Awwwww! Does yours speak Pax yet?

:Is that your language? I haven't actually asked. Probably. They've been talking about magic too, our Fëanáro is very curious about your kind, but he concurs that the ones you've described to us don't have a lot of combat applications we can't already do ourselves: 

Yeah, I was living in Valinor and it was not a war zone and what I developed and recreated reflected that.

:That makes sense. Um, anyway, we have a plan, and we're working towards it. Fëanáro is going to keep thinking about whether any of your magic can help. Do you have news on your end?: 

We are still attempting to bore your Leareth into recovery. He asked me a question last time I visited!

:Wow! That seems - sooner than I'd expected, but I guess all the information I have is about Quendi and not humans, and I think they're way more patient than humans. I mean, they like to have concerts that last weeks!: 

Yeah, I don't have great time projections but it seems promising.

:Anyway, I'm not sure I'll have more to pass on in a day - maybe we can do three days from now, and see?: 

Sure, in an emergency you can interrupt the Fëanáros and mine can call me.

:Noted, if an emergency comes up that's worth interrupting Fëanáro for then I'll do that: 

He's still touchy about being interrupted, huh?

:I mean, it's pretty reasonable of him for artifact work, if you get interrupted you lose the entire block and have to start over. But I think it's also his personality: 

Yeah, it predates getting into artificing.

:Thought so. Anyway, talk to you in three days unless something else comes up: 

(Nothing does and so Bella is not interrupted with any emergencies via her Fëanáro.) 

She checks in again on schedule.

:How certain are you of your teleport spell, now?: Vanyel asks after confirming that neither of them has any major updates. :If we wanted your help over here, could you actually come - er, and land somewhere that isn't Angband: 

I can't find any mistakes, but it does have an error rate as written, empirically, so I shouldn't make unnecessary trips.

:Right. So we have a plan which uses an artifact, and it's somewhat dangerous to use, so we want to shield it when it's in use. Also we need to transport it but Gates are fine for that. I'm not sure if your arcane magic can do anything helpful there?: 

Are you still allergic to Gates? I can help with that from here over the earcuff. I don't know any wards or anything like that, unfortunately, do you want me to ask my Leareth?

:I'm not! This is pretty much the one good thing to come out of this entire mess. I went to Lórien and he fixed it. Asking your Leareth about wards sounds good, I'm in touch with my Savil and she knows some things but I'm sure he knows more: 

Is this time sensitive enough I should ask now rather than next time I'd be up anyway?

:No, next time you're up anyway is fine: 

She checks in with Leareth at the appointed time about going north.

Things that Angband Leareth has been doing, for the last week: sleeping as much as he can, which isn’t nearly as much of the time as he would like. Repeatedly noticing himself having preferences about small things, like what position he’s lying in, and sometimes failing to squash them until after he’s already moved. He's tempted to like some food more than other food, decides to be indifferent, mostly succeeds. He lets some of the Healers drag him on walks around the hall; they’re even modelled on some of his actual staff, he thinks, though it’s been long enough that he’s hazy on those recollections. He is absentmindedly annoyed at the compulsions.

He is, at this point, solidly failing on the not having opinions or being curious front. The situation is very baffling. Leareth doesn’t know whether any of the memories he supposedly has back are real, but he pokes at them a bit anyway; they seem to be vaguely in order, in that he has a sense of if one thing happened before another, but they’re not signposted at all, the way memories usually would be by seasons or events.

There are a really large number of fake rescues! Leareth starts numbering them, gets past thirty before losing track without actual notes. The current one stands out in its sheer bizarreness, and the presence of some Velgarth magic that he would have doubted Melkor could fake just as a sensory hallucination, as well as the glacially slow pacing. Some of the others have weird time-skippy bits that must have been smoothed so he didn’t notice, but so far, none have endless days of nothing. ever. happening.

He’s indescribably bored.

On one of the occasions a Healer turns up with food, Leareth makes eye contact with them. “Where are the other people who were here? The one who looks like me, and the girl with the Companion?”