She looks exhausted and shell-shocked, and his instincts are to get her a good dinner and a good night's sleep and then ask about magic. Perhaps no one will mind spending the night on high alert, if it either proves warranted or else means they learn magic in the mornings.

There's that inconvienient and bewildering mortal custom that he can't ask her to join him for dinner without someone appointed to accompany her. He thinks it applies to taking a meal into her guest room, as well. 

"We don't have a meal hall," he says. "Is it all right if someone brings you something?"

"That sounds fine, but I'm not sure what the alternatives are or what cultural context might possibly make it not all right."

"The Men known to me have all kinds of rules about who can eat with who and who can be secluded with who. They insisted that these were universal among Men; is that not so?"

"Secluded with...oh. It's fairly common, but it's not universal and frankly it's fairly silly." She snorts. "As if anyone would have that on their minds after riding a horse for hours. Although I suppose it's probably different if you're any good at it," she reflects wryly.

Well, that's a cryptic answer if he's ever heard one. "If that's not the custom of your people, you can join me for dinner," he says, trying not to sound like he finds the customs of Men as bewildering as he does because they're brave warriors and good people and deserve no contempt for their numerous oddities.

"That sounds nice. Thank you."

So inside, then, to the cramped quarters of a northern siege tower, which didn't know he was stopping by and therefore did not import nice food. The cook is very apologetic, and he spends a while reassuring him before leaving with two dinners of lembas and potatoes.

"I'd probably think a dry crust tasted delicious right now," she says when she tastes the lembas, "but I'm pretty sure I'd think this was great even if I wasn't famished."

"One can live on them indefinitely. Not very filling, though, and being constantly hungry isn't pleasant even if you know you're getting enough. We are working on refining them."

"There are ways of making yourself feel less hungry that don't nourish. Drinking a large amount of water, I think, and chewing on things you're not actualy eating. I'm not terribly familiar with the subject, and they're far from perfect, but they exist."

"Water's often also unavailable on the move, or in combat." He smiles. "We could look into chewing on things you're not eating."

"If there are other humans around it might be useful to ask them about this. I wish I could tell you more, but this isn't really a situation I was anticipating when I was deciding what to study."

"There are. The Men who are allied with us live in Dor Lómin, the kingdom southwest of mine - so, behind it, with respect to our shared enemy - and they are men of great courage and valor."

"I'm glad to hear it. I wish it weren't necessary."

"As do we all. Is your world peaceful?"

"It is right now. There have been wars in living memory, but not involving Genosha."

"Your sense of living memory is -"

"...Excluding Great Mages, so about a century."

He nods. "Why do Great Mages live longer? A spell they cast on themselves? Could they do it for others?"

"Mages, while they practice, can reverse aging in themselves and others, especially people they're close to. Most mages actually do live longer than a century, but they're rare enough that most people don't count them. It doesn't actually take a Great Mage to live forever, that's just the idiom. I'm probably never going to be a Great Mage, but my sister will, so assuming she hasn't been flung somewhere I can't get to her in the next few hundred years or so I don't anticipate dying of old age."

"It overjoys me to hear that your community has conquered one of the great wrongs done to your people."

"Not as well as we'd like. There aren't enough mages and there are too many people who aren't. A century is still the most most people can expect," she says softly.

"I'm sorry." It's now quite late, and quite dark; he gets up and removes a couple of lampstones from their box. 

"It's...I haven't thought I was going to be one of them for years. It's less personal for me than for some people. But--it was a problem we were hoping to solve." She looks at the lights with interest. "I thought you said you didn't have magic?"

"This is engineering." He smiles. "Well, actually, there's magic to it, but of a kind that bears no resemblance to what you described; we just harness the power of creation a little bit, and it only works for making artifacts. And there's enough of a process to it that it seems more like engineering."