Can you repeat that in Quenya?

He does.

"I fight the enemy and you fight the enemy. You not an entertaining conversationalist. I an entertaining conversationalist? I were hoping you an entertaining conversationalist." Do you do strategy at all or just fight?

"Even before there was an enemy to fight I mostly didn't get on with people. People kind of suck." Strategy got all shot to hell in the Bragollach. I don't know what the plan is now.

"I mostly get on with people. People mostly suck. Mostly people are not entertaining conversationalist." Some people are alright?

"My brothers are good. All the other alright people are dead, pretty much."

"You - " knew? - "all the alright people?"

"Knew. And in Valinor we had forever. Nelyo made a point of actually knowing everyone, I was more - acquainted. But if they were alright I'd know of them."

"Most people I knew weren't alright but there are mostly people I weren't knowing."

"I don't know all the locals or most of the humans but I have very low expectations at this point."

"Lúthien -" said Dwarves "- are alright?"

"Yeah, Dwarves are great. I'm surprised Lúthien said so, the Thindar used to hunt 'em for sport. Curufin adores them, stayed up all night working on steam engines and whatnot before everything fell apart."

Blink.

"The Thindar hunted Dwarves for sport."

"People. Fucking. Suck."

"..."

Your point is made.

What is a "steam engine?" Have I figured out grammar perfectly already or are you just not correcting me?

Oh, sorry, I can correct you, you're mostly close enough. "A steam engine is, like, you burn a lot of coal and you get compressed air you can use to do most kinds of mechanical work, like mining? No idea how they work."

Blink.

"You burn coal and then air does mining? I'm -" confused. "- I will have to ask Curufin to say about it. Or dwarves."

"You're confused. You will have to ask Curufin or the specific Dwarves he was working with to explain it to you."

It's not more than a day's walk to Barad Eithel, and Celegorm needs a lot of prodding to keep talking much, so Malak's not fluent by the time they get there. They switch to osanwë once they're within earshot of the walls.

So, do you know how much they've been told about me?

The setup for communication we had was - disrupted during the battle, I don't think they'd have heard anything. We didn't risk a messenger.

OK. I'll be Talrod until I can speak with Fingon and/or Maedhros privately. I suspect spies here are more likely than in Nargothrond.

Yeah, probably. I'm talking to Nelyo now.

Ah, so he is here.

I figured he would be.

Well, I will permit you to introduce us.