This river is really long, are all rivers this long? (Malak has spent their entire life in cities, they are kind of clueless about rivers except "good for trade" and "Water is important for survival")

The next morning comes.

Hey, Beren, can I talk to you?

...That doesn't work, Beren isn't telepathic.

"Hey, Beren, could we step off for a bit and chat?"

He looks at Lúthien. She smiles. He shrugs. "Okay."

Once they are out of elven earshot - it's a while, even with the Brethil trees to break up sound - "I swear not to reveal any of the contents of this conversation without your permission. I swear that I am not intending to hurt you. Are you actually OK or are you just pretending for her sake? If the latter, I'd like to help you recover without revealing to her that you aren't, if that's what you want."

Blink. "I'm okay."

"You answered 'Do you want to die?' with 'Do you know what that would do to her?' and this does strike me as the sort of answer one gives if one is satisfied with their lot in life. And... it seems like it would be really hard to get over being Sauron's prisoner for a couple of months. Especially within a few hours of rescue."

" - I promised I'd get her a Silmaril, do right by her. I should do that."

"Uh. No, you should not do that. Her father is nuts and she wants to elope with you."

"Yes, but she shouldn't have to."

"So, you're willing to commit suicide and leave her distraught forever so long as it is suicide by Melkor?"

"- no, we'll make it out somehow."

"You are really optimistic about your chances to steal jewels from the crown of an evil god. And also overestimate how much Thingol's opinion matters."

"She was safe in Doriath - she deserves to have someone do it right -"

"...Thingol imprisoned her when she tried to save you. She wasn't allowed to leave. This is not what I would call safe.

"And... You'll do more right by her by living. The only person you'd be doing right by going to Angband for a Silmaril is Thingol and he doesn't deserve that."

"And still I promised him I'd do it."

"It would be intensely hypocritical of me to tell you to break your word but people around here give their word far too easily.

"...And you should really talk to Lúthien about this if you aren't already."

"We've discussed it."

"I think you shouldn't have made that promise and are going to come to regret it but I accept that you may feel unavoidably honor-bound to follow through on it.

"I also think that you are going to get yourself and Lúthien killed and this is sad."

"You could help us."

"I will admit that my skillset is very well tailored to stealing gems from evil deities. You would still die, though. So would I. Maybe if you're both willing to be very patient now that it's just some shiny rocks and not your life that's on the line we could come up with a plan that might work.."

"We can wait, yeah."

"I hope we can figure something out. I also won't help unless we can figure out a way not to start a war in the process.

"Um, would you be willing to help counterfactually traumatized Beren by taking a few more walks like this with me over the next however long, in order to give him plausible deniability?"

"...what?"

"So if you were not alright and talking to me about it would help, you might prefer that Lúthien not know because it would hurt her to know. But, if we kept taking long walks apart from the rest of the group it would be pretty obvious that you were in fact not OK. So I would like to take such walks even when you are OK so that our behaviour is indistinguishable between those cases."

" - say again?"

"I want to act like you're not OK even though you are, because knowing that I've committed to do this people would be unable to tell from my actions if you were OK and...

"I'm not communicating this well. Does 'I have good reasons that are somewhat convoluted but important for protecting people's privacy' suffice?"