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Dear Mother,
Someday, I’ll find a way to actually send these to you.
In the meantime, interesting news continues to accumulate! We ran into an exciting new creature on patrol this morning that looked something like a lizard, if a lizard happened to be the size of a horse. I’d include a sketch, but I’m afraid my drawing skills are as dismal as you remember.
My skills with the sword, however, are better than ever - I was able to drive the beast off before anyone was more than slightly injured! I think it may lose one leg entirely. Unfortunately, our pursuit failed, and I was not able to finish it off, but there is another patrol planned for tomorrow; perhaps I can find it then.
There is still no news from Turgon and Aredhel, but as I recently assured Father, that is no reason to fear the worst. If the worst had come to past, surely the Enemy would have found some way to taunt us with it.
I wish dearly that Father would let me go in search of them, but he insists he needs me here. I confess, I feel better keeping him in sight as well -
In better news, Maedhros’s letter has arrived after all; later than I expected, but the news in it is good, and my fears are much allayed. We are holding the line, and that’s the most important thing.
I hope you don’t worry too much.
All my love,
Fingon
…
Dear Mother,
I have found the beast! A minor rockfall down by the river pinned its tail and has kept it trapped. When I found it, it had given up hope of pulling itself free and was sulking about it. It looked rather more like a cat than anything else, and I almost laughed.
… Which brings us to my next point.
It just looked so helpless, lying there like that, and I’d gotten a bit separated from the rest of the patrol - don’t look at me like that, I was perfectly safe - and it just felt, well, wrong to kill it. When else will we have an opportunity like this, to see if we can save one of the beasts Morgoth has corrupted? Don’t I have a duty to try?
And no, before you ask, this has nothing to do with the whispers I’ve been hearing about thralls -
I promise this will end better than the bear cub I brought home in Aman. And the fox. And that hawk.
This time, everything will work out perfectly.
I’ve started by feeding it fish.
All my love,
Fingon
…
Dear Mother,
Day Three of my new project! I am now almost certain that my new friend is male, and he has stopped hissing at me when I approach. Admittedly, this is probably because I continue to bring him fish, but still: progress!
Between the need to actually fish for the fish, for lack of a better phrase, and my attempts to train the horse-lizard (definitely need a better phrase), this has been taking up a larger portion of my time than is easy to conceal from Father. He has been starting to make jokes that are not actually jokes about my riding off into the unknown like Turgon. I’m not sure what to tell him. I want to be further into my project before I try to sell him on it.
So I tried to drop hints that I was actually sneaking away to have the kind of assignations that might eventually end in grandchildren, which successfully distracted him.
If this continues long enough, I might actually have to find a baby somewhere.
I can picture you laughing at me. I wish you were here.
I will try to come up with a better name than lizard-horse soon. I also need a name for this specific lizard-horse, which I admit is harder than I thought it would be. Maybe I can come up with a sneaky way to ask Maedhros to ask Maglor. Celegorm might also be of some help - with the training, not the naming - but I’m pretty sure he still isn’t speaking with me. According to Maedhros, this is because the last time they met, Aredhel wasn’t speaking to him, so now that she’s disappeared, I have to fill in as a proxy.
No, it doesn’t make sense to me either.
All my love,
Fingon
…
Dear Mother,
Day 12 of my project! I am spared of calling my new friend a horse-lizard by the wit of one of the people who was on patrol with me; she has taken to calling it a dragon, and I like the sound of it so well that I’ve decided to adopt it. My particular dragon I have decided to call Glaurung.
He gave me a bit of a fright today when he unexpectedly breathed out sparks while I was doing my best to mend his leg, but there was no true harm done, and I think he looked a bit sorry afterwards. He is beginning to look genuinely happy to see me when I come, and I harbor some small, probably foolish, hope that it’s not just excitement for the fish.
Father has begun to poke around to try to find out just who I’m having assignations with; I might actually have to start courting someone to satisfy him.
Or I could come clean, I suppose, but my other idea sounds easier. No luck finding a suitable and available baby to claim so far, but my efforts continue unabated!
All my love,
Fingon
…
Dear Mother,
Glaurung can talk! He said his very first word today! It was “fish.” I am very proud and am now attempting to get him to say my name. The first letters are the same; how hard could it be?
I stay longer and longer to sit and talk with him now. Hopefully it will help him learn to speak. Once he can actually hold a conversation, I feel I can present him to Father.
I’m more hesitant than ever to do so before I can be sure how Father will react. He would be perfectly right to be cautious, of course, but I hate the thought of having to see Glaurung dead. I feel responsible for him now, and I want to protect him if I can, as ridiculous as that may seem directed towards a being that successfully started a fire for me yesterday.
In other news, Glaurung apparently now prefers his fish cooked.
All my love,
Fingon
…
Dear Mother,
I have finally freed Glaurung from where his tail was pinned. I confess I had some lingering fear that he would attack or at least wander off, but now that I see the damage, that concern has lessened greatly. He will need a good deal of help before he is ready to do that.
Please don’t worry. I’m being very careful, I promise.
In unrelated news, I discovered dragons can purr if you pet them just exactly right.
All my love,
Fingon
…
Dear Mother,
Glaurung did a bad thing today.
He has been growing at an incredible rate, and I’m afraid my fishing skills are struggling to keep up with him. Today he wanted more fish when all I had left was the one I had intended for my own lunch. When I told him no, the strangest look came over his eyes, and suddenly I found myself bringing him the fish anyway despite my intention.
Fortunately, I snapped out of it before I could actually give him the fish, and I suppose no great harm would have come of it even I had, but the incident still alarms me. His fire is getting stronger. What if this does too?
Well, hopefully I can train it out of him. Immediately after I snapped out of it, I poured the bucket of water I’d brought him over his nose, and he reacted exactly as a cat would, sputtering and indignant, so that will be my new strategy: All misbehavior will be greeted with a liberal application of water. Perhaps I’ll see if one of the artisans can create something a little more manageable for the task than a bucket.
On the bright side, his language skills are improving! He asked for that fish in a full sentence. I’m very proud. Is this what parenting feels like?
Meanwhile, I think Father has questioned every eligible Noldorin woman in Hithlum. Presumably he’ll move on to the Sindar next; I don’t know what he’ll do when he runs out of those.
Possibly I should have come up with a different excuse.
Maedhros’s next letter has arrived, by the way. I referred to my project very discreetly in my last to him, but apparently it was not discreet enough, because he sounded rather alarmed. I’m torn between telling him the whole truth and obfuscating so he doesn’t feel the need to lie to Father on my behalf.
I’ll just tell him I’ve gotten a cat. A very large cat. That breathes fire.
Maybe not that last part.
All my love,
Fingon
…
Dear Mother,
I now have a special bottle that sprays water when I push a little trigger at the top. I like it very much, and after extensive and absolutely necessary practice on various rocks, I have taken to carrying it with me when I go see Glaurung. Unfortunately, this has proven necessary. Twice more he has attempted that eye trick, both times in attempts to get more fish, but after the last attempt he seemed resigned to failure. I also take heart from the fact that he is now fully healed and could easily leave to survive on his own, but instead he has stayed here, seemingly perfectly content to stay with me. In fact, I’ve had to use the spray bottle once or twice to keep him from following me back to the fort.
(I am getting increasingly tempted to use the spray bottle on Father whenever he brings up the woman I am supposedly seeing, but I doubt I would find as good a result. In hindsight, I really should have found a different excuse to use.)
In cheerier news, I can have full conversations with Glaurung now! His own contributions remain simple, but he is improving greatly.
I also have a confession to make: I told you that I was teaching him to speak. I did not tell you that I was teaching him Quenya.
Keeping that secret from you of all people was spectacularly pointless, I know, seeing as you aren’t actually reading these, but I was afraid to commit the words to paper in case these were ever found.
You have to understand, it just seemed so natural! I was alone, doing something secret, so naturally I would use -
Well. I suppose when Father finds out, the sticking point about the dragon will probably not be what language he speaks. On the other hand, when Thingol finds out …
Maybe I should start teaching him Sindarin.
All my love,
Fingon
…
Dear Mother,
I have a baby!
Admittedly, I’m increasingly concerned about the provenance of said baby, but Caranthir’s not talking, and Father’s already seen the baby, so it’s too late to back out now.
… Though maybe I should back up just a little.
You see, a few letters ago, I’d mentioned to Maedhros that I needed a baby, mostly because I was too tired to think about what I was writing, and then the messenger took it before I could -
Anyway. Maedhros, being the supportive cousin that he is - and also, notably, having survived Feanor’s determination to have 49 grandchildren at minimum - assumed that I had legitimate reasons to want said baby: Namely, Father pressuring me to get to work preserving the line of Finwe by providing more heirs.
Which shouldn’t be necessary but given that we still don’t know what happened to Turgon, Aredhel, and little Idril -
Which, to be fair to Maedhros, was much more sensible than what was actually going on.
In my defense, I didn’t actually expect Maedhros to - to do whatever it is he did. I thought he would commiserate a little, maybe, and that would be the end of it.
But no. Caranthir is here with the horses he wants to trade for some of our stock, and he brought with him the tiniest, most perfect baby I’ve ever seen.
I’m going to call him Gil-Galad.
I know, I know! I shouldn’t be naming the baby before I’m sure I’ll get to keep him, and I shouldn’t decide I’m going to keep him before I can get Caranthir to cough up more than, “Don’t worry about it,” when I ask where he came from.
But Caranthir managed to smuggle the baby into my arms right before Father walked in, saw it, and jumped to the obvious conclusion, so if I do end up having to give the baby up, I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do.
Actually, I already have a lot of explaining to do because I might have panicked a little bit when Father saw me with the baby.
And by ‘panicked a little bit,’ I mean that when he said, “You have a baby?” I may have, possibly, blurted out, “I also have a dragon.”
So, as I write, Father’s getting kitted up to go meet said dragon.
Do you think Gil-Galad’s too young to come along?
All my love,
Fingon