"Thank you very much. More hot water? Soup? I can have someone give you a massage?"

"A massage would be fucking amazing. I wasn't going to ask because it seemed like the kind of thing that could go badly if cultural norms were correctly different."

"I'll have someone come give you a massage. You're going to be all right?"

"I'll be fine. This isn't the first time I've done this. Granted it's the second, but."

"What occasioned the first?"

"Odette really liked the idea of telepathy, and we didn't realize it would be quite this bad."

"It's extremely painful?" Someone knocks on the door. "That's your massage."

"Yeah, I don't know why it's this advanced an exercize, but it is."

He goes to get the door. "The things that are impossible for us - like returning to life without the aid of the Valar - are trivial to you, and vice versa. It will be useful, once we have the ability to synthesize both systems."

"Eyes and fingers," she agrees.

"Nerve damage in fingers isn't an Elf thing in general." And he lets a servant in.

"Oh? What is it, then?"

"It's a we-hiked-across-the-tundra-for-three-hundred-miles-with-almost-no-supplies thing."

"What? How are you still alive?"

"That's probably an Elf thing." He's smiling.

"Wow. Congratulations on not being dead, I guess."

"We didn't all make it."

"...Right. Sorry. Um--is that area still frozen? I bet Odette could find the bodies, and ones that have been kept on ice would probably be easier to work with than bones..."

"It is still frozen. I think my cousins will be annoyed with us for resurrecting our dead while insisting their father stays dead, but I'll talk with your sister about it."

"...It should be fine after the Enemy's been and dealt with, right? Bringing your uncle back, I mean."

"I don't see how we can insist it doesn't happen at that point. It won't be fine, but there probably won't be bloodshed."

"That's all I can ask for, I think. And--I'm not at all sure I'm comfortable denying someone a loved one forever because it would cause social strife."

"The, ah, reason for the walk across the Ice? Was him."

"Wait, what?"

"Did you think that we just had a succession dispute because my father thought the crown went better with his hair?"