"It's unoccupied except for the two of them who are both holding quite still."

"I'd like to talk with them," he says, "if you don't mind and think it's comparatively safe. The Valar and Maiar know a lot of things we'd otherwise take a very long time to learn, and while we are not pressed for time I understand it that there are still griefs elsewhere in the galaxy, and evils in your home world." He starts walking. Everyone except Maedhros and Fingon follow him.

Promise glances over her shoulder at them, but follows the party to the fortress. "If all I let them do is talk it's safe, I'm pretty sure I won't screw that up."

He nods. "Aside from having an amazingly complicated language and magical language-parsing mechanism with specific exceptions for words used as referents for specific people, how do fairies work?"

"Um, we're more immortal than you are - although I don't know all the details because I've never been reduced to parts too small to eventually regenerate or known anyone who was - and most kinds begin spontaneously but there are some breeding kinds, and every kind has its own innate magic and other properties, and we're all winged humanoids?"

He nods. "Innate magic? What's that like? Can you learn the magics associated with other kinds?"

"No, sorcery's learnable but kind magic isn't. My kind is leaflets and leaflets are each immune to one kind of sorcery; my name can't be learned by sorcery but another leaflet might be immune to being turned into an animal or something. And it isn't very useful in my case since mental sorcery is hopelessly obscure anyway and not a prominent way to get a name. I also have a tree which has special properties, but that's more a property of the tree than me."

"What ways of getting names are there? How would I be able to recognize another leaflet?"

"Conventional ways are being told by the fairy belonging to the name for whatever reason, or someone else who has the name, or being the Queen. The Queen is a one-of-a-kind fairy whose kind magic is knowing all other fairies' names. Leaflets are all female, all close to my height, all have leaf wings but it can be whatever kind of leaf, and when we haven't recently been set on fire and raided orc wardrobes we tend to be found in outfits made of leaves. Coloration and such might differ but no leaflets are going to glow in the dark or have antlers or anything."

"Glow in the dark?"

"Glowgolds glow, most strikingly in the dark. That's not their kind magic, they just glow."

"But doesn't everyone?"

"By glow, do you mean 'emit light'?"

"Yes."

"Does Fairyland have exactly the same ambient temperature as fairies?"

"Oh! So they glow by emitting a different wavelength of light than the one associated with their temperature. That makes sense. I apologize for taking so long to identify the confusion." They're in front of Sauron now.

"Taking no extraneous actions and excepting mention of my name, which you may not say, answer our questions truthfully, with all relevant information, as concisely as you can under those constraints, and promptly," Promise tells Sauron.

Fëanor beams at her.

"If you don't phrase it as a question the order won't actually cover it," Promise says. "I can tell him to obey your requests for information but every order is a chance to screw it up."

"What would be most valuable to me of the math and science you know?"

And she goes to repeat the same instruction to Melkor (defining 'our' for him since Fëanor's occupied) and goes to find some roof to sit on and sing, presuming that Maedhros and his boyfriend are still talking about their feelings since it hasn't been decades yet.