Tathlas

O Diary! Oh, oh, oh, I cannot believe it, yet -- it is true!

O Diary! What strange times we live in.

My dearest Norlië:

I hope you can read my cramped writing on this tiny parchment, and that Lille's eagle finds you in relative safety.

Oh, Diary! How long have I been unwilling to touch your pages, to record what has really happened?

Ah, Diary, it is well and truly spring now, and summer is not far off. Once again I felt like the house-mother until Elvealin arrived -- not for ill, as the new generation have good hearts, but in a way that reminded me acutely of just how much time has passed since my Themodir was born. And that his Gondolin is not even ruins, for all of Beleriand is gone.

Four there were gathered in the Hall of Fire... until Tathlas came.

Manadhlaer was known only by epesse -- Tathlas, for all that he was young, was observant. His observations so far had been that she always introduced herself by saying, "I am called Manadhlaer," not "I am" or even "My name is." The name, in her accent so different from his own, seemed fey -- "song of fate" was hardly a name without a certain melancholy to it.