Maiar are just categorically incapable of thinking normally! About anything! Elspeth's magic should not blame itself!

Melian dispatches some people to tell the Noldor their conditions.

Elspeth suspects it is not a good idea for her to be within earshot of the evil King or anyone who can credibly claim to have heard him issuing extortion-y oaths, would Doriath like to offer her somewhere to stash herself so she doesn't have to go take her chances running to Tumunzahar or something?

Sure! They can get her a lovely place that is out of earshot of the evil King. If she knocked out most of his teeth he's probably out of commission at the moment, though.

Yes, probably, but she's not sure exactly how many of his teeth it was, may or may not have broken his jaw, etc., he could be capable of getting out a short sentence like "I swear that" with respect to some more complicated elsewise-transmited content.

It sounds like someone should have broken his jaw a long time ago.

She is shown to some very pretty guest rooms.

Lovely. Into them she plops.

Well, that was good, right? Maybe no war?

Yup. Also she got to punch him in his stupid face and had a really good reason!

Yeah, sure sounds like it. 

Elspeth doesn't even know what he was about to say but she bets it wasn't anything good and seriously threatening Elspeth under the condition of 'if you tell them anything' is so unclear on the concept. She tells people things.

He doesn't sound very smart.

He's smart sometimes about some things but he's having a really hard time with Elspeth, probably because she wants him to be less evil and he might as well think that's a kind of fruit or something.

Sorry, I know it's not really funny.

It'd be a little funny if only he had no power.

Why do people follow him?

Apparently most of them actually like him? For some reason? It really bugs him that Elspeth doesn't! Which is itself actually funny! Anyway he settled a succession dispute in his own favor with what sounds like a fairly surgical batch of assassinations and then maybe people were not eager to rekindle any of that. Also he is not totally incompetent at governance. If they had trains the trains would run on time.

She has no concept of trains but the metaphor makes perfect sense because Elspeth.

It's very useful to be Elspeth! Although she can also explain the metaphor with lots of pleasingly nested context about trains and fascism.

Yeah, even on the original metaphor she caught some of the nested meaning about the kind of states known for trains running on time. 

It's not a bad comparison actually, the Noldor are not doing European fascism in more ways than simply 'not being in Europe' but they're doing something like it, military citizenship and all.

And evil.

Yup. And that.

Thanks for coming to talk.

You're welcome. Thanks for the invitation, it seems like it's improved things at least for the time being.

Not currently in a war we'd lose. Yay.