Huh! She tries to get a better look at what's straight ahead.
(The headache is annoying but it's nowhere near as bad as getting savaged by wolves the size of horses, let alone freezing slowly to death.)

Trees. Headache-inducing ones. Her glance keeps sliding off elsewhere.

Oh really. She can focus very, very well. Had to learn to, to survive as long as she did on the Ice. And now she's taking the slidey effect as a personal challenge.

The headache builds to blinding. The trees are there.

Ugh. You wind this round, Doriath.

After a while they reach the edge of the trees and an Elf comes out to talk with them.

The Elf does not want humans in Doriath.

Any particular reason why not?

Might have been influenced by the Enemy. There's a prophecy about that.

And where did they get these prophecies? The Enemy tried selectively disseminating prophecies about Men in Valinor, before he started overtly fucking shit up. By the way, they've been to Valinor, long story, they're originally from another world, this place is ruled by Elwe, right, Finwe remembered him fondly until the day he died.

Right, but prophecies are accurate. This place is ruled by Elwe and it's very sad Finwë is dead and they would let him in if he were here because there are no prophecies about him.

Okay, fine, they'll just go around. Can they at least give directions for avoiding this one valley, they've heard bad things about this one valley.

Yep, it's north of here.

Okay, they'll go south. Have a nice day.

Likewise.

They go south.

Idaia shares the whole thing with her husband.

How far south, do you know?

She sends him where the southern edge of Doriath is on the Dwarven maps.

So it's a several-hundred-mile detour. Great.

Yeah. Didn't seem very productive to try to argue them into letting us go through, though. I wish we didn't have to.

I understand being paranoid.

Which is also why we're not being wolves to go faster until we're sure we're out of sight of Doriath. Considering why they won't let us in.

Are you just going to walk the whole way along their border, then?

No, we're going south until they can't see us through the trees and then wolfing.

How sure are you that they can't see you through the trees?