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]

"Maglor can also teach you music, if you enjoy that. It's easier and can't do persistent things like order-screening but can do all sorts of useful effects. And, come to think of it, I'm sure he still remembers healing songs even though they no longer work for him so maybe he could even teach you those."

Maglor clicks.

[imeanforever]

"Got his name now. First syllable matches. Um, I've never been especially musical but I don't know that I have any innate lack of talent, I'd try."

[lintamande]

"His birth name is Canafinwë Macalaurë, you could have had it just by wondering if he shared it with our father. Macalaurë means 'shapes gold'. But we have separate words for 'gold' the metal and 'gold' the color or the light, and 'laurë' is the latter, so it's closer to 'weaves golden light' than 'makes thing out of gold'. The Eldar love names. It makes me sad we can't tell you all about them."

[imeanforever]

"Half of what you just said didn't make sense to me because mortal languages are fundamentally bizarre."

[lintamande]

"Oh? How so?"

[imeanforever]

"It's like, you're always talking in code for some reason. I just talk."

[lintamande]

"We also thought that, until we met other people who just talked and whose words were not intelligible to us. So then we learned theirs."

[imeanforever]

"Yeah, I know there are multiple mortal languages," she says. "I'm not speaking any of them."

[lintamande]

"I had noticed that. It has its uses but if you can't turn it off and hear the difference that's rather a shame."

[imeanforever]

"I can't turn it off. I can tell what sounds you're using, if I pay close attention, it just doesn't feel natural to do that. How did you notice? I thought it was supposed to be pretty unobtrusive to mortals."

[lintamande]

"It probably is unobtrusive to mortals," he says. "You have an accent and cadence associated with early northern Beleriand Thindarin, with some sound changes specific to my family, and there's no way you would speak that way. It's more like how I'd expect it to come through if you were speaking osanwë. No one's words sound like their thoughts but yours did."

[imeanforever]

"Huh."

[lintamande]

"I thought it was somehow matching what I spoke. Is that what it does?"

[imeanforever]

"I don't actually know what you hear. Various books say mortals will hear their native language, or whatever language they expect to hear - I guess the latter would normally match whatever you speak, but you seem to have been surprised."

[lintamande]

"Perhaps it has to default somehow if someone strongly expects not to share a common language at all, or that if we share one it'd be the one that's not spoken on this continent."

[imeanforever]

"Maybe. What would you expect me to have spoken?"

[lintamande]

"Nandorin, possibly, we border their territory, or you'd be from even further off and speak something else - if I bring a ship ashore in a strange city I don't have much expectations about what they'll speak but I do expect I won't already know it."

[imeanforever]

"I don't think I've ever heard of a fairy talking to someone who couldn't understand them. Unless they were deaf, and then writing's the same. We can do it with signing too it's just - uncomfortable."

[lintamande]

"So clearly it doesn't run entirely off expectations. 'what you understand best' is a good guess. Sadly I think everyone in this fortress would have the same history there as me, so I don't see how we could check."

[imeanforever]

"Didn't occur to me to ask in Sirion, probably wouldn't have if it had. No one seemed confused when I talked there."

[lintamande]

"The peoples of Sirion must speak six or seven languages, and have weaker expectations about that sort of thing.

I am curious how it was there but would understand if you don't want to tell me about it."

[imeanforever]

"They were suspicious of me until I swore I didn't work for the Enemy and then they were very kind. Elwing thinks you're going to chase me down for taking your Silmaril and I didn't correct her. - I started a sewing project while I was making sure I had a loose idea of how they functioned as a community and didn't bring it back. Apparently you can't just sew leaves here but I can work in fabric."

[lintamande]

He nods. She is done eating. "Anything else? I will come back tonight."

[imeanforever]

Headshake.

[lintamande]

He leaves.