"We can see heat, which means we can see almost as well by night as during the day. I can already see the faces in the windows of Eithel Sirion. I can - actually, it will be faster to -" he sends an osanwë image of it.

"...Oh, wow, that's amazing--give me a minute." She shuts her eyes to avoid the disorientation of having them change while she was using them, and uses Sympathy to tell her eyes that they should be structured like his instead of like a normal human's.

She forgets to specify that they should still look like hers instead of his, which is immediately apparent when she opens them again and looks around, beaming broadly.

He laughs. "Between that and being healthier than any Man I've ever seen, they'll have trouble believing you're not some odd variant of Elf when we get down to Dor Lómin. Very useful, though."

She can see Eithel Sirion now. A castle, built into the mountains on both sides, the river at its front door. The early years of the war, when they'd been young and ambitious and had tastes still shaped by Valinor. It was graceful and beautiful and very dangerous.

"Between what--oh, I forgot to leave them looking the same, didn't I. Whatever, yours are prettier, they can think what they like."

"They glow with the light of the Trees that died before the first dawn, before this world had a Moon or a Sun. I'm surprised that you can replicate that."

"I copied the physical structure of your eyes. If my eyes are glowing too then whatever is causing it is probably physical."

"It's more socially disruptive than physically surprising. There are social distinctions between those who saw the light of Aman and those who never did."

"...I never saw this thing, but I don't know what exactly is causing this and randomly messing with things in anything as delicate as an eye is a bad idea."

"I was not asking you to change them back. I'm going to talk to my father now, let him know why we're bringing you in." He falls silent.

She's perfectly content to just look around, marveling at the new colors. Everything is so much more beautiful now, it's fantastic.

...so we're coming in, he concludes when he's explained. She's capable, but very young. Any news on the sister?

No, his father says. If she landed in the East, think we'd hear about it?

Yes, he says reflexively. ...perhaps a couple months late, though.

And now they're really approaching the castle, and the bridge folds down to cross the river.

"Um, so it's been pretty obvious from context that your father is important, but what kind of important is he exactly and is there any etiquette I should know before I meet him?"

"He is the High King of the Noldor in Middle-earth, and that was disputed for long enough that you probably want to mind acknowledging it; the Men we've met previously didn't really have much central organization and no concept of Kingship and managed to avoid annoying anyone enough to end up thrown in dungeons. We're a people at war, and don't really care whether one bows at the waist or kneels. How is your homeland organized?"

"The Great Mage Atennesi Cohen created the place and rules it, but he mostly doesn't hold with titles besides 'Great Mage,' so people mostly just refer to him by name. Prussia where my mother's from is ruled by a prince, and Anglia where my father's from has a king."

"Then you'll be fine. If you end up spending more time here than in Dor Lómin I'll give you a primer on our political relationships, but absent a reason I'm not sure it'd be helpful rather than overwhelming. Unless you enjoy that sort of thing?"

"I haven't known you for very long but I don't know anyone else here at all and I like what I've seen of you so far. I would like to be friends, I think, and as an extension of that to know things about your family, but I take no particular joy in politics for the sake of it." She might as well be perfectly frank, if he can read her mind (she doesn't mind, as long as he doesn't judge her for things she wouldn't have said to people who couldn't). She won't be heartbroken if he feels no attachment whatsoever to this random girl who showed up unexpectedly and prefers to simply direct her to people who can better make use of her talents, but it would be nice if she could be friends with the first person she really met here, who has been kind to her.

Your abilities are sufficiently interesting that it's probably worth a decade of my time to get you acclimated -

- no, can't talk to a mortal of twenty-one that way.

"Then we'll skip the politics, though that leaves rather little else to be said of my family. I haven't seen my brother in four hundred years. I had not seen my sister in three hundred fifty when I received news of her death. I have a lot of cousins. They've managed a lower mortality rate."

"I'm sorry to hear that." If she lost her sister she would lose her desire to live--she wouldn't kill herself, that would be an awful waste, especially since she'd be the best-trained mage in this world, but it wouldn't be because she particularly cared for her own sake. It's different for other people, she knows, but it must still be terrible.

"It's....good not to let there be a person in the world who's your reason to keep going. It's hard on them, for one thing, and leads you to take unwise risks for their sake under some circumstances."

"She wouldn't refrain from taking risks for my sake, because I wouldn't want her to and she knows it. When it comes down to it, we're only two people. If it makes sense to risk her life to save a dozen lives, it makes sense to risk her life and my happiness." And while she suspects Odette would be more stably functional, if it were Illia who died--it goes both ways. It's part of how they work, and as long as they're both alive how they work works. It will probably mellow out after long enough, but she can't think of any way of trying to force it that would do more good than harm.

"I hope we find her soon. Politics might become abruptly relevant if we don't hear anything back from the messengers my father sent last night."

"I hope we do." Mostly she has been avoiding worrying about her sister's well-being by firmly thinking about being helpful instead.

"If she has your capabilities I'm sure she's fine; the problem would be that she's somewhere with a strict no-emigration policy."

"I'm worried about the possibility that she might have landed in this Enemy's clutches. I...feel like any politics that resulted from someone trying to keep her from leaving would involve people being mad that she did anyway and her refusing to apologize because she didn't consider them to have any right to hold her."

He laughs. "In that case I'm sure we'll hear from her shortly.

If she were in Enemy hands, would he be able to entice you into going after her?"