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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.
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"Fifty years of torture wasn't even itself bad enough to meet that bar, it was all the years since. Am I upsetting you? I can stop talking."
imeanforever
"I don't want to end up like you. It would be really inconvenient because I'm actually immortal. - I think that's about how long he had me."
"I do not think you are likely to end up like me. There were a lot of intervening factors very specific to my situation. For example, you're at this point entirely sure that you're not with him, right? One of the Enemy's favorite tricks was to make us repeatedly experience being rescued and then trying to make it in the outside world, only to wake up with him again. So we couldn't be sure. I might still be in Angband. I have no idea how I'd ever tell. I do not think that applies in your case."
imeanforever
"No, it doesn't. Mental sorcery you have to know the person really well and you can't get to that point if they're under any substantial orders."
"There you go. Can't mess with your memories for the same reason?
Also, if you have any loved ones, they won't all die in front of you because of your mistakes, because they will be fairies and undying, yes?"
Also, if you have any loved ones, they won't all die in front of you because of your mistakes, because they will be fairies and undying, yes?"
imeanforever
"That would also be mental sorcery. I don't have any loved ones and never have, but mortals sometimes wind up in Fairyland same ways fairies can end up in the mortal world. Or here, wherever here is. So if I had them they wouldn't necessarily be immortal and if they were that would just mean one of the many things that can happen to people wouldn't be something that could happen to them."
"Okay. I did not mean to scare you about your own wellbeing. Recovering from terrible things is very possible and I am very sure you'll be able to do it. Do you think having a few years here to rest and think and not worry about the war would be good for you? We can do that."
imeanforever
"Are there any more obviously preventable massacres waiting to happen during those years?"
"No. I can't predict when or if the Enemy will move against Sirion, but otherwise there are no places to massacre, and if the people of Sirion come here we will run rather than fighting them."
"Okay. I'll visit you twice a day with food - is twice a day the right frequency? - and otherwise not bother you, and no one else will."
imeanforever
"I think twice a day is about right, I barely remember getting to set my own mealtimes."
"You can tell me if you want to change it."
He wraps his hand in fabric, puts the Silmaril back in the box. Leaves.
He wraps his hand in fabric, puts the Silmaril back in the box. Leaves.
She feels energized, like she hasn't been flying all day with a heavy load. Her knee stops hurting.
imeanforever
...okay. She wouldn't have taken a rock's word for it if it burned her but it would have given her something to draw about.
She draws about other things instead. And then she sleeps.
She draws about other things instead. And then she sleeps.
When she wakes up it is gone; someone must have come and taken it. A few hours later Maedhros comes in, offers her food, stares at the wall.
"It is as far as I know rather generous in its assessments of people," he says. "It contains the divine light of creation that once sustained our homeland. Our people become, over the long Ages, less physically embodied in the world, less able to act on it. The Silmarils combat that. They prevent decay. They provide healing. They strengthen and revitalize."
imeanforever
"You could have told me they healed in case I hadn't gotten away without being shot at. How does it assess people at all?"
"Healing on a much slower scale; I don't think it'd do anything about being shot. It was blessed by one of the Valar to burn any evil being that touched it. I assume it uses her judgement for that."
"I don't know. I suppose I could ask a lot of people to touch it and give us some more information to reason from."
imeanforever
"I poked it to see what happened and I guess it liked me but in retrospect I wish I knew what it liked and whether it was looking at it before I touched it."