He bends over, closer to Alicia's eye level.

<Do not feel ashamed.  We are all playing parts whose consequences we can scarce guess.  But as of yet, I have not shared my plans, save with Mithrandir, and it is still possible they might change... which plans do you think may happen soon?>

<Well, the plot that occurs here, as you plan to destroy the One Ring, is called the Council of Elrond by most commentary.  I don't remember precisely who was invited besides most of the people who are already here, but - there were a lot of important people, and, I do believe, four entire hobbits.  ...Possibly Galadriel, in addition to Gandalf, Aragorn, - do you have any dwarves, yet?  There should be some dwarves - but I only recall something she said about - what she might be like, if Sauron successfully whispered in her ear, and not the exact details of where and when she said it.>

Elrond raises his eyebrows.

<Yes, I have already decided we must try to destroy the One Ring.  And I was planning to have a Council shortly, once I need no longer be healing Frodo...  No Dwarves are here yet, but I would be unsurprised if they came.  Nor Galadriel, and I would be surprised if she came.

<I trust we do decide to destroy the One Ring?>

<Yes.  The Hobbits sneak through Mordor to Mount Doom, while the various flashy folk are very distracting because Sauron would not expect his downfall to be Hobbits - though I've no idea of the precise logistics.>

... Yes, he hadn't considered an intentional(?) distraction, but that would help...  And he had been thinking the people going into Mordor would need to do so secretly, but sending just hobbits would be risky...

<Interesting...  I hadn't been considering that far yet, though now that you mention it I would not be surprised if Mithrandir had...  Perhaps we should discuss this more later, since I should return to healing Frodo.  Thank you very much, once more...>

He shouldn't leave a child to wander the House alone, even with directions.

<... Shall I show you back to the Rangers?  Or to one of the gardens?>

<I think I will need somewhere I can do craftswork, if I am going to be of particular help besides in blowing things up - that pouch over the One Ring isn't exactly containing it properly.>

<...Also, as far as adventuring logistics, I'm pretty sure there's quite a bit to go, still, before the hobbits - by which I specifically mean Frodo and Sam, here, there are other hobbits and I do not know everything they get up to - break off from the rest of the miscellaneous adventurer types and also Gandalf, nor do I know how or why that originally happened.  ...I mean, Gandalf originally takes a balrog to the face, but he gets better, and I'm pretty sure I have type advantage.>

< No, the pouch is not.  But I am not confident anything here will.>

<And a Balrog?  I had not known there were any Balrogs still --> He shakes his head.  But if anyone could defeat it, of course it would be Mithrandir. <Still, I will show you to Lindir who is familiar with crafts work.>

<Honestly I kind of hope I can short-circuit the entire problem by just teleporting it directly into the volcano.>

Elrond stops stock-still in the hallway.  He hadn't thought about that at all.

<That... might work.  Or might fail dangerously.  We should probably think about that more once Frodo is better.>

<Spatial magic is something my people take very seriously, when it comes to the required safety precautions.  I'm just not sure that Sauron wouldn't have done something to prevent it.  ...Or - [expletive], the bit where the [expletive]ing world's bent sideways for only some people - the topology - I mean it's probably possible to control for weird Valinor gravity - or force the possibility to collapse spherical, our planets are spherical - I don't even know if the planet's spherical after controlling for that - this is going to involve so much math ->

<... Yes, absolutely, that failure sounds like it could be dangerous...>

The shape of the world is something Elrond has thought of time and time again for over an Age, though he hadn't considered till now how it might be relevant to teleporting or other non-representational arts (save of course navigation).

<...The world is round, more or less like a sphere.  There are not many maps of it, but I actually do have some saved from the libraries of Arnor before its fall.  Though I know there are better maps in Minas Tirith, and Umbar - or at least there were in Umbar before Sauron conquered it.>

<And has it been round the whole -- no, that I should ask Gandalf.  He'd know.  Or at least I think he would, I don't exactly know-know...  I mean I could probably figure it out by sufficiently advanced reverse-engineering of the Song regardless, but I'm not from Ar Tonelico and anyway there's no way I have the time so it's better to just ask ->

<And that's assuming that gravity is still the same gravity, here - I mean, it's looked like you have something coherent to my model of spacetime so far or else the other teleport would have fizzled, but local geometry can be approximated as flat a lot better than -->

<You probably don't need to hear me going on about the math.>

He shakes his head.  <Ah, you did read of the Changing of the World...  But gravity was never my art, nor abstract math.>  Abstract math was more his wife's art... and hopefully is again now, beyond the Sea.  <And I have never sailed away from this part of Middle-Earth.  But I do know that when I was last at the harbor watching a ship come in, the tops of its sails could be seen before the rest of it.  That was not so in the days of my youth.>

<...Right.>

It's one thing to know of that little bit of fact.

It's another to know that fact, and that it is quite possibly relevant to your life right now.

<That is definitely going to complicate the math somewhat, especially given that there are yet ways to pass to Valinor last I recall -->

<...But that is not something to bother you with; I should likely be asking Gandalf about anything to do with that particular matter.>

<Yes, but only for Elves.  I hope you are not hoping the Valar will make an exception.>

He is ABSOLUTELY going to warn her before letting her repeat the mistake of the Numenorians.

<And in the meantime, the closest crafting room is this way; I expect Lindir is already there...>

He leads her down a spiral of stairs and through a hall slightly smaller than the one where they first met.

<No, no, I do not want to come to their attention unless I'm already trying to get back out - I'm more worried about what the [expletive] happens because of any remaining interface, how the interface behaves for various conditions and how that could impact large-scale/long-distance spatial magic...>

<Ah... I do not know of its affecting any magic, but I have not worked any magic larger-scale than the shields around this valley since the Changing of the World.  Mithrandir might know more, or perhaps Cirdan - though he is far away at the Gray Havens.>

Or (he remembers a bit later) perhaps Galadriel - the shields around Lothlorien are probably not larger-scale enough, but she has jousted with Sauron at long distances several times...

There is a brass knocker in the shape of a horse's reins on a door off the main hall; Elrond knocks on it twice.

<It is not that I do not wish to talk with you, Alicia - and I thank you very much - but merely that I must return soon to Frodo.>

<And I could not bear to keep you from that.>

Alright.  She has a couple different priorities.  One, arming herself for balrog.  Two, making a full-on isolation chamber/magical Faraday cage for the One Ring.  Three, determining ways by which she could attempt to short-circuit the need to walk the damn Ring to Mount Doom - both in the question of whether she's going to need to ensure the Ring is hand-delivered, and in the question of whether the Ring needs to be destroyed specifically in Mount Doom.  That, and she can't stop a small thread of attention from contemplating how to unfucken Mordor and/or orcish biology.

A light-haired Elf somewhat taller than Elrond opens the door, with a slight frown on his face.  Behind him in the room is a forge, but banked not in use, and several workbenches with necklaces and clasps and various other adornments on them.  He looks curiously at Alicia, and then up to Elrond.

"Yes, Elrond?  Has something happened with the wraiths?  Or the Hobbit?"

"Ah, Lindir," Elrond says with a smile that might betray a hint of slyness.  "Frodo is on the mend, thanks to Alicia here.  She is a traveler from so far off she does not speak any of our languages - but I must return to Frodo, so she can tell you her own story."

(Meanwhile, he's repeating everything in osanwe to Alicia.)

Lindir laughs at Elrond.  "Very well, very well.  I trust you have an excuse for handing this mortal to me... and if she has truly helped heal her fellow-mortal despite her age, I suppose that might be the excuse."

He bends down to Alicia (revealing an eight-pointed Star of Feanor pin in his hair), and sends in wordless osanwe crisper than Elrond's with fewer other concepts blended into the units of meaning, <Greetings; what brings you here?>

She doesn't actually recognize the symbol, funnily enough.

Alicia waves.  <Hi.  Honestly I'm probably jumping -> the gun - <my cue - a bit by ending up at a workshop before I even have solid plans for what I will be making in the next few days vis-a-vis ensuring certain malignant forces->  The balrog, especially, slips through connotatively, but it's not like she can totally conceal how concerned she is about Sauron - <-regret encountering me, but - well, needs must, and I rather don't figure there's...  Well, I suppose I could set up anywhere with some space that won't be missed if I fill it with entirely absurd quantities of math for some of the theory-work, really.>

<...Still, it's quite possible that I'll need to work on things that benefit from ready access to tooling in the next few days, and while a lot of it I can improvise, or have with me - I'm here because something I was working on reacted just the wrongest way to a stray thought, so at least I have some safety equipment - but, well, it's not exactly power-efficient to hold things at forging temperature through magic alone, for example.>

<...I do suppose I could start on the isolation ward straight off, actually.  That one's relatively proven given I've used it and hopefully used it successfully, and it seems particularly needful regardless of whether my long-shot plans work out.  That and perhaps - hm, but that's spellwork as much as it could be enchanting ->  By which she references 'plans to stab the One Ring with Light-enforced chaos magic', though it doesn't exactly make it across because opsec.

Lindir doesn't expect humans, or even most Elves, to recognize it anymore.

He smiles lightly.  <Ah, a mortal with plans!  I am Lindir; I hear you are Alicia?  A strange name, that.  What means it in your language?  And, you say, you have the art of warding - 'tis strange as well to see that among mortals, especially those as young as you!>

He chuckles, still not entirely sure whether playing a game - he would have thought not given that Elrond says she did heal Frodo, but her claim is so implausible in these times of decay, and he really doesn't know how mortal children mature when they've grown up around other mortals.  After a moment, he finds a question that won't seem impolite either way.

<How came you by this art?  From Numenor, perhaps?>

<A pleasure to meet you, Lindir.>  She is not going to bring up the lack of strict biological mortality vis-a-vis Villarosan humans.  <I don't believe my given name has particular meaning, beyond its having a pleasant sound; my people do not have the habit of naming their children recognizable words, for the most part, though I'm sure you could find a meaning somewhere with enough etymology.  ...As for my skills - no, they were not learned through Numenor, nor indeed in any place on Arda, as strange as that must sound - but I do truly hail from a place that Eru Illuvatar did not have a hand in making.  Thus the language troubles, and, really, thus my ability to do magics at all; it is hardly a capacity given unto the mortal races, as far as I know.  ...Wasn't there something with Aulë having to beg intercession for the Dwarves' magics, for that matter?

<...Leaving ancient history aside, it is kind of funny.  Of all the languages I could have picked up bits and pieces of, for reasons you probably wouldn't believe if I told you, I know exactly one word of Sindarin, and nothing else of any tongue of Arda.  ...Well, no, I tell a lie, I know two, counting osanwë.  ...Three counting Sindarin, I suppose, but considering that there is simply no way it doesn't have a true meaning beyond being the name for the language - most of my homeworld's languages' names are simply backformed from demonyms or ethnicities, by contrast - it's hardly true to say I know it as a word...  Oh, and Mithrandir, even if I've no idea how it was compounded, so I guess that's four-ish.  Three-and-a-half.  Just...  Definitely don't ask me to put together an actual sentence.  Or pronounce anything properly, it was all written...>

<Intriguing!>

He would have said unbelievable for an elf-child to be making this up; he doesn't know about mortal children...

<Some sorts of 'magic' crafting, as you call it, were known among the Numenorians.  Some of them assisted me, at times.  If you journeyed to Annuminas, you would see some of their works...  though> (he shakes his head) <Annuminas is sadly dead and ruined by now.  There are still some other cities and towers of theirs down south.  Or I suppose Aragorn has a sword they made, though that would not let you see the true subtlety of their arts.>

(The concept of "magic" in his osanwe is clearly just repeating her concept back to her without it relating to any precise concept in Lindir's own mind.)

<I would be interested to see some of your 'magic', to see whether it is different from theirs - as I would expect given your story?>

And that would also be some actual evidence whether this tale that's getting more implausible by the minute is actually true.  Is this growing incredulity what Elrond was hoping for when he introduced her to him and then left?