50,000 words. Achievement unlocked! - Philip

Days passed unremarkably. The Iluvátar was still in orbit, its plan to depart having been delayed by a problem with the LaMP stations, and Varda was at a loose end; with the Iluvátar's presence synchronising all of Arda's satellites, there was little for Geosat to do beyond housekeeping. She had begun to occupy herself by going through Melkor's recent requisition orders; being the Deputy Commander afforded her certain privileges. Her dream of some nights previous had convinced her Melkor was up to something, even if she couldn't think what; and even if Nienna categorically disagreed.

I told you, you can't just start having visions, she'd said with more than a hint of annoyance the morning after Varda's frantic call, having endured a long and detailed account of their dinner with Melkor and Varda's subsequent nightmare. The fire represents disorder and the dragon your fear of it. And Melkor, in armour, is a fatalistic personification of strife. Do you want my advice as a professional? Relax more.

"Relax more," Varda muttered to herself, scowling as she scratched a deep, hard line in her mahogany desk with a pair of compasses. "I've had fuck all to do for weeks."

"Ah…Commander Varda?" came a tremulous voice from the doorway. Varda sighed silently.

"Come in, Ilmarë," she said with a note of impatience. A mousy-haired young woman with thick-rimmed glasses skittered into the room, shoulders hunched and clutching a tablet to her chest like it was a precious family heirloom. Darling Ilmarë, Varda thought tiredly. A wonderful technician, but so bad with people.

"You have an urgent call, Ma'am," she said, eyes darting around the room as though they were afraid to meet another person's. "It's diverting to my…" she trailed off, waving the tablet to prevent herself having to talk any more in the presence of another.

"Very well," Varda said, taking the lock off her workstation. A beat passed between them, and Ilmarë remained, bobbing on the balls of her feet, staring at nothing in particular. "You're dismissed," Varda reminded her, and the technician practically ran backwards out of the room. The best and the brightest, Varda thought to herself with a groan, clipping her communicator to her ear. "Varda," she spoke into it, immediately accepting the call.

"Commander Varda, Ma'am. It's Lieutenant Nessa. Can we talk?"

"Of course," Varda replied, "What's the problem?"

"I meant…in person," Nessa replied. Varda paused. The lieutenant sounded out of sorts; almost afraid.

"Of course," Varda replied softly. To question her further at this point, she could tell, would be pointless. "Where?"

They met in the park which comprised the West Gardens of the Royal Palace, taking a seat together on a bench beside the pond. A few pleasantries gave way to uncomfortable silence as both watched pelicans bathe in the cool, clear water.

"Are we in a spy film?" Varda muttered. Tension broken, Nessa snorted.

"I just wanted to make sure we weren't overheard," she replied. The smile which almost always adorned her freckled, youthful face faltered and failed. Fear clung to her; Varda could feel it. It was hollowing her out.

"What's wrong, Nessa?" she asked. Nessa scanned the horizon before pulling her tablet from her hip.

"I've been working on something; a miniature drone camera. It has the resolution of our best surveillance equipment on a body the size of the palm of your hand, and I was taking it out for a test run a couple of days ago, and…" She paused before tapping the screen, playing the footage paused on it.

The North quarter of the city stretched out beneath the camera's eye as it bobbed up and down, like a buoy on a calm sea. Ormal and Illuin's lights were mingling in the way they did each dusk, creating an opalescent aurora in the clouds which cast long, snaking shadows across the white marble.

"Wow," Varda breathed "The picture quality, the stability, that…that is incredible, Nessa, congratulations. You could make First Lieutenant for thi-"

"Watch," Nessa interrupted her sternly. Before Varda could even frown, a dark blur pierced the churning clouds and hurtled towards ground at huge speed, twisting as it fell. Within a second it had disappeared behind a building and Varda flinched in expectation of the inevitable explosion – but it never came.

"What was that?" she gasped.

"A shuttle," Nessa replied, rewinding the footage and zooming in on the object. In slow-motion, the unmistakable outline of one of the Iluvatar's shuttles appeared plain as day against the coruscating clouds.

"A shuttle?" Varda repeated, incredulous. "A shuttle crashed in the city and we didn't notice?"

Nessa held her gaze and directed her to keep watching. Varda's brow furrowed in confusion, and then rose in surprise as the shuttle shot upwards at speeds she had thought would have been impossible, before disappearing once more into the clouds. The footage cut to black, leaving Varda gaping at a blank screen.

"It looks like it landed on the northern edge of the city. Everything there is empty; it won't be occupied until the Iluvátar ships out. And that's a military-style drop," Nessa explained into the silence. "Fast in, fast out. Takes a lot of experience piloting a shuttle to pull that off, too. Military experience," she intoned darkly.

"How'd you know that?" Varda asked, beginning to find her tongue again. Nessa smiled sadly.

"Knocking around with Tulkas for so long," she chuckled. "He's fond of his old war stories. More importantly," she continued, her voice lowering even further, "I looked through our records to see what was being delivered, and why they were so far from the usual landing sites."

"And?"

Nessa sighed. "There isn't one. We have no record of this shuttle ever coming here. I even checked the Iluvatar's records to make sure, but they don't have one either." Silence fell like a stone as Varda appreciated the enormity of this information.

"I-I don't understand," Varda hesitated. "There'd be a record in the satellite logs. Every time something passes through the thermosphere, the satellites detect it and send me a report. I don't recall receiving any report at the time of this…" Varda sighed heavily. "I don't mean to correct you, Lieutenant, but it's just not poss-" Varda stopped, the weight of her own words hitting her. It's not possible – exactly as Nienna had said to her. If that's so, Varda thought to herself, we'd better start believing in impossible things. "Or maybe it is," she conceded.

"There's more," Nessa said, swiping her finger across the screen to bring up a new feed. "This is one of my northernmost cameras, facing north along the Ring Road. Everything north of it is uninhabited. Watch."

Varda watched as people milled to and fro along the white-paved street, going about their daily business, until suddenly – had she blinked, she'd have missed it – a tall, slender figure appeared from around the side of a building and blended seamlessly into the crowd. She jabbed a finger to the screen to pause it and circled it anticlockwise to rewind the recording. The pit of her stomach clenched as the mysterious figure's face became fully visible.

"Mairon," she said, lip curling in disgust as she watched him infiltrate the crowd effortlessly, like an alligator sliding into the water.

"He wasn't alone," Nessa continued, tapping the screen twice. The feed split into four smaller screens, each showing a different view. One by one, Varda saw crewmen exit empty side streets and join the throng of people, each with darting eyes scanning the crowd. Her chest swelled with indignation. What were they up to?

"I know he works for Commander Melkor," Nessa said softly. "That's why I brought this to you. I don't trust…" she trailed off, clamping her mouth shut.

"You don't trust Commander Manwë not to be biased in favour of his brother?" Varda finished for her. Nessa averted her gaze, abashed. "You're right," she reassured her. "He would be." Varda sighed and handed the tablet back to its owner. "Do nothing," she ordered her. "Tell no-one. Keep this entirely between us." Nessa's mouth open and closed dumbly, trying to form a question she couldn't quite bring herself to ask. "Mairon's a lickspittle," Varda explained. "He'd never be so bold as to do something as blatantly suspicious as this, unless Melkor was ordering him to. If we wait, and see what he does next-"

"Then we've got him," Nessa finished Varda's thought for her.

"He'll lead us right back to his boss," Varda confirmed.

Nessa released a breath she'd been holding for what felt like hours and nodded, giggling nervously. "Yes, Commander," she said, standing and saluting.

"We'll talk again soon," Varda said, returning the salute, "and keep your eyes open."

"I will, Commander," Nessa said, walking away. "All of them!"

"Long nights have I spent," Irmo said, holding his hand up to the light and examining it, "wondering which me is the true me; is it my soul, which sleeps, or my mind, which wakes? Am I truly alive, or just dormant? Is this just the projected consciousness of an unconscious body, or have I – by my very being – transcended humanity, and become something approaching the divine?" He absent-mindedly stroked a scalpel down the back of his hand, watching as the minute hairs flattened and sprung back under the metal.

"Were I to cut myself," he murmured, "I should bleed, but not blood. I would feel pain, but I would not be hurt. Are we even human anymore?"

Nienna coughed nervously. "I only asked if it hurts when you go in."

Irmo blinked and returned to the land of the living. "Oh, no, not at all. It just feels a bit…strange." He returned to his seat and steepled his fingers. "You're not having second thoughts, are you?"

"No," Nienna blurted, flashing a toothy smile. "Just…curious."

Irmo and Estë's practice was to the far east of the city, overlooking the Great Sea. It was the only building in Almaren to have been designed to the exact specifications of its inhabitants, with the doctors having insisted that their spiritual beliefs be reflected in the appearance of their home and workplace. As such, the ubiquitous white marble was covered in vines and other climbing plants which stretched from the foundations up, snaking up the spire to the heavens and flowing down the eastern façade into the sea like thirsty roots.

Inside, too, flowers blossomed and leaves stretched out towards the light as stalks sprouted upwards from floorboards or crept along walls. The trickle of running water was never far away, as tiny streams coursed along grooves to join the cascade which fell down to the bottom floor, gathering in a great pool where the basement would have been, draining out to the sea.

"Very curious," Nienna muttered.

"Well, I'm happy to reassure you all the same: stasis is completely and utterly safe. Estë and I insisted on going in first, that's how sure we were of its safety – and we were right!" Irmo said. Nienna smiled diplomatically; there'd been a fair amount of hair-pulling over the thought that the two best doctors left of Ain might pointlessly kill themselves at the same time, but Irmo and Estë had remained blissfully unheeding to it all.

"It's more my…abilities," Nienna explained, "that I'm worried about. How familiar are you with the Touch?"

"Estë is just about the leader in the field," Irmo said, with a touch of pride, "but I'm familiar enough with it. And again, you don't need to worry; what we call the 'Touch' is just another form of sensory experience, like seeing, hearing, and so forth. I can see and hear you just fine, despite the organs we commonly associate with doing so being miles beneath ground," he continued, breaking into a wide smile. "Every sensation we have, even pain, is registered in the brain, and not the part of the body we usually associate with it. The avatar is, at its most simple, a remote beacon, receiving information and transmitting it to the brain, and acting on impulses from it."

Nienna nodded slowly, rubbing her head. Just the thought of her presence being artificial gave her a headache. "It's best not to think about these things, however," Irmo said quietly. "The potential for an existential crisis is quite high."

"Quite," Nienna concurred. "Shall we get this over with?"

"I thought you'd never ask!" Irmo exclaimed, leaping to his feet and beckoning Nienna to the elevator behind his desk. "It's a rather long journey, I'm afraid, so I hope you're not claustrophobic," he said as he pressed his palm to the reader by the door and ushered her inside. "Especially as you're probably going to spend the next few decades buried alive a mile underground," he added nonchalantly as the doors slammed shut.

The lift plummeted downwards at such a speed Nienna nearly lost her footing. "Decades?" she asked. "Will looking for a reversal to our sterility take that long?"

"Oh, yes," Irmo replied sadly. "It's a fiendishly difficult problem. Something about the Blight affected us on a genetic level, permanently altering the base code which – for as long as we've known, anyway – connects all Ainur. All of us have our quirks of DNA, of course, it's what makes me tall and you short, you dark-skinned and me light-skinned, but there was a basic 'template' that every single Ainur shared; it's what separated us from the animals. Ever since the Blight, however…" he trailed off, shaking his head. "The sequence keeps changing. It's never the same from one person to the next. In some it can be just a single base pair arranged the wrong way, in others it's whole reams of genetic data gone awry. Finding a fix for even one person's mutations would be a difficult job, but one that can fix thousands of different mutations in one go?" Irmo visibly shuddered.

"You know what I like about you, Doctor?" Nienna said after a long, chilling silence.

"What's that?"

"You're very honest."

Irmo smiled, taking the compliment at face value. "Why, thank you."

The rest of the journey passed in awkward silence for some minutes until the dark elevator shaft gave way to reveal a cavern of impossible size, so wide that Nienna could barely see the edge and so deep that she could see nothing of the bottom. A massive stone sphere rose up from the bottom on a mighty stalagmite, with branches of rock jutting out like fronds on a fern leaf. Within seconds the lift was within the sphere, and began slowing down until it came to a complete stop. They exited onto a catwalk which surrounded a lab as complex and imposing as any Nienna had ever seen; bank upon bank of medical equipment stretched out beneath her, with a dozen white-suited doctors running complicated tests dotted amongst them. The large wall opposite the lift bore hundreds of monitors, all displaying the vital signs of the multitude sleeping within the rock.

"Welcome to Lórien," Irmo said, sweeping his arm across his underground domain. "We named it after an old legend from Estë's homeland," he explained, "a forest where the souls of the dead slept, waiting to be reborn on the Last Day. Appropriate, don't you think?"

Nienna steadied herself on Irmo's arm, momentarily overcome by a feeling she hadn't experienced since she was a child; the overwhelming presence of hundreds of souls at once, their thoughts coalescing around her like moths to a flame. "It's magical," she whispered as Irmo gripped her hand tightly.

"I agree competely," he replied, proudly. "Let's find your berth." The hiss of elevator doors to their left drew their attention and two figures stepped out from another culvert in the rock.

"Oh, yes," Melkor announced, striding forward and leaning over the railing to examine the labyrinthine layout of the lab below. "Hell of a setup you've got going on down here, Doctor."

"I knew you'd like it," Estë replied warmly, waving to her husband. Melkor clocked the pair standing next to them and turned with an unctuous smile.

"Doctors," he said, "how nice to see you both." Irmo inclined his head and Nienna forced a smile.

"Commander," she returned the greeting.

"Shall we get started?" Irmo hurried them along. "We do have over a thousand people to get through in the next week."

"Of course," Melkor acquiesced. "Lead the way."

Irmo led them down a staircase to the laboratory and then down a passage carved through the bare rock, which spiralled around the diameter of the sphere until they emerged into the hollow centre. Even Melkor was lost for words as the sheer scope of the place unfolded before the party's eyes; blinking lights covered the far-away inner surface of the sphere, resembling a twinkling night sky, and streams of energy passed leisurely overhead out of gaping holes leading to the statis berths.

"Those are the consciousnesses of the hundreds who reside down here," Estë said over the noise of generators and crackling electricity. "They flood back and forth into our supercomputers, where the sensory information they absorb through their avatars are processed and contextualised, and then relayed back to their sleeping minds. I'm up there somewhere!"

Estë's cheerful tone in describing the detachment of her own consciousness nearly overwhelmed Nienna, who barely managed a nod and a smile in response. "How do we get to the berths?" She asked Irmo. As if on cue, a scow rose up to meet them.

"All aboard," Irmo urged her, jumping onto the vehicle. The journey passed in silence as Melkor and Nienna both stared in awe at the streams of light that flowed from the dozens of culverts in the sphere and pooled in rings around the central shaft from which the lab was suspended, chasing each other around the rock. It was over far too quickly, and the pair had to be coaxed onto the gangway and down to their berths.

The berths were small outcrops of rock, swelling from the edges of the stone like blisters, accessible by ladders and stairs up or down from the central gangway. Irmo guided Nienna to the closest one available and bid farewell to his wife. Melkor turned to Nienna as she descended the ladder. "See you on the other side, Doctor!" he shouted with a strange smirk on his face. Nienna suppressed a shudder; something about the young Commander always put her on edge, but right now the feeling was almost unbearable.

As she set foot on solid rock Irmo powered up the statis chamber, flooding the small compartment with soft blue light and the sound of machinery. A silver gurney stood upright, embedded into the rock, surrounded by crystals of many different hues.

"Please undress and stand with your back to the berth," Irmo instructed her, his head bowed in concentration as he hammered at a keypad attached to a column of computer components which, Nienna thought to herself, looked worryingly jerry-rigged. She removed her shoes and jewelry and divested herself of the long, flowing dress which had become her trademark, clutching it to her naked skin. What if I never feel real cloth against my real skin again? She thought, inhaling the perfume that clung to it.

"In your own time," Irmo encouraged her. With a sigh, Nienna cast her dress away and stepped backward onto the gurney. The cold metal sent a shockwave through her body, raising goosebumps on her arms.

"Initiating stasis field," Irmo said out loud as the crystals encrusting the edges of the gurney began to glow. An energy field cascaded down from above Nienna's head to encase her in a bright white shell. She felt her limbs becoming lighter as it crept downwards, until it reached the bottom and she found herself hovering an inch above the gurney. Without warning it began to tilt backwards until she was horizontal, at which point the crystals reached peak luminescence.

"Good luck, Doctor," she heard Irmo say from what seemed like a great distance away, before she felt her body disappear.

Hello, Doctor Nienna!

Who said that?

It's me, Irmo.

Has it wo-

Well, it's not really me, per se. This is a recording of my consciousness being played within your own mind, right now.

Oh. Why-

The purpose of this recording is to get you accustomed to your new body. You can do everything you could do before you entered stasis, and you can feel everything you could feel too, but adjusting to the avatar could take a while. We're going to perform a few simple exercises.

The fog around Nienna's mind began to clear and she saw herself in an endless white expanse. Her feet touched solid ground, but she couldn't make out a horizon. Irmo stood a few metres away from her, dressed in his traditional white coat.

Walk over to me.

Nienna looked down at her body. Everything seemed in order – hands, legs, feet, all the usual. Nothing felt any different, apart from the surreal surroundings. She walked forward to Irmo, who promptly disappeared when she reached him.

Good!

Nienna spun around to see him standing where she had just stood.

Now back to me.

Nienna frowned and walked back. Irmo disappeared again and reappeared where he had originally stood.

That's it. Now, let's try a few stretches. Follow me…

Irmo began a simple stretching routine which Nienna copied with no trouble. After a few minutes, he vanished again.

Now, a test of your senses. Your surroundings will turn different colours. I'd like you to call out the colours as you see them.

Red.

Blue.

Yellow.

STUPIDFUCKINGSLUT

…Excuse me?

Please state the colour you see.

…Green.

Purple.

KNEEL!

The virtual world seemed to lurch forward, sending Nienna crashing to the ground. The environment changed colours rapidly, all the hues blurring together to make a muddy, unfriendly brown which seemed to close in around her.

Doctor Irmo, what's happening?

Shut up you fucking slut no-one cares no-one wants to hear what you have to say

What?! Irmo, where are you? What's going on?

SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!

The featureless expanse suddenly erupted, breaking into pieces like a shattering plate. Twisted spires burst from the ground, reaching higher and higher into the infinite sky as Nienna tried in vain to get to her feet. But the gravity of the simulation seemed all wrong; her head felt like it weighed a ton while her legs were pulled in the opposite direction, sending her rolling helplessly across the sharp, jagged landscape.

You're all so fucking stupid and you can't see it none of you deserve any of this I'm going to make you pay you ignorant servile scum let's see who's so high and mighty when you're all bowing down to me I'll kill the women first

Nienna screamed as the voice pierced her like a knife, drilling into the very core of her. It seemed to come from everywhere, at an ear-splitting volume.

You have no idea none of you have any idea what you've been breeding what you've allowed to grow all of you so confident so secure so sure nothing could hurt you you will beg for death before the end

Nienna clasped her hands to her ears with a tremendous effort, wrenching them free of their invisible bonds.

I know you! I know your voice!

Melkor's form coalesced in front of her in billions of pixels pouring in from holes in the endless sky.

YOU'RE NOTHING! YOU'RE ALL NOTHING! THIS IS JUST THE START! THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING OF THE END!

Nienna clamped her eyes shut as images of death and horror flashed before them, forced into her mind. Images of fire, laying waste to the white marble of Almaren, of her loved ones in chains and dying. The dragon, its mighty wings beating a hurricane, descending upon the city to crush it once and for all.

NO! NO, GOD, PLEASE STOP!

THIS IS WHERE IT BEGINS!

Nienna forced her eyes open. Melkor stood before her, resplendent in black armour, like the star-iron the warlords of the ancient world would wear and prize above all, holding a spiked mace in his hand.

THIS IS HOW YOU DIE!

The mace came crashing-

"-crashing!"

White hands flitted before Nienna's eyes.

This is how it starts.

"-stimulant? Administer-"

This is how you die.

A thump on her chest. The sharp pain of a needle.

"Returning to normal."

This is only the beginning.

Nienna awoke with a sharp, desperate breath, tearing her throat ragged. Strong hands gripped her arms and kept her pinned down as she tried to blink stars and blotches from her sight.

"Easy now, easy," Irmo's soothing voice washed over her. "You're alright now, Nienna."

Nienna tried to speak but managed only a wordless groan. She felt like she'd been paralysed; her mouth wouldn't form words and she couldn't feel her legs.

"Nienna, focus on me. Look at me, Doctor." Nienna looked into Irmo's deep blue eyes, intense and frantic with worry. "Good. Nienna, something went wrong with the introductory programme. It crashed while you were inside it and your body reacted as though it had had a stroke, but you're okay now. We've administered you with gamma-stimulant to reverse the damage but it'll take a few hours until you're back to normal. Can you talk yet?"

Nienna moved her mouth tentatively. It was numb and uncooperative, as though she'd just woken from surgery.

"Yes," she slurred.

"That's good. The damage wasn't as great as I'd feared. Estë, help me get her up," the doctor asked his wife. Nienna felt Estë's short, strong arms wrap around her waist and drape her arm around her neck before they lifted her slowly from the floor, sending her stomach spinning through her body.

"What!-" Nienna blurted, her legs giving way and nearly dropping back to the floor.

"Shush, easy," Estë cooed. "It's just you, you see?"

Nienna looked on in horror at her own face, placid and asleep beneath the misty crystalline shield of her stasis berth. "Take me away," she groaned, "please." The doctors began to turn to lay her in the floating stretcher behind her when a voice pierced her heart like a knife.

"Doctor Nienna, are you alright?"

Melkor stood at the top of the ladder leading up from the stasis berth, peering down into the chamber. Nienna's knees buckled and the doctors had to dig their fingers into her skin to keep her upright.

"No!" Nienna screamed dumbly. "Monster!" Melkor flinched in surprise.

"Nienna, it's just Commander Melkor," Estë whispered into her ear, trying to calm her. "You're just confused."

"No!" she replied, her unwilling body desperately trying to wrench free from the doctors' grasp. "He's a monster! A monster!"

Irmo sighed and dug through his pocket. "I really am very sorry about this, Nienna," he said softly before pressing something sharp into her armpit. Her vision started to fade instantly, and within seconds she was unconscious.

"She's really very insistent on seeing you, but she won't say why."

"Of course," Varda replied into her communicator, her voice shot through with concern. "Is she alright?"

"She's more or less physically recovered, but she's emotionally very unstable right now," Irmo said. "I've really got no idea what happened; we've not had a single problem in any of the insertions so far, not even Námo..."

"Well, let's just hope it's a glitch, eh?" Varda replied, sighing heavily. "Would you like me to come now?"

"Absolutely not," Irmo replied firmly. "She's had an extremely traumatic experience, to say nothing of the tremendous physical shock she's had. She needs a full night of rest before she can do anything."

"Alright, I'll come round first thing in the morning. Thank you, Doctor."

Varda turned off her communicator and resumed her evening stroll. Ormal's light had finally waned below Illuin's and the aurorae had abated, giving way to clear purple skies dotted with stars. Varda wandered through the main square of Almaren, admiring the industry with which the new-found Ardans – as they had unanimously decided to call themselves – had set up stalls, offering their extracurricular services for simple barter; one of her own Geosat technicians, for example, turned out to be a very fine dressmaker, while one of Ulmo's lieutenants was a painter of such skill many opined he was wasted in Oceanography, much to Ulmo's chagrin. As life and laughter flowed through the square, Varda's heart felt lighter than it had in days; there was a real sense of community, of belonging. Of having a home, not just living on a space ship. Earth beneath your feet and sky above – these, surely, were the birth right of an Ainur.

She picked up a pair of finely-crafted boots, running her thumb along the seams and appreciating the smell of real leather. "How much?" she asked the stall-keeper, a burly, middle-aged man who Varda recognised as one of Aulë's crewmen.

"Let me think," he drawled, stroking his beard. "I'm sure you've got some lovely plonk up in the Royal Palace, Commander."

"Oh, we do," Varda laughed. "Shall we say two bottles of the Tyr '450 vintage?"

The cobbler's eyes lit up like fireworks. "Very kind of you, Ma'am!" he replied effusively, fishing out the boot's brother from beneath his stall while Varda filled out a chit. They exchanged goods and parted with a wave, before Varda walked straight into an unsuspecting pedestrian, spilling her new purchases across the road.

"So sorry," Varda apologised as she bent to retrieve the boots.

"Not at all," the stranger said, grabbing for the same boot and accidentally clasping Varda's hand. "Oh…hello, Commander." Varda's mouth went dry as their eyes locked for the first time.

"Hello, Enwe," she said. They straightened stiffly. She seemed so very different from the last time they had met; the day Enwe had taken her leave of Geosat and gone to join Engineering. She had by then already begun her transformation from a bubbly, exuberant young woman into something harder and more serious, but now she was barely recognisable; significantly thinner, her rosy cheeks now pale and tight across her face, and her eyes lacking a certain sparkle.

"It's been…an awfully long time," Enwe said uncomfortably.

"Yes," Varda replied, equally uncomfortably, "yes it has."

"How have you been?"

"Oh, fine," Varda lied. "Very busy up in Geosat," she lied again.

"Oh, I can imagine," Enwe lied back. "Engineering's pretty busy too."

"Yeah, yeah, I heard." Varda swallowed hard, unsure of where to look or what to say.

"I'm sorry," Enwe blurted, unexpectedly. "The last time we really talked…I was completely out of line. I'm surprised you didn't have me court-martialled," she laughed nervously.

"Of course I wouldn't," Varda laughed with her. "You're my friend."

The words hung in the air between them. They stared at each other, smiles growing slowly under each other's gaze.

"Would you like to get a drink?" Varda offered. Colour flooded into Enwe's cheeks, just as Varda remembered her.

"I'd love to!" she gushed. "Just let me tell…you know who," she said, almost embarrassed as she took her tablet from her hip and typed a quick message before returning it. "So, where shall we go?" Varda took her friend's arm and walked with her.

"Well, I hear Olórin's homebrew is getting a lot of fans…"

Melkor stood on the roof of his home, looking out across Almaren. Soon, he thought. A buzz at his hip broke his concentration. He picked up his tablet and opened the message from Enwe.

"Hook, line and sinker."

Very soon, Melkor thought with a smirk. Very, very soon.