Gilinnen

Manadhlaer sighed, not for the first time that day, or that hour. She dipped her quill and made another attempt:

It has been widely known since the Elder Days that the sap of an unopened poppy...

Instantly she stopped and put a line through her words. "If it has been widely known," she said aloud, "why write it at all?" One of her delicate silken slippers, as light as an Elfling's first breath, had already gone. She kicked the other against the far wall of her office and began again.

They say, Diary, that there is no fool like an old fool, and so I felt when -- having sent a panicky message to our Tûr via raven -- I discovered the source of the blood on the missing scribe's bed-clothes: a bat flew in somehow and chose to devour its mouse far from the hungry hawks -- indeed, hanging immediately above Sorontar's bed. A second search revealed tiny bones and, horrifyingly, the tail. 

Dear Diary,

Yes, yes, it is late. It is one of those white nights. Norlië's cat Eli is making some very odd and unpleasant noises at me because I am not reclining on my bed. I have had some lengthy conversations with that cat. Of course, the chief topic is Norliriel herself. I told Eli that I miss her too, that she will be back when she has finished her business, and I am sure that to buy back her cat's favour, she will bring some sort of fish. Maybe salted, as the traveller prepares it, but fish.

I do not know where to start. At the first glance Daegond might have been strange, crude and even mean to a person who did not know him, but he had more than meets the eye. Profound loyalty to those he protects. The reasons why he was behaving the way he did. A softer side which the Noldorin (or any) warrior tries so hard to hide under their shell of steel.

All I have in my mind are the scenes of meeting him.

14 June

My only love,

I have blinked, and five years have passed since I held your hröa in my arms, long after your fëa had sped to Mandos. 

It makes me happy to imagine that Lord Ulmo pulled the blue rose given me by hiril Gilinnen, mother of Elvealin, and which I set on top of the surf at Lindon, along the Straight Road until it came to the shores of the Blessed Lands, and to think that there it came to your hand. For you would know at once who sent it and what it meant.

The wax seal on the outer letter bears the image of a pillar, like that once displayed in Gondolin. The Tengwar on the letter are precise, needing to communicate their message, yet artful and really quite attractive to read. This letter is bound to a thick packet of others, each one a business letter of some sort -- yet while their purpose is utilitarian, and these too are highly readable, the calligraphy is simultaneously so beautiful that one would think the writer had copied out poems for framing on one's wall as artwork.

My dear Lady Gilinnen,