When the Moon Hits Your Eye

[zopyrus.livejournal.com]

Title: When the Moon Hits Your Eye

Author Name: Zopyrus

Prompt: Durin's Day

Rating: General

Summary: In Hithlum, Fingon receives the first of many Dwarf-made gifts.

Notes: Thank you to suzll for the beta!

~~~

From the Library of Imladris, Special Collections:

The following letter was transcribed from the personal correspondence of Maedhros Fëanorion, the Dispossessed, and Fingon Fingolfinion, High King of the Noldor (FA 456-472).

The original document may be examined only on the seventeenth day of the lunar cycle.  For more information, please contact Merineth Baineliel, Chief Assistant to the Lord Erestor.

~~~

Dear Fingon,

You will be shocked to learn that my good-for-nothing brother Caranthir is good for something after all.  As you know perfectly well, the territory I assigned him was picked almost at random--my only requirement being that he live as far away from our cousin Angrod as possible, preferably without sharing a border with me.  But he has somehow, incredibly, established trade between his people and the Dwarves in the Blue Mountains, without (at least as far as I can tell) offending anyone.

I am very proud.  I am also waiting for the other shoe to drop.  But before it does, I mean to make the most of his neighbors' resources and talents!

The Naugrim are an endlessly inventive folk--perhaps even more so than the Noldor.  Unlike us, they are subject to the pressures of mortality, and thus bring their ideas into development with shocking quickness.

The Moon has only been in the sky for about fifty years (for Dwarves, as for us, the age of young adulthood), yet they have already harnessed its power into all sorts of useful tools.  Best of all are their "moon-letters," created by Kigva of Tumunzahar.  (You may know her city by the name "Nogrod." In deference to our friendly Doriathrin overlords, I suppose I ought to forget it is ever called anything else.)

Her book is enclosed, along with half a dozen jars of ithildin powder, for ink-making.

If you were able to get this far into my coded letter, I imagine you have already begun to read Kigva's book.  She parted with her secrets only reluctantly, and for a very high price.  Anyone you trust may study her book, but do not make copies!  Kigva claims she has worked secret runes into the pages, to prevent her words being stolen.  It sounds absurd, but you and I both know the lengths to which craftspeople will go to protect their work--and given her obvious talent for enchantment, I suspect her threat might be true.

The moon-letters are not, of course, perfect for every situation.  Since it takes at least a month for anyone to be able to read them once they have been set down (or much, much longer, for the more pointlessly complicated kind--Kigva has been marketing them for use in legal documents, especially wills), any time-sensitive information will have to be relayed in a more ordinary way.

However, we can use them for long-term planning--and for more personal correspondence.  The most recent packet of letters from Hithlum contained some rather questionable (if, thankfully, unsigned) verses that I can only assume were meant for me.  Unfortunately, my secretary took one glance at the music paper and forwarded them to my brother by mistake--or so she claims!

Maglor has declared the anonymous author a genius, and whistles highlights whenever he sees me.  Personally, I found the songs rather insipid, and uncharacteristically lacking in metrical complexity: was the author drunk when he wrote them?

Hence the second book in this package.  My own copy of Elemmírë's "Beginner's Guide to Poetry" is long since lost, but my wretched secretary, in a rare display of helpfulness, has donated hers to the cause.  (She implores you to take good care of it, and not to bend the pages.)  I trust you will find it useful, and that any future verses will be at least as well-formed as their subject.

Yours, as ever, &c.

Maedhros

~~~

NOTES:

1.  In the Hobbit, we are told about two types of moon-letters: those that can be read any time the moon shines on them, and those that can be read only under a moon "of the same shape and season as the day when they were written."  On a sliding scale of complexity, the runes Maedhros is using fall somewhere in the middle: they can be read once a month, under the correct moon-shape--possibly with a simple spoken password a la the ithildin gates of Moria.

2.  How did this letter survive?  Some heroic librarian was probably in a hurry, realized it was in code, and misfiled it under "military secrets" on their way out of a burning fortress.  Long ages later, when Erestor's long-suffering secretary finally reorganized the records of the High Kings...

3.  Speaking of which, Merineth daughter of Bainel is on loan from suzll's Gilraen stories, one of which also involves code of a different kind.

Comments

[zopyrus.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I am glad you liked my observations about Dwarves--and that the legal context of moon-letters made sense.