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Another Moment of your Time  by Larner

My Easter gift for 2022.

 Verification

            Pando Proudfoot, nephew and ward of Sancho Proudfoot, sat cross-legged on the hearth rug before the parlor fire in Bag End, little Cyclamen by his side, a book in his lap, his left elbow on his knee and his head resting against his hand, his right hand turning the page to show a picture of a great dragon walking down a track near a cliff crowned with tall trees.  The dragon had walked over a break in the road where a wide pit lay, a pit that would have stopped smaller creatures from going forward but failed to stay the great worm from its intended path.  Only, hidden within that pit there crouched a Man, a shining sword in his hands, one he intended to stab into the dragon’s belly!

            “Oh, I remember you telling me this story, Cousin Frodo!” Pando exclaimed as he straightened and turned to look over his shoulder to catch his older kinsman’s eye.  Frodo sat, wrapped about with his favorite oversized shawl, in the Master’s chair, a chest beside him on which rested a tray of sliced cheese, vegetable strips, and quarters of fruits along with slices of buttered bread laid out on a colorful cloth.  “Túrin and the Dragon!  I used to play this with you when I was a little one.”

            “That you did,” Frodo responded, then reached out to a pile of handkerchiefs lying behind the tray of food to grab one of them and cough into it. 

            Pando and his foster sister and cousin, Cyclamen, both watched this action with concern.  “You are still coughing,” Pando said, unconsciously sounding almost accusative.  “You should be getting well by now.”

            Frodo grimaced, dropping the soiled cloth into a small basket already filled with more than a half-dozen of its fellows.  When he answered he had to stop himself and clear his throat.  “It’s as if we were climbing Mount Doom,” he finally was able to say clearly.  “My lungs would become filled with the fumes, and I’d find myself coughing so to get what was in the air there out of them so that I could breathe at all.”

            Sam, who was reentering the parlor from the kitchen carrying a mug of Frodo’s tea, said, “I’d not be surprised were it you’re doin’ exactly that now, Frodo.  We both of us breathed in so much of the smoke and ash then.  It’s a wonder neither of us spent most of that April coughin’ it all up again.”  He set the mug down by Frodo and paused to feel the elder Hobbit’s brow.  “At least there’s no sign of fever now.  And you didn’t get the lung fever this time.”

            Frodo sighed as he reached for another handkerchief.  “Maybe not this time,” Frodo answered from behind the cloth.  “But I am so tired of the continued coughing and all.  Poor Rosie seems to be spending all day washing out handkerchiefs and pressing them.”

            “I don’t remember you getting ill, not before you left Hobbiton,” Pando noted.

            “Nor did he,” agreed Sam.  “Last time as I member him getting’ ill was the first winter he spent here in Bag End as Mister Bilbo’s ward, when it seemed as ever’body was gettin’ the lung fever or the ague or whatever.  We all got ill but him, and then him got it worse than the rest of us, just as the rest of us was ’bout over it.  Old Mister Bilbo wasn’t quite well enough to care for him on his own, so I come up to help, along with his Auntie Dora.  Now, if’n she wasn’t a dragon of a lady for doin’ things right!  She knew just what to do and saw to it as Mister Bilbo and me done it right, too.”

            “I barely remember being ill then,” Frodo noted.  “But I do remember that Aunt Dora wouldn’t let me exert myself for quite some time after I began to get better.”

            “Don’t I member that well enough.”  Sam was shaking his head at the memories of that time.  “It was all you could do to get her to let you do the copyin’ of this book, and to do the pictures.”

            Cyclamen, who had been examining the picture of the dragon in the book Pando still had in his lap, looked up inquiringly at Frodo.  “You did this picture?”

            He nodded, and went into another fit of coughing.  “At least,” he managed to say, “I wasn’t coughing through the whole time I was working on it.”  He blew his nose and dropped this new handkerchief into the basket.  “When will my chest finally clear of all this—stuff?” he demanded.

            Sam sighed.  “Just try gettin’ some of your tea down you,” he suggested.  “I’ve added some of the juice from them lemons Lord Strider sent in his last gift to you.  He said as it was useful to help folks get better after a cold and the likes.”

            Frodo shut his eyes and took a shuddering breath, and reached for the mug.  “I hope he was right,” he muttered before taking a drink from it.

            “I’ll bring one of them little orange fruits, the ones as the folks in Gondor call tangerines,” Sam said, and retreated back toward the kitchen.

            For a time there was quiet as Frodo sipped at his tea and the two children turned their attention back to the book.

            “Is the picture like a real dragon?” Cyclamen asked.

            Frodo shrugged.  “Bilbo seemed to think it was close enough to how he remembered Smaug being, there in the treasury in the Lonely Mountain.  I hope I did Glaurang justice.”

            “Is this a real story?” Cyclamen asked after a time.  “It’s not just made up, is it?”

            “Well,” Frodo began, “they repeated the story in the Hall of Fire while we remained in Rivendell, before we started our journey to Mordor.  Elrond himself told it, and he’s not the sort to make up such a story.”

            Pando looked up with shining eyes.  “Then, there was a real Túrin Turambur?  Oh, but that is wonderful!  But—“ he paused, his voice now uncertain, “but how can we know for sure?”

            Frodo didn’t think he could answer that question.  “I don’t know myself how we could know for certain.  I didn’t do as much reading while we were there in Lord Elrond’s house as I’d like to have done.  I’m certain there must have been something in his library that had more details of Túrin’s life, or so I would think.”  He thought on it for a moment before his face lightened.  “Sam was doing a good deal of reading, when he wasn’t getting food for me from the kitchens to help me recover from my wound or visiting the gardens or the glass houses.  We’ll ask him.”

            Just then Sam returned with a shallow bowl in which lay several of the small orange fruits, each carefully peeled.  Pando asked, “Mister Sam, when you were in Rivendell, did you read anything about Túrin Turambur?”

            Sam seemed surprised by the question.  “Túrin Turambur, the one as killed the great dragon as was called the Father of Dragons?  Well, yes, I did.  I found an old book ’bout him, one as was writ a long time ago.  Was in an older form of Sindarin as is a bit different from how it’s spoke today, and I had to ask Master Erestor, as keeps Lord Elrond’s library for him, to help make it out.  It told about his life, and how his dad was cursed by Morgoth hisself, and that Húrin’s children was cursed, too.  And it told of the grief all as was part of Lord Elu Thingol’s people had for him and his wife, as was really his sister but them didn’t know, since them died as they did.  T’was most sad, it was.”

            “Did it say who wrote this book, Sam?” asked Frodo.

            Sam nodded.  “It was an odd name, one with more’n one part.  Altariel, and after that, almost like it was thought on afore it was writ down, too, Nerwen.  What a name!  Man-woman?”

            But Frodo was laughing delightedly and clapping his hands, forgetting his coughing completely.  “Nerwen?  The author was Nerwen, also known as Altariel?  Oh, but Sam, we both know the author!”

            “We do?  How?”

            “Altariel was her name as most knew her back in Valinor, Sam.  But her father named her Artanis, and her mother called her the Mannish Woman.  Not meaning Men, but like an ellon, or a man among Elves.”

            “Artanis?  You mean,  this Nerwen is another name for—for the Lady?”

            Frodo smiled as he reached to take one of the small fruits from Sam’s bowl.  “Yes, not quite as many names as Strider has, but she has her own share of names and titles.  Yes, Sam—apparently your book was written by the Lady Galadriel herself, back when she dwelt in Menegroth!”  He turned to the two children.  “I would say that, yes, there was indeed a Túrin Turambar.”





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