"Scouting, mining, quarrying, agriculture, engineering, I expect people'd be happy to have another hand with their children, you can work but it'd be - another evil thing - if we insisted."

"Also I don't know how to do any of those things. But I can babysit. ...Depending how different Elf kids are."

"You can observe and decide? They're mostly not jobs demanding a lot of expertise, too, if you wanted to follow someone around and get a feel for it."

"Okay!"

And he introduces her to people who are a bit wary but friendly enough and who have young children (no infants; Elves stopped having children when things got bad and that was more than a Year ago).

Hello Elves! She is an orf! This is her baby!

That sure is an orc baby. They're really glad she's here and brought Maitimo.

She is glad too, it has worked out pretty well so far! Her orc baby is friendly and if you hold her she will put her hand on your face and say "ba"!

Some people do this!

"Ba!" says Kat.

"Is that a word in orcish?"

Giggle. "No, it's just a noise. She should start doing a couple words in a few more months."

The person holding Kat starts singing to her.

Elves take a little while to come around to leaving their children with Beka, but they get there! They're also happy to show her the work they're doing, which is in fact mostly tedious manual labor and not hard to pick up. They sing while they work. They scrupulously avoid discussing the war around her. They have absolutely nothing critical to say about their royal family, despite the continued disinclination of the royal family to torture dissidents!

Some people swear to do their jobs every day, if they're having trouble with motivation. Some people don't.

It turns out Beka kind of likes farming. Plants are neat. There are literally no plants in Angband anywhere. She wears Kat on her back and plants things and waters things.

They have greenhouses with magic lighting, since all their plants are meant to grow in Valinor which had more than starlight to go by, and they have mosses and so on which the locals recommended.  

One day he announces without explanation that rations are being halved and they're focusing more resources on production of food. 

Elves are slightly alarmed, but do that.

...Orcs eat bugs. They're not hard to keep and they're good protein, would that help?

Yep. How do you farm bugs?

You get crickets - they're easy and can live off trimmings - and you give them water like this and keep them in bins and give them trays for eggs and the babies get meat if you have it and the grownups get plants and those affect how they taste.

Elves start farming bugs. 

He summons everyone for an announcement. "We've determined that the other host is trying to cross the ice. We wish, obviously, that they hadn't, but since they have we're going to try to ensure they survive it. The food will be for them; ideally we'd also have the resources to shelter them when they arrive, but that, ah, depends on the state of diplomatic relations. You should feel free to approach us with questions and suggestions, for a change in mission this broad."

The next time he visits to sing to her and the baby and the other kids she's watching she asks if there's any way to help the other host get the rest of the way across, and if they don't when will they show up?

We're looking into it but it's not like the Ice is passable from this end either. Huan might do supply runs if he wants to. It'll be another Year if we don't speed it up, it's a long long trip and they're taking it very slowly.

I don't super understand how Huan decides what he wants to do.