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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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They are.
Yes!
Thank you. They're lovely. You're welcome to go meet them sometime.
There are no other peoples! Unless you count animals.
imeanforever
I don't really know what to think about animals because Fairyland doesn't have them, except fairies who've been turned into them and not very many of those.
I think animals are perfect the way they are.
imeanforever
Yes of course you do you made the place. "Does anybody have any input on animals and the design thereof?" she asks aloud. "I have never seen an animal in my life, so."
The Elves raise their eyebrows. "Uh, if there were a way for them to not suffer while not changing their behavior, that'd probably be good," blond Elf offers. "Animals dying isn't a problem, they don't have a sense of themselves the same way, but they usually die slowly and horribly and they do suffer like anyone else."
There is something like the cosmic equivalent of a sigh. Nature, red in tooth and claw. It's supposed to be a vicious world out there.
I changed it.
"Nelyo," says the blond one, "I'm kind of disappointed that you took longer than a week to win this thing."
imeanforever
Blink. Who's Nel- oh, it only clicks for Maedhros. "If that's because of what I'm doing, he could hardly have done that, he isn't a fairy."
"Right, a week from when he found you."
"So -"
"Tyelcormo, please drop it," Maedhros says.
His brother does.
"Tyelcormo, please drop it," Maedhros says.
His brother does.
Maedhros sees her hesitating. "My brother thinks 'what orders should Maedhros have given Promise to end this within a week' is an interesting puzzle and was going to spend the next hour puzzling it out. I think this might be insensitive to you, so I asked him not to."
imeanforever
"Oh. I mean, in principle you could have done it but if you'd actually tried it this wouldn't be going nearly so well because you'd have been trying to order Powers around at one remove through a hostile vassal."
"Yes. Using Eru's name would have been a horrifyingly bad idea and I think I'd have recognized it as such. I don't personally find 'how could it have been done' to be a rewarding puzzle, which is another reason I suggested my brother stop doing it."