The castle seems emptier now that people have left to do war-related things. She can wander for much longer without running into Elves, and Lady Hareth is working nonstop on war logistics.

Wandering around is not an efficient thing to do, she decides the next morning when this becomes apparent. Does anybody need healing?

Sporadically, but not enough so that hanging out in the healing areas is a good idea either, unless she wants to bring something to do.

Noooo she needs to work out her sisterly inferiority complex by being efficient. She could...go kill orcs, she supposes.

They are happy to have her along to do that. 

Orc killing. Not very fun, but almost disturbingly effective.

The orcs seem mostly, in wars like these, to keep the Elves exhausted and with limited mobility while the Enemy tried other things. They die by the thousands.

Pity Morgoth's whatever-the-fuck keeps Odette from peering into Angband and discerning exactly what he's buying time for this time.

The Elves are speculating. More dragons, maybe. Sauron again, maybe. Another mountain going volcano.

Is Sauron really the kind of thing he needs to buy time for? A dragon would presumably take time to make and have grow up, and volcanoes need time to build pressure, but Sauron seemed like a bit of a renewable resource.

Sauron's plans usually take a little while to unfold, though, she's told.

Somehow that doesn't sound reassuring.

No one sounds reassured. It'd be nice if it were sunny during the day; instead it's all ash, and there won't be any crops, and that's stressful in itself.

Well, she can get some of the ash out of the sky in between killing orcs.

People wonder aloud if the Enemy means to erupt volcanoes every year for a decade and starve everyone out.

That is. Probably not possible. Based on her understanding of volcanoes, and the fact that he didn't try this sooner.

He might have been preparing all of the mountains for the last century.

Well. Odette can probably do something about the food supplies, if it comes down to it.

That does cheer people up a bit.

Well, that's something. Illia explains how Odette grew a book with a wooden cover and a reinforced satchel out of a leaf she found on the ground, as an example of her ability to increase the amount of plant matter.

Everyone is greatly encouraged by this; with that and singing to the crops, perhaps they can avoid a famine even if the Sun never comes back. The Sun not coming back is a possibility the Elves take quite seriously; the Trees didn't, after all.

Particulate interference with solar light is not permanent! Have some half-remembered examples.

(If Illia is particularly perturbed by the idea of the sun going away because of her religion she tries not to let it show.)

She's probably succeeding in not letting it show because otherwise everyone would be more sensitive about debating whether the Enemy could pull the Sun out of the sky.

At least the light-eating spiders are contained.

They rotate in in the evening.