Tennis With An Elf and A Dwarf by Grundy, Raiyana

Elf Again

Senior Journeyman Harga,

My greetings to you and your kin! I trust you are all well.

So long as you are satisfied none of your people will trouble about lack of formality, I am happy to call you Harga. (My people, being on the whole unfamiliar with your people’s naming customs, will likely assume that is simply your name, so will not assume any informality.) I am afraid I have no such informal name to offer in return, as I am Carweg to all.

My hearty thanks to you for the diagram of the chair! I have ventured to make a copy with measurements I think would fit elves and passed it to some of our craftsmen, for several have taken an interest. (They are as full of wonder as I am myself – your father’s name and reputation will live on so long as any Iathrim do! We have agreed that rather than create a new word or continue to call it a wheeled chair, it shall be known as a Hafli-chair in memory of its maker.)

Though you may not have thought it, there are one or two among my people who will benefit from a Hafli-chair. Would that we were so indestructible as your excellent father believed! It is true that we would heal from an accident such as befell him. But if an accident – or the wolves of our mutual enemy in the north – should sever a leg, elves cannot regrow missing limbs any more than dwarves can.  

As I am a bit belated to wish your sibling luck in the past Midwinter Craft Fair, I shall content myself with wishing them luck in the upcoming one, should they once again compete. We do have occasional craft competitions, but nothing so formal as what I understood from your letter. Though I am not confident I understood fully – when you speak of the Thirteen and the Firsts, are these offices or prizes? And does the king choose from favor only, or does he judge based on the skill demonstrated? Do you compete also, or is the contest open to those who have attained their mastery only? (I know you will laugh, but if your father has told you elves are apt to err when they reckon the age of your people, it is true – and so I must humbly ask if you are only just of an age to reach journeyman, or whether you are at the stage where you yourself are contemplating attempting mastery?)

Though I am sure these seem like obvious matters to you, here it would be a bit odd for King Elu to take part in the judging of a craft competition. Though he sings rather well and his knowledge of the forest is unmatched, he is not a craftsman in the way of a smith or a woodworker. While he can generally recognize good work from bad, judging the finer gradations of ‘good’ would be beyond him. As he would tell anyone himself, in trying to name a winner of such a contest, it would have as much to do with what struck his fancy as with the skill of the craftsperson. If the contest must be judged on skill, we would have either the craftspeople themselves pick competent (and impartial!) judges. The king engages craftspeople on much the same basis – so long as their peers judge their work sound, it is more a matter of taste with him than any belief that they may be the finest carpenter, or jewel-wright, or so on.

Have you any further news of the folk in Thargelion? Odd as the question may seem, I suspect you will have better information than I, for by the king’s command we keep our distance from most of the golodhrim. There was apparently some quarrel among them and we cannot make out who was in the right, so better to be polite but distant to all than to pick the wrong faction to be our allies. I cannot see myself where it is any great matter, not when nearly all of them are happy to place themselves between us and the enemy…

Do not blame the messengers, dwarf, golodh, or lindar alike,  for the long delay between your letter and mine. As far as I have been able to discover, your letter was passed from hand to hand as quickly as could be expected (and of course it could not take a direct route hence from Thargelion.) You wrote in the chilling season, and I am told the letter reached Menegroth in the earliest part of spring. Unfortunately, I myself was away in Brethil at that time, gathering herbs which do not grow closer to the king’s halls. I only returned as the leaves of the trees began to turn.

I have asked the lady Galadriel if I might send this with her next messenger to her brother, for I know they both correspond with her cousin in Thargelion, with any luck it will find dwarves from Belegost there to trade. If my words make the reverse journey as quickly as yours arrived, I think you should have the letter in hand by midwinter. So I send my best wishes to you, and hope that the Midwinter Craft Fair brings honor to you and your kin.

I am also enclosing something in the hopes you may find useful. The main ingredients are from my harvest in Brethil, compounded in plant oils and butters. It is good for dry skin, something I am told can trouble claysmiths. I would not dare send it in the summer, for it would likely turn liquid and slosh out of its small pot on the journey, but now that the days are brisk and the nights chilly, it should prove no trouble for the messengers.

May the stars shine upon you,

Carweg