glanced back behind her now to see Faeldor's hands upon the swaddle, wrapping the wool blankets more tightly around the nest Miriel had built for her safely near the wall of the carriage. “Her cheeks are quite warm. I do not think she feels it at all,” he added.

Miriel stiffened and groaned. It had been her brother's arm over her. He had most often on the journey slept outside by the fire to leave room for the others, but since they had begun to move near the mountains again, making their slow way uphill en route to the high pass, the whole family had found themselves moving the benches aside in the carriage, and rearranging the other wagon, that each person might sleep in a huddle on those nights that they were between the Inns. It was not completely unbearable, for there were many bodies to stay warm amidst.

“Were you having a nightmare?” Faeldor wondered.

She paused before answering. “Yes.” Perhaps it could be considered a nightmare. It was a dream she never would have willed herself to have.

“It will be dawn soon,” Faeldor tried to comfort her, laying back down on his pillow, and pulling the pile of blankets up further over them. Gilwen shifted against his back, pressing near, and he head Haliel mumble in her sleep at their feet. She had the most blankets of all, for she was the only one short enough to fit widthwise in the carriage, though she seemed not to mind, with Lilotie purring near her head.

“You can lay near,” he whispered. “It's fine, you're still my little sister,” he teased lightly. “Don't you remember camping with Father when we were young? You'd rather sleep by me than the fire.”

“You've always slept hot,” Miriel remembered. “I could not get close enough to the fire without rolling right into it,” she smiled in the dark.

Miriel turned back around to face her child, settling with her back against her brother, though her eyes no longer had sleep in them, and she lay remembering the dream. Durion. She loathed Melian's father… she had loved nothing of him, save his embrace, and it had not taken her down kind road. It was long past the time when Faeldor's breaths once more became deep and even, and she still lay warm, but not asleep, that her eyes began to take in the dusky morning twilight.

She looked above to the western window of the carriage. The mountains were white and stark blue with snow beside them, and seemed to stretch on for endless ages. Miriel wrapped the blanket more closely around her shoulders, looking across to her infant daughter so soundly sleeping beside her; her little chest rising and falling, and her eyes contentedly shut.

“You won't remember Minas Tirith at all,” she hummed to her at the dawn of morning. “I shall never set foot in the White City again, nor ever take you there. Promise me you will not go seeking what lies behind, little one.”