"I suppose that's fair. ...I hope Rodyn's okay. One of these days I hope to wander into some random village and have somebody point at me and go 'were you just a bird' and thereby find out what happened to him, where he wound up."

"I am sure he is much much better off than he was, if you rescued him."

"If he just ran off in a confused panic he could have been caught again right away. Also, state of the art ex-prisoner rehabilitation procedures sound like they all boil down to 'reimprison, more gently' - if you want to go live in Brithombar you can do that, just, that's the conditions they've got to offer, too dangerous to do anything else. The Dwarves will probably make fun of you a lot but according to the one I talked to it didn't sound like they have that as a requirement. Maybe they're less paranoid because they're built to better defensive design specs."

"Yeah, it didn't sound like it tended to work out very well. So, Dwarves while your family builds an outpost, assuming the actual kingdom is as amenable as Nýi implied after I go talk to them - they'll want you to earn your keep, sounded like, but it didn't sound like they'd stop you from walking out. Outpost in a few years."

"That is acceptable to me. Thank you."

"You're welcome. ...You didn't already overfly the Nolofinwëans, right, because it turns out they don't want you to do that."

"I expected they wouldn't. And no, I went east."

"Feel like filling in my map? I'll leave copies with the others."

"Do you have something I can write with?"

"Yes, but Lúthien actually gave me the base of this map by tracing in midair; unless you think I ought to throw this one out and start over seems most efficient to add on that way."

"Hmm, all right." He starts tracing. "Past the forest of giant spiders there's a great deal of unoccupied territory. It's very nice - there's a river here - so I doubt it was always that way. I think the Enemy must have gotten there before anyone could come to the aid of the locals. Then another mountain range, north to south, I only saw one pass but the snow's melting now that we've got all the light in the sky, and then the rain shadow of that mountain range - a desert stretching a few hundred miles - and then the Men."

"Did you go visit the spiders? They're not very friendly. I went and revisited my adolescence, I think I got about a hundred of them. Turns out they hunt by sound, but they're not blind - they pounced on illusion light, ate it right up. Didn't care to comment on its nutritional value or anything else." She adds symbols as he traces.

"I was a bird, it didn't seem particularly wise. I watched for long enough to determine that they were numerous and not organized and confounded by the blurry border of what must be Doriath, then headed onwards. You should tell my father - but not the Nolofinweans - that we should take the eastern corridor and give them the western one. The west is far more defensible, it has a mountain range between you and the enemy, and things'll grow better in it, and there's a better avenue of escape south."

"What, pray tell, should I tell the Nolofinwëans about this?"

"You can show them the map, obviously. Just don't tell them I'm trying to persuade my family to move, because then they'll get suspicion and declare that no, they demand the eastern corridor."

"I detect more of the 'manipulating people for their own good' strategy. Still, you have a point. Moving your family will interrupt a lot of projects in progress, but I assume you think that's not a significant factor?"

"It'll probably set us back by about a year. There are other benefits that in my opinion justify it."

"To your own or to the Nolofinwëans?"

"Everyone who hates the enemy is my concern; none of them are my command."

"That's very big-picture of you. All right."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome. I will go visit your family, tell them to send the orcs south, give them this conversation, see if Curufinwë has managed a lightbulb, and then book it Dwarfwards and mean to be back here in three days; sound good? Anything else to discuss? Do you want to spend these days this shape or that?"

"I'd like to fly again. ...Am I likely to run out of strength for it if I don't eat or drink?"

"Um, I would, but you've got all kinds of fancy Quendi features and maybe you'll be fine. ...Did I forget to tell you what swifts eat? I forgot to tell you what swifts eat. It's bugs, flying bugs. I have not noticed anyone in your culture considering them a delicacy so this may be hard to get used to. And they drink by skimming low over water or catching raindrops. They're such a stupid perpetually airborne species, very committed to the bit."