I will. I wish I could think of a straightforward way to come home safely, even if it took a while to put into action.

When's the next Dwarven travel to Doriath?

I haven't actually asked? I'm not sure I'd be welcome there, and even if I am, if I can't think of a way to get home safely from there I'm stuck in Doriath.

Stuck?

...I could go back with the Dwarves, true. I...was not so much thinking in terms where getting farther away from you was a palatable option.

So it might leave you back where you started or it might get you ahead.

True. Might interrupt some stuff I'd rather not see interrupted if I don't get to come home...I'm not sure it's a good idea if I don't have at least a guess as to how I might get home from Doriath.

We don't know how far it is from here, it might be close.

If I don't even have a good guess as to how to get home at all, let alone safely...

How are you planning on getting one?

Sort of depends on how Doriath's secret--if it's just that the locals are all keeping mum that's one thing, if there's a mind-affecting thing that the Dwarves are naturally immune to that's another.

That'd interfere with even getting in in the first place, right?

Even then it depends on how it works. I might well be able to get in just by thinking in terms of "follow the Dwarves" and not "enter Doriath."

Have they ever taken a non-Dwarf with them?

Probably not? I'm not sure under what circumstances they would do that.

Fair enough.

Can you ask some locals what dangerous stuff there's likely to be between where you are and Doriath, in case it's trivially smushable by some combination of dreamshaping and the ability to turn into a horse-sized wolf?

Yeah. They don't think there'd be anything worse than orcs as long as you stay clear of the, uh, "Valley of Dreadful Death".

The what? she almost giggles.

No two stories agreed. Well, the presence of giant spiders was a constant; beyond that everyone had a different story. Just stay away from it, I guess.

I think I can do that.

How tough are orcs? How good are their senses?

Elf-like, but adapted to the dark. We didn't have much trouble killing them but we're armored.

Well, we can be wolves the size of a horse and also generate sufficiently lethal quantities of ice. ...I might be being too optimistic because I want to come home but I don't have a good way to tell.

Sounds pretty safe to me.

Well, if you think it's safe for me I'm probably not being insufficiently paranoid to think so.