It's actually been, what, five years since they've seen each other? Celegorm turns to look at his brother. She's going to be able to do it, eventually, if she lives long enough.

Maedhros is watching the northern horizon with a grim smile. All right.

If we don't get resurrection until long after the war ends, do you want us to bring you back when we can?

Maedhros doesn't do facial expressions. He had to relearn them and now they are entirely intentional. But his heart rate is a few seconds out ahead of his conscious decision to return his heart rate to normal. I am not dead.

Must have slipped my mind when I asked the question.

Are you asking 'if you die during the war'?

Yeah, Celegorm says, that. 

Once you can it would be strange if you didn't, it would be a sort of dereliction of duty on my part. 

I'm sorry. I didn't think of that. And he heads off to get them all dinner.

It's almost a shame that Odette can't hear any of that; it would probably have gotten a ton or two of stone out of the way quicker. But it's not like she doesn't have plenty of fuel to genuinely want any and every terrible thing she can imagine brought down on the Enemy's head any way she can do it.

They sit there over dinner and practice making rocks float in the air. Maedhros is getting very adept at it.

These are irritatingly large mountains, irritatingly far away. When next they check in on her, she'll have made visible progress, but not much more than that.

Well, they can sit up all night. I want to know if Cáno can give her a power boost, he thinks. If it's powered by will -

Maedhros smiles. That'd be interesting.

Careful, of course. Not "I'd be interested", or "I'd like", so if he feels nothing at all and hasn't for centuries he is still technically not lying. The smile should count as a lie, but whoever'd defined lying had underestimated the power of Maedhros' smiles. Even thinking this, he's matching it, reflexively, feeling a swell of pride - yeah, it's a good idea. I'll ask him tomorrow.

All night works. She's going to be filing those mountains like recalcitrant fingernails until someone tells her to sleep or she collapses from exhaustion. Die.

How often do Men need to sleep?

Maedhros is juggling rocks without touching them. Every night, I think.

All right. "Odette," he says, "they'll still be there in the morning."

Right. "Fine," she says, with irritation but no argument.

"Oh, good. I was prepared to actually bodily carry you downstairs on the grounds that using force on someone who could easily stop you if she wanted to doesn't really count, but not doing that is clearly better."

I suspect you're treating me the way you treated your father and I feel guilty for not being going to bring him back as soon as I can, she keeps the hell out of her osanwe channel. "If I'm going to go anyway I may as well make it as painless as possible for both of us," she agrees aloud.

"Thank you. Maedhros says you already have a guest room. It is gloomy and practical because Maedhros designed Himring and he finds deep and soaring beauty in gloomy and practical things. If you are more effective in an environment that has flowers or windows or stained glass, I can arrange for those things, and he can't even complain because under the circumstances they would be practical." This speech brings them to the door of the guest room. "Good night."

She goes back to 'her' room. She left the clothes she arrived in there--are they still there?

They are. They seem to have been carefully washed and folded.

She sits on the bed and holds the fabric to her chest for a minute. Then she puts it aside and climbs under the covers and goes to sleep.

He knocks on the door precisely three hours after sunrise when she has had six hours of sleep, which might not be the amount mortals need but seems tolerable. "For the record, I don't care if we get my brother back one day sooner and will happily turn around and let you sleep all day if you tell me that in your considered opinion more rest will help you."

"How long has it been? For best general maintainence purposes I should get eight hours at least twice a week and as little as six on other days."

"Six. I can do that. Also if you have an idea for how we can reacquire the Silmarils they make Elves need sleep half as often and might do the same for Men, I'm not sure."

"What's a Silmaril?"

"They have general and specific restorative powers and are very important to the possibility of Elves living outside of the direct supervision of the Valar. The Enemy holds them. At last intelligence, which -' he gestures in Maedhros' direction - "is four hundred fifty years old - "he wore them in his crown."

"Considering whose fortress we're in it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that I'm somewhat leery of going anywhere near that place before I am much surer of my capabilities than I currently am."

"Yeah, I think we probably won't get them back until the war's over. But I'd be remiss if I didn't mention a possible solution to your sleep needs, just in case moving inanimate objects turned out to be easy to do with magic or something."

"Well...I can move those mountains from here. But I can see them. I guess there's no harm in trying, but I wouldn't expect it to work.

He sends osanwë images of them, radiant and making the room around them radiant. "In case you want to try."

She gasps softly in delight. "They're beautiful."

"Memory rather fails to capture it. But yes, they are. They're also really important. My grandfather died trying to keep them out of the enemy's hands."