The thing my parents care about is that Doriath is safe and peaceful. That's it.

I got the impression that they care about you, even if Thingol's prioritization of your happiness vs. suitability of your marriage seemed a bit out of whack. Does "We have a plausible shot at winning the war which will keep Doriath safe forever" sound like a convincing line of argument?

Yeah, probably. And the marriage thing is that once Beren dies I'll be unhappy forever.

...Oh, right. You get a nice cushy afterlife with all your memories. That does make "will be sad after he dies" a bigger concern than "will probably get killed trying to help him fulfill this stupid quest you've given him and refuse to retract" Unfortunately, I don't think my magic unlocks any routes to immortality that aren't ethically dubious.

I think Eru means for Men to be mortal. Don't know why.

There'd better be some good reason for it. Maybe they have a nice cushy afterlife that's just inaccessible.

...I don't suppose he - Thingol, not Eru - would accept "Well, too late, they're already married,  you should probably focus on doing things that will make 'Beren dies' a little less immediate than when he runs off to fetch that war-provoking rock you wanted?" Uh. More diplomatically than that.

Might help. Definitely more diplomatically.

"I'm sorry to have to tell you this, your daughter seems to have gotten married... yes, I agree, it seems like something of a rash decision, marrying a human soldier in the middle of a war... well, at least he's far from the front lines while he recovers from his recent ordeal...?"

Maybe said from a great distance, just in case.

There's a saying, back home, about stabbing messengers. Specifically, how you're not supposed to do it. I am guessing this saying is not particularly common here. I doubt they'd let me close enough that I'd have to worry, anyways.

I've never heard that one, no.

I guess if you didn't really have war before Melkor it might not have come up. It's to make it less costly for opposite sides in a fight to communicate with each other, maybe resolve things peacefully.

At this point they're at Lúthien and Beren's door. Telepathy is weird and they're not entirely used to having been conversing for so long before actually meeting up. They knock.

Door opens. "Hi!"

"Hi!" hug!

Does Beren want a hug? Beren probably does not want a hug, Beren does not seem the huggy type and Malak is not Lúthien. They will make a vaguely hug-offering gesture anyways.

"Do you want to take a walk? It's so pretty here and they seem to have stopped with the armed escort thing - or maybe they're just being really discreet - either way, they aren't making faces whenever I try to go anywhere. Though I guess I should probably..."

"That looks so cool."

(Beren declines a hug).

"Yeah, let's go for a walk."

They haven't managed to figure out how to make their hair come out braided, so instead they briefly cover their head in shadow so as not to offend while they do it manually.

Is Beren joining them on the walk?

He is!!

Then Malak will ask how his studies are coming, if he's had any trouble adjusting to working in a group or with the elves, etc.

He doesn't especially care to be around people who aren't Lúthien but he mostly hasn't needed to.

They can help him learn magic faster, which is kind of important. If Lúthien wanted to study magic they could do that together?

Sure!

Oh, good. It will be interesting to see if being half-maia affects Lúthien's ability to do magic at all, this really is the sort of thing they should have thought of sooner. They are a little embarrassed about forgetting to offer to teach her earlier.