"The thing I am sworn to retrieve is held by a young mortal woman who is the ruler of a settlement to the south of here. It's not even really a settlement, more of a refugee camp, filled with the survivors of the collapse of the last kingdoms on this continent. And their children. The Enemy hasn't attacked it yet, perhaps because it's not worth his time, perhaps because he expects me to do it. I have asked her to give back the thing I am sworn to retrieve. She has told me to come and get it. We have an army. We are going to do that."

"Why doesn't she want to give it to you?"

"Before she held it, her father did. We made the same request of him, for the same reason, and he refused. He thought that its blessings would protect his kingdom from the Enemy. They might have done so, for a little while. We attacked her father's kingdom. Her father, her mother, and her brothers, who were young children, were killed in the fighting. As were many tens of thousands of other innocent people. So now she hates us and is eager for us to ride to war so she can avenge them."

"Killing children is considered very wrong because they are very small, and defenseless, and cannot hold weapons or harm anyone. In this world 'mortal' is used to mean people who will die after a certain span of years - we are immortal in that we will never age and can live all the lifetime of the world, but if you drive a sword through us in the right place our body still can be damaged beyond the capacity to sustain us. Does that not happen for you?"

"No. I can't die."

"So what would happen if your body was damaged very badly, or thrown into molten rock, or ground to dust by a powerful enemy?"

"I'd heal eventually if there was a big enough piece. I don't know exactly what would happen if there wasn't but I wouldn't die."

"We can get new bodies, but it takes a long time and leaves us prisoners of the Valar. These bodies can suffer wounds they do not heal from. I - thought my people were unfortunate. I'm sorry."

"I usually don't want to die."

"I was taking some solace in the thought I hadn't prohibited you from it, and wouldn't. But. We can die. When we attack the refugee camp of Sirion many people will die. I don't know if you consider that a bad thing, but here it's considered one."

"I don't want anybody else to die either if they don't want to."

"Right. So. If I am somehow stopped from attacking Sirion, or if the Silmaril is retrieved such that I don't have to, then no one dies."

"And you want to send me in to tell her to hand it over."

"That is the most obvious solution."

"I assume you have her name."

"I do."

"If you give it to me are you going to use me to make her do anything else?"

"Get you out of the city safely, maybe. It's all in vain if you don't actually get the Silmaril back here. Otherwise no."

"Somebody whose name you don't have might interfere with me on my way in or out."

"No one knows that names can be used in this manner, I could try to get the names of most of the people who could interfere. But yes. The city has defenses and even with Elwing's agreement I'm not sure you could get in or out of them unimpeded."

"If this were Fairyland I could turn invisible, but it's not."

"You could arrive at Sirion as a refugee. They take people in. You could avoid telling anyone that you met me first, or how you work, or that you're anything other than a girl with wings. You could learn the names you needed, order Elwing to give you the Silmaril, and leave."

"Would that take long enough that it would be conspicuous that I wouldn't eat or drink anything?"

"Not if you arrived with food you could feed yourself, or does even that not work? Or you could ask to eat and drink in private, citing trauma - people certainly are familiar with that."