"Good night."

Kib wakes up well rested and sighs and starts his morning. Is Findekáno any more accessible now?

Yes. He smiles blandly at Kib. "Can I help you?"

"I have a Quenya translation question and you came to mind as someone to ask. On the assumption I don't want to leave town and spend six hours discussing verb connotations, anyway."

"My uncle would in fact probably contest my claim to fluency in the language," he says. "But I make do. What do you need translated?"

Melkor showed me some visions of the future and volunteered to swear to their truth and I would like that done before I go anywhere much with them. I don't have enough Quenya to come up with an airtight wording and it's entirely reasonable he doesn't want to swear in the common.

He shudders. I'm not even sure what happens to you if you say the words of an oath in a language you don't know. Hmm. Shall we walk somewhere? I'm obviously going to have to say things aloud to be any use here and it sounds like a topic that might attract attention.

Sure.

So he stands and winds his way out into the palace gardens. Do you have a wording in mind, or did you also want me to come up with one?

Something like 'I swear that the visions I showed you all represent the truth as I understand it' but if there are fiddly oath-related things to observe I'm open to suggestions. I'd love to press him for more context but he doesn't trust me enough to use me as an unrestricted waypoint for otherwise intransmissible prophecy at this time.

You can't share prophecies at all, generally. People can share them with you?

Well, that's what he said they were; the extent to which I believe him hinges on getting the oath right. Open question whether they can go any farther than me and whether me not being in The Plan gives me special prophesied-event-averting powers.

If they're the sort of thing you'd do something about, you shouldn't have been able to learn them. If you were still mortal I might think you could learn them just because you wouldn't have time to do enough, but now that shouldn't explain it. The wording you asked for would be 'I swear that the visions I showed you all represent the truth as I understand it.'

Kib scribbles that down. Well, I didn't like them one bit, I'm not going to just leave them alone to happen!

I wasn't saying you should.

I would also like to consult you about their contents once I've verified the accuracy, how does that play with the 'distantly cordial' thing we're doing?

Am I likely to react strongly?

Yep. - Oh, how do I splice in 'and commentary concerning them', he told me some things in non-vision form.

"I swear that the visions I showed you and commentary concerning them all represent the truth as I understand it." I'll arrange to be alone, later.

Kib amends his note. Thanks. Is there some way around the distantly cordial thing? It's annoying.

I shall gradually become friendlier with you over a plausible length of time.

Is a plausible length of time like 'weeks' or 'years'.

I'm friendly with everyone, I can probably manage weeks.

Okay, good. My protocol is just 'take my cues from you' or should I do something more complicated?