They start heading back towards the lake.

Is she being followed? Their eyesight is unfairly better, but if they're paying attention a connection will snap into place or strengthen. And those can be severed if they have to be.

Once out of sight, it's fairly simple to reassemble the bubble and take off.

They seem surprisingly disinterested, but perhaps they're distracted. 

Then it's back oceanward. With a break for food. This was supposed to be a trip of indeterminate length but no more than a few days, so being the only person who needs to eat on a planet incapable of sustaining life is going to be a problem soon. But not yet.

The ice looks just as forbidding as it did the first time around. She lands far enough to be probably out of sight and walks in to the camp.

"Hey. How'd it go?"

"They took the message more or less as expected."  Fëanáro says to stay in Valinor and they'll rescue you after winning the war because you'd only slow them down, I told him that really doesn't look like it's going to happen, and he said that if you insist on being that reckless he wishes he had a way to help. He didn't say he wishes he hadn't burned the way to help. They don't have food to share, but at least won't be starting a fight if no one here does. Except if people are still calling for him to be deposed and killed, he says those people won't be welcome in whatever borders his people are holding at the time.

Also I probably saved Fëanáro's life and might have convinced him to let someone else handle the political power.

"Huh. Okay. Well, it's not as if we were expecting better from him. Do they control much of the coast? Will his people be holding meaningful land by the time we arrive?"

They expect to by then. For now, they've been fighting enough that they were literally mid-battle when I arrived. I don't think controlling land is a concept that applies yet.

Oh, the Enemy has giant fire monsters of some kind. Does that sound familiar at all?

"The valaraukar. I've heard of them. Halls, what a mess. And thank you. It was a very good thing you did."

I did end up using magic where they could see it. The effects, if not me being the one to do it. They'll have put two and two together, and whether that adds up to enough I have no idea.

"Enough to get you in trouble, you mean?"

Yeah. If that happened in my world, observers would be wondering why the monsters fell over and exploded, who had done it, and how. After a candidate appears out of nowhere, just how. But people are very good at not guessing too much; if there's any other explanation they'll latch onto that first and if there isn't they'll file it away as just weird. Between people being more perceptive here and more willing to believe that people have powers, I might be in trouble.

But if I hadn't helped more of them would be dead.

"I'm glad you helped.  Maybe I'll feel differently by the time we've been through this torture but I don't want them dead. And I'm sure they went for 'friendly Maia', that's the obvious guess."

A friendly Maia who carries messages for their relatives.

What's a Maia?

Minor powers, like the Valar but, ah, less. They could help with a fight and, if they'd decided to aid us, convey a message. They could also have killed Fëanáro on the spot and he presumably knew it but he has an odd sense he's invincible.

Are the valaraukar Maiar? Fëanáro and his people were putting up a fight against them. Losing, but it wasn't all one-sided.

Yeah. And my cousins have all kinds of magic weapons - that's one of the things darling uncle's good at - they can carry their weight in a fight. For a while. I'm glad you did something, they definitely wouldn't have won.

Even if none of them noticed anything, I earned some bad karma for fighting. The spirits would have seen that as an unprovoked attack. Still, one person accruing bad luck has to be worth it.

And that was a few lives, if that was worth it then this has to be, it's at least a thousand and possibly as many as ten.

I had an idea while flying over the ice. We'd have to run it by the king and get volunteers, but it could help cross. How good is your hearing?

Very good. The light of Aman is gone now but it enhanced us physically in every respect. And out here there's less of the noises of a city to filter. Why?

If I give some of you magic, your hearing might actually be the limiting factor on a plan to get across the Ice. It'd mean more bad karma for everyone involved, especially me, but if it works it'll cut casualties by a lot. How far away would you be able to hear someone who wanted to be heard?

Does osanwë count? Can they amplify their voice with magic?

No, and untested but probably. It does have to be them, not some facsimile, but if it's just making them louder I don't see why that wouldn't count.

Then one could be heard over a distance of a hundred miles.

Then this might actually work.

Awakening in the first place could be tricky. The ritual needs a bunch of small items that I don't have with me and might not even exist here.

You want to teach us your world's magic?