They will tentatively start doing things that are not 'preparing for an inevitable war' but 'giving the Noldor food' sure isn't going to be one of those things.

...Elspeth will settle for that but be conspicuously unimpressed about it.

We could offer to give food to anyone not sworn to the evil King but I think everyone's sworn to the evil King.

Well, yeah, Elspeth just doesn't happen to think this deserves starvation.

It's not that they deserve it, it's that they might do evil things later. Do you want us to feed orcs, too?

If the orcs swore that they weren't going to have a war with Doriath? Yeah, probably.

Weren't going to have a war with Doriath unless we do one of a long list of things including 'inciting other people to war with them', which might just mean 'telling your mother the truth'.

Well, they could try to narrow down the definition of "incite" if that's a serious concern, although Elspeth expects to be reporting to her mother personally.

Honestly, even if we were sure of it I don't think we'd send them food. So no need to bother.

Sigh.

The Noldor have another go. When they disable it the relevant area does not crumble to ash, or look any different. Songbirds?

She goes and gets a bunch, leaping around to catch them in midair so neatly that she doesn't bend their feathers, and brings them all in a basket.

And they freeze time. And when they restart it, songbirds fly away.

Great. Now the orcs - is Doriath going to let us bring orcs in - 

Well, are they?

Doriath is not even clear on why they need to test whether this is survivable; isn't the point to use it to kill the Enemy?

That's a good point, although there are two of him so it might matter for some possible deployment plans.

Yep. They want to get both at once and then trim the area under the time stop, rather than try twinning the effect. They tried that too, but no success yet.

Doriath is less than thrilled to learn that the plan involves timestopping and then untimestopping Doriath. There is a lot of muttering.

Well, the birds were fine and they're going to try orcs if Doriath lets them. And since they can't leave with the Silmarils until the Enemy's handled, presumably they are not going to time stop all of Doriath.

Doriath will let them try orcs if the orcs will swear not to cause any trouble in Doriath's borders.

That seems like it might be hard to get orcs to do. They won't settle for unarmed orcs under guard?

And then the Noldor happen to be "careless"...

Doriath guard, perhaps. Or Elspeth. Or both.

After exhaustive negotiation, orcs are allowed in, bound hand and foot and carried by the guards and with lots more guards around to shoot them if anything goes wrong. And to shoot them anyway after the testing.

What fun.

The orcs don't have private thoughts. They are scared and confused and horrified to be surrounded by this many Elves. Most of the Elves in Doriath can hear them panicking and it makes them vaguely uncomfortable.