"There's only a few of those here. I asked. I asked the Men too. Nobody's thought of anything. I think if Fëanor had had a better idea he'd have mentioned it back when I first brought you there. But in the long run he has every intention of breaking open Mandos and freeing everybody in it and so have I."

"Is that why the false Melkor's been giving everyone orders not to follow the call of the Elf-gods when they die?"

She sucks on her ice. "I don't want to die. I know that's the wrong thing to say to persuade you but it sounds like I don't even need to persuade you so I think I can say it."

Hug. "I don't want you to die either. And I have no intention of leaving you that way. And unless I think of something searingly brilliant -"

"I'm not searingly brilliant. And if there are people who are searingly brilliant and would think of something, he probably knows that, and he's probably hoping you'll ask them to save me instead of do whatever more important things need searing brilliance. I still don't want to die. It doesn't feel like dying protecting people in battle. It just feels bad and lonely and pointless and there are so many things I want to do that I keep thinking of now I don't have time for them -"

"Yeah. Supposed to come right back to him."

"I'm not exactly sure; he said it like once I was dead I would know. I know that you hear the call to the halls of the Elf-god, and most everyone goes there, because everyone they know is there and it's not like it hurts less anywhere else. And you don't have to accept the call to the halls of the Elf-god but then your soul is just kind of wandering and Melkor or anyone else who can see and manipulate souls can grab it. And now I guess we go straight back so Melkor can take it first."

"If the Melkors disagree everything hurts," she says. "But maybe if I could think past the hurting, yeah."

"Thauron wants," says Loki, "for me to think about you in Angband subject to whatever evil he thinks up, all the time, so that I can't get the work done that I need to do. But it's possible Mandos can fix the oaths for you and it's possible Mandos is on the ball enough to do that and it is likely he won't make anything worse than you would be any time the oaths conflict anyway and Thauron is by no means above using that option to hurt you if he has you. Do you understand?"

"Go to Mandos. Go to Mandos and ask for help and if he can't or won't help you wait and I will get you out." And Loki squeezes her and kisses her forehead and it is a lance of ice through the brain.

Winter comes. It's a mild one.

The orc children grow up fast. They can talk, now, and walk; they play games in the snow.

After she's done this a couple times he stops sending them. Periodic checks for invisible creatures lurking on her lands will reveal none. The snow melts early.

When her igloo is no longer structurally stable she swaps the Elves for the tower again. And works and works and works.

No one interrupts her.

She doesn't work literally constantly, although at this point she's sometimes putting in multiple consecutive days. She goes out, she talks to people, she applies songs to things to accommodate the growing population and takes careful notes of how many of her limited copying entitlements she's spending down for trade with Dwarves. She makes page-turnable copies of books, and she translates and churns out such copies of books on plumbing-and-such, when she needs to just stop doing what she's doing for an hour. She generally remembers to eat well enough that no one need feel tempted to fetch her a tray.

The Elves are flabbergasted by the idea of this many books and tell the Men earnestly that they are the wealthiest civilization on earth.