Copies for copies strikes me as a fair approach that will assuage peoples' discomfort while giving you things to trade. Perhaps we can call a conference to negotiate some sort of universal rights for the war effort.

...That would be very interesting. And I would expect it to occur on a very Quendi schedule.

Fifty years, at a guess. People don't like feeling rushed on issues of this importance.

Yeah, by then I may well have figured out how to get home and obliterate Morgoth with something pocket-sized, loud, and moderately expensive.

We all very much desire that you do.

I would expect it to take longer than that but today I got some songs that speed me up and I'm very pleased about it. So you don't mind free distribution of the warmth song, what else have you got and under what conditions will you play it for me to record?

I can light fires, I can make people feel relaxed and safe and trusting, I can make a boat sail on a calm sea. That one has some effect on a person running and I'd expect to have interesting ones on a person flying. I am personally comfortable with giving you leave to make copies of everything and give them out as you please, but expect that that precedent will make it impossible for you to get anyone to share anything with you.

I don't have to acquire them all under the same license, whatever other people have done. ...I'm not sure I want the relaxed and safe and trusting one, that's kind of disturbing. And I'd have to hear it in the first place to take a copy just in case I came up with a situation where using it was better than not.

We could pick different agreements, so people know there's a variety available.

I'm not sure I need extant examples of a possible agreement to offer it to future songwriters... How is the fire song targeted?

Will, he says, a bit proudly. You think of the target and if it's the sort of thing that would catch fire if you held something that was on fire to it, it does.

...the singer does?

Oh, hmm. I would expect that if the singer has no opinion but there's a listener who does, it'd work for them. We might need to try it.

Or maybe you could produce an opinion sufficiently generic that it'll work based on specific behavior of an object, or if I intersect the sound source with whatever I want to ignite. Any of the others have this potential problem?

The sailing one works if the song is happening on an object that's distinct from its environment and can move forward by pushing backwards against it. I can't imagine that'd be a problem.

Yeah, that's fine.

The deescalation one is area-effect and affects everyone but you said you'd prefer not to use it.

I'm uncomfortable with mind-affecting magic.

He nods. Then we can do the ones which certainly work and with which you're comfortable, and think about how to do the fire.

Sounds great.

"Thank you. Do you want any of these stuck to things for yourself?"

"I'd be delighted to have ten copies of each," he says, "and I suppose something to keep them in. Can I just go find appropriate pebbles?"

"Sure, that'd work fine."

Word spreads; she has a few people interested in getting song-copies that afternoon. One that helps crops grow, one that calms waters, one that makes it nearly impossible to fall off a horse.