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[kingsdaughter]

[Sigrid is looking fairly haggard and pale. Behind her is the rugged green wilderness surrounding the Station, though the Station itself is not in sight.]

I'm in the middle of nowhere at all and I've got a bad leg. I couldn't find my locket and I had to ask a thrush to find it for me. A thrush. I'm talking to thrushes and they answer me. Anyway I need help. The thrush said he'd go and find someone, but I don't know who he meant. Does anyone know if thrushes are wise birds or silly birds? If he brings back a bear or something, I've got to hide now.

Comments

[bythewaves]

Then what name would you have me call you by milady?

[ he flinches visibly at that ]

I have done far too much to ever be good.

[kingsdaughter]

Sigrid, and I'm not a lady either. Whatever you've done isn't important so long as you're not doing it anymore, probably. Elves can get very silly about good and bad and such things, if you ask me. Everyone else is just trying to get by and doesn't care nearly as much as you about whatever crimes you've done. And I promise you I've known worse folk than you, and lived with 'em every day of my life. If I can do that with them, then I can do it with you and find it a lot more pleasant.

[bythewaves]

You are lady enough for me. Mother said to us once that all girls were ladies, and ought to be treated so.

[ A soft bitter sound that might almost be a laugh ] Oh Sigrid, you know not of what you speak. There are few so reviled as the Feanorionnath, and rightly so. What we did... cannot be excused, nor forgiven. Rightly are we called Kinslayers, Sigrid - three times we struck out against our own people, and left only blood in our wake.

[kingsdaughter]

Men do that all the time. If you've only done it three times, that isn't so bad.

[bythewaves]

Perhaps, and perhaps not. But my own conscience damns me, Sigrid - the amount of blood on my hands is not small.

[kingsdaughter]

...Why are you arguing with me to make me think you're horrible? I don't want to hate you, you know. I don't even know your name.

[bythewaves]

"You should" he whispers, eyes sliding shut in despair. You keep talking to them, Makalaure - you really should stop observes Caranthir's ghost darkly. "It would be safer if all hated us, and yet I cannot bring myself to shut myself off from the world."

Looking at her again, despite the lack of lines on his face and or frost in his hair, he looks horribly, horribly old. "Maglor I am, Sigrid. And you may ask Thranduil what the Elvenking thinks of the Feanorionnath."

[kingsdaughter]

"...Well, Maglor, I think for someone who's done so much bad, you sure like to feel sorry for yourself. And I'm not going to ask him because I couldn't say that word in a hundred years of practicing it."

One day she will know when to be impressed. Today is not that day.

[bythewaves]

That gets a small glimmer of amusement. "Do not let my Father hear you say that, or you may find yourself saddled with language lessons. But you may ask Thranduil for tales of Maglor and his family, and find plenty to drown your dreams in the madness of our people."

[kingsdaughter]

The amusement angers her even more. He thinks she's a joke.

"Oh, because I haven't anything to have nightmares of if I've not heard of you? Or is it you high folk have problems so much worse than anyone else's?" She's angry, so angry she can barely breathe. A tear gleams in one eye. "Well when winter comes proper and mothers on the Lake are giving their babies laudanum so they can die peaceably instead of starving to death, they can all take comfort to know you've got it so much worse than they."

She snaps the locket shut.

[bythewaves]

So sensitive murmurs Caranthir's ghost, chuckling low and dangerous. Like me, hm?

"Perhaps a little." Maglor answers the air, tired and old. "Better her angry and wary than wanting to comfort and being drawn into our war."

It will get her into trouble. Seeing enemies where there are none observes Curufin darklyAs if we did not know what it was to starve

"And that is the Elvenking's problem, not mine."

Lifting his eyes to the stars (for he is outside and has been, since Thranduil arrived) he lifts that golden voice in song, and perhaps Sigrid might hear it, as Thranduil brings her to safety. A voice like the crack of winter, the whisper of ice and grief that kills warriors as well as civilians, without the strong walls to keep out the cold, frost that kills crops that cannot be harvested, burnt by dragon's fire, and blood, blood blood on the sands, on the streets, in the halls, staining the ocean red, Elf and Men and children all alike on the streets of Sirion.