Title: Considering Stars
Fandom: Silmarillion
Challenge: Horoscope
Rating: G
Length: 300
Content notes: N/A
Author notes: Thanks go to Morgynleri & Runa for encouragement & sanity-checking.
Summary: Maglor knows more than one way to consider stars.



Maglor found himself in great demand as a caster (and reader) of horoscopes, rather to his surprise. The casting aspect was satisfyingly mathematical, and of course he had been watching the stars since before the world was changed. As long as time and location were known to a sufficiently precise degree, working out the positions of the various celestial bodies was straightforward, if time-consuming (and that was a difficulty easily solved by working out an ephemeris; he could, and did, keep it all in his memory, in musical notation, but the cross-check was useful).

Interpreting a horoscope was more art than science, though, and much better done in the presence of the person. Really, though, he preferred to leave the reading to others. He saw more than most were comfortable with unmediated by cards or bones or careful charts; looking deeply, or worse, prodding at his small gift of foresight, was just asking for trouble.

Once, as an exercise, practice, (and because no self-respecting Astrologer would be without that basic knowledge of their own stars), he worked out what his own horoscope was/would have been, had the world been as it was now, and Aman roughly where the Americas were at present. He'd been both begotten and born in Tirion, on the equator, which simplified things considerably. He very well knew that it was only a guess, but at least it gave him a place (the time was not a guess - that he had worked out quite precisely -- Tree-years, dark-years, sun-years -- to a degree that even Curufin would find acceptable,) from which to derive answers he could use when speaking and working with other, Mortal, astrologers, and, at that remove, the thought of Varda's stars was neither pain or penance, only memory and numbers made of hope and light.