Losgael

The note is scrawled in an unusually shaky hand.

My lord,

I have paid this courier a great deal of money to find you, and I hope he does. Lord Tindir is away, and the matter before us is urgent to a degree I felt you must know.

Lothilind of the Pillar, who had become an apprentice at the Houses of Healing, has been murdered in the Vale. We discovered her poor hröa under a bush, downhill from the Markets of Imladris.

Besides the obvious security implications, these things should be known:

Dear Diary,

Well, it is all done. Daegond of Gondolin lies in a cairn alongside his oath-brother, my husband -- I took a stone from Themodir's to put on Daegond's. No more will he break furniture in what he called the "Hall of Lies." No more will he sniff new recruits to make sure they are sufficiently respecting me. May Lord Namo give him at least the mercy of forgetting all he saw, heard, smelled at the sack of the White City.

Manadhlaer remembered well the time Lord Elrond himself had had to be summoned to the Houses of Healing for a Perian with a wound even she and Norliriel together could not touch. When the great Peredhil emerged from the poor little thing's chamber, he had looked drained but briefly reported that the patient would survive, and athelas steam would not go amiss until the small body regained consciousness.

As I write this, it is two days until my first wedding-anniversary, and two days until the anniversary of my only love's dying in my arms.

Ancalasse did not blink an eye that night. 

There were many angles to the fight that was coming the next day. If Daegond to kill Meluilindele, which he thought Daegond would Losgael would be strayed from her order and grief would consume her. Reducing her into a pile of rubble.

If he did deny Daegond to fight, the hound would surely use it to his benefit. Spreading tales of favouritism. The previous time he did that in the mountains was nearly disastrous for Ancalasse's well established reputation as a good quartermaster.

Well, Diary. That was quite a day.

Losgael was proud -- proud of her man, who is my only known living kin; proud in every possible way. That is the way of the Hammer. And because Meluilindele loves her, though -- I did not know this until the day of the contest -- he had forsworn fighting at the request of his father and brother many yéni hence, he arrived at the appointed time, bearing a sword.

Well, Diary, now I can say I have been on a boar hunt. I dared not leave the fates of my friends to chance -- and indeed, one of the Hammers took a blow to the face. I ordered that he stay awake for the next six hours, that I might watch for signs of concussion. I write this before that time has elapsed, but it is my hope that the poor lad will not suffer too much for his eagerness to please the Sergeant.