"I have no plans to kill anyone who doesn't work for the Enemy, worry not."

"In that case you can be as critical as you like of my living relatives. Until we have the means to bring them back we may as well leave the dead out of it."

"Probably for the best."

"Dor Lómin technically begins in the middle of this pass. We'll reach their guards soon."

"Good to know."

Dor Lómin's guards come to attention and Fingon waves at them and they proceed into a very spacious lowlands boxed in by the mountains on three sides, with villages lining the river and two fortresses in what is becoming recognizable as the Elven style.

Illia is distracted for a moment by how pretty everything is. She's going to get used to that, eventually.

"I thought we'd settle in a village, ask everyone to assemble, heal ailments, hand out instructions to the literate, and teach them magic. By the time we've done the full rotation the people in the first village might have enough familiarity to learn healing."

"Good idea."

So they head down to a village of a few hundred people, on the river, and set up extravagant silken Elven tents and play trumpets and announce that the Elven King has decided they should all be taught magic.

She makes a mental note to ask later if this kind of pageantry is necessary to the point where she'd have to adopt it if she accepted the whole "kingdom" offer, and then focuses on the people.

He writes letters requesting things they'll need to get more paper to make more copies with the printing press.

And she teaches magic.

She has an attentive and respectful audience. They're also absurdly excited to get lembas for lunch in the middle of lessons.

She notices this. Do any of these people look underfed, or is it just an 'elves are cool and therefore their food is cool' kind of thing?

Almost everyone is on the very thin side.

She'll definitely need to do something about that, but she can think of several different options and since they don't appear to be literally starving to death she can wait until she's done with this and put some thought into it.

In the evening everyone is dismissed and the Elves retreat to the elaborate silk tents to play music and sing.

Gosh they're good singers. She wonders if there's much point recreating the musical instruments of her world, given that she doesn't play them.

"Do you need it to be quieter than this to sleep? That's something we forget to take into account."

"You're going to be doing this all night? I certainly don't mind."

"We really like singing, and the locals usually appreciate it."

"I'd want to join in, if you weren't all so much better than me."

"Is that not a thing magic can help with? At a minimum, practice can. You'll get it down eventually."

"Magic can probably help," she allows. "We're taught back home to avoid using magic frivolously, but honestly sometimes I think they overdo it..." she hums a few bars to herself. The last one is noticeably improved from the first one, which wasn't bad for a human. "I don't want to use too much Sympathy, though; I'm not as resistant to it as I am Effort. It might be worth it for a song I know. Maybe I'll sing something from home next time we're on the road."