The grownups are all very busy, but the children are all bored.
Bored or having nightmares. But Tasárinon was not on a ship and did not see the people dying and has only heard it thirdhand and can't exactly have nightmares about the look in his mother's eyes - well, he probably could, but he hasn't - so he's bored, and he is drawing on the floor. It is an absurdly intricate drawing. He has been embellishing it for three days.
"No, I'm not gonna have trouble with bombs. I'll be back in a while," Cam sighs.
And he goes out in a nice cloaky shuttle - makes some cloud cover - and goes orc hunting.
There are lots of orcs dug in along the borders of the various Elven kingdoms. There's lots of land reduced to rubble beyond that. And beyond that there are cities full of orcs.
Well, he doesn't want lots of orcs, he wants a few orcs. Are there a few orcs anywhere.
Countryside up north? There are some villas, there are some orcs driving along mostly-deserted roads.
....Cam is going to perform an alien abduction on a carful of orcs. Will they pull over if they get a flat tire?
...yep.
And if he makes a shuttle with a layer of osanwë-blockage around the car, quick as he can manage and still get the vehicle off the ground with successive layers of making, and he calls the shuttle up into his cloud cover lickety-split...? Any problems?
Nope. They barely even have time to react and wouldn't know how to react to that anyway.
Okay cool. He wends back Brithombarward, though he doesn't plan to land or get very close while the sirens are going.
He gets his computer chewing on the complete written output of the nearest orc city. What's the condition of his shuttleful of carful of orcs?
They climbed out of the car to explore the shuttle. The kids are clinging to what must be their parents. Five kids.
...he should maybe have looked more closely and picked a car without kids in it. Well. The shuttle is fairly nonthreatening as alien abduction shuttles go. "You don't happen to speak Quenya, do you?" he radios in.
They do not happen to speak Quenya. They look confused and alarmed and try answering in their language.
...well, that'll help the translation software with the phonemes.
Eventually he gets it to spit out, "I apologize for this."
His computer will interpret their response as something to the effect of 'please don't hurt us what do you want are you an Elf?"
"I'm not going to hurt you and I'm not an Elf and I want to know more about orcs but I wish I had been paying enough attention to pick a car without kids in it, I'm really sorry."
This calms them down. "Will you swear to that?"
"Not an Elf, won't hurt us."
This calms down even the smallest of the children. "You said you wanted to learn more about orcs?"
"You could just visit. We have a visitor's bureau in Erdenet and in Darhan. Probably elsewhere too but those ones I've been to."
"We did before the war. Some of the Maiar still come by. Men just started."
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