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]

"I have to know which person you mean - faces would do it - and entertain the correct hypothesis about their name and then I'll know if it's right or not."

[lintamande]

"How badly am I hurting you if I order you to do this?"

[imeanforever]

"Depends on how free a hand I have to order the people intelligently as opposed to on a rigid plan, and whether you continue to intend to leave them alone after you have your thing. I don't - I don't intrinsically object to having names, all that does by itself is make it so they can't hurt me - and I'm assuming they'd rather not die -"

[lintamande]

"I think they'd rather not die. You can ask them. I will need to talk this over with my brother but I currently intend to order you to do whatever you think retrieves the Silmaril best, not to do anything more specific, and I can promise to leave them alone once the Silmaril is in our hands."

[imeanforever]

"I don't understand why you're under the oath to get the Silmaril in the first place but as long as you are this is better than massacring them."

[lintamande]

"We were very young and naive and thought it was only our own lives we were staking. Thank you." He stands. "Do you prefer that I tell you when I'll be back when I leave, or give you some notice when I'm returning, or what?"

[imeanforever]

"Notice would be nice."

[lintamande]

"All right." And he walks away.

[imeanforever]

She draws for hours.

And then she goes to have a look at the books.

[lintamande]

The books are very pretty and all very old. Most of them are technical reference books.

[imeanforever]

References for how to technically do what?

[lintamande]

Glassblowing, syntax and language, metalworking, magic metalworking. The author has put his name inside the books. It is Curufinwë Fëanáro.

[imeanforever]

She was not forbidden to think about names. Second half of the first name goes snap.

Syntax and language is bewildering; mortals talk weird. She is interested in the magic metalworking though.

[lintamande]

No one interrupts her until evening, when he comes back with food. He sees her engrossed in the books. "Learned my name?"

[imeanforever]

"Yes."

[lintamande]

"If you ever ever figure out a way to use it to take me prisoner, or a way to help someone else do that, I order you not to do it and to warn me immediately. If you ever figure out a way to communicate it to someone else I order you to stop them from getting it by any means necessary. If someone else has it, stop them from taking me prisoner. If you cannot stop them from taking me prisoner, kill me."

[imeanforever]

"I literally cannot kill you even if you order me to."

[lintamande]

"Then get me the means to kill myself, or order someone who can to do it."

[imeanforever]

Twitch.

[lintamande]

"If there's something I'd be interested in hearing on that topic, say it."

[imeanforever]

"I don't want to have to order anyone to kill you."

[lintamande]

"I don't want to be taken prisoner."

[imeanforever]

"And what I want doesn't enter into it, so if there is literally anyone available who can kill you and you can't do it yourself I will, of course, unless I'm entirely out from under you, tell some let's say small child to do it if by any means I can gain the ability to order them to do things -"

[lintamande]

"It's awful. Which is why I am unwilling to have it happen to me no matter the cost. I promise you that I actually do think ordering a small child to kill me is on the whole less psychological trauma for everyone involved than me continuing to be a fairy prisoner."

[imeanforever]

"So should I assume in the future that this does not count as something that would interest you?"