"We'd noticed. Please do, though, everyone'd be delighted."

"It delights me to delight people."

"And to keep busy, I take it."

"That too," he agrees, still repeating every phrase in English and Thindarin. "If I'm not always trying to do ten things at once, how are the ten things I want to do at once going to get done?"

She laughs. "It's really really a shame you got here after the King was dead. You two would have got along well."

"Everyone keeps saying that. I'm sorry I didn't get to meet him."

"Well, if you had, the current situation'd be much worse." She shrugs. "No civil war, that's pretty nice."

"I'm not sure I follow...?"

"Did no one explain the mess to you? Like, actually, here was everyone involved, here is what they believed was happening at each relevant time?"

"I've heard separately about some different parts from different people, but, mostly, no."

"So. Melkor manipulated Fëanor's family into believing Nolofinwë was trying to get him disowned and exiled, and Nolofinwë likewise. Finwë noticed the tensions and tried to hold a public conference to settle them. Nolofinwë arrived at it first and tried to speak to Finwë and convince him that the conference needed to be a denunciation of Fëanor. I think as Fëanor walked in he happened to be saying to the King "two sons remain who are loyal to you" - referring to himself and his younger brother, who you haven't met.

Fëanor took this as a grievous insult, rightly, and drew a sword and told Nolofinwë that was how the next such insult would be answered, not so rightly."

"Oh, dear..."

"Finwë forgave him, and thought that the best way of managing the situations was just to stubbornly not exile any of his children and thereby establish the absurdity of their fears. But the Valar intervened, and sentenced Fëanor to twelve Valian years - each of which is ten of the years in this realm, going by what the locals say - in exile. 

So Finwë left with him. He felt, I think, it was necessary to keep Fëanor stable and grounded. He left Nolofinwë the regency. I think both sons concluded that their father had sided with the other."

"...I keep being really unimpressed with the decisionmaking of the Valar every time it comes up that the Valar made a decision that affected something," says Miles, exceeding the capacity of his Thindarin and therefore switching back to Quenya alone.

She smirks. "Everyone involved made some mistakes, and the magnitude of those mistakes tended to scale with how much authority they had. Anyway, about a third of our people either went into exile with Fëanor, or maintained close ties with those who did. They built a city in the north of the continent and made plans to depart Valinor entirely eventually. 

After five years, Manwë called a festival at which Fëanor and Nolofinwë would be required to make a public show of moving past their grievances. Fëanor resented this, and didn't apologize for the threat; Nolofinwë apologized for everything and promised to follow his brother and let no further griefs divide them. And then Moringotto killed the Trees, killed Finwë and destroyed Valinor."

"...I can't imagine that had any positive effects on the situation," he says.

"Fëanáro was heartbroken. Everyone present apparently thought he was going to die of grief or throw himself off something - I wasn't present, so I don't know - and when he returned to Formenos - the city we'd built in exile - he was visibly in terrible pain and visibly containing it only by acting, and acting very quickly. He organized us, started doing drills, started forging weapons, started experimenting with how we might supply ourselves in the dark. Everyone complied. We'd trusted him that far, we were helpless and floundering and he had a plan, his directives all made sense, and he was hurting so badly.

He didn't want to wait. We knew Moringotto had fled to the Outer Lands and was presumably killing everyone there. And he couldn't stop, I don't think, not without falling apart. So as soon as we were remotely capable we marched for Tirion, to gather the rest of our people and then get out of Valinor."

...Of all the extremely relatable things Miles has heard about Fëanáro, this is perhaps the most relatable. He doesn't say so out loud, but he suspects it comes through anyway.

"At the same time, Nolofinwë'd taken his people back to Tirion and was trying to manage the city with the sudden death of the crops and everything, and by all accounts done a good job, and when Fëanáro arrived in the city and rallied everyone to the cause of departing at once and fighting Moringotto, not everyone agreed that they wanted him to actually lead that. 

I think everyone knew that being divided was going to be a catastrophe but there we were, divided, so we left under three different banners with Fëanáro's host in front. He was very frustrated with everyone who wanted to come but wanted to follow someone else, he didn't see how he could win the war that way, but the most important thing was to get there and we'd hoped that maybe feelings would settle on the way.

We went to the edge of the Ice - several thousand miles of travel from Formenos to Tirion to there - and Fëanáro realized there was no way out of Valinor, and he turned around and headed back south to Alqualondë. At that point our host had been marching for months. And he lost his temper with the Telerin king - who decided, when we arrived, to lecture us about how we were silly little chidren who needed to be stopped for our own good - and they refused to loan us boats, or help us make them, or teach us how."

Miles winces symapthetically. "I've heard a few things about how that turned out, but even if I hadn't, I wouldn't expect it to end well."

"Yeah. They blame us, reasonably so, because by the time they arrived on the scene it was a mess and they had the unenviable choice of joining us or watching us die. And afterwards the whole mess divided the two hosts further, because we'd taken horrifying casualties and everyone was grieving several family members and they'd had almost no losses and were furious that it had happened and that was the point when Nolofinwë's people - I have no idea if they had his approval, implicit or otherwise - started calling him Finwë Nolofinwë, the one true King of our people, and if all of that wasn't enough to drive the situation to a breaking point there were people in Nolofinwë's host who'd fought against us at Alqualondë and who announced they were making the crossing only so they could ensure my father failed in everything he tried.

And then the Valar spoke the Doom."

"The Doom is one of the parts of this story I understand least, though I've heard it mentioned before."

She takes a deep breath. "Tears unnumbered ye shall shed; and the Valar will fence Valinor against you, and shut you out, so that not even the echo of your lamentation shall pass over the mountains. On the House of Fëanor the wrath of the Valar lieth from the West unto the uttermost East, and upon all that will follow them it shall be laid also. Their Oath shall drive them, and yet betray them, and ever snatch away the very treasures that they have sworn to pursue. To evil end shall all things turn that they begin well; and by treason of kin unto kin, and the fear of treason, shall this come to pass. The Dispossessed shall they be for ever.

Ye have spilled the blood of your kindred unrighteously and have stained the land of Aman. For blood ye shall render blood, and beyond Aman ye shall dwell in Death’s shadow. For though Eru appointed to you to die not in Eä, and no sickness may assail you, yet slain ye may be, and slain ye shall be: by weapon and by torment and by grief; and your houseless spirits shall come then to Mandos. There long shall ye abide and yearn for your bodies, and find little pity though all whom ye have slain should entreat for you. And those that endure in Middle-earth and come not to Mandos shall grow weary of the world as with a great burden, and shall wane, and become as shadows of regret before the younger race that cometh after. The Valar have spoken.”

There are no conceivable circumstances under which that is an acceptable thing to do to anyone. Miles would not wish such a curse on his worst enemy from the depths of blackout rage, and that's taking into account the fact that his words would have no power if he did.

"For that matter, I'm not very familiar with the Oath either," he says, instead of reiterating his desire to go find the Valar and shake some sense into them. Long-term list, that one. "I get the sense that oaths here are... a more tangible force than I'm used to."

"Well, you're a Man, right? Men are different, it's part of Eru's -" she waves her hand helplessly - "you know, I don't really know. Elves are fated, and bound to Arda, and our Oaths bind us, and that particular one, because of the circumstances under which it was spoken, binds them even more. You're not likely to run afoul of it unless you're planning to steal the only possible means for us to live outside Valinor without falling prey to the 'waning shadows of regret' thing."