A Sense of History: Straight Road
The next in a series of articles about ships passing to and from the West, Simon uses "The Fall of Númenor" to attempt to arrive at Tolkien's reading of the exordium to "Beowulf."
“Excuse me,” said the first person I met on the Swan-ship’s deck, a grim woman with appallingly frizzy hair. “Strangers are not permitted on board, be they Vanya, Noldo, or even Manwë himself.”
“Strangers might be unwelcome, but, I, Cévandil the merchant, am no stranger, only a friend bearing gifts,” I told her as I held out one of my precious vials of hair-oil.
“Enter freely, then, friend,” she said, pocketing it.
Big thanks to Shihali for helping me with the name! Cévandil means "friend of the new/fresh" (by which I mean something like entepreneur) and works in both Telerin and Quenya, even if the pronounciation is slightly different. (I do see Cévandil as fluently multilingual and being able to code-switch as needed.)