"I ran the ideas - most of them not weapons - by Curufinwë. And I explained electricity. I am leaning a little heavily on Fëanor's oath, but they're fairly load-bearing things, oaths, and I am convinced his priority is the Enemy."

He raises an eyebrow. "Well." Unhappily: "I agree on the oath, I'd put rather little weight on your assessment of their character."

"I wouldn't consider the prioritization to be a character assessment."

"If they think defeating the Enemy requires bringing us in line? And they think they have weapons powerful enough to do that with minimal bloodshed, through an overwhelming show of force?"

"I doubt," she says, "that defeating the Enemy requires pissing me off."

He smiles. "Yes, so do I. I am glad Maitimo is happy and you have a way to fix him."

"I don't know if it'll work yet, I'm not meeting him again till Elenya. It seems promising, though."

He nods. "We did decide to stay here for a few months, let everyone recuperate from the Ice. Traveling through the next mountain range puts us closer to them and we'd rather not rush that, and anyway we are momentarily safe. Father deliberated on the question you asked him and has a formal request for Elwë, if you'd like to take a copy of it."

"Sure. Maitimo also wanted his permission to overfly the camp."

He winces. "The answer'd be 'no', except how on earth would we stop him?"

"You'd refuse permission, I suppose, or ask me to put something unidirectionally opaque over you. I suppose he could have already done it but he did bother to ask."

"We may end up asking you to do that. Refusing permission only works with people you can trust."

Nod. "I didn't turn him invisible this time, so if you see a swift and it doesn't stop, say hello, and turn out to be me..."

They all nod and glance briefly at the sky. "No one hurt it, if that happens," Findekáno says, "he's not reporting to Fëanor and we will have a war on our hands if we shoot him. Plus some idiot might shoot Loki."

"I'd be annoyed," says Loki. "And I might ever teach anyone else to fly. It turns out osanwë speeds that way up."

"It'll be fine," Findekáno says. I'm sorry, I should have asked privately in the first place.

Speaking of privacy, there's more things I can relay to you that you likely don't want generally disseminated; what's a good way to privately read written material?

Loki waves to Irissë and follows him.

He walks past the houses to a space where an elevated platform is in the process of being built; it overlooks the valley. He starts working on one of the beams.

Loki pulls transcripts, appropriately redacted.

"I think we may have progressed to the point where he thinks I may be a perfectly nice deceitful hallucinatory Maia under insurmountable coercion who slacks off at work for his benefit. And - I don't know, what he wants, really. He does have some reason not to tell me." Pause. "Look, were you an item or was he just allowing it to sound that way for some reason?"

"I loved him. He found it convenient for me to believe that he loved me."

"Lack of affection isn't the only explanation."