"I don't know what happened next. Fëanor may be the only person who really does. I know that after reaching the farth north of the continent, and realizing that they couldn't survive the march across hundreds of miles of tundra they turned around and went back south to the harbor. I know they begged to be loaned or sold ships, and were refused, begged for aid in building ships and were refused, begged for knowledge about how one builds ships and were refused.And I know that when I arrived, half of them were dead and dying on the beaches.

I attacked. I learned later that we'd been the aggressors, that Fëanor'd tried to steal the ships and met resistance. At the time all I saw was that they were going to die and we attacked and it changed the course of the fight and it was the other side who mostly died on those shores, we escaped. The seas rose up against us and drowned many of the ships, but that mostly affected Fëanor's people.

It remains the greatest regret of my life."

"Definitely going to ask Odette to ask what was going on there."

"They won't tell her. My cousins have redeeming traits, but they don't have regrets and they're universally bad at acknowledging mistakes, except Maedhros. And I confronted him immediately after Alqualondë, we screamed at each other for hours, I know everything he does.

The Valar announced our sentence for our crimes a few weeks later. The sentence was on Fëanor's house, but also all who followed them, and it was that we would see all our endeavors here fall to ruin, that we would die by sword and by hunger and by grief and by every other evil imaginable, and that any of us who survived would live to regret it."

"Can they enforce that?"

"I don't know. Parts of it they could and did enforce, like fencing Valinor against us."

"Is there--is that going to apply to us, too, since we're helping?"

"You're Men, I don't think one even can set Dooms on Men."

"Well, that's good, but why not? What's the difference?"

"Now we're into theology. Men don't have predetermined fates, Men have free will, Men have a different afterlife, Men are the Third Theme in the music...I really don't know. I expect that having you here makes plans in the aggregate go less Doomed, but they might not. I'm happy to let your sister take you both home."

"If we really were all doomed by the gods of this world I think it would be wise to take refugees home with us and then come back and help some more," she says. "Actually come to think of it if we could manage that anyway it would probably be a good idea."

"We don't have any children, or any civilians who are actually noncombatants rather than just farming because specialization is useful. You could get the Men out of harm's way, but they're not Doomed that we know of, just Men and fragile."

"Good to know. It might still be useful in an emergency, so we should probably see if she can do it, but not a terribly high priority."

"I was distracted from telling you our history. After the sentence was spoken, tensions between the hosts got worse and eventually Fëanor loaded all his people onto the boats and sailed off without us and lit the boats on fire on the other shore, leaving us stranded in the northern part of the continent. That left us with no choice but to go home or cross the ice, and most people chose to cross the ice."

"That sounds...less terrible than most of the hypotheses I had been entertaining."

"Seemed terrible at the time. What were you entertaining?"

"You had other options that weren't terrible and he literally pointed weapons at you to get you to choose the terrible one because it was best for him."

He raises an eyebrow. "We'd have made him use them."

"I'm not saying I don't believe you! The hypotheticals a person conjures in the absence of fact aren't always plausible."

"Fair enough. My uncle abandoned us because he didn't want to deal with a succession crisis, he did not torture us for personal advatnage.And by the time we arrived in these lands he'd died in the fighting."

"That sounds like a pretty clear case of hoist on your own petard."

"It was fortunate, because otherwise I think we'd have then had a war. As it was, it took some maneuvering to avoid one. And to reunite our people took Maedhros apologizing, surrendering the crown, surrendering everything that had been on the stolen boats and agreeing to follow my father. And now everything's fine, except that my cousins aren't very good at actually being anyone's subjects, and bringing him back would rather wreck them."

"Odette--not exactly said, but it slipped through--that the son of Feanor she was talking to at the time...implied that the fact that you say it would was the primary reason it would be a problem." She sighs. "Honestly I mostly want to find a way to make it okay for him to stop being dead because it will do unfortunate things to Odette if she can't fix it so people she's gotten fond of get their dad back someday. She doesn't like not being able to solve problems, especially problems that involve people hurting, especially especially when she likes the people who are hurting. I don't think it's worth a war. She doesn't think it's worth a war, not really. But I want to find a way for my sister to be alright." She shakes herself. "I'm sorry. Look at me complain that my sister is going to have to deal with upset feelings while yours is dead. That was unintentionally petty of me."

"Great griefs don't actually make us immune to small ones, you know. And my cousins have literally never in any respect let themselves be inconvenienced by my opinions about things but I'm amused they'd suggest they might."

"The point was less you as a person and more you as the heir of the current reigning king, if I recall correctly."

"In which guise I am even less a concern of theirs, when I actually want to be!"