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

"Eru thinks a 'black hole' several hundred billion or possibly several hundred quadrillion miles away from here might be more thematically appropriate than Everlasting Darkness and says that Melkor and Sauron wouldn't be able to hurt anybody from there," she reports.

From:

lintamande

They look at each other. "I am not qualified to evaluate that claim," Maedhros says.

From:

imeanforever

"Well, neither am I, he said yesterday it would take eight hours to improve my understanding of the idea of a black hole beyond what the phrase suggests."

From:

lintamande

"How long would it take to improve mine?"

From:

imeanforever

Would Maedhros have an easier time understanding black holes than me?

From:

lintamande

He has more of the prerequisite knowledge, but it would still take him a long time. It would take his father around three minutes.

From:

imeanforever

"Apparently it would take you a long time even though you have more of the prerequisite knowledge than me but your father would take around three minutes. Your father sounds like a really interesting person."

From:

lintamande

"That he is. I hope you two get along."

From:

imeanforever

"Me too. So I guess the options are address dead people first and evil people standing still in Angband second so as to get an opinion on black holes or just go with Eru thinking it's thematically appropriate and secure."

From:

lintamande

"Let's do dead people first. They can stand in Angband a while longer."

From:

imeanforever

"Okay. Input on dead people?"

From:

lintamande

"Can he bring everyone back near whoever they'd most benefit from being around, including if that means they're better off alone? Seems easier than sorting for 'not near people they'll immediately try to murder' manually, and seems like the best thing for the orcs not knowing anything about their social circles."

From:

imeanforever

"That sounds like a really elegant algorithm to me." What do you think?

From:

lintamande

I can do this but in the short term it will probably cause Maedhros some distress.

From:

imeanforever

...Why?

From:

lintamande

Because the set of people who'd benefit from being near him is not known to all members of that set.

From:

imeanforever

Could you rephrase that?

From:

lintamande

Imagine there were two people who would like to wake up at his side, A and B. A does not know that B is sufficiently important to Maedhros that 'at Maedhros's side' is the right place for B to wake up, and will probably be angry to learn of it.

From:

imeanforever

Oh.

Promise relays this. "And I assume there are probably similar cases for other people but yours is the one he mentioned."

From:

lintamande

There are many such cases but most of the Eldar are less inclined to interpersonal violence than Maedhros' family.

From:

imeanforever

Promise relays that too.

From:

lintamande

Maedhros has stopped having facial expressions. His brothers are staring at him a bit alarmedly. "I think Eru is wrong," he says, "about what is good for people. This is a problem with your plan to let him decide it."

From:

imeanforever

"What do you want me to do, interview every dead person and decide myself who it would be good for them to wake up near, this was your idea in the first place."