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

[lintamande]

"Heap of laundry, probably, covered in fishing net."

[imeanforever]

"Not 'probably'. I need to be able to recognize it. When would be the least suspicious time for me to collect it?"

[lintamande]

"In an hour or two, when I can have had time to tell everyone I gave you food to take back to your people."

[imeanforever]

"All right. When I've left this room, act normally except insofar as is necessary to plant the Silmaril, the described bundle around it sufficient to conceal it, and the key to its box without any suspicion you can possibly evade or defuse. As necessary to maintain the fiction but not extraneously or in any tellingly irregular manner, tell people I am taking food that you offered me. If anyone is suspicious enough to make trouble in the relevant time frame, telepath me their name and face and what's going on in as much detail as I would need to find them and address the situation informedly. Continue to minimize suspicion until I have been gone with the Silmaril for two hours. At that time you may freely act. Do you detect any flaws in this plan from my perspective?"

[lintamande]

"The Silmaril will glow even with that much wrapping if you wait until it's dark. You should leave during the day. I think it'll still be day in two hours. I haven't been outside, I'm not sure. The House of Fëanor will try to kill you for stealing their Silmaril. I don't know if that's a flaw in the plan from your perspective."

[imeanforever]

Nod. Sigh. "I won't insult you by thanking you. Plan stands without revision. If you have to explain what we were talking about, pretend we were discussing something intensely private to me and also my need for food." She opens the door, looks shaken and grateful, and says, "- thank you for seeing me, Lady Elwing."

[lintamande]

"My pleasure," says Elwing.

[imeanforever]

And Promise goes out and makes sure she knows where the yard is and makes herself innocuous for an hour and then goes to check the yard again.

[lintamande]

And it's there; clothes, wrapped in fishing net.

[imeanforever]

Scoop.

Fly fly fly why is this so fucking heavy why didn't they mention it GLOWS fly fly fly.

[lintamande]

Nothing shoots at her.

[imeanforever]

Great. Then she can lug the damn thing all the way back to the fortress.

[lintamande]

A cry goes up as she returns, and he waits for her on the ramparts.

[imeanforever]

She goes and plunks it down. "You didn't tell me it glowed. You didn't tell me that it plus enough stuff to make it not visibly glow weighs half as much as I do!"

[lintamande]

"..how much do you weigh?" He unravels it, opens the box, touches it, immediately removes his hand. Goes very very still.

[imeanforever]

"Thirty pounds."

[lintamande]

He shakes his head wearily. "An Elf your size would weigh a hundred. I apologize for not considering that flying creatures would have to be very light. Are you all right? Are you hungry?" He still isn't looking at her.

[imeanforever]

"I'm hungry. I'm otherwise fine. They sang me almost all healed, I didn't know there was mortal magic. Is something wrong with it? Did they have a decoy or something?"

[lintamande]

"No. It's the real thing. You prevented a war. Someone bring me food for Promise. We are, again, not mortals, but have magic. My family no longer has any healing magic, because we've been fighting for so long."

[imeanforever]

"What does fighting have to do anything?"

[lintamande]

"It makes healing magic stop working, among the Eldar. My brother has very powerful magic but he can't use it for healing anymore."

[imeanforever]

"Oh. Sorcery doesn't have anything like that. No matter what I did I'd still be able to heal. As long as I remembered, anyway, I might be stuck here long enough to forget all the sorcery I know."

[lintamande]

"You're welcome to write it down." He is flexing the fingers of his remaining hand; the fingertips are burned. Behind them, the Silmaril is bathing the whole castle in astonishing, beautiful, sparkling light.

[imeanforever]

"You didn't tell me it was dangerous to touch, either, what if she hadn't had a box for it?"

[lintamande]

"It would not be dangerous for you to touch, or for her. It burns evil things."