"Lovely."

I don't see anything watching us now, have you noticed anything since we left? I assume Nargothrond was secure, it's all elves there and they made me swear an oath I wasn't working with the Enemy before I came in, that would catch a Maia too, right?

Yeah, Nargothrond would be secure, I don't like the Noldor but they're competent.

Well, then hopefully the Enemy doesn't know about me yet. I'm a Noldo who has been feeling terribly guilty about not standing with his King when he was deposed so when you said you were staging a rescue mission I decided to go along. What's a realistic sounding Noldor name? Also, I'm not used to long hair, could you help me get this into a braid?

...uh, touching hair's - intimate. And the Noldor are dreadful at names, they just kind of squish letters together when translating from their native language - are you pretending to be a boy or a girl one -

...Oh. Sorry. Malak starts braiding their new hair. I don't suppose you happen to know enough of their native language that we could make something up, actually just a few words in that language should be good enough that I can trigger my spell off of it. I was trying for male, did I mess some features up?

No, just, with hair loose I wouldn't know how to tell. And my father banned the speaking of their native language on the whole continent because he was mad about the Kinslaying. I can give you some examples of their names? Fingolfin, Fingon, Turgon, Finrod, Amrod, Angrod, Aegnor, Orodreth, Maedhros, Maglor -

Malak looks distressed. The hairstyles are gendered? Does this sort of braid match a gender, I'll just change everything else to look like that one... The top fourth of their hair is in a very basic three-strand braid.

...you can do 'soldier' or 'in mourning' or other not gendered things, but most of them are. That one'd be'soldier' if you did the rest like that -

They relax. I should have figured hairstyle signaled something other than personal preference. Thanks, I'll stick with soldier. Talrod? 

Sounds sufficiently Noldo-trying-to-speak-our-language to me.

OK, cover story's almost complete. We need an excuse for staying in Brethil instead of going straight for Tol-in-Gaurhoth. I have something in mind but if you have ideas...

I mean, the lack of weapons is pretty obvious -

Could you plausibly delay fixing that for long enough?

Think so. Can't go to Doriath, can let us be assumed to be on bad terms with the High King -

Well that is a much better plan than "give myself a visible injury". At least from my perspective. Ideally, we make it seem like we're delayed more than we actually are so that we have a chance of beating the news of our departure to Tol-in-Gaurhoth...

Should be doable. I don't know how much we will actually be delayed, sort of depends whether we can actually get weapons anywhere -

Do you think you'll be safe acquiring weapons on your own while I stay back and do spell research?

It'd be good to have a plan but the Noldor definitely do not want me to end up dead.

I do not want you to end up dead either, are you concerned they will try to imprison you again? We have a month to come up with a more detailed plan than "Be invisible, try to break people out."

I am mildly concerned they might do that. I think the High King is less terrible than the Fëanorians? Then again there are the rumors that he's a front for Maedhros -

Hm. Tell them to ask Curufin whether or not imprisoning you for your own safety is worth annoying your friend over? Assuming that elves are capable of performing my magic they probably want my continued cooperation on that front at least, even if not they might not think it's worth the risk that I try to break you out... If that doesn't work and you're willing to do something slightly risky to avoid imprisonment, you could swear to kill yourself if taken prisoner and that you have a friend who has committed to be sure the news of your death in their custody reaches your parents... That should stop them whether they are actually concerned for your safety or are using that as a pretense to hold you as leverage against your father.

I will swear to attempt to break you out or to inform your parents if either of those will help.

Yeah, that sounds plausibly safe enough. ...he actually also did an insane solo Angband rescue mission so he might be sympathetic to me -

Oh, so it's not as impossible as they were making it sound in Nargothrond. That's good to know, we're not even doing anything unprecedented!

I mean, it was meant as a suicide mission and then the Valar directly intervened, and that was four hundred years ago when we controlled a lot more territory. But he's not even half-Maia -

But Angband is supposedly more secure than Tol-in-Gaurhoth? I guess we probably can't count on Valar intervention.