"Hello. How quickly do you travel? I went climbing to look for Doriath, and I can see a couple hundred miles in every direction and I can't see it."

"Hundred miles an hour. Also it's designed to be really hard to look at."

"Clever. We were half-expecting they'd all be dead by the time we made it, you know."

"Doriath is safe, and beautiful, and you and your brothers are invited there but might want to have a speech prepared because Elu's displeased about Alqualondë and I didn't know enough to disclaim your involvement."

"He knows?" Several different emotions rush across her face.

"He knows some. I don't have recreational conversations with him and he hasn't exhibited particularly penetrating curiosity about the details. If you can say you didn't kill anyone I imagine he'll be delighted and invite you to live there forever."

"I killed them," she says, gesturing rather viciously in the direction of Mithrim, "in defense of his and my family. You think that'll be an issue?"

"I wouldn't recommend sounding proud of it if you want to stay very long. His worldview is not one of nuance and extenuating circumstance."

"It's not nuanced. Fëanor and his people attacked my people, unprovoked; we defended ourselves. There's no equivalence."

"It's not me you have to convince. And my impression of Elu's likely opinion is as I've said. Lúthien you can probably rant to a bit, separately, she's more, mm, grounded. And very excited to meet the four of you." Loki presents an osanwë memory of Lúthien expressing this.

"You could consider letting them do the talking, then," says Loki. And she writes the proposed schedule in her notebook.

"I heard you rescued Maitimo."

"Well. Physically."

"Have you considered that you now have quite a lot of leverage with his family?"

"Yes. However, I am not evil."

"That's a strong word."

"Maybe you have managed to think of a perfectly innocuous way for me to go to people who have never - to me - been anything other than charming and helpful, mention that I know where their missing family member is, and, what, hold that information hostage? Offer it in trade? Do you think they're going to forget a horse you very much want back when the orcs are capable of horse-delivery and you have an address for them to deliver to and you want me to use it to make sure of that because the last time I exchanged the well-being of their family for something it wasn't good enough? What could you possibly mean?"

"Oh, you feel obliged to be friendly with murderers if they're nice to you personally? What I mean is that we need some semblance of a united command to have any chance of winning this war, we can't all just hope you'll pull the magic to win it out of your pocket in time. Elwë doesn't look inclined or suitable to step up and be that lead. Nolofinwë's qualified, but I think the current Fëanorian policy on collaborating against our shared enemy is "pretend as much as possible that they don't exist and we didn't do anything'. I don't know if the non-Doriath Iathrim have someone who could do it. But we need someone, and yes, I think it'd be appropriate to tell Feanor that he has to muster something better than "I'll pretend they don't exist' as a strategy for the level of collaboration we will need to win this war."

"I feel obliged not to throw my weight around to extract things from people who have not, in the entire course of their acquaintance with me, misused that acquaintance. I am not the sort of person who barges into people's lives and holds their children hostage, and I doubt very much that Fëanor's resentful and temporary compliance is worth more than his goodwill, look where that got the Valar. If you had rescued Maitimo we would be having a different conversation, I suppose, but you didn't. I rescued him because I wanted him to be rescued. I didn't even know who he was. He is not yet rescued enough to suit me and so I'm going to keep working on that. If someone who loves you ever does something unconscionable and then you are captured by the Enemy you may rely on me to do the same."

"Maitimo is not merely guilty by association."

"So I've heard. But I also haven't heard him express a wish that an entire campful of people with only the possible exclusion of children all be massacred, so I am not sure if you are innocent merely by lack of opportunity, which excuse I find flimsy if we're talking about what people deserve. I don't care. People do not exist to be hostages for their families' cooperation."

"If his father gave an order like that, he'd follow it. Don't kid yourself."

"Fëanor's rather snugly oathbound to be harmless outside a few narrow circumstances, so I don't plan to spend much time worrying about that."