don't touch me

[lintamande]

Confirmation reaches them in the spring that Elwing of Sirion has the Silmaril.

It takes as long as the spring only because they weren't looking. They can stretch the oath that far, they can be disinterested in knowing - but now they know, and so there it is. Elwing of Sirion is twenty-three. Half-man, so fully grown. Sirion is a city of refugees. Elves and Men and, since there are Men, children. Elwing herself has infant children.

They debate whether to send messengers. Debating is allowed, even protracted debating. The Oath, these days, is loud in their minds, and louder when they're pushing it like this, but they drag out the debate for a few months. Messengers will probably be shot on sight. The last time Elwing of Sirion received news of the House of Fëanor it would have been the news that her brothers, twins, aged seven, had not survived the sack of Menegroth.

They send messengers anyway. The messengers are shot on sight. They have good armor, Fëanorian armor, and return home injured but not lethally. Maglor's songs no longer stitch them together. War makes you worse at healing. Maglor's songs are more powerful than ever - he can knock back a wave of approaching enemies, he can make a blade's next touch deadly, he can make them faster and more impervious to danger, but he can no longer do healing.

Maedhros, when he thinks about this, thinks that perhaps there needs to be part of you that is not broken for healing spells to draw on. Or perhaps the Enemy is amused to strip that away first. Perhaps the Enemy finds it suited to the theme as the Oath tugs and yanks and twists them into violence against the lands they once defended and the peoples they once sheltered.

They send messengers to Sirion again. The messengers deliver a plea for the Silmaril, an offer of anything at all in exchange. The messengers do not return at all.

The Enemy is many many hundreds of miles from here but at night Maedhros can hear him in his head. Is it so implausible that I really let you go? the Enemy likes saying. You serve me better free than you ever would have willingly.

The Oath allows them to work slowly. They begin planning the sack of the refugee camp even more slowly than the Oath allows, so slowly that its currents are constantly tugging at them. Any slower and the currents would erode all the things they care about which are not the Oath, and it would be a disaster to go to Sirion once they've been stripped of their capacity to care about anything that is not the Silmaril. So they do not hold out forever. But they work as slowly as they can.

Comments

[imeanforever]

"Wait," says Promise, apologetically. It's gentler than 'stop'; Elwing will still be able to breathe. "I'm very sorry about this but I need the Silmaril. Exclusively truthfully and exclusively to me, tell me what I need to know to take it away without any fuss."

[lintamande]

She looks confused, then angry, then terrified. Then - "it's in a locked box in my room. I wear the key on my necklace. It glows even in the box, it doesn't glow too visibly if you wrap it with thick fabrics before you put it in the box and wrap the box. Everyone will try to stop you. I could tell them you're allowed but I don't think they'd believe I wasn't being somehow coerced, there'd certainly be a fuss. If you flew out over the water with it I'm not sure anyone'd realize what was going on, not if I told them I'd just given you some food for your people or something bulky like that."

[imeanforever]

"Will people notice right away if you're missing the key? How confident are you that you can sell the 'food' story until I'm out of bow range?"

[lintamande]

"People will notice I was missing the key. I can convince them of the story but they'll notice something's wrong with me, they'll see - they'll hear -" she's clearly trying to move.

[imeanforever]

"I'm really really sorry about this. How heavy is the box when wrapped up enough not to be identifiable?"

[lintamande]

"Fifteen, maybe twenty pounds."

[imeanforever]

"Carrying that I can fly maybe forty-five miles an hour. Can you reliably keep anybody from shooting at me long enough for me to get away?"

[lintamande]

"I think so. If I distract them, tell them that it's urgent news and they should come in here so we can speak privately, make something up..."

[imeanforever]

"And you can do that after giving me the Silmaril and the key?"

[lintamande]

"I can give you the key. I don't know how we'd get up to my room without suspicion. That'd make it harder to convince them you don't have the Silmaril."

[imeanforever]

"Is there anything else you keep there that you could invent an excuse to show me? Do you have a window, would anyone be watching the window from the outside?"

[lintamande]

"No one watches the window but plenty of people might see it. I don't keep anything I'd be sending off with a stranger in my room."

[imeanforever]

Damn the lack of sorcery. "Could you realistically go and get it so I wouldn't have to go to your room or would that be just as conspicuous?"

[lintamande]

"That would be less so, but only a little less so, and someone might stop me and see that it's a Silmaril. If you went up with me to see it, and then out through the window? And the people who I told that you were going up to see it were in the palace, and I ordered them to a secret meeting before a cry went out that you were flying off?"

[imeanforever]

"How confident are you that would work?"

[lintamande]

"I don't know. It might. You could come play with the children while I slipped off and got it, I take it out to show them sometimes, and then - I can't think without moving."

[imeanforever]

"How much do you need to move to think effectively?"

[lintamande]

"Usually I walk on the beach. I don't know."

[imeanforever]

"To the extent this will be inconspicuous to people outside you may pace in this room."

[lintamande]

She doesn't stand up. "I don't want to think effectively."

[imeanforever]

"I am trying to get the job done as gently as possible. I don't want to have to do this to anyone besides you or micromanage you uncomofortably, but if I have to, I can. I recommend cooperating."

[lintamande]

"I am cooperating. I am not standing up to think of a better plan. There isn't. I gave you plans."

[imeanforever]

Sigh. "Which do you think has the best chance of success by my standards?"

[lintamande]

"I don't know. I could move it now to some other location, you could pick it up from there later when there's no suspicion. Then I could tell people I'm giving you food to take back to yours, so when you do fly off no one sees."

[imeanforever]

"Okay. Where will you put it?"