A flower, a memory, a song by Himring

A flower, a memory, a song

See end notes on prompts.

It was as if Daeron and Keats were having a conversation about nightingales in his head. An odd meeting to be going on in the head of a wandering kinslayer but he supposed it was the only place such a conversation could happen. Maglor had heard rumours that Daeron was wandering far inland as he was wandering by the sea, but hoped it was no longer true. Such a sad kind of long-distance companionship to share with a former friend—and Daeron did not seem to have as strong a reason for exile. But he would have loved Keats’s verse.

He had walked down to the river in the twilight hoping to hear the nightingale announce the spring under the full moon but what he found was a hen party: hovering near the bank, two punts side by side in which the girls had taken their places, wreaths on their heads, drinks stowed at their feet. At first, he was irritated, but something about the open, friendly gaze with which one of them looked up at him reminded him of a student of his wife’s, long ago in Alqualonde…

He gifted the bride-to-be with an impromptu epithalamium for the altar.

Chapter End Notes

Begun for the Poetry Fiction July mini challenge and expanded for Tolkien Gen Week.

The Poetry Fiction prompts used were two quotations from Sappho:

"In the Spring Twilight"
The full moon is shining:
Girls take their places
as though around an altar

From: "The Nightingale’s"
The soft-spoken announcer of Spring’s presence

(translations by Mary Barnard)

The Keats poem alluded to is: Ode to a Nightingale.

2 x 100 words in MS Word

ETA: this piece accidentally got archived twice, with different notes text. Earlier upload deleted.