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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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This is how we learned everything we know about botany. Planting beans in fairyland to see if genetics works would be very interesting. Does she know enough about breeder fairies to guess about trait heredity?
imeanforever
She's never interacted closely with them; breeder courts tend to be unmixed, none of them lived very near her tree until shortly before she was captured, Thorn only had a handful and they didn't talk to Promise about their families. She does know that breeders have all different ways of reproducing and they don't consistently involve two parents and definitely don't consistently involve the sort of things mortals do to have children. Actually, she's not sure if any of them involve that? She's pretty sure she's never heard reference to a pregnant fairy?
Huh. Okay, bean plants it is, then. The way fairies do it seems sensible.
imeanforever
Fairies do breed plants! All kinds of plants. Probably many kinds of plants were bred once and then spread from there unattended. There is frequently magic involved but she thinks not always?
So perhaps plants in fairyland have genes. Though perhaps not, if they don't die - do they never die? If they do die, what eats the debris, because here there are insects and worms for that...
Do you have very very small animal-like things that can't even properly be called animals? And can only be seen under microscopes? Do you have microscopes?
Well! This will be an interesting thing to check when they have microscopes. Here is the concept. He can't show her one now because lens grinding takes time.
imeanforever
She doesn't know if they have the tiny not-animals! Maybe they do. (It transpires that they do have algae.)
He doesn't know enough to make many inferences from that, but interesting. Do they get sick?
He's not sure what to teach next. There's a lot. What interests her?
imeanforever
Animals are weird! She saw a squirrel the other day and it was so weird! The only information about animals she has is the three traditional kinds that fairies turn people into when they're pissed off (snail, frog, and sparrow, depending on how pissed off)!
There are thousands of kinds! He'd be delighted to tell her all about them. He supposes horses are less useful if you can fly.
imeanforever
...You sit on them? And then they move you?
...That's really, really weird.
...That's really, really weird.
...right, not being children, fairies probably also don't do piggyback rides.
imeanforever
By and large, no. And smaller fairies are on average faster than big ones, although it's not consistent, she's faster than a patient mossy.
Well, Elves and Men ride horses. It's quite a lot of fun, actually, though he can't compare it to flying.
imeanforever
She does not see the appeal even trying to take the perspective of someone who doesn't have flight as an option, really. Animals: so weird. They just look kind of fundamentally incorrect to her.
He can't really relate. Animals look lots of different ways anyway. Does Fairyland have coral?
Coral: technically an animal.
Animals come in all different kinds, like he said. Sparrows are not much like snails either.