"You--they--of course you've encountered prostitutes, that's just--" and she collapses into helpless giggling.

"Perhaps I'm still failing to understand the situation? It doesn't seem particularly humorous."

"I'm sorry, it's just so--incongruous. And a very good thing no one was foolish enough to accept, because you can bet none of those women knew about the elf marriage thing."

"I don't think marrying an Elf does anything to you. The misfortune would be entirely on the Elf, who would also have known perfectly well - no, very avoidable situation. We really should have pieced that one together sooner."

"This is...kind of embarrassing to ask, but I don't actually know that it won't be important later--is it, um, every kind of sex that does this or just penetrative intercourse?"

He looks amused. "Just that. We advise young couples not to take adjacent chances, though. Why?"

"I mean, it sounds like it kind of rules out same-gender marriage, which kind of sucks."

His face changes, hardens. "That sort of thing is permissible in your homeland?"

"Um, yes?"

"Well. I'm not going to tell Men to abandon their Mannish customs."

She raises an eyebrow.

"Our customs are different," says the King, frowning, as if that settles this. "Perhaps you can compare the intimate ones later, not over dinner. I'm more interested in how a flying city grows its food."

"...Oh, we mostly import it, but there are the greenhouses--" and then she begins explaining how those work.

The topic has circled back around to magic by dessert. "Were you able to show Hareth how that works?"

"I tried explaining it with words, but it didn't take."

"We'll try with osanwë, after - I was going to say after dinner, but it's already quite late. Shall we cut dinner short and try now? If it can't be taught to Men, that changes the plans."

"Let's try now." If this doesn't work for some reason she's going to have to spend all her time running around clearing up diseases, pretty much, that would suck so bad.

He smiles. "We can still train Elves in it, and many of them would be happy to have a rotation clearing up diseases. Lady Hareth, will you accompany us back downstairs to give this another try?"

"Of course, my lord," she says, and stands.

Back downstairs, then, and then they can transmit the sensations via osanwë.

And Lady Hareth gives moving her ring another try. This time it scoots across the table after a few minutes' practice. Fingon looks pleased. "Good, then, you just need some way to communicate the sensation. Growing up with it must somehow do it."

"Apparently. Lady Hareth, can you think of anything better than how I described it? It wouldn't surprise me, since I don't know what it's like to lack it."

She shakes her head. "It - I'm not sure you could explain it, or people'd have stumbled on it on their own, holding a child and wishing desperately that they'd be cured or something."

"Well, that makes things considerably more difficult. If I knew how it was transmitted in my world..."

"You live in a floating magic city, yes?" Fingon says. "That seems like it may be relevant. In any event we have lots of Elves on hand and they don't even need to themselves be good at magic to transmit the sensation."

"It might be, but Genosha has only existed for a few hundred years and even now there are mages coming out of completely unrelated places and I don't think they have telepathy either."