martasfic | Oronnad meren allen, Linda Hoyland (Reply)

Originally published at Faith Seeking Understanding. You can comment here or there.

… which according to a fan website is Sindarin for “Happy birthday to you. Even if the translation is atrocious, I hope you appreciate the thought.

When I think about Linda, one of the things I think of first and foremost are her lovely pictures of her flowers. This wasn’t taken by me so perhaps it’s not quite the same, but this picture of flower gardens took my breath away and made me think of those.

And because this is the internet and that apparently means cats, how about some cats with flowers?

No, no, no – I said cats with flowers, not cats as flowers.

That’s a believable sciene with a cat and pretty much any knock-offable object if ever I saw one. Of course, not all cats can play it so cool…

… while others do manage to stay above it all.

And some cats, even when they try to “help,” it’s just never quite appreciated.

Now no proper birthday would be, well, proper without a first-rate cake. If I had the skills necessary I would make you a fannish birthday cake as detailed and no doubt tasty as this masterpiece

but unfortunately I’m nowhere near that good. But maybe this would hit the spot?

Imagine good spice cake with cinnamon and nutmeg, apples baked with brown sugar and pureed, and gooey, so-bad-for-you,-you-can-only-justify-it-once-a-year cream cheese frosting. It’s Aragorn’s favorite, probably because the apples remind him of that one night in Rivendell, but he knows better than to ask for it too often. Arwen would not be pleased. He’s not as young as he once was, after all.

Many happy returns to a good beta reader and a better friend!