This easily takes up the rest of the evening. By the end Irissë is glowing with delight. "I should have asked you to do that earlier, after Findekáno mentioned how you'd explained life on your planet and how round worlds work. It's good for people to start thinking 'once we can build a library' instead of 'once we reach the Enemy'."

"I will be happy to provide similar lectures of half-remembered science regularly. I only regret that my memory isn't better. Once I've learned to teleport I can bring books."

"Once you learn to teleport it'll be rather a game-changer, I gather."

"Yes. I mean, unless I set foot on Asgard and am instantly slain or something, but that doesn't seem too likely. Maybe just to be safe I'll go somewhere else first and write Heimdall a message."

"Even if your mother wants you dead now, will she still want that in two hundred years?"

"I don't know."

"Would this Heimdall warn you?"

"She sees everything. She did not tell Odin that I was practicing sorcery. I think she might."

She nods. "We're probably about ready to stop for the night. Are there orcs in the immediate vicinity?"

They're clear. Also, she can barely see Angband from here, but it does not appear to be shrouded in magical darkness any longer.

"...okay. Have a restful trip," Irissë says.

"See you in a few days most likely," says Loki, and she ascends again and points herself Fëanorward and sets a sedate sleeping pace and dozes off. She doesn't have much practice at this, turning into a bird is a new spell, but she can do it.

When she wakes it's sunrise and she's only moderately off course, though she hasn't gotten as far as she'd have liked.

Well, one doesn't sleep at a hundred miles an hour, that's a good way to get brained on a mountainside. She accelerates and reorients.

Yes, definitely no smoke hanging low over Angband. The lake looks placid, and the Elves she can't quite see from here.

She swoops down to the edge of the camp and changes and nods politely to the guards. "Good morning."

"Morning, You want us to go find one of them in particular, or any one of them? Or take you straight to the orcs?"

"The orcs will be fine, thank you. How many are there?"

"Thirty six. There was a debate over how many, and apparently it got loud because Fëanor shouted through the walls of his workshop 'thirty-six, and shut up'. and that settled it." He starts walking.

...Loki giggles and follows along. "Are they re-vowed and just waiting to be healed, or is the plan to do it in the other order?"

"We tried on a few of them, the first ones back, but it didn't work, they weren't buying it. Wouldn't talk with us at all, which might be part of their orders, and your friend Vár just kept insisting that the sorcerer of the greater Melkor healing them proved that the greater Melkor had a stronger claim, but they hadn't seen you and weren't clear on what it is you're healing. Obviously we can try again, but it might be that you can't actually do this in any reasonable timeframe while they're still in pain."

"Well, I can heal them and Vár can try again."

"Yeah. I don't think she made it permanently impossible or anything: they were unpersuaded, not exactly hostile. Well, one of them was kind of hostile. I can't understand what they said but it sounded very insulting and she was very upset by it. Oh, also, Fëanor says don't use 'it' even if we can't tell their gender, he's added a series of appropriate pronouns to the language."