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]

"You grow up together so you have a lot in common from a young age. People often experience a strong fondness and desire to protect their family members, but even if you don't, you tackle lots of things together and that can make people close."

[imeanforever]

"Huh."

[lintamande]

"I knew all my little brothers their whole lives."

[imeanforever]

"So why is your family not a nice lovely normal one?"

[lintamande]

"Another criteria of nice lovely normal ones is no mass murders. If you do any of that you're not lovely or nice or normal, even if you're not internally dysfunctional."

[imeanforever]

"Permanent disqualification?" she wonders.

[lintamande]

"I think so. You might be able to get back to 'nice' eventually but certainly never 'normal'."

[imeanforever]

"I suppose that would be a different matter."

[lintamande]

"If you asked people in normal families they probably also wouldn't say their father had the most important claim on their lives."

[imeanforever]

"Who usually holds the position?"

[lintamande]

"Uh, the person themself. Maybe their children. Maybe a husband or wife."

[imeanforever]

Nod, nod. "This all seems very complicated and may be more trouble than it's worth."

[lintamande]

"Functional or dysfunctional I know of very few people with families who would agree with you. Are - things associated culturally with mortals low-status in your society? The way you talk about them..."

[imeanforever]

"Um, depends on what you mean. Having a mortal in a court is actually a status symbol because they're hard to get and maintain. The cultural stuff is mostly considered incomprehensible more than anything; I don't think people would look down on a fairy who studied them, every now and then a fairy wanders in the mortal world and gets stuck and that's rotten luck but not particularly low status..."

[lintamande]

"I mean, like, having parents, speaking languages..."

[imeanforever]

"Breeder fairies are low status compared to spontaneous kinds," she says. "They have worse kind magic on average and start vassaled to whoever names them, so any given one you meet is probably low-ranked within their own court unless you get the ancestor. Languages are just weird; somebody might have a hobby of learning them and that wouldn't be lower-status than having a hobby of copying art books or weaving grass."

[lintamande]

"I see," he says, "fair enough."

(frozen)

[imeanforever]

"I don't mean to be condescending or anything, have I been?"

(frozen)

[lintamande]

"I appreciate that you stopped calling us mortals."

[imeanforever]

"Well, you're correct that you did recently get lots less mortal."

[lintamande]

"Removing a layer of bureaucracy on the reembodiment process is not the relevant distinction here."

[imeanforever]

"Why did you even call it 'dying', then?"

[lintamande]

"When we invented our language, mortals didn't even exist. Dying referred to having your body destroyed."

[imeanforever]

"Oh."

[lintamande]

"The mortals only came after the rising of the Sun."