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:

lintamande

"And if I used a recording device? Macalaurë, did you ever get around to inventing a sufficiently high-fidelity recording device? I require one immediately."

From:

imeanforever

Blink. Blink. "I can also sing chords," she volunteers.

From:

lintamande

"Yes, obviously, since there are tonal languages. Where are you from? Do you know other people who communicate in the same manner? Do you perceive the way we communicate as being the same as they way you do it? If I think about this enough and stop having expectations about what I'll hear, will I cease to be able to understand you?"

From:

imeanforever

"Fairies in general all use plain speech like me. Fairyland's full of us. I hear you're supposed to be able to make me a gate there. I probably wouldn't notice if you switched languages but I can hear the sounds you're using if I think about it, I had to do that a lot to use magic songs. And I have never heard of that happening but my default expectation is that you'll be able to understand me whatever you do."

From:

lintamande

"Why do you call it 'plain speech'? It apparently involves making a number of simultaneous different sounds that are calibrated to the listeners, which you can't even know, or else making the sounds that would convey your thoughts in all possible languages.

If I switch languages to one with better technical vocabulary for a technical conversation, will I start hearing your responses in that one?

If I invent a language that doesn't use the vocal chords, uses entirely non-vocal sound production, what happens?"

Everyone else is still blinking confusedly in the light.

From:

imeanforever

"I think it's called that because it's just speech instead of encoded speech like everybody else uses. I have no idea what I sound like to you, let alone what I'd sound like if you switched codes. No idea."

From:

lintamande

"Father," Maedhros says, "Eru thinks he can explain black holes to you in three minutes. We can start working on a recording device for Promise after we've disposed of Moringotho and Thauron."

"Tell Eru he can wait a moment, did you at least run the obvious experiments? What does an observer who has been told to expect to hear Thindarin hear? What does an observer who has been told to expect a foreign language hear? If everyone present speaks only one language, does she still do the chords? If everyone present speaks only one language but there's someone within earshot who speaks a different one? Could she determine what language she's being heard as, once she knows how to identify them?"

There are a lot of complicated emotions on Maedhros' face. "We did not think of those obvious experiments, because you were dead. Perhaps after we've disposed of Moringotto and Thauron?"

"This is way, way more important than Moringotho and Thauron," Fëanor says, "whoever did this had a kind of magic I don't yet understand. Fairies are probably more powerful than -"

"Than Eru," Maedhros says, "which is why she's ordering him around and he can explain black holes to you -"

"Oh, all right."

Edited Date: 2016-05-27 03:51 am (UTC)

From:

imeanforever

Promise giggles. Um, I think he's willing to listen to a black holes explanation now.

From:

lintamande

Fëanor goes suddenly still. This allows everyone else to get a word in edgewise.

Everyone else is, apparently a red-haired man who looks exactly like one of Maedhros' surviving brothers, lurches into his arms, and goes very still; a blond man who says to Maedhros. 'Well. Don't know how you pulled that one out, but well done.' and then looks around like this is not in fact the place where he would have wanted to wake up, and several more men who are glaring at each other.

"That's Eru's fault," Maedhros says to the latter group, "Findekáno, I told him to put you with your family and I have no idea why he insisted -"

"Probably because no one else," Findekáno says, "would yell at you enough for whatever the fuck you were thinking in Doriath, you should have dismissed everyone under your command after the Nirnaeth, how could you-"

This has the other people even tenser. Maedhros raises a hand, as if to hold them in place. It's shaking.

"I know," he says, "but Eru was supposed to put the dead where's best for them, not where they're needed by the living -"

"It is definitely best for me to be here, Maitimo, why do you think I keep on chasing you down, no matter what you've done since we last met, no matter how hard you try to kill me -"

Maedhros flinches.

"I meant that in the sense 'you can't actually avoid me for my own good', not 'the Nirnaeth was an instance of you trying to kill me', obviously we both made the same error of optimism there..."

"How on earth is it good for you to be here with me?"

"Well," he says, "what are they doing with you now?"

"I don't know. They were talking about a war crimes trial, or another exile -"

"Then I don't have much time, do I? And we wasted so much of it-"

Fëanor blinks. "I'd insist on more than a few hundred quadrillion miles," he says to Promise, "the universe is apparently very big and that's actually pretty close, light travels that distance in only a few years. A black hole is a satisfactory means of disposing of our Enemy. Findekáno, why are you here?"

From:

imeanforever

Um, you heard the guy who understands black holes now, says Promise, unequipped to comment on the family drama or the boyfriend.

From:

lintamande

Are you sure you don't want anything else with them first?

From:

imeanforever

"Are we sure we don't want anything else with Melkor and Sauron before flinging them into a black hole?"

From:

lintamande

"Why did 'Sauron' come across that way when I'd expect you to have said it correctly?" Fëanor says.

From:

imeanforever

"Uh, I know his real name but fairies have a thing about abiding by chosen nicknames."

From:

lintamande

"So did you specifically choose to make the sounds of the phonemes in 'Sauron'? Because it's a name? Is it even his chosen name?"

From:

imeanforever

"Well, I don't know, he didn't exactly clarify, but it seemed likely from context."

From:

lintamande

"So names you process normally: you learn a collection of sounds, and then you produce specifically those sounds and your listeners hear them as specifically those sounds. I speak the name of a flower, or a concept, or a movement, the way you speak the name of a person. But to you, flowers and concepts and movements have no names?"

From:

imeanforever

"...they have words..."

From:

lintamande

"But not the kind of word that 'Sauron' is to you. 'Sauron' is a word that every hearer will hear the same way. Is that because it's a name?"

From:

imeanforever

"Probably? Names are different. But it's not his real name, so I'm not sure."

From:

lintamande

"Do you consciously do something different when you say 'Sauron did that' compared to if you say 'a bad person did that'? Is it all proper nouns? What's the name of the fortress behind us?"

From:

imeanforever

"I think it was called Angband? And of course it's different, one of them is a specific bad person and one of them is an indefinite one, there are more bad people than just him - do you mean with my voice? I'm not paying conscious attention to how I say stuff, not like that."

From:

lintamande

He hears 'Angamaite' when she says 'Angband'. "So it's really just names of people. The magic that powers your translation ability distinguishes that specifically. Weird. How about names of animals?"