For Marta's Single on Valentine's Day challenge. She said she wouldn't mind something Denethorish, so here's a double drabble featuring Denethor, Thorongil, and a vaguely mathematical dispute.
"The Haradrim call it temhan," Denethor explained, and indicated the sphere. "There, the world." Then, pointing to the angle and line that touched upon it, completing the symbol: "There our aim: temhan, the point that lets us move matters as we will."
He paused and glanced up at his attentive audience of one. Thorongil, after a moment, met his gaze. "Gondor cannot wait a thousand years, as the Haradrim tell it, to find that point," he said.
"No," Thorongil agreed, glancing east towards enemy lands. "She cannot."
A year later, Denethor watched Thorongil's ship depart Harlond to join the others massing at Pelargir. Ambivalence plagued him, and pride still smarted from his defeat in the Council. It had been a hard fought contest, and if the stakes between them remained not quite clear, it was evident enough who had won, who had lost. Or was it? He looked down at the letter the man had left for him:
A thousand years for one point—too long a wait. One year and ten arguments with a hundred men—the world will move. Pray prudence is the lever!
—Thorongil