[piosenniel]

‘It’s a pretty thing, whatever it’s made of.’ Amaranthas turned the clasp over carefully in her tiny hand, then handed it to Pio. Pio smiled when she saw it. It recalled to her the knife she had given Mithadan with the inlayed pommel of mother-of-pearl. The light shifted and ran along the lines of blues and greens on the clasp, like the sea’s water, in motion.

‘Look! Here in fine script along the back.’ Pio took Laurie’s hand and bade her run her finger lightly across the surface of the clasp. The letters were worn and hard to see. ‘Well, what does it say?’ asked the Hobbit. ‘It looks like just a bunch of hen scratchings to me.’

Laurie shrugged her shoulders, and looked at Pio. ‘It is very old. Your mother must have had it handed down to her, and her mother before her and hers before her. There are none now in Middle-earth who use this language.’ Pio’s eyes looked away, unfocused, toward the West. ‘It was the language of my childhood. Long ago to you, yet only a thought away to me.’ She turned the clasp in her hand once again, admiring the beauty of the shell.

‘Fallinel . . . Foam Singer. That is what it says.’ She handed it carefully back to Laurie, her fingers lingering along the cool smoothness of it.