"And then your grudges fester and you continue to have those skills when it occurs to you that you might like to go steal your things back from Fëanor's people, put into practice your opinions about who deserves to die..."

"We're going to learn to fight. We're going to do it whether we have your aid or not, because this is a dangerous land and we need to be able to defend ourselves. My father's been planning drills for as soon as everyone's recovered physically from the ice. I am sure you have a great wealth of cultural knowledge of fighting that it would take us a thousand years to arrive at on our own, but you can't prevent a war indefinitely by keeping us incompetent at it."

"I understand that. But I can save myself the heartache. Have more time in my day to work on spells. I am well accustomed to mourning strangers and have yet to need to mourn friends."

"All right. I think we're planning to camp here, though you can go on ahead if you've decided you don't want to get attached to us."

"I may as well stay for now, in case orcs come back, to reinforce the idea that you have orc-blinding powers," she sighs. It is probably inconsistent to find Fëanor's priorities ridiculous and simultaneously consider the prospect of someone whose primary interest in her is linguistic soothing.

He starts setting up a tent. "Maitimo wasn't present."

She helps. "Not in the room, anyway."

"Maybe managing their actual logistics. If they have a fortress safely back from the Enemy's and reliable access to food and water and scouts that noticed us almost immediately, Fëanor's not the one making the day-to-day decisions."

"I think he may be too ill to focus on anything less interesting than foreign vocabulary for much of the time."

"I almost feel badly for my cousins. Watching people you care about slowly die and knowing there is absolutely nothing you can do kind of sucks. If only they'd learned that earlier."

Loki is silent.

"Are you sharing with my sister again? Now that we're out of the Ice I suppose we can stop with the extremely rigid access-to-shelter schedules."

"I might sleep outside now that it's not snowing."

"Alright. Want my bedroll? I don't really need it - we used to go mountain climbing a great deal, this is practically like home."

"If you don't want it," she shrugs.

He tosses it to her. "Night. Are the stars the same as at your home?"

He's planning their route with Irissë and a few other people. "Morning. We're thinking about where we want to settle, any preferences?"

"Close enough to the source of whichever river to easily defend it if the orcs get the bright idea to poison your water, but not so close that there's not enough streams joined up to irrigate whatever you manage to grow. If I were you I'd find out what the Men grow and ask them for some of that."

Everyone looks slightly startled. "Men don't have agriculture," Findekáno says, "it requires light, which until recently wasn't available, and also centuries of trial-and-error. And they die."

"There are plants here, however disorganized their cultivation; find out what the Men have been eating and where the things keep their seeds as opposed to guessing and finding that you have discovered a poisonous berry. Is my advice, based on the plant life of worlds which have always have suns, which may be completely incorrect and which you may ignore if you like. I am planning to try my luck at fishing for my breakfast and then fly back to your cousins."

"I was traveling by air," she points out. "However, they did not immediately react with bewilderment to my appearance before I introduced myself, so they may have encountered natives with round ears and other cosmetic distinctions before and do not find it remarkable that one might visit them."