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Loki is not technically banished. This is just - giving her mother space. To think. About what to do with her wayward child. She will be called back in a few years for a more permanent decision. Midgard's nice enough, anyway, and Sigyn's coming along.
The Bifrost lights up in all its colors and -
- this might be Midgard, but it is not a part of Midgard she ever saw and not the place she was expecting to be dropped, and there is no Sigyn with her.
She holds Lævateinn ready as a glaive. Maybe her mother feared her sorcery and thought she'd best be sent somewhere deadly under the impression she was meant to survive the trip -
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purposeful_glory
purposeful_glory
"Well, no one told me that it was a chronic condition until this one expressed confusion that it had stopped. And they didn't start shapeshifting when I applied the spells. I know little enough about what it would have taken to provoke you to lethal force; I am badly calibrated about Elves' willingness to go to war."
"So are all of us, apparently, because if you'd asked a few years ago..." he shakes his head rather like a wet dog. The similarity is made more obvious by Huan shaking beside him. "Anyway. Greenhouses. Dad. He'll have heard us coming so if he pretends to be surprised that's just his way of communicating that he resents interruptions."
purposeful_glory
"Noted. A more effective sort of communication with a translator, but fortunately here you are."
"And here I'll stay, I think, since no offense but we still don't know you that well and Huan's the only thing around that could definitely take you down in a fight."
purposeful_glory
...Loki looks at the dog but doesn't comment on that. "I don't mind the additional company."
They head inside. Fëanor is examining some kind of delicate instrument. "Ottinsdottir! What's Asgardian for 'interruptions set me back by several hours'?"
purposeful_glory
"I'd much prefer to be 'Loki' and not 'Odinsdottir' if you shorten my name. I have mixed feelings about my matronymic. Asgardian for 'my prisoners are undoubtedly distressed and ought not to have to wait' would be -" And she renders that sentence sans Allspeak.
"My apologies, Loki," he says instantly. "I have mixed feelings about my own fathername and should have asked. Your prisoners are " - his eyes flicker up to meet Tyelcormo's - "orcs that have been turned into birds?"
purposeful_glory
"I accept your apology. And yes. And they do not like Elves. Because they were obliged on learning to speak to so swear. But they don't want to die - insofar as the one who spoke to me can be called representative - and this is the way I have to make them harmless while seeking advice and not letting them out of my sight."
"Moringotto forces them, as soon as they learn to speak, to swear to dislike Elves?"
purposeful_glory
"To serve him, and to hate and hurt and kill and take as prisoners Elves. With apparently enough leeway to allow them to retreat if they're guaranteed to lose a battle but not enough to make the problem of how to humanely treat a captive orc very tractable."
"Specific wording?" He sets his instrument down and motions for someone to bring him parchment.
purposeful_glory
"I am not sure I got it exactly. I can turn one back, if you will trust me to keep it pinned."
"Not in here, plate glass is difficult to make and I'd be annoyed if an orc knocked something over. Let's go outside."
purposeful_glory
So she goes outside, and unties the orc she spoke to from the end. Swifts being unable to walk and incapable of taking off from the ground she doesn't have to be particularly careful with an untied bird; she puts it on the ground held down by one hand, forks Lævateinn around it for an orc-sized pin, and reverses the transformation.
The Elves speak in the high-itched and gratingly syrupy Elf-tongue, and then they're inside and it's hot and then they're outside and it's not hot and the orc is an orc again. She blinks at the Elves and at Loki and hopes the Elves have not talked Loki into making her death slow.
"To be an orc, and seek orc greatness. To serve Melkor, greatest of the powers, and pursue and kill and capture Elves with hatred undying, with our whole selves and whole souls, and let pain undying take the orcs who fail to serve."
Tyelcormo whistles. Huan whimpers.
"Okay," says Fëanor. "I think I can work with that."
Tyelcormo whistles. Huan whimpers.
"Okay," says Fëanor. "I think I can work with that."
purposeful_glory
"Work with that?" asks Loki, although even not knowing what the heck he means it's the most encouraging thing she's heard all day. ...To the orc: "Can you understand them? Should I translate for you?"
"Sounds like Elf-tongue," says the orc, "can't speak it."
Fëanor is still writing. "It's an engineering problem, yes? We have constraints and a goal and an underlying physical law. Principles of oaths: you can't get around them, exactly, by a narrow or legalistic interpretation: it's as much a binding to the intent you gave voice with your words as to the words. I say 'as much' because the opposite is not true: if an oath obliges you to do something that went against your intent in speaking it, you're still stuck. The person who taught me this said that the forces of Fate are sticky: they will entangle you certainly every time when you intended it and sometimes when they didn't.
I have sworn, for example, not to harm anyone who does not serve the Enemy, threaten me or mine, or withhold a Silmaril. Can I escape this by deciding 'anyone' is the name of a specific acquaintance, and the rest of the world is fair game? No, of course not. Could I have done this if it were the latter interpretation I had in mind when I spoke that oath? No. An oath is a realization of an intent - in that case, my intent to reassure you and get my father's children by his second wife to go away - and can't be subverted with trivial tricks of language.
But a child chanting words they've been taught has the intent to recite the words correctly and win their parents' praise, or the intent to be the cleverest, or the intent to be seen as grown. When she first spoke these words, she bound herself, don't get me wrong. But with the intent absent we have only the words, and alone they're not as sticky."
Fëanor is still writing. "It's an engineering problem, yes? We have constraints and a goal and an underlying physical law. Principles of oaths: you can't get around them, exactly, by a narrow or legalistic interpretation: it's as much a binding to the intent you gave voice with your words as to the words. I say 'as much' because the opposite is not true: if an oath obliges you to do something that went against your intent in speaking it, you're still stuck. The person who taught me this said that the forces of Fate are sticky: they will entangle you certainly every time when you intended it and sometimes when they didn't.
I have sworn, for example, not to harm anyone who does not serve the Enemy, threaten me or mine, or withhold a Silmaril. Can I escape this by deciding 'anyone' is the name of a specific acquaintance, and the rest of the world is fair game? No, of course not. Could I have done this if it were the latter interpretation I had in mind when I spoke that oath? No. An oath is a realization of an intent - in that case, my intent to reassure you and get my father's children by his second wife to go away - and can't be subverted with trivial tricks of language.
But a child chanting words they've been taught has the intent to recite the words correctly and win their parents' praise, or the intent to be the cleverest, or the intent to be seen as grown. When she first spoke these words, she bound herself, don't get me wrong. But with the intent absent we have only the words, and alone they're not as sticky."
purposeful_glory
Loki murmurs what Fëanor says to the orc as he says it. ...And blinks at the orc, whose sex she had not been able to discern. Female orc, okay. "This is all new to me," she says, when he's done. "...What about making an oath makes it an oath? I was surprised that a little child new to language would be able to do something that counted at all; and apparently it loosens but does not eliminate the binding...?"
He blinks at her. "You just - decide to make your words bind you, and pick a formulation that's sufficiently formal. Anyone of the age of osanwë could do it; I don't know if it takes hold the minute an orc speaks, but certainly while they're very young. Screaming "I won't!" at your parents wouldn't do it, no matter the desire to make your words true, but screaming "by Eru my name and the powers I won't!" would, even if you were ten. No Elf would do that. You can feel it, it feels dangerous.
Anyway, yes. Tell her - I can understand her but I don't think I want to try saying something this precise in her language -
Tell her that we are not Elves. That 'Elves' is a name the Powers gave us, the Powers that Melkor hates, when they wanted us to be their pretty pets in paradise. Before that we were the Quendi, a name of our own choosing; we, too, hate 'Elves', an ideal of what our people should be that exists in the minds of the Valar and bears only a distorted resemblance to the creatures we are. Tell her that the only Elves are in Valinor; every creature that walks these lands is a Quendi, and she needs not hate us."
Anyway, yes. Tell her - I can understand her but I don't think I want to try saying something this precise in her language -
Tell her that we are not Elves. That 'Elves' is a name the Powers gave us, the Powers that Melkor hates, when they wanted us to be their pretty pets in paradise. Before that we were the Quendi, a name of our own choosing; we, too, hate 'Elves', an ideal of what our people should be that exists in the minds of the Valar and bears only a distorted resemblance to the creatures we are. Tell her that the only Elves are in Valinor; every creature that walks these lands is a Quendi, and she needs not hate us."
"He talks a lot," the orc says. "Is that - true?"