Eventually people crowd around trying to piece together what happened.

Annie is not in a condition to be of very much help there.

Annie is focusing on grief instead of total berserker rage because if she leaps at the person with the sword and gouges their eyes out and banishes them to another universe that will probably interfere with her ability to get Rirosseth back so she is just holding Rirosseth's hand, kneeling on the ground, holding very still, incapable even of tears, they would be so pathetically inadequate -

Luckily everyone is sufficiently confused about whether this is a grief-worthy death that they do not sing.

They killed her, Annie eventually recovers enough to tell Lírnith. They were singing and she came in to get me and someone killed her.

What?

They killed her and it was too fast and I can't fix it and she's dead

What - what do you need -

I need her to be alive how do I do that help

There is no way that is ever happening.

Mandos. Uh, stay calm - I'd come but it sounds like I shouldn't do that - stay calm and ask Eönwë if you can go to Valinor, now that there's proof of concept, and go help Mandos heal all the orcs - we've got forever, we've got forever and she's got the mental opacity so Mandos can't tamper with her -

I am being very calm I have not sent that person to a random universe missing important body parts even a little bit

I killed the people who betrayed us to Morgoth in the Nirnaeth, it doesn't help, doesn't make anything feel any better - she's okay, she's safe, what she needs is for you to make best friends with the Valar and Celebrendes and the Dwarves to invent immortality and she will be okay and you will get her back -

Uh-huh

I don't know how to make friends with Valar

We didn't exactly do a great job. Um. I'm sorry, I can't think right now - can you get clear of there -

And go where

Back here, out to to sea a bit, I don't know, I'm scared they're going to burst into song again -

Annie slowly lets Rirosseth's hand out of hers.

She slowly stands up, wobbling. She borrows Lírnith's eyes to navigate.

She takes extremely deliberate steps out of the host of the Valar to where the little camp is set up.

She is sitting there, very still. She can sing once Annie's stable, she can sing for all the rest of time -

Annie sits down.

And curls up in a ball on the ground.

Yeah. She stays there a while longer, makes sure they weren't followed, then - I'm going to go out of your earshot -

okay

She walks down the coast and she closes her eyes and she sings. About a little girl braiding her baby sister's hair because both parents were too busy, a little girl who knew she was cute and deftly leveraged it to distract from her mother's discomfited hostility towards their people, a little girl with a gift for faces, so many of them, laughing ones and solemn ones and too-old-for-her-years ones and wholly persuasive expressions of innocence. About a big sister teaching six children in a row to read, blanketing them all with uncomplicated adoration, a solemn young woman who made Tirion hers and protected everyone in it fiercely and impulsively and inexhaustibly, the princess that everyone knew would be their queen. About the way she'd smile at people, the way they'd smile when she passed them, about the hunger for names and faces and understanding that drove her to every Essecarmë and every reading and every performance, about the way she wound herself into every quarrel and unwound it, innocent, charming, earning and hoarding their trust, treasuring and improving their lives.

About the pardon of Melkor, and the anxious patience with which they'd all greeting the news, naive as they were, hopeful as they were, more anxious and less hopeful as Melkor deftly kept herself from ever meeting Tirion's charming brilliant princess who was an impeccable judge of character. About the lies that built up around them like snowdrifts in a blizzard, faster than Nelya could untangle them even though they melted before her smile, about screaming matches under stunning silver skies and paranoia and panic and terror and death and despair and words spoken in desperation -

- Alqualondë, Losgar, the way the fated arc of the world had dragged her from violence to violence and shoved her to her knees at her dying mother's side and then ripped her from there into the nightmare she never escaped -

-Rirosseth - for no one would call her Maitimë anymore -  emaciated and twisted and broken and bleeding, ripped out of Angband, this is what it was like to watch her learn again to lie -

- and five hundred years of a patient stubborn heroism the cost of which no one could fathom - she sings about Himring, its watchful windows opening north where Rirosseth could see the Enemy, building a civilization and besieging the Enemy and pretending and pretending and pretending until the whole house of cards folded in fire and it became so achingly apparent that Rirosseth's only regret was that she was still strong enough, still fast enough, still loved enough, to hold back the flames - 

- the Nirnaeth, the uncountable dead, the slow bleak closing in of the end of the world, the arc of history grabbing her again like a rag doll and dragging her through Doriath and Sirion, leaving only blood and horror in her wake and only hatred as her legacy -

Annie borrows her ears. She can't be near the music but she can listen.

She's glad someone's listening. She can't get it right, not improvising. She goes over it again and again and again.

Eventually Annie is wrung out enough to actually cry.

She is going to do this - forever, actually, probably, can't think of anything else to do - but if Annie shows signs of wanting to talk first she'll stop temporarily.