Nod.

"Not in my hearing. He seems less inclined than some to discuss personal matters with an otherworldly stranger in general, though."

"I am confident he talked about whatever he cared about."

"Then I will be unable to persuade you otherwise."

"The day they all left because Fëanor'd been exiled, I said to him 'you don't owe him your whole life' and he said 'a hundred twenty years, that's not my whole life' and what I didn't say - but I think I did know - was that next time, it would be."

Loki does not know what to say to that.

He sits there, humming quietly, until the sun rises.

No orcs are apparent; some of the plants look vaguely similar to ones she remembers from home, but not definitely edible. The Elves are eating them.

Loki tastes them, one at a time, ready to heal herself if any of them disagree with her.

The Elves are now enthusiastically admiring the sunrise, which does look quite pretty, and starting to pack up to keep moving.

It is a nice enough sun, however bizarre its genesis. Loki brings things-that-might-turn-out-to-be-snacks and goes with them in case they are suddenly beset by orcs, a problem they are worse equipped to handle than their cousins.

Findekáno seems to have decided his job today is to walk the entire length of the host, repeatedly, saying the same things to everyone, a smile fixed on his face.

Loki... sticks nearish him, in case he decides that there should be a break in this activity for something else and it's convenient to have someone with fewer intense feelings about his boyfriend's (?) death around, but doesn't pry.

"The next time I see one I'm going to catch it and see if being an orc counts as 'injured'," Loki says. "Have I heard it rumored correctly that you would enjoy learning to fight via the expedient of you and Tyelcormo beating one another up on a routine basis? It was suggested that for some reason this would make it look less like I was training people to be my private army, although I think I may be missing a step or two in why that might be."

"Training a private army? Why are you doing that? And yes, I'd be delighted to."

"I'm not, and I don't want it to look like I am, but my idea for avoiding unbalanced combat training was to train only mixed groups. So you could see what they were learning and vice-versa, and learn enough to have less lethal fights if it came to that while simultaneously being better equipped for opposing the Enemy. Maglor thought that - especially if to avoid awkward family drama it was mostly people not closely related to the royalty who attended - this would look like I was trying to amass a force of my own. His suggestion to avoid this impression was you and Tyelcormo being present and fighting."

"I wouldn't start you on armed combat, for all that you've been accustomed to swords. You start learning to fall and move your feet. The absolute most important things to know about fighting is that you should not let the floor be a weapon against you and you should not be in any place about to be visited by a weapon."

"Unarmed sparring was a sport in Valinor. I'm sure you're much better at it - it was always considered vaguely impolite, back home - but I know the principles."

"Then maybe I could skip you along. But if they want to learn and not just look good they'll share their better swords if they're better enough to make a difference and everyone will be paired with a partner of similar sword quality so it's their skills and not their equipment that's affecting the feedback on their performance. If we don't wind up just using wooden practice swords, which is also an option."

"I can imagine Tyelcormo giving me whatever he's using in the spirit of a fair fight. I can't really imagine them arming us en masse. Wood might be a good idea. When did you want to start this?"

"I'm not sure I'll wind up doing it at all and don't have a timetable. Do you have a guess of how many of yours would come to such a thing?"