Anglador

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. 

My dear Telpenaro,

I have asked what scholars I could find -- minus Sorontar, who is off doing falconry things, and Anglador, who rests by day so that he can observe Varda's jewels at night -- and we all agreed we could give a home to one of the kittens when they are ready to leave Mintel's side.

Manadhlaer, Lady of the Order of the Pillar and of the Houses of Healing, looked most unladylike as she crawled on all fours around her garden. Indeed, dirty as she was, she would have resembled a giant shrew at a distance, had she a tail. As she was not so endowed, she merely resembled a garden-variety gardener as she crawled around her yard, making sure that each precious athelas start got its grip in the rich Imladris soil. Someone drawing near would have heard her humming an unmistakably lovely tune they had not heard before.

Well, Diary, this is a bit of a turn-up.

I am falling to pattern again, and neglecting you on the calm, ordinary days when all I do is count bandages and listen to the singing birds outside my window. It is only on the days that are particularly strange that I seem to turn to you, and for this I apologize.

At last, Diary, the letter came: the star-man, Anglador, waiting on my pleasure and wishing to make a visit to me, to explain his findings. He expressed concern that all of this information would be much for anyone's mind, but I wrote him telling him to fear this not, and I summoned Norlië as well, that she might hear the findings at once and that the hard-working scholar need not repeat himself.

Oh, Diary. Oh, oh, oh.

It started innocently enough. Anglador, the astrologer, came by to show me some star-charts, and Norlië came along with him. (I refer to her by this name still, though there is a more intimate name she told me that only her family ever knew. To keep it that way, I shall try not to quote it in these pages.) Hir Tindir of the Hammer was out on his evening stroll just then -- I had been puttering about in the garden before the visit -- and Lady Ambassador Tingruviel, before long, and Caun Danel ended up joining the group.

O Diary! What strange times we live in.