Faramir Fiction Archive

Speaks to the Trees (R)

Written by Draylon

27 July 2011 | 18210 words | Work in Progress

Title: Speaks to the Trees
Author: Draylon
Rating: R
Pairing(s): Faramir
Warnings: Orc-heavy content

This is a tricky one, this being a stand-alone-ish sequel to the (the still unfinished, and not yet posted here) sequel to ‘Captain of Mordor’. Please note that Faramir, though generally sniped about by Orcs in earlier chapters, doesn’t actually play a main part in this story in until Chapter 6 onwards. Contains generally Orc-heavy content and some explicit (mostly consensual) Faramir / Shagrat sex scenes in later chapters.

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Chapter 6. A merry morning meeting

The low rising sun throwing his long shadow ahead of him, Prince Faramir of Ithilien walked a leisurely path along the river margin, leading his horse along behind. His goal in sight ahead of him and not too far away, he tethered the docile beast to graze at a gate-post in the shade of a tall hedgerow, by the edge of a pasture full of plump white goats.

As for the trees he was searching for, Faramir was only familiar with the general type. Grey poplars, he knew, were most often found growing singly or in small groups on field boundaries, rather than in the company of other trees in woods, and while they could not grow with their feet wet or in waterlogged soil, they did prefer the fertile meadows adjacent to watercourses. Apart from this he had never thought to pay them much attention before.

Looking more closely now, he saw that the bases of the tree-trunks were dark and had a deeply fissured, almost corky appearance, which lent them an extremely – almost alarmingly – craggy character; but almost as soon as the upper limbs began to diverge from the main stem their appearance was quite different. The large branches were in the main smooth and were coloured an unusual – and pleasant – pale greenish grey, being marked here and there with darker bands, each comprised of clusters of lightly raised, arrow-shaped points. Even a slight breeze was enough to stir the shaggy clusters of leaves, which hung at the ends of the branches, into constant pattering motion; and these leaves, coloured pale grey on the lower surface and dark, dusty green above, made the two-toned foliage stand out pale and surprisingly distinct; this type of tree could be seen from miles away across the open countryside.

And a full-grown grey poplar was as statuesque as it was massive: Faramir reckoned that the trees he was looking at now were among the largest he had ever seen. Though clothed with great tousled bunches of leaves from the top of the crown – on somewhat drooping branches – right down to the ground, the trees retained an almost see-through aspect for the main branches, each of enormous girth, were widely spaced apart and this – together with the trees’ tendency to bear foliage at their extremities, left them with markedly open canopies. From a distance they were a singularly impressive sight.

Faramir could understand the attraction. And they were obviously an excellent match for Shagrat.

Riding in the valley at daybreak, he had been told a strange tale as he passed through the outskirts of a community of still-agitated weavers. People were talking about an enormous mountain Orc running wild and savage that had been sighted near their village in the night, and even in spite of some of the fabulously inaccurate descriptions of the monster he’d been given (‘they say he was twice as tall as I am, Sir, and with fire in his eyes!’), Faramir had a fairly good idea of who this creature have might been.

And there a short way ahead of him, softly-lit against a backdrop of green-and-grey poplar leaves fluttering in the sunlight, was Shagrat, making his way through a glade of fresh spring grass. He stopped in the middle of the clearing, shed his cloak and turning to the left and right, carefully sniffed the morning air. But the morning sun was in his eyes and Faramir still some way upwind of him; he appeared to notice nothing and his alert, wary pose visibly relaxed.

As Faramir drew nearer Shagrat unfastened his greaves and wrist-plates and stepped out of his boots. Then he began unbuckling his sword belt, which was supported by a pair of straps that ran diagonally from each shoulder to the opposite hip, crossing the middle of his chest. Battle harness removed, he doffed his short-sleeved chainmail tunic, having difficulty with his left shoulder as the close-fitting, heavy material caught; and bending forwards he struggled for a moment, half in and half out of the battered old garment, as he tried to take it off over his head. As Shagrat stood up again, Faramir quietly stepped back into the cover provided by a line of young poplar saplings, quashing his quick impulse to help.

The Orc had worn armour of some sort continually, in Mordor, and Faramir knew very well how exposed and vulnerable he felt without it. The fact was that Shagrat avoided taking off his outer garments wherever possible, and almost never willingly undressed. Seeing him in an unguarded moment like this was a rare experience for the Prince, and for once Shagrat did seem relatively relaxed: working his shoulder for a moment, the Orc straightened up slowly and stretched his back. Now that he was not weighed down by battle-trappings his habitual stooping hunch was gone and he stood up much straighter, posture improved immensely. It occurred to Faramir then, as it had sometimes done before, that if one did not look too closely at the details, the Uruk’s general shape could be said to be a fine one, indeed. He had long legs, straight limbs and was strongly built, with a broad-shouldered, though not overtly muscular frame. This underlying structure of Shagrat, unfortunately, was packaged in an outer envelope that most people would find decidedly off-putting: the Orc had mottled grey skin and a fearsome face with fang-like teeth, and he was covered, each and every inch of him, with ugly marks and burns and scars. All in all it was a sad and ragged covering, and though it bore witness to its owner having endured countless years of abuse, of greater import was that this gruesome exterior was the badge of his Orcishness, and more than enough to condemn him for that.

There came to Faramir then, as he watched the lone Orc by the trees, another strange notion and he fancied he saw – as if overlying the broken face of Shagrat – a fleeting impression of the person he might have been if the circumstances of his life had followed a radically different course – and it was a savagely handsome, merry-looking fellow: dark haired, clear of eye, and with a wide, expressive mouth. Then, as quickly as it had come this vision or idea of Faramir’s was gone, and he was only looking at the scarred, wrecked features of his Orc, with his familiar twisted nose and bitten lips and fear, always, hiding in his eyes.

The sight of the Uruk standing quietly in the sunlit clearing moved Faramir first to pity, then arousal, and he felt the familiar light-headedness coupled with a tightness in his groin that he often did when he was near to Shagrat, as the thought of him sent a swift rush of blood away from Faramir’s head.

Meanwhile, the Orc had been picking up all the pieces of clothing, armour and weaponry he’d been carrying or wearing, and had methodically hung them one by one on a low branch that was catching the sun on the far side of the glade. Then returning to the middle of the clearing, he sat down carefully on a large fallen trunk. Crossing his legs, he rested his elbows on his knee, assuming something absurdly close to classic pose of a shore-bound mermaid and began to dry his hair. The bright morning sunlight shone down through the widely-spaced poplar branches, back-lighting this pastoral scene – to unfortunate and gruesome effect. Having twisted a long, ragged grey skein over one shoulder into a somewhat stringy hank, Shagrat was inexpertly trying to wring the moisture out from it.

At this point it finally occurred to the usually-observant Faramir (who in all fairness to him, had clearly been distracted by other pressing matters whilst watching the Orc) to wonder why Shagrat was absolutely sopping wet. He stepped forwards into the clearing through the screen of poplar leaves, deliberately making noise to make his presence known.

On seeing him Shagrat started violently where he was sitting, almost jumping to his feet. “Goldilocks!” he exclaimed in a warm voice, and there was a definite note of welcome in it.

Faramir smiled down at him. “Don’t get up on my account,” he said.

**

Faramir closed his eyes and thrust hard down into the Orc’s throat. At first Shagrat choked and struggled with it a bit but soon accommodated him properly, as he always did. Because you could say what you liked about higher-minded motivations, but for Faramir part of the joy of sex with Shagrat often involved something – pretty much exactly like this. Trembling with the effort of – containing himself – the Prince shook his head. This wasn’t quite the tender reunion with the Uruk he’d been anticipating.

“Don’t get up,” was all Faramir had said, and at that – quick as a cloud shadow flitting over a field of summer grass – some subtle element of expression seemed to go out of the Orc’s face, and he was left regarding Faramir impassively, but with a wary look in his eye. Then with an abrupt movement he’d reached for him – for the front fastening of his breeches in fact, and while it wasn’t wholly out of the ordinary for the Orc to suddenly proposition Faramir in this unexpected fashion, this time it had taken him by surprise and he had – so to speak – found himself going with the flow.

Looking down, he saw that Shagrat was in what had become to be a fairly familiar pose for him: hunkered down on his knees in front of Faramir, face jammed up between his legs and clutching hold of them for balance; being vigorously fucked, in short. The Prince twisted his head to one side only to be met by the much same image – only this time played out in shadow-format, as the slanting sunbeams merrily lit their activities and projected them onto the riverbank. It was an arresting tableau, no doubt – but again, not what he’d intended. He seized a handful of the Orc’s wet hair – none too gently – and dragging his head back, held him away from his body for a while, to make sure he would make no effort to resume.

As usual when they’d been engaged in this sort of activity it took a moment for Shagrat to catch his breath and he hung his head, panting, at the Prince’s feet. But Faramir hadn’t failed to note the flicker of apprehension that had passed over the Orc’s face as they disengaged from one another and now he saw Shagrat dart a swift, assessing look towards the branch where he’d left his sword-belt. The tree it was hanging from was clear across the wooded glade however, well beyond the kneeling Uruk’s capacity to reach – a fact Faramir could almost see Shagrat registering as he dropped his gaze, hunching his shoulders and quickly clenching his fist. Shagrat’s left hand snaked out quietly, as he reached for a hefty fallen limb from a nearby tree.

Nettled by this reaction Faramir bowled him over onto his back directly, driving his knee into the Orc’s shoulder to knock the branch out of his grip – but even given the element of surprise, it still took a couple of tries to make him let go.

In spite of himself Shagrat made a soft noise of dismay in his throat as he squinted up at Faramir, which turned into a cut-short yell as the Prince launched himself on top of him.

“No, Faramir!” he cried. “No -”

The Orc’s long arms grabbed for him, closing round his chest in what was more of a wrestling-grip than a proper embrace, and Faramir used his knees again to pin him down.

While his mouth was otherwise occupied earlier, Shagrat hadn’t had much chance to swallow, and a certain amount of moisture had run down his neck and was still wet on his chin. Gathering what he could of it, Faramir quickly swiped some of it off him into his hand then added as much of his own saliva as he was able to muster. The problem with Shagrat, he was thinking a little feverishly – possibly with all Orcs, he wouldn’t know – was that his privvy parts had been mauled so much about during his sexual encounters in the past, that sometimes it was tricky to know how to handle those same parts here and now in the present. A little lubrication – well, that often helped, and he moved some of his weight off the Uruk’s hips, eagerly pulling down the waistband of his leggings and slipping his spit-slicked fingers in.

Shagrat was only half-hard as yet but as Faramir squeezed and shifted his grip around him, his manipulations called up a rush of blood to the Orc’s member and he felt it swell and begin to stiffen properly in his hand. Aching with arousal himself, the Prince was anticipating a quick completion for both of them, when he felt the Orc shove a hard, closed fist against his chest, pushing him firmly back.

“Goldilocks, get off me,” Shagrat said in a breathless voice – not much more than a rattling rasp.

Faramir almost laughed out loud on noticing the tiny blade that Shagrat was now holding up between them in his shaking hand.
As Faramir was recognising his own clasp-knife – a little novelty piece that he habitually carried in his the pocket of his breeches, the Orc jammed the sharp tip into the pulse-point at the angle of his jaw, not quite hard enough to break the skin, but using a disconcerting amount of pressure, nevertheless.

“Get off me, Goldilocks,” the Uruk said.

And Faramir realized then that he looked absolutely terrible – worse, that is, than usual: cold sweat was running off him and his naturally-haggard face was even more drawn and livid than it was in its ordinary state. Snarling lips drawn back over jagged teeth he was panting hard in – fear, Faramir realized to his consternation, for it was exactly the same look the Orc had worn towards him once before in Mordor, many years ago. He drew himself smartly off Shagrat, who immediately rolled away from him, lifting himself up onto all fours and from there into a hunch-backed fighting stance, which he held lop-sided, on obviously unsteady legs.

“Shagrat! It’s all right, Shagrat!” Faramir assured him.

Approaching warily, showing open hands that he held carefully away from his sides, he was able to get close enough to reach over and clasp the Orc companionably on the shoulder. Flinching slightly under it, the Uruk searched his face briefly, not meeting Faramir’s eyes.

Feeling utterly at a loss as to know what to do next, a vague, hare-brained idea occurred to Faramir. Letting go of him, he abruptly turned his back on the Uruk – paced a few slow steps forwards without turning round to look. Then he sat on the ground with his back against the fallen tree trunk and waited. This trick was also a signal to ‘follow me’ that was sometimes calming to skittish horses; the means of it working, as Faramir understood things, being related to the way it immediately removed from the animal’s field of view any perceived threat associated with a direct human gaze – and it also might have had something to do with the way that the eyes of a horse were placed on the sides, rather than at the front of the animal’s head. While Faramir had no idea how such – basically, equestrian – principles might apply to an over-wrought Orc, after a long, precarious moment, he was gratified to note Shagrat hesitantly approaching and wavering for a while on the brink, before finally sitting down beside him.

The Uruk cleared his throat. “Was that you trying – horse-whispering – on me?”

In spite of himself Faramir snorted with amusement. “And wherever did you become acquainted with horse-whispering as a general concept, Shagrat?”

“Heard one of the stable hands talking about it once, back at your place. Fellow didn’t much rate it. Said if you wanted to break a nag, all you had to do was jam the reins on its head and give it a good taste of your spurs, then stay on its back till it knackered itself out. Better to let it know its place and who was boss right from the off – no point bothering with all that fannying about trying to be friends with it, he said.”

“Well,” Faramir replied, making a mental note to get a full description of this unsympathetic character from Shagrat at some later date, “when it comes to the training of horses, and – actually, many other matters also, I think your stable hand and I would certainly have to agree to differ on that point.”

“The other way works though, and not just on horses. I can tell you that.”

“Really. Is that so,” Faramir murmured. He put his arm round the Orc’s shoulders and pulled him nearer, until they were sitting side by side. He spoke soothing, gentle words to him for a long time until at last, the Uruk seemed to calm down.

“That softly-softly approach,” Shagrat said a little indistinctly, as he had his face pressed so close against Faramir’s neck. “I should’ve known you’d be all for it.”

The Prince smiled as he kept on stroking the Orc’s still-damp head of scraggy hair. “I’ve seen for myself that sometimes it can produce remarkable results.”

TBC.

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