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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
"I'm saying I'd react differently to the conclusion. His response is not unreasonable but it doesn't - optimize, in the way that I do. He's completely discounting upside potential in the case where he was actually rescued. I'd have gone somewhere comfortable and populated, and read books and listened to people talking, even if nothing could convince me the people were real or what they talked about was true or that the books were worth the paper they weren't printed on. Given that the hallucination is purely mental I might be willing to do some sorts of physical work that would help if they were real and wouldn't hurt anything by information leak if they weren't. Maybe I'd take up art; I doubt very much that the Enemy would benefit from a supply of imaginary drawings. I would especially do this if I knew people who would be happy to take me in as a non-contributing guest."
"Right, except people aren't and no such place exists. Comfortable and populated doesn't really characterize anywhere on the continent - we're in the middle of a war zone - and who would take him in? Elwë?"
purposeful_glory
"Then uncomfortable and populated, but better than the middle of nowhere, alone, doing nothing. He has to know that you'd take him in, even if he thinks his father and brothers would prod him into producing intellectual work he doesn't dare give up?"
"We aren't going to take him in," Artanis says calmly. The crowd around them has been starting to press in. "This situation is awful and the Enemy despicable and I expect that some members of this host will help get him food or materials or whatever, but he participated in the murder of our families, he left us to die, we are not going to say 'nice to have you, we know you don't think we exist, hang out and help dig fence posts.'"
purposeful_glory
"I meant Findekáno personally, who seems very much like he would go and personally build an entire town if that were the best place to Maitimo to be," says Loki.
"I don't think Maitimo thinks that," Findekáno says. "The last time we spoke he gave me his name's oath that he would bring the boats back. Also, they left us to die and might reasonably think we are actually dead."
purposeful_glory
Loki sighs.
"I can go back and try talking to him again. I suppose if the time dilation thing holds it won't demonstrate particular Enemy impatience."
"I can go back and try talking to him again. I suppose if the time dilation thing holds it won't demonstrate particular Enemy impatience."
"You could try suggesting to him that he live somewhere populated and read and do art, at least. I think he'd appreciate suggestions of that nature. It'd be a better suggestion if you had such a place in mind, but - telling him that I'm alive and forgive him will not convince him he's not hallucinating."
purposeful_glory
"The Fëanorians would, I assume, have him, and I am not sure it's such a bad thing if they manage to get more response from him than art and digging fencepost-holes," Loki says. "I could try asking at Doriath but I'm not optimistic."
"His family would take him in, yes. I expect that slides into plan-make-Maitimo-assume-the-upside-is-h
"I could build him a village. Do you think that's a good idea?"
purposeful_glory
"I was not being serious. If you wish to build villages there will be a market for some among the orcs soon and they will appreciate it more."
"You could send Maitimo south with the orcs to teach them farming and crafting and literacy. Can't see how that'd help the enemy."
"I want to tell him something but I can't think what would be reassuring to hear the enemy put in my mouth."
purposeful_glory
"...Well, if it seems opportune I'll tell him you said that."
He almost smiles.
"Thank you, Loki."
"Thank you, Loki."
purposeful_glory
"You're welcome." She sighs. "I think I'll go now, I'll sleep on the wing. I hope he hasn't made himself too scarce."
He barely seems to hear her. Irissë eventually puts a hand on his shoulder. "Oh!" he says. "Good night."
The agent of the Enemy leaves and Maitimo spends two hours perfectly still, putting his head back in order.
This might make him more vulnerable to the next game, but he knows himself and knows he will eventually do it and so may as well do it immediately.
Every branch or blade of grass that touches him has him recoiling in anticipation of searing pain. This isn't a torture hallucination, he tells his reflexes, for the moment the feeling of leaves on his skin is just that, and he makes himself do other hundred times until some part of him believes it. This will certainly be unwise later but he's not going to play out the rest of this particular game curled up and whimpering in the corner of his own head.
The long shadows on the hillside are not orcs. It feels as if they have to be, Every time he catches sight of them his heart doubles its pace and his muscles tense to flee but the shadows are not orcs. The rustling of branches in the wind is not orcs. He cannot practice this one a hundred times because it takes him too long to talk himself back down, and after twenty trials he feels sick with some kind of fatigue from provoking the reaction again and again. He resists the urge to keep pushing. It might be better that he's not fatigued.
He can't eat or drink, can't yet believe in food, and it is uncertain if they're managing this in such detail that they will bother slowing his reflexes to account for hunger. So he leans against the tree and rests, and then he gets up and starts walking.
The Enemy won't have any trouble finding him, of course, but whatever he'd told the Enemy sitting in a tree is not an tolerable way to drag out this reprieve, even if doing something interesting ends it sooner.
Now the question of interest: is he demanding some fraction of the enemy's attention? Does this game require constant management? If not, nothing he does - provided it reveals nothing, and he is already committed to that - matters. But if it does, he can at least aspire to be computationally demanding. Traveling could be a way to do that. Eating could too, actually, once he untrains all of the associations between sustenance and continuing to not die, between sustenance and being drugged, between sustenance and being toyed with -
- no food, yet, he'll work on that next subjective-time sunrise, but travel he can do. Is it his subconscious filling in the details, or the Enemy's? It has to be a little of both: clearly his subconscious could generate no premise for his rescue, which is why it happened by turning into a bird and falling off the cliff into someone's arms and then being walked out of Angband, which is implausible even by rescue standards. If he went to his family's home, certainly most of the details around him would be supplied by his own mind - the Enemy spies haven't gotten that close. Another reason not to do that.
An interaction with a stranger? Or a crowd of strangers? Did the Enemy have the time and energy to duplicate the thrum of dozens of osanwë-sendings, dozens of voices, dozens of movements? Or would Maitimo find this mirror-continent implausibly depopulated, its denizens only willing to meet him alone or in pairs? He's not sure it's wise to risk it: if one of the things the Enemy hopes to learn from this is how to make his manipulations more convincing, and if he'll eventually rip from Maitimo's mind the knowledge of everything Maitimo used to pin him down, then it's better not to think at all.
Focus on computation expensiveness, then. If everything the Enemy can do to be more convincing takes his attention, he'll do this less. He pulls out plants by the roots, dissects them in his hands, rubs them between his fingers just in case that helps. He sings quietly to himself. He's not even sure if his voice sounds normal.
And he keeps walking.
This might make him more vulnerable to the next game, but he knows himself and knows he will eventually do it and so may as well do it immediately.
Every branch or blade of grass that touches him has him recoiling in anticipation of searing pain. This isn't a torture hallucination, he tells his reflexes, for the moment the feeling of leaves on his skin is just that, and he makes himself do other hundred times until some part of him believes it. This will certainly be unwise later but he's not going to play out the rest of this particular game curled up and whimpering in the corner of his own head.
The long shadows on the hillside are not orcs. It feels as if they have to be, Every time he catches sight of them his heart doubles its pace and his muscles tense to flee but the shadows are not orcs. The rustling of branches in the wind is not orcs. He cannot practice this one a hundred times because it takes him too long to talk himself back down, and after twenty trials he feels sick with some kind of fatigue from provoking the reaction again and again. He resists the urge to keep pushing. It might be better that he's not fatigued.
He can't eat or drink, can't yet believe in food, and it is uncertain if they're managing this in such detail that they will bother slowing his reflexes to account for hunger. So he leans against the tree and rests, and then he gets up and starts walking.
The Enemy won't have any trouble finding him, of course, but whatever he'd told the Enemy sitting in a tree is not an tolerable way to drag out this reprieve, even if doing something interesting ends it sooner.
Now the question of interest: is he demanding some fraction of the enemy's attention? Does this game require constant management? If not, nothing he does - provided it reveals nothing, and he is already committed to that - matters. But if it does, he can at least aspire to be computationally demanding. Traveling could be a way to do that. Eating could too, actually, once he untrains all of the associations between sustenance and continuing to not die, between sustenance and being drugged, between sustenance and being toyed with -
- no food, yet, he'll work on that next subjective-time sunrise, but travel he can do. Is it his subconscious filling in the details, or the Enemy's? It has to be a little of both: clearly his subconscious could generate no premise for his rescue, which is why it happened by turning into a bird and falling off the cliff into someone's arms and then being walked out of Angband, which is implausible even by rescue standards. If he went to his family's home, certainly most of the details around him would be supplied by his own mind - the Enemy spies haven't gotten that close. Another reason not to do that.
An interaction with a stranger? Or a crowd of strangers? Did the Enemy have the time and energy to duplicate the thrum of dozens of osanwë-sendings, dozens of voices, dozens of movements? Or would Maitimo find this mirror-continent implausibly depopulated, its denizens only willing to meet him alone or in pairs? He's not sure it's wise to risk it: if one of the things the Enemy hopes to learn from this is how to make his manipulations more convincing, and if he'll eventually rip from Maitimo's mind the knowledge of everything Maitimo used to pin him down, then it's better not to think at all.
Focus on computation expensiveness, then. If everything the Enemy can do to be more convincing takes his attention, he'll do this less. He pulls out plants by the roots, dissects them in his hands, rubs them between his fingers just in case that helps. He sings quietly to himself. He's not even sure if his voice sounds normal.
And he keeps walking.
purposeful_glory
Loki wasn't expecting him to be in exactly the same place. When she wakes up in the approximate region, she flies low, listening, watching for footprints - do Quendi even leave footprints? - and finally turns him visible so she can find him again, hoping she has not done so at an inopportune time.
He starts slightly, goes still, then with visible effort forces himself to keep walking forward at the same pace.
purposeful_glory
Looking looking looking she did leave him alone for quite a while this is a difficult search radius curse her inadequate eyes she could have built better vision into the spell, falcon's eyes, she didn't have to be a single kind of bird - only then it wouldn't have been done before she got here -