Araman gets uglier the farther north they travel.

"We can't do this," Macalaure says to his father after the second day, but then they also cannot defeat Moringotho and they cannot save everyone and they are trying anyway, so sheer physical impossibility no longer moves his father. 

"It would be faster to get boats," Maitimo attempts, the next day. Efficiency might serve where nothing else will. "I could go to Alqualonde and petition for aid-"

"Mmm," says their father. He is in too much pain to think straight but it's not a no and the Ice will kill them all and so Maitimo carefully keeps pressing the subject. 

And then there's an uproar outside.

"Kiri it is real fucking cold," is the first thing Aleko says.

"...that, at least, I can fix," she says, and it warms up around them. She brushes street dust off her and looks around.

It is, in fact, really fucking cold. Also completely dark. It's also very rocky, very windy, and totally barren of life except for a distant line of marching people, inadequately dressed for this, bearing northward while angling away from the winds.

"There's some people over that way."

"Over what way, it's pitch dark."

Kiri picks up his hand and points. "Not sure if we want to be obvious to whoever is wherever we are, but that way."

They're obvious; a person's heat alone would be impossible to miss against this freezing temperature, and the area around them has gone startlingly hot, too. There's a flurry of conversations and the scouts report immediately to people authorized to interrupt the King and the King is interrupted and soon a few thousand sharp Elven eyes are fixed on the two people and the host stops moving. Not Elves. Too short. Orcs? With some kind of heater? Valaraukar?

Weapons are drawn, just in case, by people who have never actually used them.

"Shit I think they noticed us anyway."

"Not in a good way?"

"Not so much. Help me up -"

She gets to her feet with some help.

They approach. They very nervously approach; there's bad footing, here, if it comes to a fight it'll be ugly, even with these numbers, but what are they going to do, ignore it?

Hello, he says when in range. Declare yourselves.

"They've got some kind of telepath and beat my range so I don't know how comprehensive. Think bland thoughts," she says to Aleko.

And, clamping down on her own thoughts in a way she's never had to before: Prime Kiribel Miar Swan Ardelay and my brother Aleko Fylt Swan Ardelay, lost. You?

Those aren't names in any Elven language.

Turkafinwë Tyelcormo, son of Curufinwë Fëanáro Noldoran. You are very lost; I have never heard of you or your language or of people like you. How are you warming the area?

Magic. I've never heard of you or yours either.

So we probably don't have a language in common, so I can't swear to no hostile intent. Well. No hostile intent. His people do sheath their swords. Unless you serve the Enemy, but at a guess you'll say you've never heard of him either.

No, I haven't, she confirms. "I think they put their weapons away," she says uncertainly to Aleko.

Are you from somewhere in the Outer Lands?

We're from a country called Welce. It borders Soche-Tas and Berringey, it's across the sea from Malinqua...

Not familiar. What do the stars look like there?

I don't have a star chart memorized... Not like these, I don't recognize any constellations.

It might be complicated to get you back. This wasteland is the only way out of Valinor and the Enemy is on the other side.

I don't recognize any summer or winter constellations. I don't think we're even on our own planet.

After the war my father might be able to do something. But not until then.

What are you having a war about?

The Enemy murdered my grandfather and destroyed the Trees and is probably slaughtering and torturing his way across the Outer Lands.

...the Trees?

He sends the mental image. That's why it's dark, the Trees are dead. Are you used to the dark?

...No. We have a sun. Mental image of that.

We don't have one of those, so now that the Trees are dead there's no light in the world. We can fix that with the Silmarils once we win the war.

I'll have to take your word for that.

Like I said, I'll swear to everything if you'll do likewise once we have a common language.

I'm not sure why that would help. If you really need me to trust you, you could get in range of my telepathy.

...you can't be lied to over osanwë?

I have no idea how your telepathy works, but I'd take mine over a verbal assurance. I'm not going to require it for mere nonhostility or anything though.

I can't hear anything that someone wants to keep private, not once they're older than a kid and know how to keep thoughts private in the first place. You could be lying to me quite easily.

I'm the only telepath in my country and probably my entire world, she says, and if there's a way to shield thoughts from me within range I haven't run into it. Range is five feet.

Bit of a catch; I'd be happy to get that close so you can verify I don't want to hurt you, but I have no way of being confident you don't want to hurt me and that'd be pretty easy to do, at five feet. I am guessing your brother does not want to come over here as assurance.

Are you the sort to be reassured that if I wanted to hurt you you're already well in range of the other half of my magic?

Yeah, definitely. What's the other half of your magic?

Fire. More generally temperature. You wanted to know how I was warming the area; that's how. Aleko was cold.

Um.

And to his father, we might have a way across the Ice, or I might die. Either way, kind of need to know as soon as possible.

Go on, his father says.

Do you think you could help us cross this place? We need to do it as fast as possible to get to the site of the war.

Um. There's kind of a lot of you, and I sleep and don't know if it gets cold enough to freeze you while I'm doing that, and I don't know how much food you brought. But maybe? How big is it?

It's about four hundred miles by land from here, but we don't need constant warming, we have tents, the snow can insulate them too, we just need a clear path. We have more than enough food.

That's... a really long hike and I'm not very good at walking, but I can warm the area within my range as long as I'm awake and someone reminds me to keep doing it every now and then...

We can build sledges for our supplies and you can sit on one of them, if you can do warming that'd be directed enough to make a path for sledges. Or we can carry you, that's not a problem.

I have pretty arbitrary precision within my range. I can't directly affect terrain per se but I can melt and refreeze ice.

That should do it then. I'll tell people to get started on sledges. How fast? How much ice a day?

I don't have a capacity limit that I've ever come across, just range and attention. And I think you must see better than I can or something so that's a factor too on anything delicate, we can't see you from here at all, all I can do is tell where there's warmth.

I mean, I'm seeing you by body heat too, but I can see you quite clearly. He sends a mental image.

Yeah, you see much better than us. I don't see heat, I feel it. Aleko can't even do that. He's just seeing dark and stars. I'd light up the place but it'd ruin what adjustment to the dark we've managed.

Aleko, want me to continously project what I'm seeing? It takes a while to get used to using someone else's eyes but it totally works.

"Shh."

Aleko's not interacting with your telepathy like that till I know more about how it works.

Your call, Aleko, he says a bit pointedly. And I'm happy to come within range of you, if you'd like, we're gonna need you to cross the Ice so you may as well trust us.

In case you can't tell, Aleko is deferring to me on this one. You can approach.

So he does.

They are smaller than Elves, or perhaps not fully grown. They're dressed strangely. 

We're not going to get any taller, she remarks. If you'd like finer control over what I read you can stand just there - She sends a distance. And stick out a hand and drop it if your thoughts stray to something sensitive.

No secrets here. The Valar aren't around for you to run to about my personal life, and there's, y'know, a war.

Right then. What's on his mind.

He's trying to think what kind of being they are - Men? They're not Dwarves, there's eventually gong to be other kinds but no one really knows, and then they're from a different universe so even that might not apply. He's thinking how if she goes murderous out here or turns out to be a valarauka at least they're away from the tents, though Father might do something stupid... He's thinking how fast they can cross the ice if it can be melted through cleanly, what will the Enemy have had time to achieve on the other side.

We call ourselves "humans". What's a valarauka?

All we have are vague stories. Fire-demons, serve the Enemy, very dangerous.

How's your telepathy work?

Can send thoughts, and read them. Range depends on how well you know someone. It's a few hundred miles if you've known them for hundreds of Years. You keep your thoughts private by habitually designating some that way... he runs through how this is done - and then in principle no one but Mandos can hear them.

And there's no suspicious reflection of her or Aleko in Tyelcormo's mind. She murmurs instructions to her brother and he switches from thinking about what he had for lunch to thinking about how the heck to do that.

It sometimes takes months to learn, but I can tell everyone not to read you if it makes you nervous.

I suspect I have the hang of it for myself. Aleko's working on it. You may check me.

Can't hear anything. If you want I can keep checking and let you know if you forget and stop doing it.

Is there a reason not to warn me before doing that?

If what you want to know is whether you're doing it even when you're not thinking about it, prompting you to think about it will not be informative.

All right, if Aleko wanders out of my range and indicates it's a good time you may check me on his say-so, he'd have a reasonable chance of guessing if I was thinking about anything particularly essential. She relays this to Aleko in Welchin.

Lot of secrets to keep?

I have been an involuntary mind-reader since I was eight. I take mental privacy very seriously.

Okay. I'll ask your brother. 

You want to learn a word or two of Welchin or teach him some of whatever you speak?

I can try to pick it up. I can also ask him and he can nod or shake his head, if he doesn't want to answer me with osanwe.

He's still working on the private/public distinction and I have twin privileges on indiscriminate mindreading that do not extend past me, so please don't listen to him until he's gotten farther with that. But yes, nodding works.

Great. Want to come in, we can set up a tent and get you some food?

Kiri relays this to Aleko, who is fervently in favor of food. Thank you.

Any time. This way. And he explains to everyone that they're coming back and he thinks they're legitimate. When they reach the rest of his people Huan brushes by him to sniff them.

Kiri steps back abruptly when Huan comes close, wobbles, has to be caught by her twin. "THAT DOG IS A PERSON," she says loudly, forgetting that Aleko is the only listener handy who can understand her.

"...what, literally?"

"Yes literally a weird person with way too much attention in one place!"

He doesn't understand the conversation but he notices the distress. Huan's friendly.

My problem is not that I suspect he's unfriendly my problem is that in my world dogs are not people.

Oh. I can talk to all animals. Most aren't as smart as Huan, though.

I usually can't read anything off anyone except humans and I suppose whatever you are.

The Eldar. The species is Quendi. Most animals don't have very complicated thoughts but I can talk to all of them. Anyway, Huan's a Maia, one of this world's gods.

My world doesn't have any of those.

We've got a bunch. One of them's evil, he's the one we're marching off to fight.

...Seems like fighting a god might be difficult to impossible.

The alternative was sitting at home and letting him slowly torture to death everyone on the continent.

Why aren't the non-evil gods self-policing...?

They are. They just move very slowly. They'd get around to it in a few thousand years, maybe even a few hundred.

Wow.

So we're not waiting.

Makes sense.

There are a lot of us, even more than you can see here. We can put up a fight.

You'd know better than I would how you match up against a kind of god I only heard of moments ago.

We don't know very well but we're going to try.

And you think your father can get us home but won't until your war's over?

My father can pretty much do anything, but it takes him a lot of time. And he's going to be devoting all his energy to the war until it's over, he can't afford to spend time on other things. And the Silmarils might be able to help send you home but we need to win the war to reclaim them.

What's a Silmaril?

He sends an image. They amplify magic, among other things, and they're very powerful.

Is there any world-hopping magic for them to amplify?

No, not yet. But I bet given enough time he can do it.

It's really not a good time for me to be disappeared. There's been a rash of instability in primacies and I am currently both the most experienced and the youngest active prime and I do not think my disappearance counted as a death and activated a replacement.

You could ask the Valar to send you back, but that's chancy.

Because they'll take a few hundred years to get around to it? If that's the time frame I'm looking at I may as well find someplace comfortable to live and not bother at all, I'm not going to live that long.

Are you expecting something bad to happen to you?

Humans are not immortal by default. But now you mention it I'm probably a really obvious target for anybody with any interests at all in a war-torn world where my powers are useful.

Enemy doesn't know about you. He'd probably go after you if he did, though, and he'll probably learn eventually. Elves don't kill people.

That's good for Elves. I didn't mean necessarily a target for murder.

Elves also do not hold people prisoner.

This is also good for Elves, but if I help you get where you're going and you go provoke an evil god my life may get very complicated.

Yeah. I cannot promise we can protect you, honestly. You want to go to Valinor, you can go to Valinor, you aren't likely to die there. Everyone here decided to take the chance.

I don't have enough information about your pending war effort or about Valinor to make an informed decision.

So come eat dinner and ask questions and my father'll learn your language so your brother can ask questions too.

Okay. He's some kind of language prodigy that he can just do that casually?

He's really really smart.

The two don't always go together, but okay.

They reach the host. He explains what's going on, and there's a tent ready for them. The food's not warm, but perhaps Kiri can change that.

Well, is it supposed to be warm?

Might be tastier.

Then yes, now it is warm.

And a minute later, Tyelcormo says, my father's the King. So you know. And he's coming over now.

Good to know. Does everybody know about my range limit or does Aleko need to do perimeter duty or what?

I told them, but I really don't think they're going to mind too much. The only thing that matters is the war.

If you say so. "You don't have to watch my borders like they don't know," she tells Aleko.

And a minute later a very gaunt very intense unhappy-looking man walks in and Tyelcormo rises. Father.

Hello, he says to Kiri and Aleko. I'm going to sit over here because I don't mind if you read me but if only people who do mind avoid you then it'll be notable. Feanaro. You're from another world?

Yes. It has a sun, for example. And humans.

What are those?

The sun provides a day cycle and warms the planet, mental image, and humans are our species, I've never heard of yours before today.

Likewise. I'd like to learn your language, both because that'll confirm you're not a trick of the Enemy and because that way your brother can participate in the conversation. Is this a good time for that?

Sure. How do you want to do it? I learned what I know of my second language mostly out of books but I don't have any Welchin-to-whatever-you-speak texts around.

The easiest way is for you to just talk, and then also provide a translation in osanwe, but if you're new to it you may find that hard to do at once.

"Is this good?"

"Good. Is this Kiribel? Is this Welchin?"

"...What?"

Kiri snorts. "He's practicing, I guess. This is Welchin, yes, and I'm Kiribel, and that's Aleko, and correct my pronunciation if necessary but you're Fëanáro?"

"You're Kiribel, you're Aleko, I'm Fëanáro. I'm practicing, I guess. That's Tyelcormo. Correct my pronunciation if necessary."

"Your pronunciation is really good for someone unfamiliar with Welchin, as it happens."

Can you tell me how you got here and what you want to accomplish now?

"I was called out to address a weird creature loose in a town near my house. I have no idea what it was, I've never heard of anything remotely like it, but it looked like a giant snake with a mirror for a face and it was eating people, to the extent you can call it eating when the apparatus involved is a mirror and the destination is an otherworldly wasteland - though nobody else landed here with us, so maybe other victims landed elsewhere. I was going to burn it but someone whose son had been eaten practically tackled me asking me to hold off and see if there was a way to get him back first, and the snake got close enough to 'eat' me and Aleko while I was distracted."

There are no incidents like that recorded in our history, and no otherworldly arrivals. Go on.

"It is a bad time for me to be away. The fact that I still have my magic powers suggests that the primacy, which is a political and magical position which is passed on with those powers, rests with me, and therefore solely with me - there's only one prime per element at a time. All five primes are necessary to ratify new monarchs, and the other four primes are all due to a series of misfortunes newer at their jobs than me, and I'm the only person who knew all their predecessors in enough detail to give them any hints about how to work their powers. They can learn the politics other ways, but the magic is close to incommunicable and even primes of the same element don't all do it the same way. I really don't want Prince Isten to have the slightest bit of trouble assuming the throne when his father finally dies, it is loosely possible that my prolonged absence will disrupt some magical ecosystem that might or might not really exist, and yet I am not prepared to commit suicide - this might not manage to transmit the primacy either, if whatever does it can't tell if I'm alive or not when I'm not at home, and anyway I like being alive. However, it sounds like there is no short-term solution to getting us home, so I suppose I want to get my bearings here and maybe see how easy evil gods are to set on fire."

That last earns her a fierce smile. Not easily, but I think it can be done. The Valar might be able to send you home but they also might decide that you'd offended against them by walking in their territory and they also might spend a decade debating it, both things would be in character.

"Getting me home in a decade is barely more helpful than me living out the rest of my natural lifespan here, that would be plenty of time for any political interests that have a way to leverage my absence to decide it's permanent and get decisions made on that basis."

"...living out the rest of...your natural lifespan...is how long?"

"We're seventeen now and humans die of old age beginning around late sixties, early seventies, with some lucky specimens persisting past a century."

"Wait are these dudes immortal."

"Yep."

We do not experience that, no. I expect the war to be over in fifty Years but I am not sure if our years are the same as yours.

"Well, how long are yours? ...How do you even have 'years' without a sun?"

The Valar count them. A year in your world is related to the Sun? A year for us is twelve times twelve times twelve days. 

"That's a lot longer than our years even if your days are somewhat shorter. Ours are Sun-based, yes, as are our days... we've been here maybe an hour to the extent I can rely on my internal clock, a day is twenty-four hours, and a year is three hundred and sixty-five days, divided into five seventy-two-day quintiles and five changedays for convenience."

Our days were by the Trees, and the Trees are absent, but they'd be - perhaps longer than yours? We don't generally subdivide them. You might die very soon by our standards. I wonder if I can do anything about that.

"Well, that'd be nice, at least if I can expect to ever go home. It'd probably be irresponsible of me to become immortal if I can't."

Because of the powers, right. Okay. I won't make it a priority if you don't want it. We have a lot of priorities as it stands.

"Oh, I want it like crazy, but not at the expense of my country's stability, and I don't have a way to assess that from here."

"My country's stability - depends on crossing the Ice quickly."

"It sounds like I can help with that if the problem is mostly something that can be solved by stuff being warmer."

"It happens to be a problem that can mostly be solved by stuff being warmer, yes. How fast can you make stuff warmer?"

"...Instantly? If it's in range? I might have some limit, I haven't tried making a volcano in my backyard or anything, but by and large anything in range I'm paying attention to is a temperature I find satisfactory moment to moment."

"Great. In that case we might in fact be able to win the war fast enough to get you home on mortal time."

"That would be nice."

"Are there minimums? Maximums? If you find it satisfactory for the Enemy to be true-frozen, the temperature at which no molecules move, could you do that?"

"I don't know. I don't have any limits I have run into but have not attempted particularly rigorous experiments because I'm risk-averse, primes can and do die screwing around with our powers, and I'm a very busy person."

"Okay. I think this is a cause worth risking your life for, though obviously we shall do everything in our power to minimize the risk. The Enemy creates people magically bound to obey him and in constant torment, from birth which he uses to disfigure them. There are hundreds of thousands of them and there will be more if we delay."

"Yes, that sounds like a serious problem all right."

"He also gets stronger with time and will eventually destroy the whole of the world outside Valinor if we do not stop him."

"Also bad, yes."

"So let's start melting and refreezing this ice into a path."

"I'm told I don't have to actually walk it? I am unreliable at walking even on friendlier surfaces than ice."

"We're working on sledges as we speak, and can in any event carry you."

"Okay. I cannot move water around in ways that aren't melting it so this might get complicated if there's slopes or anything, you got the fire prime not the water one, I'm happy to be directed by people who know more about fluid dynamics than I."

"We'll be happy to consult."

"If we're not in a hurry on a scale of the next couple days right now, then we should probably maintain something like our usual sleep schedule, which has us awake for another few hours and then sleeping for about eight. I can't maintain heat effects in my sleep - although I retain my general indifference to cold and my own body temperature - and I think you lot cope better with the current unadjusted temperature than Aleko will, so he needs priority insulation and probably also to sleep snuggled up to me so he still has his ears in the morning."

"I like my ears."

"Tent in the snow with a few people staying in it - and we do have songs for heat, they're just limited in effect - should keep him warm," he says, "and we'll throw additional blankets at the problem if it's not yet solved."

"Songs?"

"Magic songs that make it warm. They're not very efficient because heat wasn't a common problem in Tirion."

"We do not have magic songs, that's interesting, but... Aleko's a really light sleeper and I'm not sure he can sleep through music."

"I'd have to be really tired to sleep through you talking in your sleep, too, even if I'd freeze otherwise, but music I'd probably have to be practically dead of exhaustion."

"We can have someone else sleep with you for body heat if that's not somehow culturally objectionable."

"...am I just assuming you speak Welchin now just like that or what, um, anyway, it's a little weird but I can live with it if blankets are hard to come by?"

"I don't speak very well yet. I am only speaking of present things, you will notice, and I have not attempted to use - several kinds of word forms. Blankets are not so scarce there are none among the whole host. I don't know if blankets will be sufficient for you because I don't know how much heat you need."

"Blankets should do it if there's plenty of them."

"Then we'll have those."

"That is ridiculously impressive even without conjugating verbs, especially if you're going to retain much of the vocabulary later."

"I think I retain and should be able to use all of the sentence forms you've demonstrated and certainly all of the words. Sentence forms I might have generalized wrongly and therefore retain wrongly."

"Wow." She does not ask can I see .

"I like languages. This was a treat."

"I know some Soechin too but I literally studied it for a couple of years and am worse at it than you currently are at Welchin."

"And everything around me does not adopt the temperature I desire. We all have our strengths."

"True enough."

"Let's see what can be done in a couple hours. Then you sleep?"

"Sounds like a plan."

So he accompanies them out onto the ice. A number of other people press in, a little curiously.

"You want me to just melt along -" She outlines a path in fire. "And see how that goes?"

"Yes, let's start with that. I also want to test melting the slopes -" naively? what's the word for 'without specific consideration'? - "to see how they refreeze but we can chart a flat pat through here and should probably do so."

"'Naively'," she supplies, and then the ice in the path chosen melts.

"Does it cost you any energy to make everyone you can see warm while you do it?"

"Attention yes, energy no. Is the temperature I have going for Aleko fine for you too?"

"Yes."

Temperature for everyone within range of her heat sense, then.

And the path ahead starts melting its way clear. 

It's attention-consuming but not especially interesting. Oh well.

"I wonder if magic songs could make it go faster or be more entertaining," he says.

"I'm not sure how they'd do either, not being familiar with magic songs."

"I wouldn't expect it to help unless your magic demands some mental resource on your part."

"Just attention."

"There are songs that heighten perception, make you think faster relative to the world?"

"...That's very interesting. You're sure they're safe? I have less passive mental powers but I'm extremely paranoid about using them..."

"They've been used for Years without incident but on Quendi, not humans."

"I didn't detect any obvious structural difference except in sensory acuity when Tyelcormo was in range, but I'm not sure I'm prepared to trust that without knowing how the songs actually work."

"Our magic creates -" localized? " effects that usually involve calling information forth from the song of creation, in one form or another. Our definition of information is very broad. Music magic is usually developed by experimentation. There are principles but they're complicated enough you can't predict effects well without testing them."

"Localized," she supplies. "I'm not sure telling me it's the 'song of creation' adds useful information because I don't know what you're talking about there - how do you tell when a song is safe enough to test, when it's mind-affecting?"

"Music magic can't do lasting effects. Whatever it is will stop when you stop singing. So it's safe enough to test no matter what you're doing."

"Huh. I might want to try the songs you mentioned if that's a guaranteed general principle regardless of subject species."

He glances at one of the other people in the vicinity. 

Not a guaranteed general principle, he says, but a guaranteed my-songs principle, species shouldn't have anything to do with it.

Songs you sing or songs you compose?

Compose. I like my head, and I have to play them thousands of times to get them sorted.

Well, I think I'm sufficiently reassured, then.

And he starts singing.

Oooh.

That is not only very pretty, it makes it much easier to keep everybody in range warm and the path melting at once.

I like it.

Thank you. I try.

Macalaure.

Kiri.

"Path's melted a few inches deep to the edge of my range now. Does it look smooth enough that I should refreeze it?"

"I think so."

Now it is frozen again.

Feanaro lets out a quietly envious sigh. "I am not even sure the Valar could do that. Lovely. More, or should you rest?"

"I can do that again if you want to get me to the end of the path extant, I just can't go farther from here. I guess I could widen it, do you want it wider?"

"...probably, I think the people in the rear have wagons."

So she widens it.

She now has an appreciative and delighted audience of Elves. 

"I can do another one of these before I crash if someone can drag me to the end of all this very flat slippery ice in a timely manner."

We don't have sledges yet but if you put up your hair I'd be happy to carry you, it'd be hardly any time at a run.

...My hair?

It's a cultural thing, it'd be weird to touch your hair.

"Aleko, they are weird about hair for reasons, what on my person is best repurposed as a headscarf -?"

"Uh, probably the sash?"

So Kiri unties her sash and manages to stuff all her hair into it and tie it up on her head.

And gets scooped up and carried down the ice path by Tyelcormo, whose thoughts are mostly about what a lovely ice path this is and how quickly they'll reach the other side and can she just superheat orcs' brains so they die painlessly.

Yeah. I could do that if it seemed like a good idea.

You can meet some first, see if there's a better way.

Yeah. This is possibly a case where it is reasonable to try mind powers as the safer option.

Orcs are - us. They're what happens if you raise an Elf in constant agony.

I don't advertise the mind powers. A handful of people have come to me desperate on their own initiative and I haven't screwed up, yet. None of them were chronic pain sufferers but it doesn't seem in principle impossible. I might be able to fix it and if the default's killing them I might as well try.

Definitely. What are the mind powers, exactly?

I don't know exactly. My great-aunt was the last sweela prime, and she either lied about her powers or had different ones - she said she could detect lies, but if she could outright read minds, let alone if she did whenever someone got near, she didn't mention. And I can't detect lies past five feet and only as part of the general mindreading. But sometimes I try a thing and it works. I have not yet tried a thing and had it not work, but...

Okay. Well, we'll be meeting orcs soon enough at this rate. Expect we'll keep you well back of the fighting.

Within or without fire range of the opposing force?

Up to you. We can take orcs, just not as cleanly.

If there's likely to be arrow fire I could burn incoming arrows midair. Maybe not all of them but still.

Then we should probably have you in range to do that. The fighting's honestly going to be a bit of a mess, there's never been a war in Elven history and few of us have ever even seen anyone die. We've been drilling but I don't think it's the same.

Welce is really peaceful. It's been generations since there's been a war. - Orcs don't count towards 'Elves don't kill people'?

No, they don't. They all serve the Enemy, there's no choice about it, at least not without powers like yours. And hopefully someday Mandos will fix them. But we do kill orcs.

Mandos being the one who does not respect the private thought distinction?

Mandos is the god of the dead.

...and also the one who reads minds without permission?

Yup.

Lovely. Meanwhile when I was eight and suddenly came over all on fire I went on a sharply restricted hug diet until my family had time to get used to the idea.

I'm not a fan of Mandos. But I think he does try to heal the dead, so it's better than nothing -

I won't be able to do anything for an orc without being in mind-stuff-range either and it's probably better than ceasing to exist when one dies but it is a bad way to run an afterlife.

Yeah. And we're going to lose a lot of people to it. Hopefully not for too long.

Nod.

He doesn't say anything else but he keeps thinking about it. Worth it, of course. It has to be.

She doesn't comment further on his thoughts. Just finishes refreezing the second stretch of path. There.

Great. Back so you can sleep? They'll do like five to seven miles a day, at this rate, three weeks to cross the Ice.

Yes. I will usually be able to do more than this in a row, I just landed when it was evening for me.

Two weeks, maybe. No problem.

Supplies'll hold that long and everything?

We have supplies for half a Year. We were starting to think the ice actually impassible, in which case we'd have been in real trouble since I don't know if we could backtrack all the way to Alqualonde and persuade the Teleri or invent seafaring boats and build enough of them fast enough. Now it''ll be no problem.

Persuade the who to do what?

Teleri: Elves who live by the shore. They have boats that could cross the ocean safely. They spent Ages developing them and I think it's at least a little difficult, enough boats to get an army across an ocean. We were going to beg their help if we couldn't make it across the Ice.

Makes sense. We've got ships that could do that but I don't know how to make them and I do know how to melt stuff.

This way's definitely faster.

So where am I sleeping? And where's Aleko going to be, since you can probably heap him under enough blankets that he doesn't need to try to sleep through me mumbling all night?

Two tents in the snow, coming up.

It seems weird that snow would help.

It's an insulator. I know what you mean, though.

I'm sure I'd have a better sense of it if it snowed more where I live.

It was never cold in Valinor either.

I feel like at some point I need a more systematic history lesson.

Sure thing. Bedtime story or save it for while you're working tomorrow?

The latter, I think. In case it's very long.

Alright. Good night.

Good night. And she says good night to her brother and they both go to sleep.

And he's warm enough. And in the morning the Elves have lembas and are eager to extend the road.

Lembas is nice! Kiri will road-extend all day and relay Aleko's idle desire for ice skates.

Elves will immediately get to work on ice skates. Least they can do, really. They'll also sing her along on the road-extending.

It helps!

And does she want a history of this world?

Yes please.

Elves awakened by Cuivienen, in the dark, and lived there until the Enemy started kidnapping some to torture; eventually the Valar found out, fought the Enemy in a worldshaking battle, and invited the Elves to Valinor where they'd be safe. Some of them accepted.

Only some of them? Were the Valar's deficiencies clear in advance?

People were more afraid it was a trap. It wasn't, or not that kind. A very very gilded prison. She is peppered with memories.

It's really pretty, admittedly.

They sigh. 

"Elves actually don't cope well when it's not pretty,"  Fëanáro says. "It won't be our first order of business in the war but it'll have to be our second one."

"Don't cope well? What do you mean?"

"Our" souls? "command our bodies, and if they're not well we suffer physically and mentally - there are traumas and griefs that kill us without damaging us, and Elves will die in captivity  - unless the Enemy magically prevents that - and if things aren't pretty we do not function."

"Souls. That's... interesting."

"Luckily we are very pretty and nature is very pretty so we often cope even without building pretty cities."

"Convenient."

"And we build very pretty cities! And the SIlmarils are unspeakably pretty. We're going to be just fine."

"Is the trip across the ice going to be long and unpretty enough that it would make sense for me to take occasional breaks from paving to do lightshows?"

"Is that a thing you can do? Yes, probably."

"I can do fire and I can make it go where I want, although I don't know what you'll think of my artistry."

"I imagine everyone will be impressed by your capabilities, regardless of how pretty the results. And we do have Macalaure along for morale."

"All right, let me know when would be good."

"Perhaps in a week's time when everyone tires of marvelling at the roads you're making. If that works for you. Do you require diversions for wellbeing?"

"I won't be able to read any of your books," she shrugs. "I'm not going to disintegrate for the lack of them, though."

"I can translate some if you teach me your alphabet."

"Sure." She's been using letters of fire to do processing in her cipher, but here's the actual Welchin alphabet, behold.

He asks questions about it for about ten minutes and then asks if he can work with her brother for vocabulary as he translates.

"Sure, why not. I'm probably like sort of okay at the thoughts thing now, even."

"Probably, but I'd prefer to talk aloud so I can practice your language."

"Yeah but if I have to say a word you don't know you have to do the mindready thing."

"You can use other words to describe it, and I can send you candidates?"

"I guess that works."

So they start translating a book from Quenya. He works very quickly and has astonishing handwriting.

"Dang," says Aleko. "I bet Kiri would have really complimentary things to say about your brain if she got a look at it, you kinda go a mile a minute."

"She can look at it once I've established the precedent that it's unremarkable if someone declines," he says distractedly. Translate: symphony? articulation? enraptured?

"Symphony, articulation, enraptured. She expects people to decline, I go around with her in crowded places so if she trips she doesn't trip into range of anybody but me..."

"My people'd do anything I asked of them and most things I merely passively expect of them. Especially if it looks like a way of proving loyalty."

"...what's that have to do with anything?"

"So if I and all my children were comfortable in her presence and said what we really do think which is that there's nothing to hide from allies here, people'd feel like they ought to be comfortable, like they were doing something suspect if they weren't."

"Well, that'd freak her the heck out. And crowd her, there's lots of you."

"Yes. So. Here I am, though I don't mind if she reads my mind, so no one thinks they ought to let her."

"Okay."

"The book will take us a couple days; are you going to tire of this?"

"Don't really have anything else to do," shrugs Aleko. "So, like, yes, but not more than I would tire of staring at ice all the time? I can't fill all day with ice skating my ankles would go into open rebellion."

"What do you do at home?"

"Draw, help Kiri with stuff because she's got this heavy political job, go into town or Chialto and do stuff there, we have a little brother and I hang out with him, we have parents and I spend time with them, I have friends..."

"You're welcome to draw? Can't help much with the rest."

"Yeah, can I have some paper?"

He can. There's spare from translating the book. 

Aleko doodles. His subject matter is fanciful and creative and his technical ability is pretty okay.

 Fëanáro does not dispense compliments. Macalaure comments to Aleko at one point that his father has never had anything nicer to say about his singing than 'people will be very impressed'.

"...well, I'm a people who's very impressed."

"Oh, I wasn't looking for musical compliments, I was apologizing on his behalf for his failure to notice that the drawings are very nice and that you're being very helpful on the translation project."

"Oh. Thank you."

"You are very welcome."

And Fëanáro, who apparently ignored this exchange, has another barrage of translation questions.

Which Aleko answers quite patiently, doodling all the while.

And time comes for the two of them to sleep again.

Which they do!

Barrelling across the Ice this way, they reach the opposite short in two weeks and a half. The host stretches out behind them for a hundred miles; not everyone is moving so fast. And they encounter orcs.  Fëanáro has ordered some brought back alive for Kiri to have a go at.

Delightful.

And here is an orc. They're - shorter than Elves, a tad grotesque, but not appallingly so. They're trembling. The Elves look unhappy.

Kiri sighs. And steps into range of one.

Have to kill the Elves have to kill the Elves if there's no way to kill the Elves at least have to hate the Elves, and they do hate them, and they're terrified. 

"I might need to know more about how this oath stuff works in principle."

"...when we give our word it binds us,"  Fëanáro says. "If they've sworn to not do something they can't do it, if they've sworn to do something they can delay but at great cost and eventually they end up doing it."

"Right now they can't kill you, and they're dwelling on it but it doesn't seem to be directly harming them..."

"If you cannot make progress towards a goal you've sworn to achieve, the oath is at rest."

"I might be able to do that. I might mangle something horribly the first few times I try but keeping them around alive is... not really viable is it."

"No. You think you can - render them incapable of harming Elves?"

"Maybe."

"Are they in pain, were we right about that?"

"If they are they aren't thinking about it right now, too scared."

"Okay. And we can't very well make them less scared...Do you want to try it?"

"It is not going to be the most fun I have ever had but I don't have anything lined up that I'd rather do."

And she looks at the orc and looks harder for what exactly the orc has sworn -

To be an orc, and pursue orc greatness, and hate Elves and kill Elves and bring Elves to Melkor, to serve and obey Melkor.

Well, she's got nothing if not license to experiment, here.

She will leave the first two bits alone.

Killing Elves or bringing them anywhere (because presumably Melkor can move around and cause various locations to be where Elves are to be brought), nope, can't do it - can't even leave a self-defense loophole there this thing is fucking insidious - hating them, no, no opinions south of, let's say vague annoyance, about Elves as a species - she will have to see if this compels them to find reasons to individually hate every Elf they run into or if it'll just work - annnnd - unable to hold any actionably confident opinion on the opinions or orders of Melkor even if he is standing right there saying them over and over again?

There's a moment of silence.

The orc is terrified, but just terrified. It doesn't hate them and it isn't going to kill them - arrange their deaths? it can arrange their deaths - but how -

Nope you may not do that either no.

Now just terrified.

"I think this one is de-oathed now but still very scared."

"Well, if it can't hurt us -"

It can hurt them, just non-lethally! It has lots of ideas from Angband on how to do this.

"Hurting you sans lethality is not in the oath so I didn't cut it out how crippled do you want it -"