"Okay. It took me weeks to get the hang of it but I had no demonstrations to go on and I had to practice surreptitiously, when no one was likely to want to get hold of me; and I had to re-change every time I failed to take flight, whereas in your case I can just repeatedly drop you. Maybe osanwë will help; my people don't have it but I can send things to people who do, possibly including proprioceptive stuff. I apologize for the 'dropping' part; I wanted to learn to turn into a bird to fly, not to walk, so I picked a kind of bird that is very good at one and incapable of the other. You'll need to land on vertical surfaces if you want to rest, although you'll be able to sleep in the air too if you like. I cannot enable you to change back on your own, but I'm at the Fëanorian camp on a fairly regular schedule, every Elenya and Aldúya, it's Anarya now - you could lurk near it and catch me on my way out, once you can get around, if you wanted to resume being Quendi-shaped for any reason. Sound like a plan?"

"Accepting your premises," he says warily, "if anything happens to you I am a bird for whatever the natural lifespan of a bird is unless I shorten it, and then dead?"

"The spell will probably revert itself if I die, which could still be a real problem if you were a few hundred feet in the air. But I don't know for sure, never having died; that's just what happens to other sorcerers' spells on their deaths unless they do elaborate things I have not added to the bird spell. You shouldn't age while being a bird but I can't guarantee nothing will decide you look delicious, especially if you get stuck grounded; and you definitely shouldn't enter Doriath because they're wise to my tricks and are assembling preparations for defense against enemies in the shape of birds. If you die you will be dead, although your species gets an afterlife, which is - maybe arguably - an improvement on what mine gets."

"You can probably simulate the Halls of Mandos, too," he says. "Quite well, since I've never been there and wouldn't know what to expect. Do you have to touch me to transform me into a bird?"

"Yes, the bird and healing spells are touch-range." She holds out her hand.

He goes very rigid and doesn't move a hand. "Go ahead."

"Nothing at all; this is an irrational reaction. Just go ahead."

"I am going to have to pick you up a lot for you to learn to fly. I am really uncomfortable doing that while you're so obviously unhappy about it in a situation less dire than 'scurrying you out of Angband' and if you're going to freeze up you're not going to be figuring out how to hold your wings right anyway." She drops her hand and sighs.

"I have all these reinforced associations and reactions that are not very helpful in this hallucination. I am undoing them but of course that's going to be awful once you tire of this. If you go away I'll have broken in some more locally optimal instincts by the time you come back."

"Okay. Flying lessons later, then," she sighs. "I assume it would be completely unhelpful for me to disguise myself as someone you're more comfortable with and not only because I'd be missing several colors."

"Missing colors?" he says. "You've done it before without any missing colors. Quite convincingly, as we both recall. And how I react to a facsimile of someone known to me is obviously more useful information to the enemy than how I react to a stranger."

"Well, in this hallucination I'm an Asgardian visitor who has really terrible vision, so when I make illusions they are missing colors. If I make one of myself it looks like this." She makes one. "To me it looks exactly like myself; you can see heat and ultraviolet, so it looks off to you. Within the parameters of this fucking hallucination if I wanted to get a convincing instance of someone you knew I would have to go and actually get them, which we have established you'd rather I didn't do. It just crossed my mind that if I looked like one it might calm down the flinch reaction and I said it because I only intermittently have the skill of keeping my mouth shut." The illusion disappears.

"That reaction also happens for those who wear faces I recognize, even fully colored ones. You can't see heat? How do you see your companions on a cloudy night?"

"I don't, or we carry light sources. In my case I have illusion light, although through most of my life I haven't been able to use that."

"I could do a spell for it but I'm prioritizing teleportation which is going to take a long time, especially if I keep finding so few moments to work on it. Anyway, it's not much of a hindrance at home where everyone's eyes are like that." Shrug.

"You are welcome to work on teleportation; I make no claim to your time. I am going to continue walking. Is there a location you'd like me to return to after an agreed-upon length of time?"

"How long will it take you to be able to relax enough to learn to fly?"

"Do you have to live here in time with me? Maybe I should protract this after all; you seem competent and the Enemy may be poorer without you." He starts walking. "I could probably retrain the relevant impulses in a day."

"I'm curious, who does he deputize to do his simulations for him? Am I meant to be a disguised Balrog or what? And yes, I have to live here in time with you. If it won't take that long I'll go to Doriath to ask their advice on where to put orcs and see if they're willing to be a refuge for children in an emergency and discuss sorcery with the queen and try very hard not to flirt with the princess" what, it's not like he's liable to meet her, she's not allowed to leave and he's not allowed to enter, "and stop here on my way back to visit your family to get started on dropping you."

"Not the Balrogs. I don't think they can change forms anymore. Thauron, for a while, but that was before they started just toying with me. I don't think you're him. Different strengths. Have a journey no more eventful than the one you've planned for yourself; I will aspire to teach my body to be comfortable with being manhandled."

"Thank you. Would you like to be invisible again until I come looking for you?"

Probably computationally easier for her, probably a little safer. "If you're not going to give me a weapon."

"I described the ones I have," she sighs. "Anyway. Late Isilya or early Aldúya I'll come back and remove your invisibility and hope to find you somewhere hereabouts, and we can do flying lessons and discuss what I should tell your family. I can narrow that down if you need me to."