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]

"What would be most valuable to me of the math and science you know?"

[imeanforever]

And she goes to repeat the same instruction to Melkor (defining 'our' for him since Fëanor's occupied) and goes to find some roof to sit on and sing, presuming that Maedhros and his boyfriend are still talking about their feelings since it hasn't been decades yet.

[lintamande]

She's definitely going to get hungry before Fëanor's done demanding science lessons. Or before Maedhros and his boyfriend are done talking about their feelings.

[imeanforever]

And there are like no plants around here, ugh.

She flies out in search of plants.

[lintamande]

Everything around is mostly barren ash. A hundred miles out there are trees and so forth.

[imeanforever]

Then it will take her a while to get plants, but get plants she will. Plenty of them so she has a while before she has to make more trips. She comes back full of leaves and with an armload more of the tasty kinds.

[lintamande]

On her way back she will see Maedhros and his boyfriend. They are sitting on the ground, not touching, and wave her over.

[imeanforever]

She supposes it is unlikely they were going to spend the next several decades continuously talking about their feelings. Over she goes.

[lintamande]

"I'm sorry about the food situation," Maedhros says. "About sixty years ago he killed everything but I'd have expected some of it to grow back. We'll have to build the place for everyone to live a little farther south. What's my father doing?"

[imeanforever]

"Probably still interrogating Sauron about math and science. He didn't look like he was going to stop any time soon."

[lintamande]

"I guess that's a safe topic. I was worried he'd ask something broad like 'what do you know that would interest me'."

[imeanforever]

"- I can go narrow the order."

[lintamande]

"What? No, I don't have the right to withhold anything from him, there's just stuff I'll be happier if he doesn't think to ask. He probably won't."

[imeanforever]

"...I could make it sound like it was about me."

[lintamande]

"When I said "I don't have the right" I didn't mean "I can't get away with". But thank you."

[imeanforever]

"Why wouldn't you have the right?"

[lintamande]

"He's my King. He's my father. You have neither, it's a little hard to explain."

"Promise," says Maedhros' boyfriend, "would you go change the orders for me? Maitimo does not understand that he is allowed to want things that don't serve big worldly ambitions."

[imeanforever]

Promise glances between them uncertainly and sets down her pile of leaves and flies Angbandward.

[lintamande]

Fëanor is talking about current and voltage with Thauron.

[imeanforever]

She contemplates wordings, then remembers Sauron can do the telepathy thing. Inconspicuously as possible, omit from your remarks details about how you tortured people and the fact that I made this update. Melkor gets a copy too, she's assuming he's next.

[lintamande]

Fëanor does, eventually, get around to asking "what else do you know that'd be of interest to me?"

"Your son is in love with Nolofinwë's," Thauron says, "and has and would choose him over you, your mother swore to kill you as a child, your only grandchild disowned his whole family, Elwing of Sirion leapt off a cliff after she lost the Silmaril, Elu Thingol regarded you as a pathetic waste of your father's line, the Silmarils will burn your hands, most of your children do not love you -"

"What's my fathername?"

"Curufinwë", Thauron says, and falls silent.

Promise? I think we're ready to dispose of this one.

[imeanforever]

You're done already? I was expecting you to be there for weeks, she says from out where she has been accumulating leaves.

[lintamande]

I am a fairly fast learner.

[imeanforever]

If you're sure.

I think we are out of uses for Sauron now.

[lintamande]

He could have a redemption arc, Eru says.