lintamande | don't touch me

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

imeanforever

"I don't know how you could fix it but you could curb the worst of the abuse if you got the Queen. I used to think about that a lot."

From:

lintamande

"How would that do it?"

From:

imeanforever

"The Queen knows all the other fairies' names. - every kind of fairy has a kind magic, and by and large one-of-a-kinds have the strongest, and she's one of those." Food's gone.

From:

lintamande

He stands. "It's a shame you don't have osanwë - if you had everyone's name and our range you could just fly through fairyland broadcasting 'your orders are revoked, no giving orders ever again'. See you tomorrow."

From:

imeanforever

"See you."

And she goes to bed.

From:

lintamande

And in the morning he has food. He does not look as if he's slept since they first met.

From:

imeanforever

"Don't you sleep?" she asks. "There are fairy kinds who don't have to, or who don't have to much, but they look. Awake."

From:

lintamande

"I don't sleep and do have to," he says, "it's inconvenient. Are you one of the kinds that requires sleep?"

From:

imeanforever

"Yeah, leaflets do."

From:

lintamande

"In theory with the Silmaril I should not need to very often. Once a week, perhaps. I do not know what will happen if I persist in not sleeping."

From:

imeanforever

"Why are you not sleeping?"

From:

lintamande

"The Enemy talks in my head when I do. I don't know if it's him or if I am insane, but if it is him, he shouldn't know about you."

From:

imeanforever

"And he can read your mind like you can 'only more so'. So I guess it wouldn't even help if you had me order you not to tell him."

From:

lintamande

"Can orders make you do things you aren't capable of doing?"

From:

imeanforever

"Depends what you mean 'capable of doing'. Physically capable no, you couldn't make me fly twice as fast as my top speed or something. Psychologically capable yes."

From:

lintamande

"In that case it might be worth a try. Could I order you to think privately if you didn't know how, even though it was in principle possible? Could I order you to stop speaking privately - I won't, I'm just trying to get a sense of specifically how these two magics interact..."

From:

imeanforever

"You couldn't get me to do something I didn't know how to do like that. I'm not sure you could get me to stop thinking privately altogether - you could load me up with other things to think about in case that one slipped - but you could order me to think publicly for sure."

From:

lintamande

"What's the difference?"

From:

imeanforever

"I think privately by thinking about being in my tree; nobody can go in my tree if I don't let them. You cannot forbid me to think about that except indirectly you can try to crowd it out with something else. But you can order me to also think about not being in my tree and get my thoughts that way. It'd amount to the same thing; I can't actually keep a secret you really want to have."

From:

lintamande

"I'm not going to order you to think about not being in your tree. I don't torture people. I used to draw the line at 'I don't mind control people', but.

If there was a way to make fairy orders not work in this world at all I'd do it in a heartbeat. I'd do anything I could to see it realized."

From:

imeanforever

"Might interfere with your oath if you lost the Silmaril somehow."

From:

lintamande

'Right now I have the Silmaril. I am not constrained to not destroy any capabilities that I'd need if it were taken again, or I couldn't kill myself even once I've found a way, right? Come to think of it, I think I can even order you to order me not to demand your help retrieving it again if it's stolen again, right now it's mine, the Oath has nothing to say..."