Dear Diary,
Well, it is all done. Daegond of Gondolin lies in a cairn alongside his oath-brother, my husband -- I took a stone from Themodir's to put on Daegond's. No more will he break furniture in what he called the "Hall of Lies." No more will he sniff new recruits to make sure they are sufficiently respecting me. May Lord Namo give him at least the mercy of forgetting all he saw, heard, smelled at the sack of the White City.
So many came, Diary. Even Dwarf-lords paid their respects, which would surely astonish my brother. It is already one of those stories I wish I could tell him, but now cannot, at least not for a very long time.
The only tribute I could think of to place with him was the medical textbook I wrote entirely about him, A Strange Case of Digestive Difficulty in a Soldier. Oh, it was not the only copy. In the days prior to the funeral, I truly put Sarmetecil through her paces as a copyist, to make a fresh one entirely for a grave-gift. I have given her a few days off to rest her arm.
When I visited the new cairn yesterday, I found a curious tribute outside of the grave (another gift given him was the leather belt he bit on while I operated on him in a house Feamiril and Gilinnen insisted was that of Iarwain Ben-adar). Wedged between the cairn-stones is a sort of bird brooch, but not a swan. It reminds me of the art style of Doriath, but surely there are few enough Doriathrim left on this side of the ocean, and those few must all be in the Golden Wood. A most odd occurrence, and yet it reminds me that like Daegond himself, many I know surely keep secrets I cannot even guess at.
Certainly his poor hroa yielded few enough secrets. Someone hated him enough to -- well, let me not dwell on that, not now. My poor brother! It is all heartbreak, Diary. At least he and Themodir are together again. But they are both apart from the rest of us.
Dear Losgael, of course, will keep Daegond's swan. Meluilindele is an adaptable sort of fellow. He can learn to put up with an endless flow of green eggs.
I tried to calm my mind after it was all done by looking over the first of the ancient tomes from the great chest brought to me by the Hammer some weeks ago. I put on my cotton gloves and carefully turned the flaking pages. What then would be revealed? Would there be accounts of Cuivienen? Just how old was this tome of great mystery? It certainly had a promising title: To Serve.
Unfortunately, the author reveals very little of themselves, except possibly in their choice of recipes. It is a cookery book. Supposing my overworked secretary will ever copy anything for me again after having to read every last nuance of Daegond's bowel troubles, I will pay her a lavish bonus to make Telpenaro a copy of this volume.
Would not my husband's brother roar with laughter, if he could see me breathlessly opening the dusty tome, only to be greeted with a recipe for honey-cakes? At least it was not sausage. I could not have borne that.
My heart, Diary. It is absolutely shattered.
