Incredibly cursed AU idea: Sapadal catching Lödwyn’s soul before it returns to the Wheel and bringing her back again so she can serve them. This time as a somewhat worse-for-wear skeletal framework overgrown with/held together by plants and fungi!
@tolkienocweek // day seven // the children of eomer and fealasse // sunnwyn
Sun’s Joy
Sunnwyn was the eldest child and daughter and was much beloved by her parents and people. She was a symbol of light and rebirth after the years of war and darkness, and for that she was named after the warmth of the glowing sun. She grew, along with the other children that the Rohirrim were blessed with, and her growth was no different than the children of Men.
She was alike in features to the people of her father, Éomer, with flowing golden hair and a love for all creatures equine. And was loved fiercely in return, especially by her younger siblings. Sunnwyn became a lore-keeper and loved most singing the songs of the Hobbits, taught to her by Meriadoc Brandybuck, Master of Buckland, who once had been sworn to her great-uncle Théoden Ednew, King of Rohan.
Sunnwyn was instrumental to brokering a ceasefire and the beginnings of a peace with the Dunlendings that would last several lifetimes of Men. She married a Chieftain of one of the Dunlendings tribes that bordered Rohan, having several children that would continue her work.
Sunnwyn lived a full life, by the standards of Men, and passed peacefully to the Halls of Mandos in her sleep.
Sunngifu/Lödwyn being Extremely Hinged about each other behind the readmore (+ canon-typical violence and body horror)
Lödwyn carries a splinter of living wood from Sunngifu’s face around with her. Sunny has a fragment of Lödwyn’s rib in her belt pouch (rising from the dead didn’t get rid of the hole Maia’s arquebus left). They’re OVER each other, nothing to see here.
🧑🧑🧒 FAMILY - what is their family like? what is your oc’s relationship to them? does your oc have any siblings?
Sunngifu was born into a large extended family living on the outskirts of a village in northern Aedyr. Her mother disappeared into the forest while Sunny was still a baby and her father was killed in a hunting accident not long after that, so Sunny and her two older siblings were raised by their paternal grandparents. The household was loud and chaotic, with relatives and friends constantly popping in and out. Many of them gossiped about Sunny where she could hear or directed comments right at her, which instilled a sense of bitterness and distrust at a young age. But it wasn’t all bad; there were times when the atmosphere was warm and loving, too.
Sunngifu’s family were quite prominent/popular (the sheer amount of food they grew and brought home to share out helped) and her grandparents in particular were seen as pillars of the community, so that helped shield her from some of the worst anti-godlike sentiments growing up. Not all of them, though; every time someone else’s vegetable patch failed or hunters came back empty-handed several times in a row, the muttering would start. As she grew older, it got worse, and she began to worry about what would happen when her grandparents died. She settled on the military as her best option for getting out and keeping herself safe, knowing they would take pretty much anyone who could hold a weapon. Her grandparents had mixed feelings about it for multiple reasons, but both of them were secretly quite relieved once she’d left; they’d been having the same fears. They didn’t even care that she wasn’t technically old enough to join!
It would have been very easy for Sunngifu to view her squadmates as a surrogate family (especially in the Tall Grass), but in spite of the pressure, she never really did. She’s the essence of that “found family abolition” post. She has used her newfound influence to help her birth family and others out (like getting her sister a forestry job on one of the Crown estates), but she still feels removed from them, as if her childhood memories happened to somebody else. But there’s a thick layer of distance between her and almost everyone; it’s just more obvious when it comes to the people she grew up with.
☁️ CLOUD - a soft headcanon
Sunny loves braiding grass and flowers together! It started off as a habit she fell into when her hands were idle or she felt bored/anxious, then evolved into her making little personalised ones for people she cares about. Several of her squadmates in the Tall Grass wore them for luck. Lödwyn received several over the course of their relationship; she had the last one pressed to preserve it and still carries it with her in the Living Lands. All the party members end up getting a few, too.
(okay this is quite a bittersweet headcanon but! still soft!)
🎭 MASKS - do they act differently around certain people? what’s different about the way they act around friends, family, strangers, etc.?
Sunny isn’t great at selective masking or adapting to different social contexts - it’s not a skill that comes naturally to her. (She survives at court mainly because the emperor finds this refreshing, even if many of his courtiers disagree.) When she first entered the military, for example, she found it very hard to perform appropriate deference to a superior. I’d say it’s a case of “what you see is what you get” with her, but that implies a level of openness which just isn’t present. Her surface-level straightforwardness only serves to deflect from how much she’s hiding, even from those she’s closest to. You’ll know if you get really close to her - her actual attitude won’t change much, but she’ll start telling you all her secrets and asking you about yours.
in the otp asks for Sunny and Lödwyn, I would love to know 17, 20, and any one applicable question (if any!) of the dirty category of questions. and just as a question I have, what did Sunny think of Hylgard's diary?
OTP Asks
Thank you!! Finally getting around to answering this a million years later, wooo! I think these two are taking over my brain.
What senses (sights, smells, feelings, etc). remind them of each other?
For Lödwyn, it’s all about salt, peat, leaf litter, and rotting things (sorry, Sunny). She feels especially close to those memories when she’s in a forest or near the ocean. When she arrives in the Living Lands, everything around her becomes a reminder. Sometimes, she swears she can see Sunngifu’s features in the face of every peasant farmer the Steel Garrote rolls over.
Sunngifu would say the odour of zeal reminds her most of Lödwyn. She can’t quite define what that scent is - a lightning strike, the ground after rain, hot metal? - but she knows it when she smells it. Sparring with Kai is also a painful reminder of what she and Lödwyn had. There’s no attraction between them, but having a good regular sparring partner again is A Lot.
What is a promise they have made to each other?
Early on, they swore neither one would ever try to divert the other from her purpose. This was before Lödwyn found out Sunny never really wanted to join the Tall Grass in the first place, so for a while afterward, she was plagued by wondering what Sunny’s actual purpose in life was. It didn’t occur to her that Sunny might not have a singular purpose to dedicate herself to.
Meanwhile, Sunngifu made this promise thinking she knew what it meant to love a paladin and was going in fully prepared. Turns out she Did Not and Was Not.
(putting the rest behind a readmore for mentions of breathplay and spooky scary skeleton sex)
What are each of their signature foreplay moves?
Lödwyn: working her fingertips underneath the edge of Sunngifu’s wood mask right where it meets her skin. Sunny loves this move, but most of her other partners were too squeamish about what was/wasn’t under there to pull it off.
Sunngifu: tracing Lödwyn’s throat very, very lightly. No pressure, just a faint threat… or a promise.
also fisting the bullet hole in Lödwyn’s ribcage, but I’m not sure that counts as foreplay even if she does lead with it
On reading Hylgard’s diary: Sunny felt a sense of incredulous amusement she wanted to share with Lödwyn, before realising they don’t have that sort of relationship any more. Since she didn’t particularly want to talk about it with Kai or Marius, that left her to think it over on her own. Most of all, she was reminded of the disconnect between other people’s experience of Lödwyn and her own - the woman she knows and yearns for and sometimes fears is not the same woman the rest of the world sees. also for gods’ sake Hylgard she’s not a dom /headcanon
