Lothlann is a truly dreadful defensive position; rolling plains stretching for hundreds of miles, each Feanorian fortress sticking out of the ground like a burr clinging to silk fabric. They have held it anyway, for nearly three hundred years. Himring is the tallest and stickiest of those burrs in the landscape, forbidding and by Elven standards graceless, and it can house the whole civilian population of the area if needed and endure a decade's siege. All its windows look out on Angband. He can see the place every waking minute, and he does not often sleep.

When the girl appears, he sees her.

Warmth, she suggests, and if it burns, well, pain is more pleasant than cold. She saw to that. Where am I, she queries, come on, don't I know so many things, isn't it right that I know about this place too, and it's certainly nowhere she recognizes, chilly and flat and oddly still--and the nearest people--there's something off about them but she can't place what--they're that way, that giant building that sticks out like like a sore thumb--shouldn't I be able to see it better, she coaxes.

There is a man, looking out a window. Looking at her. She meets his eyes.

Powerful, talented, command of the world flaring up around her in a way he recognizes. He stands. "Pull everyone in," he says - they will hear him throughout the fortress - "and get ready for a fight. That stranger appeared out of nowhere."

Well, the stranger never asked to hear him. Since that building seems to be the nearest sign of civilization, she might as well go there. She's--not going to risk trying to teleport again and maybe get even more lost, but she can fly faster than she can walk.

They rush archers to the walls, they close the doors, they send the injured underground. The stranger is flying, now. Not even attempting to be subtle. In a way, that's reassuring. If it's not trying to deceive them, there's at least a chance it's not hostile. He doesn't believe that. He has a hard time believe anything isn't hostile, even people he'd known for centuries before the Sun. 

He watches her. That'd be the form of a Man, if Men flew, and if adult Men were ever that healthy or still had all their teeth.

"Hello?" She calls out in Germanic, when she's reasonably close. "I'm very, very lost. Can someone tell me where I am?" And then she repeats herself in Genoshan, Ashkenazi, Hebrew and Anglic, because she has no idea what language these people speak. If she's unlucky they'll have zero languages in common and she'll have to get creative.

"Please land and show us that you are unarmed," he says in Thindarin, and then in Taliska, and then in the other mannish dialect he's heard of he says "land and peace" because he doesn't know the whole phrase. She's trying to communicate, too, but in no languages he's heard of.

...
They have no languages in common. Lovely.

Well, she's not the greatest Sympathy mage of her generation for nothing. She dithers for a moment before deciding that there's no harm in just finding out what he said, he consented to her knowing it when he said it, it's not like it's real mindreading.

...

Well, she'll land, but...didn't he see her flying? She's a mage, does he really think lack of weapons is going to make her less dangerous? She holds up her arms and gives him a mildly skeptical look.

Her thoughts are easy to read even without a language in common. "I'm a Power," she's presumably saying, "what does it matter if I'm unarmed?"

Very confident, are we?  "I would like a volunteer to go outside," he says, and feels a flicker of pride in his people as most of them step forward. He picks someone who is appropriately afraid.

Hello, random person! Okay, how to communicate that she can understand them but can't speak to them...she cups her ear and snaps her fingers, creating a spark as she does so, the universal "I'm a mage" gesture, then sticks out her tongue a bit, taps it and shakes her head.

The gestures are meaningless, but he can catch the tenor of her thoughts. Tell her that this is a war zone and a bad place for unaccompanied strangers, even if they are powerful ones. It is also a bad place for us to receive them.

His volunteer echoes this, warily.

...Wow. What's that? Whatever it is, she likes it.

So...does she just respond...by thinking at him? I don't know how I got here--I was trying to get away from someone who was trying to kill me, and apparently I wasn't specific enough about where I wanted to go to, and my sister isn't here so I hope she isn't still back there with him, and where am I? I apologize for accidentally intruding on your war, but the sooner I find out where I am the sooner I know what direction to leave.

Tell her where we are, he orders cautiously.

Her interlocutor shifts nervously, sends a message that's a map of the continent. Beleriand. And an image of the fortress. Himring. And of the whole world, oceans and a distant memory of a golden glowing continent - Arda.

...

...

This is a map of the entire world, as she knows it.

She's broadcasting so oddly that the whole fortress can hear her; is that deliberate? It's certainly useful. 

She's not from anywhere in the world, or from a time so distant from this one that the continents have been reshaped. Or lying, of course likely to be lying, but she's powerful and for the moment it might be wiser to play along - 

You came very far, then.

Apparently.

Well, she'll just have to grit her teeth and try to teleport home, then, and hope whatever anomaly let her cross worlds duplicates a second time, much as she may dislike using too much Conquest magic over a short period of time. Home, she orders--

The pain slams into her with the familar bone-jarring sensation, but she doesn't go anywhere.

They all feel it. Everyone else flinches. He does not. 

I take it you cannot make the journey back, not immediately?

Apparently not. I'm sorry.

Convenient. Do your powers permit you to cross mountains? To the east it is safer to travel alone, and the Enemy is less likely to pursue you there, or learn of your presence. How long do you expect it to be until you can safely return?

How should I know? I've never even heard of someone teleporting between worlds before. Until I get strong enough to force it, I guess, but who knows how long that'll take.

I see. And if he sends her away she might arrive at Angaráto's doorstep, or Findekáno's, annoyed with him, and this seems like a risk worth weighing against the risk to his people. If you are not strong or consistent enough in your abilities to travel alone in enemy lands, you should come in.

What's this Enemy like? Are they a Great Mage? I'm...not, yet, but I'm a bit of a prodigy.

Your word is unfamiliar. The Enemy is a Power. And he sends -

Melkor in Valinor, in charming Elven form, smiling and laughing and ripping their people apart at the roots -

The Darkening, screams in the night, the darkness clearing to show their hometown shattered into rubble, what remained of Finwë's body strewn severla hundred yards across it -

dragged beneath the throne of Angband and forced to his knees -

Valar, we call them.

...

...

Well, that's sure as hell not Aten, she thinks, her hand going to a circular pendant with seven lines going down from it. That's...that's...she fails at coherency. That's awful and horrifying and it really should not exist, and it's sure as hell not her God, but if any human mage tried to do something like that they'd be unable to think from the pain, even her own lovely patch only goes so far--at least for now, maybe if she got used to it--she'll get stronger. She'll buid up her tolerances.

She doesn't seem to have consciously realized the certainty in her heart that she must oppose this being, but it's there, hard and tight and fierce and warm.

Okay, not friendly with Melkor. Or a really excellent actor. 

Thus why we name him our Enemy, and build these fortresses, and plan one day to throw down the walls of his kingdom. The Valar of your world are all good?