[drabble repost] Dustsceawung [B/Fa: PG]

[aesc]

One from the vault...

Title: Dustsceawung
By: HF
Pairing: B/Fa (hinted)
Rating: G
Warnings: Angst?
Disclaimer: Tolkien made this. I dabble.

Notes: Repost from a long-lost lotr100 drabble. I think it was originally for a foreign language challenge, but it seems to fit tolkien_weekly's "Dust" challenge, too.


Dustsceawung Éowyn names it when he goes, time and again, to Boromir’s tomb to mourn his brother. His grief never lessens, for it has no focus – no body, no beloved face. It has only the tomb, and the knowledge that it is empty, and that his brother is lost.

Faramir asked her its meaning once, dustsceawung.

“Contemplation of the dust,” she said.

But what if there were no dust, no bones, no body?

For Anduin has swept them away, and the Sea has swallowed them up, and they are gone.

He knows Rohan’s words for this: swá híe næfre wæren.


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dustsceawung - The translation is that of Bruce Mitchell and Fred Robinson. Clark-Hall uses dustsceawung to refer to a wake or vigil, but the one time the word occurs is when a man is looking upon the long-dead body of his friend and meditating on the difficulty of life. (Depressing, no?)

swá híe næfre wæren – “just as if they had never been.” Adapted from one of my favorite poems, "The Wife's Lament"