the path it takes will follow the laws set down by Newton 300+ years ago.
As in previous threads I have to disagree again. It will follow the laws of newton only because there is a single system in your example. For an observer moving relative to the path of the pencil it will NOT follow the physics of newton. It will practically be the same in this particular range of velocity, but it will only be an extremely close APPROXIMATION (for practical purposes it will be the same as newtonian physics, but in truth there will be an infinitesimal difference not significant for practical purposes). If the observer were to move in a large speed relative to the pencil, newtonian physics will give a result quite different from the truth of the matter.
Any time there are two observational systems, moving relative to one another, newtonian physics will give the wrong result in a mathematical sense, (ie 10,000,000,000 is not identical to 10,000,000,001). In the range of speeds in which we generally operate this difference will not have any practical impact, nevertheless this difference always exists and when it comes to particle physics the difference is large and critical.