They're on a narrow, snow-filled pass between two sheer cliffs and he's numb with grief and cold and hunger and then, not three miles out, there's a woman.

The visibility is pretty poor here, and a gust of wind somewhere clouds the air between them before he catches more than a glimpse, but he's still certain what he saw. There was no one there, and then there was a woman.

"Have we lost anyone?" he says, bounding to his father's side, and he must sound worried because his father immediately turns around and orders a count.

It'll take half an hour. They've suffered heavy losses but they still number nearly a hundred thousand. They do this every day but there's a limit on how efficient you can make it, checking a host of that size.

"Why?" Nolofinwë says, once they've started, and Findekáno describes what he saw.

"You think it's the Enemy?"

"No. Maybe. No. If he can take on any form he pleases, he'd be incomparably stupid to waste a strategic secret like that on pretending to be an Elf lost in the north."

"You think it's something else?"

A minor Power, maybe, defecting from Valinor to their side. That would be interesting. Or -

- but if any among Fëanor's host did feel any remorse, they wouldn't come alone searching, that was suicide.

"Can I go out ahead?" he asks. He regrets it almost immediately. Nolofinwë's eyes immediately light up with the special anguish he only feels when being a King and being a father come into conflict. "Not far," he promises, and his father wearily nods.

It's cold here. It's not cold enough to bother her, but she's always liked winter and she is wearing her full armor - she is not ostensibly properly banished, she was not stripped of her more portable possessions, she is armed and armored and does not have a thermometer to determine that it's anything more than rather nippy. The bird form might have trouble. No nearby sign of animal life, so she's liable to get hungry, which she can patch with healing spells if she has to but not well. If the swift form is too cold to operate here and fly somewhere more habitable - she should check; she will if she can't find anything else to do or investigate in the area in an hour - then she will have something of a problem with getting any very great distance. Maybe there's at least a cave so she can sleep without being snowed on.

He goes out alone. His father likes saddling him with additional people, knowing he'll take chances with his own life that he'd never take with theirs, but this was his vision and his responsibility, and if it is a trick or a trap the fewer people ensnared in it, the better.

The vaunted Elven ability to walk on snow does not aid you in crossing a continent of ice as much as you might expect. The wagons, for one thing, don't walk on snow. Neither does anything you might eat. You end up fighting your way through snowdrifts several times a day anyway, uncomfortably aware that you're burning calories you can't replace, that every extra exertion means that much more knowing hunger.

And - yep, she's real. Another quick glimpse amidst blowing snow. Short, armored, apparently alone. If the Enemy can pull off a trap like this, he reminds himself, this is the best possible situation to discover it. He moves forward.

Not that short after all, but sinking with every step into the snow. So not an Elf. She looks like one, though. He's getting more uneasy the closer he gets. And the constantly-distracting thought of how they'll cope if he doesn't come back is getting louder.

Well, if it came to a fight, he has a significant advantage in mobility. Perhaps he should arrange for their paths to cross in the middle of a snowdrift.

She sees him, at this point, and lifts a weapon. He slips out his sword. All right.

Asgard.

Well, it doesn't seem likely that the folk of the Outer Lands call their homeland "the Outer Lands".

"Findekáno Astaldo," he says, "Of Nolofinwë of the Noldor," Then he lowers the sword slightly in a way that imposes no combat disadvantage at all but suggests a little bit of friendliness.

In reality, hope is already soaring in his chest. If the people of the Outer Lands are alive and well and armored, they won't be too late and perhaps won't lose any more along the way.

She lowers her glaive a bit likewise. "I have become rather exceedingly lost. Where are we? Is there any sort of civilization nearby?"

"Oh. Is Asgard not nearby?" He lowers the weapon entirely. "The place we left from is several months' travel away, and we're not welcome there in any event."

The blade of her weapon disappears and the thing might as well be a walking stick. "It is not anywhere nearby and the travel cannot be described in terms of months. Where are you headed?"

The weapon vanishes. Well. For a friendly gesture, that's certainly terrifying. And Asgard isn't in the Outer Lands after all. That implies - lots of things, none of them particularly reassuring, but he's not going to leave a friendly stranger to die in this weather. He honestly probably wouldn't leave an enemy to die in this weather. He's seen enough of that. "We're emigrating to the Outer Lands. My grandfather was born there but few among our host have ever been. It was abandoned when we left, but probably isn't now - I thought you were from one of the peoples there."

Headshake. "I'm afraid I know nothing of this realm."

"It doesn't have much to recommend it. Cold, hungry, and if you step in the wrong place you'll die. We lost thirteen people, recently, in an avalanche."

"I had noticed the first two features and the third has even less to recommend it. No one survived the collapse?"

"No, some did. If you dig them out they're fine, but you can't always find everyone fast enough. Sometimes you can hear them in your head, but you can't find them, and after a couple hours -" He shakes his head. "I regret to hear that you're also cold and hungry."

"I'm not yet debilitating amounts of either. I arrived here only very recently. But the sympathy is appreciated."

"I saw you. You popped out of nowhere. We, uh, can't do that. I thought you might be a Vala. You're not. This close I'd be able to feel it."

"Well, I can't do it on my own, either, or I would likely be elsewhere by now. What is a Vala?"

"The Powers that built the world. I'm not surprised they aren't known in Asgard, because they've never mentioned it, but I am confused, because I thought they had a hand in the whole of creation. They take forms like this only when it pleases them, or when they want to interact with us."

"Is it often that they want to interact with you?" wonders Loki lightly.

He tries to keep the regret out of his voice.

"We grew up with them," he says. "My cousins rode with Oromë, the Vala of the hunt, and his followers - lesser powers. My uncle studied metalworking under Aulë, the Vala of ores and stone and earthworks. My youngest brother spent a decade with Vána, she's Springtime, and recently there was a family dispute that was, uh, mediated by Manwë. He's in charge."

"Ah. Well, they have not visited Asgard to my recollection, but as I have not previously heard of this realm nor heard anyone else take credit for its invention I may as well presume it was they who made it. Complete, I take it, with inhospitable frozen wilderness."

"This is the bridge between paradise and the outer lands. It's, uh, supposed to be deterring."

"It is certainly that. And yet here I am and here you are, stuck in it."

"And a hundred thousand other people, actually. As I said, we're emigrating."

"I hope I have not slowed you down by presenting something unfamiliar that needs investigation right in the path you were hoping to traverse?"

"Our travel speed is mostly set by the wagons and the children, so you're all right there. I think I could have gone the whole way in a month, travelling with the right supplies and the right people, but then I'd just have gotten killed on the other side, so -"

"Hostility in both directions? Why?"

"I see." And sense understatement. "Is your plan to meet the hostility with more of the same given strength in numbers when you finish crossing...?"

"Yes." That's going to sound bad. There's no way to make it sound better without giving away too much. For some reason he's more uneasy with being thought a violent troublemaker by this stranger than with accidentally sharing critical information, but that's a ridiculous impulse. He ends up just blinking at her sheepishly.

"All hope for diplomacy is lost? Your options are be slaughtered at one end or the other or starve here or meet your chosen neighbors with drawn blades?"

"You sound like my mother," he says. "She turned back. The Valar - they won't kill her. They'll forgive everyone who sincerely repents, probably."

"Will you tell me what there is to repent of...?"

"We killed a lot of people," he says flatly. "It was an accident and we didn't intend it to happen and we thought we were defending ourselves and that doesn't actually matter, because they're dead."

"The children you mentioned surely did nothing of the kind?"

"Their sentence was on us and our bloodlines, for all the rest of time."

"We killed people."

"Your children did not, if they are any sort of child I have ever heard of. If my speech is failing me and by 'child' you mean some sort of toothy monster by all means correct me!"

"Well. In the absence of an objective and undoubtable source of context on the circumstances of your departure I can have few absolute opinions, but one of those I can have is that children ought not to be held responsible for the behavior of their parents."

"What a mess," she says, shaking her head.

"You don't say. My father knows the name of every person, on all sides, who has died since it started, and he says them to himself over and over, under his breath. I don't think it's healthy but on the other hand - blaming yourself for things is still a way of feeling like you're in control of them, you know?"

"Not a coping mechanism I have chosen to employ, but perhaps I have less to cope with."

"Right," he says, "what brings you here?"

"I am not sure. It is possible that the artifice which sends people between realms has broken, and that is why I am here, alone, instead of on Midgard, with my companion; it is also possible that my mother had a rare fit of cowardice and decided to have me killed in this oblique way under the pretense of sending me away while she decided what to do next."

"I don't think it very likely. If she wanted me dead it'd be more likely that I would, in fact, be dead, and would have been able to see this coming at the point of a spear. But it crossed my mind, because it is rather unheard of for the Bifrost to break. Perhaps some third thing I have not thought of occurred."

"Right. Well, it seems you should join us. We mostly know where not to step, and I can't really offer to share food but I can share suggestions on finding it. And you'll be much safer on the other side if you don't arrive alone."

"I can if necessary do without food. Not comfortably, but indefinitely. You think they'd attack a lone stranger?"

"There are... two different hostile groups on the other side. One certainly would; one probably wouldn't. And you can go without food indefinitely? How is that?" The only conceivable answer to that was "I'm not really incarnate", but she wasn't a Vala, she didn't act like one either -

"Unorthodox applications of magic. For that matter, I can do this for others as well, although I really cannot recommend it as an alternative to any sort of nourishment."

"Well, nourishment's not really what it's an alternative /to/. How many others?"

Shrug. "As many as I can touch - I don't know how quickly your people normally starve; I cannot improve them much beyond that with a healing spell."

"Slowly. We can go a few months without food, if needed. You could - you could keep everybody alive that way." Strangers she's never met - "would you?"

"...I have some misgivings about providing this service to one side of a conflict I know little about but I have no reason to actually want you and yours dead and no other pressing engagements, so."

"We're more than half noncombatants." He hesitates. "Though, truthfully, if you stopped them from starving they'd probably give us their extra food, so - I can promise to not benefit in any way from aid you give our civilians? I just don't know how I'd scale that."

"I would need reasons to dislike you that I do not currently have to make such a condition."

"Well. Thank you. Really, sincerely, I don't know if you know what it's like to watch people who trust you slowly starve to death, but - thank you. You should meet my father, he needs to know this right away - I mean, if you don't mind - it's just that there are people who actually might die today while we're figuring out logistics."

"By all means, introduce me."

Loki observes this but does not know the local mores on weapon handling and doesn't comment. "Hello. I'm Loki Odinsdottir of Asgard."

"Hello," he says. "Are we in Asgard's territory?"

"No. I am very lost for unclear reasons and cannot get home."

"I cannot improve on anyone's comfort much. And I can do it only as fast as I can touch them. But I have a healing spell which will put someone in a state of 'not starving' and 'not, at that moment, freezing' - even if they then resume starving and freezing in short order."

He swallows. "That could save quite a few lives. And you're - willing to assist us, in that manner?"

"Yes."

"Then I will ask my people if there are any among them who would like to try it, and we'll keep them under observation and see what happens." He nods to someone who is already scurrying off. "In the meantime, you can imagine I have many, many questions."

"I can imagine that," she agrees. "What is your first?"

"What are you?"

"An Asgardian."

He sighs. "All right. Asgardians - are you typical of them? Can all of them heal starvation or sickness with a touch, for example? How many of them are there? How would I recognize one, if I met them?

"...I am atypical. Most could not do that; the sorcerers all specialize differently and in things I know how to do I suspect I am the best of them. There are some hundreds of millions, and we are..." She investigates the assembled álfar or whatever they are. "Shorter than you on average, with round ears, but we vary in coloring and style considerably beyond that and might not be distinguishable from all other races easily on sight. Although you can tell us from Midgardians because we have no soul-animals following us around."

He blinks. "Hundreds of millions?"

"Why, how many are you?"

"There are six hundred thousand beings in the whole of creation, as far as I know."

"...Well. There are more than that in most other realms of my acquaintance. I know the Midgardians have a few hundred million themselves. The frost giants may be less populous, but it is harder to estimate."

"How does one get from Asgard to Midgard, or another realm known to you? Or make the reverse trip?"

"I was meant to appear on Midgard with a friend, not here. There is an item on Asgard, called the Bifrost, which can convey passengers between realms. Typically it does not send people astray."

"Are there events like this recorded in your history?" He hesitates. "How many Ages has your world seen? How old is the Bifrost?"

"I do not remember any tales of the Bifrost in particular causing this problem, which is why I entertained the possibility that someone misdirected it maliciously. But of course we have stories of lost travelers. The current version of the Bifrost is thirty thousand years old, approximately; I would need to look up the exact date and have no references on hand."

He nods slowly. "How would a person experience being healed by you? Does it alter the mind? Does it alter the soul? Does it grant you any kind of control over them, even temporarily?"

"...It does not alter the mind. It is, at least, not designed to alter the soul, although being no expert in souls I cannot guarantee that it doesn't; when I have healed Midgardians it did not seem to affect their soul-animals, but obviously you have no such things. And no."

She is either not lying, or lying extraordinarily well. Her thoughts are coalescing around her answers exactly the way they would be if she were telling the truth. "Do you have magic which can do any of those things?"

"I have illusions, which I suppose at a stretch could count. But no, I do not generally hold with mind control as a goal of the practice of sorcery and have accordingly invented none."

"Can we build a bifrost, or otherwise assist you, once we have more resources, in returning home?"

"I could probably construct something equivalent to a Bifrost eventually but it might well take hundreds or even thousands of years, and while I will miss my friend and my father and my sister I will not do so urgently and plainly enough for working on that to be my top priority in the next few decades, I expect, especially if in those decades none of them activate the Bifrost from their end to retrieve me of their own accord. I am uncertain whether local assistance could speed the attempt."

"Fair enough. We, ah, also have urgent priorities for the next hundred years, though I cannot imagine, one way or another, they won't be settled in a thousand. Your family can retrieve you at any time?"

"I don't know. It depends on why I am here in this unheard-of realm. I may be by some accident too far for the all-seeing to observe, in which case I should expect to be here until I construct my own way back; they may know exactly where I am and be squabbling about my fate; my mother may have deceived my sister and disposed of my friend; I have far too little information."

Raised eyebrows. "Is it appropriate for me to ask more about that?"

"My mother is currently very angry with me. Ostensibly I was to spend some five or ten years in Midgard accompanied by my friend, in comfortable temporary exile to give her space to think about how to deal with this emotion. Instead..." Gesture.

He smiles bitterly. "What happened to provoke her anger?"

"You know, I'm actually concerned you won't believe me. It sounds very ridiculous said aloud away from the culture of Asgard."

" My father abandoned me for a decade because my older brother threatened to kill me and he concluded that meant my brother needed him more."

"...My mother temporarily banished me and was openly considering doing so on a permanent basis because I healed my father when he was attacked by assassins."

He nods. "I - I can't imagine that, actually, but I can imagine the sort of political environment in which it could happen. Is your father all right? Did they catch the assassins?"

"My father is fine. My sister and I apprehended the assassins."

And her mother has appallingly bad judgment and no place having the power to banish people, but he can imagine how he'd feel to hear that said about his father. "Well. I am sure you are not feeling lucky to be here, but we are very lucky to have you, if you can heal starving people."

"Indeed. Where should I start?"

"You'll start by healing exactly one volunteer, and then we'll observe them overnight, even if there are other people dying in the meantime. I've never heard of anything like this and can't take chances."

"...If that is the way you think best. Although I am very much unsure what you think I need permission to touch someone in order to do which would be worse than death."

"I also don't know. Everything about you is entirely unprecedented. But some kind of magic that requires the participant to be willing, but then bends their will, or harms their soul, is not more unlikely to me than women materializing from Asgard with the power to heal the dying."

"I am absolutely sympathetic to a paranoid desire to retain one's will for oneself and as I said am not an expert on souls, so I suppose if these are your priorities I will abide by them."

"The Enemy was said to have the power to trap a soul, prevent it from returning to Valinor to be reembodied, twist it into something under his power. And the Enemy can wear a fair face when he pleases, though not such a thoroughly incarnate one, and if he knew we were here he'd just kill us all. I don't think you're the Enemy, but we'll walk carefully here."

"You said Midgardians have soul...animals? We are soul animals, I think. This form is chosen by the soul, willingly, and we have a fair bit of flexibility to remake it in our preferred image - we can generally heal very well, but after a few months without sustenance it's that much harder. When we die we used to just ...wander, bereft of a body that we could use to engage the physical world, and then the Valar found us and now they keep the dead in the Halls of Mandos, and judge us, and when we are found adequate they create for us another body so that we may take up our lives again."

"...Well, the judgment step is worrisome, but I will nonetheless accordingly fret slightly the less over the dying."

"One of the terms of our ...exile.... is that we will not be reembodied for many Ages, should we die, and never permitted to depart Valinor again if we ever are reborn to it. So we are quite eager to avoid that. But the anger of the Valar may be tempered by the Ages, while the evils done by the Enemy are irreversible as far as we know."

"Slightly, as I said. How long is an Age?"

"Four thousand years, six thousand? They are begun and ended by momentous events so there's no fixed length. Before Incarnates walked the world, when it was just the gods, there were Ages that lasted millions of years. Now things happen faster."

"I see. How long will it take to find my volunteer?"

"It sounds as if they're already on their way. Do you have a concern other than preferring not to needlessly let people suffer?"

"No."

"All right." He turns around. "Laurefindel, this is Loki. She is from another world and tells us she has healing powers. She is looking for a volunteer to demonstrate them. Loki, can you explain -"

"At a touch I can cast a spell to remove various accumulated damage. It will not make you feel nourished or warm but it will undo wasting, frostbite, that sort of thing."

The new arrival nods, then looks uncertainly at Nolofinwë, then nods again. "Please do that."

Loki holds out her hand.

He takes it.

And lo, he is healed.

They're all watching intently. Laurefindel's thoughts don't change, except in the sense that you're expect suddenly feeling significantly better would change them. HIs soul doesn't visibly change. He smiles. "Wow. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Findekáno stares at his father searchingly for a second, then picks up his things. "Loki, while they're ensuring that no harmful effects manifest later, would you like to head out ahead? We can talk more, now that the important thing is in motion, and it's probably better not to have you in close proximity to him while we're checking if anything goes wrong."

Shrug. "That suits me as well as traveling with the rest of the group, I suppose."

"Thank you," he says as they head out. "Really. And, uh, sorry about your mother. I can't be sorry you're here, but I wish it'd been for a more reasonable - do you want to talk about this?"

"I have no desperate need to unburden myself, but nor is the topic deeply sensitive at this stage in this setting. Ask whatever you like."

"Your mother might be trying to kill you?? Is there a chance she'll show up here, if that's what she intended and it failed? Is she competent? What the hell is wrong with her? What kind of person doesn't give you a glowing medal? Does she want your father dead?

"As far as I know she likes my father perfectly well. The trouble is that it is socially unacceptable on Asgard for women to learn magic, and by demonstrating the ability I revealed that I had been doing so in secret. If she tried to kill me in this way it is because she assumed I would sow some sort of chaos or destruction with magic she does not understand if she confronted me directly; so I do not much expect to be chased down here, at least not by her personally. She is... competent at some things. I do not actually think I could defeat her in combat, especially since she has her own, non-sorcery magic which is culturally different enough that it's all right for her."

"Socially unacceptable for women to learn magic." He shakes his head. "....how does one learn magic?"

"One normally does it in some unbearably tedious and not particularly effective manner that I was obviously never exposed to. I learned by touching a dangerous magical artifact and being imprinted with a sort of sorcerous alphabet with which I composed my own spells from the smallest parts."

"Can you teach it to others?"

"I haven't tried. I don't think it is impossible in principle, but I cannot imprint the sorcerous alphabet in anyone else's head and I fear the characters would be all but meaningless without that."

"Right, fair enough. It'll get dark in a few hours, so we shouldn't stay out for long, but if you weren't here I'd be scouting the ridge you can see on your left, we're going to try to hug that for a couple days."

"Yes. It falls in the sky and then sinks below the horizon, but it's come back every time so far. Usually about twelve hours later. We've been pushing on as quickly as possible while it's around - makes the cold more bearable."

"That is the moon, yes, and not some sort of oddly silver sun...?"

Neither of those words translate properly. He looks at her oddly. "It's - we don't know what it is. It's probably the Valar's latest effort to light the world. How is the world lit where you're from?"

"How do they stay up?"

"...That is not a meaningful question. 'Up' means 'away from one of these round objects' and 'down' means toward one. They stay down, by being spherical."

"If I hold a spherical object, and drop it, it'll fall. Down. Unless they're absurdly big, but then they'd take up the whole sky..."

"They're far away. I compressed this model so you could see all of it." She spreads it out to actual scale.

He stares at it silently for a long time. Then- "I wish you could have met my sister-in-law. She was an extraordinarily gifted mathematician and, even rarer, gifted at explaining mathematics, and she could probably have convinced me that that kind of world would hold itself together."

"It does, and quite well. It's a customary sort of arrangement for realms I'm acquainted with."

"Well, not this one. It was lit for a time by great globes on the edges, but the Enemy knocked them down; then there were two magical Trees, taller than mountains, that lit half the world and waxed and waned for the days and nights. But the Enemy killed them, too.Since then we've been managing by starlight, until the Valar got that working. What is the distinction between a Sun and a Moon?"

"A sun is fire and a moon is stone. And suns are much, much bigger and farther away."

"Then that's neither. How would we go about getting a Sun, if we need one?"

"...One does not normally get them. One comes to exist under one that has already been there for quite a while. It may be that you do not, in fact, need one, especially if most parts of your world are not this cold."

"No, thankfully. Where I grew up it was very warm. The air carried a lot of water, you could cook on a black stone that faced the Trees, you could sleep without a tent or blanket..."

"Then perhaps you are getting along fine in the absence of a sun, however odd it seems to me."

"When we had the Trees, yes. Now we need a Sun, or something similar, because the Trees are dead and most plants don't grow under these conditions, which makes it hard to feed a city. And the Enemy likes the dark."

"...Well. I cannot make a real sun but plants may like illusion light well enough."

"...I expect they would. There are specific kinds of light they care about, I'll ask someone who knows things about agriculture. It's encouraging to think we can grow things on the other shore. That might even resolve -" he falls silent.

"Resolve...?"

"I'm concerned that if I muck up too much in explaining the situation we're probably going to encounter when we arrive, you'll decide it's not right to help us."

"That makes you the best person in this whole bloody mess, do you realize that?"

"I'm familiar with the sensation."

"What exactly is the Enemy?"

"Melkor. He's one of the Powers. He murdered our grandfather, destroyed the lights, captures Elves to enslave and torture and breed with other beings into his own races. That's why we left Valinor, because the other Valar won't do anything about him and there are people in the Outer Lands, and they can't stand against him for long."

"That seems like a good reason to leave, if... not necessarily well thought out given your current combat readiness."

"Of course," sighs Loki.

"You say 'of course', but you have to understand - until Melkor murdered the King, no Elf had ever died by violence in Valinor. Until that fight, no Elf had ever killed another Elf. None of us had ever seen anyone die. We didn't - it was't even the sort of thing you think of as possible. It was unimaginable until it was already over."

"...I see. Violence is more common at home - it seemed fairly predictable that if someone wants to leave a place and the boats and the information about how to produce boats are being kept away from them by others they might eventually come to blows."

"My uncle was an incompetent diplomat. If he'd had the patience or the tact we'd eventually have found someone who would have been willing to explain how it's done." He shakes his head. "I'd like to believe it was inevitable, but it wasn't."

"Patience is difficult under pressure, and from the sound of things it would be quite reasonable to worry more over the lives of persons outside of Valinor than within it among its rulers' favored. If theft seemed faster..."

"And yet - the gods of the sea rose up in anger and drowned many of our host and many of the boats. The Valar Doomed us and our people to fail in every endeavor and meet our deaths on these shores. We committed mass murder on their shores! If you'd asked anyone how they'd react - honestly, it's astonishing they didn't kill us all on the spot. No, I don't think Fëanor was thinking that their deaths were worth it for the lives saved on the other side. I can't imagine even he'd be that ruthless, or that willing to provoke the Valar. I think he thought the owners of the boats wouldn't fight back."

"Ah."

"Anyway, fine for him to decide that he's willing to kill people for some larger plan. He didn't give the rest of us that choice. We just arrived on the scene to find our families being killed, and had to decide which side to jump in on -"

"Sorry. He's also the one who abandoned us here. A lot of people decided, after that, that it was all his fault, the Kinslaying. I don't think so. I hate him, and I resent what he started, and if he'd been wiser or more capable he could have avoided it, and he's utterly undeserving of the title of King. But I don't think it was all his fault. I could have, and should have, stopped my people from joining in."

"I can't help but think it may not have helped that this was previously a society of pacifists, however admirable a state that may otherwise be. Skilled combatants can more neatly handle a fight nonlethally than unskilled ones determined to continue until they cannot."

"That makes sense, actually. If we do end up fighting with my uncle, when we arrive, it's going to be very ugly."

"However, I am reluctant to attempt to train any of you in combat to address this problem."

"We're also going to need to learn in order to fight the Enemy. You have to agree that's worthwhile."

"It does sound like a pressing problem, but in that case I would equally offer training to other groups besides your own in some relatively balanced fashion. Beyond a general willingness to commit murder what skills does he wield?"

"I will take that under advisement. There must be some limit to his will-commanding or there would be no war to fight; what is known about where this power ends?"

"Yes, he's only done that with people he'd enslaved for years. And even then - some people, released from his fortress, go back to their lives, as much as that's possible. Some of them seem to, and then murder everyone in the town that night. And many people are of course never released at all. So it seems likely that he has very low reliability. It's mostly a source of concern because it means we can't trust our own most vulnerable people, and because it's the process by which he created the orcs."

"What is an orc?"

"If he's trying and hasn't just decided to enforce a curse on one of their common ancestors. Where do thinking experiencing beings come from, around here, then?"

"Eru Ilúvatar."

"Who is...?"

"The one who created thinking experiencing beings. He created the Valar, too, and set them the task of Creation. It's said that everything that happens is according to his plan, but I'm not sure what that means. He speaks only to the Valar, and infrequently."

"...I see."

"We should head back, it'll get dark. Where do thinking experiencing beings come from in your world?"

"I can light the way if that's the issue. The usual manner involves less intelligent creatures finding themselves in a position where only their cleverest children survive, for many, many generations; although any given race's particular origins may be too long lost to discern in detail."

"That sounds monstrous."

"...On whose part?"

"Having children in an environment where only the cleverest will survive."

"Do most animals live and have as many children as they might like, here?"

"Yes, of course. It wouldn't be a very good paradise otherwise, would it? There's hunting, of course, but you wouldn't hunt children."

"Have you no predatory animals? Those often go for the vulnerable, including the juveniles. Diseases? There are no animals here, so they cannot be invulnerable to the weather in general, but perhaps in other places yours is mild and harmless? If they breed as they like how do they not run out of food, whatever it is the animals here eat? In most cases animals do well by being quick or good at collecting food or good at shrugging off illness - in some what they need is to be smart. If they need it badly enough, long enough, well, perhaps you have observed that people tend to take after their parents in some respects. Perhaps you breed horses, or something, picking the favorites to have more foals than the others, and have noticed this in them too."

"Smart animals won't have children if there are going to be too many for the land to support, just as you or I would. Less smart animals -" he laughs - "there's someone I'd ask, but I can't anymore. We do breed horses. You could make them more smart by breeding, but I don't think you could give them a soul that way."

"Well, it may be different here. There are no insects bright enough to restrain themselves that I know of. Other, more complicated animals might not breed - or, more likely, their attempts might fail for simple biological reasons - if they themselves are starving, to hope to live to a more abundant year without spending themselves on a litter of offspring. But if they're doing well and it's their neighbors who are hungry they will reproduce regardless. People will do this too, people of several kinds."

Findekáno shakes his head violently. "To bear children into troubled times is considered a great injustice to them. Into a world where other children are starving - you'd have to be more selfish than Fëanor."

"Which is very civilized of you, but not all peoples think that way. Too, some of them have not invented the ability to decouple the having of children from the traditional method of doing so and cannot bear to be without the latter. ...Possibly that is also different here, I wouldn't know."

Findekáno looks extremely confused. "Yes, I think so, because I'm not sure what you're talking about."

"Elven...parents?"

"Yes, doing what?"

"Trying to make a child. It's a lot of magical and emotional effort, it's not as if you could do it halfheartedly."

"Really? How does everyone else do it?"

"Well, you have not explained the mechanics underlying the emotional and magical effort, so I don't know if I need to explain the entire procedure or just assure you that it's entirely physical for the rest of us..."

"No, I imagine - your thoughts seem about right, though I'm not married and don't know for sure. But just - you do that, and sometimes a child results? By accident? Oops?"

"Yes. Absent the aforementioned inventions, that is; Asgardians have them, Midgardians have only low-reliability options and I have witnessed couples avoiding each other for fear they will have a fourteenth mouth to feed. By accident. Oops."

"Oh. Wow. Does the inventor of the Asgardian solution not desire to teach it? Worlds full of people unwillingly having children...

"Midgard does not know except as stories they take to be fiction about Asgard at all, let alone how to manufacture our conveniences. It is among the things I'd been hoping to change if I'd inherited the throne one day. I would have loved to go to Midgard with an entire library of knowledge -" She shakes her head.

"You're in line to rule Asgard?"

"Well. Not very, as you can tell from the whole, socially unacceptable, banished, thing. My sister is not only older but has always been more in line with Mother's preferences. But I had some hope. And my sister as queen might have listened to me even if I held no formal power."

"Then she'd be a much better ruler than certain people."

"...I am not sure she has our mother's ability to think long-term. Which Odin has, albeit not according to the values I would choose. But she is not the worst princess Asgard could have, no."

"It's a problem I've been thinking about a great deal, lately. What to do if your nation is ruled by reckless and dangerous and unqualified people."

Nod.

"How do they command this loyalty?"

"His father - Finwë, my grandfather - was our King for the great journey in Valinor. He ruled us for more than four thousand years. He was adored by everyone. He was a good man, great King, bad father. And he favored Fëanor."

"Why?"

"...Asgardians do not live forever even absent violence, but for thousands of years. It is customary to expect a marriage to last someone's lifetime, but sometimes they do not, even if no one involved has died."

"Sometimes couples live separately. It's becoming involved with someone else which is unprecedented. And we've learned. No one will ever do it again. Half-siblings are - not a good addition to any volatile political situation."

"This form of monogamy is very extreme in comparison to even the ideal as understood to my people. Although perhaps you're eliding over the behavior of the unmarried."

"Most people marry young. The royal family mostly hasn't, because you don't marry during troubled times and it's been a rocky century. And a century ago most of us weren't yet of age."

So I'm going to be looking at a rather sexless few centuries, aren't I, Loki doesn't say. "I see."

"We should head back even if you can magically light things, my father will worry."

"Very well."

"What will happen if you teach Fëanor to fight is that he'll excel, because he's very bright, and then best case scenario he'll go challenge Melkor to a duel and lose and worst case scenario he'll challenge Father to a duel and win."

"Is Melkor reputed to be unbeatable...?"

"He's a Vala. We're not going to defeat him in single combat."

"But he may be defeated en masse?"

"Well, we don't actually know. It might be that the most we can do is destroy his physical form while he's invested in it, which will mean he takes a few thousand years to recover his power. But that's a few thousand years of peace, and by then maybe we'll know more."

Nod.

"Or maybe we can't even do that, but we can keep him besieged in his fortress, keep the rest of the world safe."

Nod, nod.

"Or maybe we'll just die. Not trying wasn't acceptable to me."

"Of course not."

"If there's a means to defeat him permanently, Fëanor'd be the one to come up with it. That's the primary disadvantage, as I see it, to challenging him as soon as we see him."

"You don't have anyone innovative and talented about who isn't also... Fëanor?"

"One of his sons. And his grandson."

"...who are irretrievably loyal to Fëanor and cannot be convinced otherwise?"

"The truth is, everyone with any talent in the design and engineering of magic objects studied under Fëanor, because he's by far the best in the field, formalized most of its assumptions, and teaches it quite capably. And even studying under him, it takes centuries to get any good. So, yes, anyone with any talent spent centuries studying under Fëanor and is over there with him already."

"What a pity that he is himself, then."

Fervently: "Yes."

"There is a lot of pity to be handed around, of course. I am no particularly great diplomat myself or I might entertain hope of talking him down from an - outsider perspective he may never have encountered before."

"You have the healing magic. That counts for...quite a lot of diplomatic skill." Findekáno hesitates. "If you do go over there - I'd be very curious how they react to learning we're alive. There are a few people I don't think will be able to look me in the eye, which would be satisfying except that we're not going to come that close unless we're killing each other."

"How would you advise me to substitute healing magic for tact and patience?"

"Sounds like a viable plan."

"Uh huh. I should shovel snow or something. It's been - I'm very very grateful for everything you can do for us." That wasn't particularly coherent. He's feeling guilty and miserable and alone and the particular loathing that feels like the back of your mouth swelling closed and hopefully she'll forgive it next moonrise. Or not. If she's going to be doing that it's probably better if he avoids her.

"...All right."

There's a woman around Loki's height within earshot of the two of them; at that she waves Loki over. "So you're our miracle worker?"

"If that's what you want to call it."

"Irissë. I'm Findekáno's sister. He could have introduced us - what, did you ask which Feanorian to make friends with or something?"

"He suggested one of his own accord but it may have had the same effect."

"You can reliably cheer him up by talking about in which order you'd kill them. We're not going to. Somehow we're going to have to forgive them for something they'll never apologize for, because otherwise we lose the war. But it's fun to think about."

"Fantasizing about death is not my form of entertainment, but I am accustomed to being unusual."

"I promise you, there's a number of years spent watching everyone you love slowly starved to death, or quickly crushed to death, by someone you once trusted after which you'd start to find it appealing. Then again, you can save people. Maybe that changes it."

"Maybe it does."

"We're reorganizing the line - usually we have everyone in bad shape in patches between some people who are holding on, so there's people to make a rescue effort if a disaster happens. About half the deaths are a disaster, half the time someone's heart just stops. Now we're putting everyone in bad shape in the same area, so you can go through faster. Does it tire you out or anything?"

"No. I thought I was supposed to wait longer to see if the volunteer suddenly became mind-slaved or something?"

"Moving this many people takes some time, they won't let you near the host yet but I assume Dad started organizing this because he thinks you're legitimate. I think you're legitimate. If you were mind controlling Findekáno he wouldn't be -" she shakes her head. "He's damn good at this. He's saved hundreds of people, he barely sleeps, he barely eats, we would never have made it without him. Sometimes he even laughs. But I'm coping a hell of a lot better than him and I don't know why."

"I couldn't say."

"Well, mine is smaller, but there's some resemblance."

"Ours is shrinking quickly."

Nod.

"Do you need a place to rest? Rather deficient hospitality, with no food to offer, but warm tents buried in a snowdrift we can do."

"That would be more comfortable than sleeping in the open to be snowed on -" all night? is this even a day now with the silver thing? - "for hours. Thank you."

"Sure thing. My tent, this way. I share it with my aunt, but she's out helping reorganize people. Hey! Finno!" She doesn't noticeably raise her voice. "Can you help everyone who's still climbing the pass a mile back? The reorganization slowed that down, now we've got people waiting." She raises an eyebrow at Loki. "That's why I was looking for the two of you, actually. It's usually better to give him a minute when it seems like he might need it, because he'll never give himself one."

Nod. Loki follows Irissë.

Irissë's tent is, indeed, built into a snowdrift. "Insulation," she says. "It actually sometimes gets too warm in here. We're probably about the same size, too, if you need warmer clothes - not that I have much. We grew up near the Trees, we had practically no functional clothing. You're quiet. Everything okay?"

"I'm all right, I just don't have many comments on the immediate situation. I think I may have a higher cold tolerance than you; I've been as comfortable as could be expected as-is."

"Oh, that's not your magic? You're definitely more comfortable in this weather than me. Can you also heal injuries sustained in combat?"

"Much better than I can starvation and cold, yes. And I have no spells for comfort in the cold at all or I would certainly have offered to share those likewise."

"You're very generous. The Valar have healing powers, but there was too much to heal, they were doing it constantly, or, if they weren't, were aware of whatever they'd failed to heal. So they built a new continent, where nothing suffered, and sealed themselves off there."

"It is lost on me how this alleviates the problem of having failed to heal some things."

"I don't think they thought the problem was having failed to heal things, I think they thought the problem was being surrounded by reminders of that. Like, I'm sure you'd prefer to be in your intended destination, rather than here healing strangers, yes?"

"I would probably have healed strangers there too," Loki remarks. "But I would have had my friend along and would not have been wondering if there was an attempt on my life."

"There'd have been a much easier place to send you not far from here if someone wanted a certain and painful death."

"Well, that makes it more likely that this was some kind of mistake or poorly executed third party sabotage, then," says Loki.

"Who'd likeliest be sabotaging you?"

"No one seems an obvious candidate, but any number of people saw the circumstance preceding my banishment and might have decided it would be better if I disappeared."

"That was?"

"I healed my father of a mortal wound when assassins attacked him in public."

"Congratulations. And you think whoever sent the assassins is after you too?"

"No. I think everyone saw a princess doing magic and is scandalized that I could ever have picked up such a skill. Although your idea is also plausible."

"The royal family isn't supposed to do magic? But how will people respect you, if you don't study the skills they have?"

"Women are not supposed to do magic. My father does it sometimes."

Irissë blinks. "That's - an odd rule. Why? Does? And people'd kill you over it?"

"There's no reason, it's just considered unfeminine. I didn't think anyone would kill me over it, but it crossed my mind when instead of the nice country of Midgardians I expected I wound up in a frozen wasteland."

"Oh, like how men aren't really supposed to study math? I'd say 'we don't murder people over that sort of thing' but I guess that's not even true anymore."

"...Math is not considered the province of either gender in Asgard, but I suppose otherwise similarly."

"The King has fifteen grandsons and only the two granddaughters. People really wanted us to show some aptitude, but Artanis can't stand being bad at things and I can't stand being still."

"Asgardian women are generally expected to be, or at least esteemed highest if we are, warriors. And royalty are particularly expected to exemplify the cultural ideal, so where some anonymous citizen might instead design furniture or be a musician or an engineer, my sister and I were expected to learn to fight. My sister is very well suited to this, a prodigy. I'm all right but I wanted magic. And no one would let me have it."

"It's not entirely warrior. The men are not supposed to be warriors, for instance. My friend who I've mentioned defies this convention and at somewhat less cost to his acceptability than I suffer, but it's unusual. And we have other hobbies between practicing fighting and killing roving monsters and keeping in good condition."

"That sounds stupid and arbitrary, but on the other hand, if we had that rule about men none of this would have happened. So."

"Ha. It sounded like you had that rule for everybody and it was men who instigated defiance of it."

"Did Findekáno tell you Fëanor held a sword to Dad's throat in front of the King and the King said, and did, absolutely nothing?"

"That particular anecdote did not come up. ...If my sister had a sadistic bent I could have seen it happening with our mother. Our mother was not a limiting factor on sibling rivalry by any stretch of the imagination."

"Sounds familiar. Was your sister the favorite, too?"

"Very much so. When I was small it looked like I was never going to be able to hold a blade without getting myself killed. I tripped walking down a corridor, let alone trying to perform any sort of combat maneuver. Things improved when I secretly invented myself a spell for grace and pretended to grow out of it, but Thor was still better, and more - temperamentally similar to Odin."

"My father's a better King in every conceivable sense: more principled, more cautious, more just, less paranoid. Finwë couldn't see it even when it was literally dancing in front of his eyes. The Valar stepped in to punish Fëanor for that one, and Finwë held a massive protest and moved in with Fëanor to show solidarity."

"Our succession was never formally decided either way. I had only a slim chance, because Thor is not a political disaster nor even strictly a worse option than I - she has people skills I don't, at least when interacting with the sort of people who you must exert skills at to rule in Asgard. I'm just smarter and would take to the other details of statecraft better. But I did think it was a chance, at least if I could keep hold of my secret."

"And now that's known, so you probably can't. That sucks. I'm sorry. Uh, were you set on ruling Asgard?"

"It is the only place of which I am a princess. Why?"

"There are very few people in the Outer Lands. There might be none at all, if we don't get there in time. If we win the war, we were sort of thinking - one way to do it, less stupid than the current system, would be to let anyone who pleased build a kingdom, and then the people who were good at it would attract a following. All those wide-open lands to reclaim from the orcs, or rebuild from rubble. If you're stuck here for a while you could have a go at it. Maybe show Asgard you have the talent."

"...I am not sure Asgard will be impressed in the correct way by a sorceress-queen but it is not an unappealing option."

Irissë sighs and sits down. "What do you think you'll miss?"

"My friend, my sister, my father. I'm not sure what you eat when you have food, here, but I'm sure it's not exactly what I'm accustomed to. The libraries. I will need to write very energetically as soon as I have paper to be sure I remember as much as I can, my own mind being my only reference."

"They took our books. We had as many as we could carry with us, and Fëanor said it'd be safer to load them on the boats. When he reached the other shore he set the boats on fire. I don't think he'd have burned the books. That would be unlike him."

"Why did he set the boats on fire, books aboard or no?"

"I have been painted quite the picture. You could see the fire all the way from across the sea?"

"We could see the boats the whole journey. It was a calm sea. Couldn't quite see them disembarking, not at that distance."

"A hundred, hundred fifty miles? I don't think I could swim that, but the Teleri - the Elves who live on the coast - possibly could. It's the closest the two continents get."

"I might be able to swim it but definitely couldn't see that far. Not boat-sized things, at any rate."

"Really? That's interesting. Your planet is much brighter, right? I wonder if that's related."

"Yes, there's a lot of light during the daytime, but even in full daylight I wouldn't be able to see that far."

"No, I mean, Eru had to design us to function by the light of the stars alone. That's probably why we have better eyes."

"Perhaps. Well, that and Asgardians were not designed for anything in particular. You may have all sorts of convenient advantages like that which make more sense for your origins than ours."

"For example, we can't have children by accident, which is incidentally horrifying, we come back if we die, we can design our form to some degree - yeah, it does seem sort of like you were less planned out. No offense."

"None taken."

"Do the Asgardian warriors take down Powers, much? Because it'd be nice to know how that's done."

"Powers being?"

"The Ainur, we call them, the Valar and the lesser beings of the same type, everyone who's entirely spirit except if inclined to adopt a physical form, as old as the universe, that sort of thing."

"I've never personally faced off with anything of that genre. I'm sure it's been done but I can't look up any histories from here."

"It is potentially hazardous to give a captive tools and supplies."

"...right. Do you have any solutions on that front, other than 'ignore the fuck out of them', which is probably what we're going to end up doing if we can survive without them, or 'meekly beg them to let us join again', which - well, you haven't met my other brother Turvo yet, but his wife died on the way here and I am quite sure he'll choose to die rather than make nice with the people who did this..."

"Findekáno seems to think that if I operate through Maitimo I can convert healing magic into diplomacy. Whether it will be enough I don't know. If someone wants to die such as dying is for elves, and take their chances with the Valar's questionable judgment, and see their loved ones again that way, well. I have no grounds to try to interfere."

"He suggested that? Wow. Good for him. Yeah, it's worth a shot."

"He didn't seem thrilled with the prospect but I suspect almost no one is going to wind up thrilled with any result."

"Fëanor's getting everything he wants."

"I hope he has not considered the events thus far ideal."

"He was pretty broken up over the murder of his father."

"So, he is not getting everything he wants, because if his father reappears again it will be in Valinor, where Fëanor will not be able to interact with him."

"That's not compromise, though, because it's nothing to do with us." She shakes her head. "It's a good idea. It's the best one anyone has. I'm just bitter."

Nod.

"And sometimes I think, you know, if people'd stood up to him earlier, instead of always taking the higher ground, maybe he wouldn't be like this in the first place."

"That's possible. Of course, if we're talking about the 'first place' I may start opining on the practices of the Valar. Or their creator."

"We're not making them sound very good, are we? They're ...they don't know how to be kind, but they want good things for us. Everyone you talk to is just reeling from the Doom, it doesn't give you a particularly nuanced perspective."

"Beings as powerful as they are made out to be should not require much nuance to sound good."

"You might have high standards for goodness." She turns her ear. "That's Father, I should probably go talk to him. Do you need anything? Uh, anything we actually have a chance at providing?"

"I'm fine."

It's Findekáno who comes to find her in the tent, a few hours later. "Loki?"

"Yes?"

"Everyone's satisfied that being healed by you just results in being healed by you and doesn't seem to have discernible other effects. So they're sufficiently unlikely we can't let people die over them. So we'd be grateful for your help, if you're ready."

"Certainly." And up she gets and she follows him to where her patients are assembled.

"Right. We weren't sure if you need skin contact, but everyone said you can touch their faces. Don't touch hair, it's considered highly sexual. I'm going to be supervising. I hope that's all right."

Well, Loki is not a mindreader. She does not know that he is thinking anything of the kind. Noseboopnoseboopnoseboopnoseboopnoseboop.

"Good morning. If it can be called that."

He blinks. "It occurs to me that we shouldn't even find the same word familiar for that; I used to wake when Laurelin the golden tree waned and Telperion the silver tree waxed and their light mingled, but there's no reason your people would have a word for that time of day."

"We call it morning when the part of the planet we are on begins to turn toward the sun. Also, I am using translation magic."

"It's not constantly turning? And that's - impressive. I know some people who'd be very excited. Used to know some people." He sighs. "We have more people for you to take a look at, if that's all right."

"It is constantly turning but it takes a day to go all the way around. And yes, of course." Up she gets, out she goes, to boop noses.

"Scouts think we might be close. Past the ridge you can actually head south, and while it looks just as ugly one assumes that as we head south it'll get less so."

"You're the ones who presumably have seen maps or heard descriptions, so I will take that as encouraging."