She turns at once, and Faramir will be able to feel how tense she is, how uncertain, as though steeled for some conflict she does not yet understand. The wet nurse smiles as she approaches--she is an older lady, and well used to new mothers in her profession--and then places the infant in Eowyn's arms.

Those arms shake a little, and if pressed she would claim that it is because of the blood loss she underwent, rather than any foolish nervousness. But this is a moment of reckoning, far more than the birth was. Pain and effort and injury are things familiar to Eowyn. This is altogether new.

But she has held babies before, and her arms know how to bend to accomodate one. She sits with Faramir's arm around her and their son on her lap, and looks down into the sleeping face. "He is so small," she murmurs. He is no smaller or larger than any other baby, in truth, but he seems small all the same, especially the tiny nose and fingers. She touches his hand, and even in sleep it automatically clenches around hers.