Another Name for The Sickle by Himring  

Another Name for The Sickle

I'm not sure I have written this down anywhere before, but I think in Himring 'verse Erestor might once have been an inhabitant of Nargothrond. At any rate, the background of this ficlet places him in the Havens of Sirion.

It was not what most people would have considered a lazy day, but when Erestor needed a day of mental recovery, he cancelled all appointments and other commitments and spent the day copying a manuscript himself, rather than delegating the task to others.

His writing desk was in an alcove, with daylight coming in at just the right angle. He carefully arranged inkpots, quills and penknife. Then he propped his exemplar open before him, steadied on a pillow to preserve the spine. Finally, he dipped in his quill and steadily began to form beautiful tengwar, calm settling in his mind.

Today, the text he had chosen for copying was discussing constellations. By Men of the Ancient North it was named the Burning Briar, he read. Surely, he had not heard anyone call the Valacirca by that name since the First Age? He tried to cast his mind back, but Men had mingled in Sirion and he had not cared enough to find out, back then, whose usage this was, exactly. No details to add here then—but he smiled and in the margin of his copy he drew first the seven stars and a bramble shoot on fire around that.

Chapter End Notes

The italicized quotation is from The Later Annals of Valinor in The History of Middle-earth.

Erestor is interested in the differences between Men (unlike book!Lindir), when he has the mental bandwidth to consider them. In Sirion he was a lot younger and also, like most other people there, a traumatized refugee...

2 x 100 words in MS Word.

Also written for challenges at tolkienshortfanworks and tolkien100 on Dreamwidth and for Erestober on Tumblr.