A Blaze in the Northern Sky
Dol Amroth
(Private)
The morning sun peaked over the horizon, a bulge of pink and orange light bursting across the water. The young girl watched it with bubbling anticipation. She watched the waters of the Bay of Belfalas catch fire with the power of the dawn. She loved watching the sun rise each morning, it was the highlight of her day. Each dawn brought a spray of possibilities, a blank slate of ideas and dreams. She placed her hands together in front of her chest, inhaled, and bowed until she was a perfect ninety-degree angle. She held the bow for half a minute then returned to a standing position, exhaling. Pharâzuri smiled, her bright golden hair shimmering in the light of the new dawn. “A day of new discoveries,” she whispered to herself. She took one last look at the sun as it rose up out of the eastern waters. She longed to stay and watch it rise, but she had to get to work, a necessary evil, the payment for being able to watch the sunrise and see it as more than just a rising ball of celestial fire.
The library would be opening soon, and she liked to be there when it did. She wanted to be there before the streets were too crowded with merchants and travelers and sailors. The library was her fortress. She didn’t like people. People made her nervous, they made her uncomfortable. The constant feeling of eyes on her, watching her, breathing on her, forcing her to become smaller and smaller until there was no way she could occupy less space. She pulled the mask over the bottom of her face, covering her nose and mouth. It wasn’t much, but it was a shield against people and their invasiveness. No one wanted to talk to the girl who didn’t want to show her face. They avoided her, ignored her, rolled their eyes and went on about their day. With the mask no one was going to tell her she was pretty, no was going to tell her to smile, no one was going to try and strike up a conversation with her that she didn’t want. The mask was a key to freedom.
Dol Amroth was becoming a beehive of activity already. Grocers, vendors, cheesemongers, restaurateurs, bakers, and fishmongers were already up. The street criers were running to and fro shouting news from Minas Tirith, from Pelargir, from Ithilien. Pharâzuri ignored them. Nothing in those places had anything for her, nothing to do with her. She didn’t like the wide world. It was too big, too frightening. She wanted nothing to do with. She wanted her library, her desk, her ink well and pen. She wanted to transcribe books and scrolls and texts. She wanted to go home, to eat, and to watch the great stars wheel overhead. She didn’t want or need friends or companions. She had her books, her work, her imagination. What more could she ask for?
Today she was lucky. No one even so much as looked at her as she moved through the streets, moving as quickly as she could, nearly jumping from shadow to shadow to avoid having to look at or talk to anyone. She could smell the butchering of fish, the baking of bread, the frying of meats and vegetables. It reminded her that she was hungry. For a moment, just a moment, she considered going up a street vendor and asking for a bowl of something. There was a man selling rice fried with chicken, snow peas, sweet corn, and spring onions. It was tempting. So tempting. He even smiled at her before a large crowd of sailors surrounded the little venue and blocked from his view. That was good though. She would have gone up to him and froze as soon as she had to speak to him. No matter how wide his smile had been upon seeing her, it would not have stopped her anxiety from overwhelming her powers of speech. There would be fruit at the library, fruit and some water. That’s all she needed.
Inside the library, the great echoing atriums felt safe and comforting. She knew every pillar here, every nook and cranny, every possible hiding place or private study corner. The smell of ink filled her senses and set her mind at ease. She exhaled. Her hands had been shaking. She made them into fists and squeezed until they calmed. “You’re safe,” she whispered to herself, “you’re safe.” Having filled her waterskin and grabbed several different colored apples, she came to her desk. Her sanctuary, her home away from home. She knew this space as intimately as she knew herself. She knew the indentations, the ink stains, the flow of the wood’s grain. She sat facing north, away from the sea. When she first came to the library, she had wanted a seat that watched the sea, but the only desks they had were too close together, too clustered. Someone might want to sit next to her or, worse, talk to her. Just the thought made her skin crawl. The view of the White Mountains was lovely as well, a more than decent compromise. Her desk was alone, far from the rest of the scribes. She could hear their chattering gossip. Two men and a woman were talking about some entertainment they’d seen the night previous, some sort of sporting competition, Pharâzuri couldn’t tell what sport it was, not that she would have wanted to talk with them about anyway. They waved at her, then went back to their conversation before waiting to see if she responded. She didn’t wave back.
Once at her desk, she removed her mask and took in a deep, satisfying breath. The mountains were beautiful this morning, purple rimmed with golden yellow. “Good morning,” she mumbled, not wanting anyone to overhear her and think she was talking to them. She took a deep draught of her water skin. The water was cold, almost too cold. It felt good going down her throat. She took a bite of a yellow golden apple. It was soft, sweet, juicy. She wiped her chin with the back of her hand and smiled. Alone in her little world, this moment was good and perfect. She didn’t have to share it with anyone, it was all hers. The work today was easy. Scrolls from up north to be copied and illuminated. It was the story of an ent’s journey from the forests of Doriath across the Ered Luin and finally to Fangorn. It was a long, plodding tale filled with all sorts of details that were unimportant but Pharâzuri loved it anyway. It was a positive tale, a tale of survival and travel to new places, a search for home culminating in the greatest discovery of all. Whoever this “Númenyraumion” was, he captured the feeling of the ent’s plight and ultimate success very well. She dipped her pen in the ink and began transcribing, making sure each letter was perfect and in line, each word, and each rhyming couplet. She lost herself in the work. She worked through lunch, ignoring calls for her to take a break, to join her fellow scribes at the local tavern for a midday drink. She wouldn’t have gone even if she’d heard them calling.
The only thing that brought her out of her focus was a strange flickering out her window. She stopped and looked up. There it was again. For the past six days it had been the same thing in the same place. There was a bonfire somewhere in the hills north of the city. She began to cry. She’d tried to ignore it, tried to pretend it wasn’t what she knew it was, that it was just a random fire out in the middle of nowhere. “Mother no,” she sobbed quietly. “I don’t want to go. Not now, not after I just got my routine. Please, please, please, please, no, no, no...” but the distant flames did not stop, they flickered and burned without regard for her feelings. Her deep blue ocean eyes filled with tears. She had no choice. It was time to go.