"You should say 'Thauron', people won't know what you mean. Why'd she help if she thought it was a bad idea, did she say - "

"She said it would be fun."

Sigh.

"Who's Thuringwethil -"

"One of the Maiar. The nicest one. She does bats and stuff."

"What bar does one have to clear to be the nicest Maia in Angband -"

"Well, not much of one but she's also nicer than most orcs."

"Is that bar much higher?"

"Yeah - the orcs would all hate you, they swear to, but I'm not an Elf, most of them are fine unless they've got orders otherwise -"

"I wonder if we could get anywhere by asserting we weren't Elves."

"It would be pretty obvious bullshit but maybe enough for some of them to pretend to believe you for a little bit."

"Even if we sang your look-like-an-orc song?"

"Yeah, that would help. I still haven't taught you it."

"I'll confess curiosity but it will be a little tricky to safely teach. Maybe after the oath."

"Or you c- never mind. Okay."

"Or I could tie you up." He shakes his head. "Does the idea appeal or do you just like the faces I make?"

"It's one of those things that can be more fun than it looks. And they're pretty great faces. Sorry, I was trying to stop."

"I don't think for an Elf it'd be more fun than it looks. And it's all right - you weren't making me angry - or, well, not at you -"

"When I was doing it I thought you were having fun but you weren't so I stopped."

"That's very thoughtful of you, but I could have left if I wanted."

"Do you want me to start again?"

He makes the face again. 

"On one level he finds it very hard not to parse it as an insult, because it really is hard to overstate how horrifying we find the idea and how - obvious it feels like it ought to be, that it would be horrifying. But also he doesn't really like being a king and therefore vaguely resents all problems which are only problems because he is king. And he is competent at the job and had sort of numbly resigned himself to doing it anyway, forever, and is now slowly shuffling around to optimism that he does not have to - slowly shuffling because he knows I'll be pretending to be more all right than I am, and because he has to correct for the impulse to just let me maneuver my way back to running things, my ability to do that not being something that meaningfully tracks my having been uninfluenced by our enemy. And if he didn't have to be a king then he could just say to me 'we owe her, it's what she wants' and the moral and practical considerations could be my problem, and that's tempting in its own right and tempting as a sort of symbol of all this gradual shuffling towards the hope he is not morally obliged to shoulder a role that makes him miserable forever. And he likes it when you flirt with him but he feels guilty about leading you on, and he's also not sure that it's not the title you're flirting with in the first place anyway, and he likes it a lot when you're happy and occasionally entertains variously tenuous justifications for prioritizing that more -"

"Nelyo -"

"Don't give the poor girl mixed signals and I won't have to clarify them!"