"Draw up plans or another prototype? Because I'm pretty sure Odette could carry a printing press."

"I carried thousands of refugees and later on an army after the volcanoes blew. I can handle a printing press."

"I'm not certain they won't take offense at us sending them something we built, but sure, let's send a prototype."

"Oh. I hadn't thought of that."

"I don't suppose it would help that it was mostly me and not you?"

"That's nothing to do with a specific grudge against us, that's my cousin Curufin being an eccentric genius who basically doesn't think collaboration is worthwhile, except with Dwarves, because he's smarter than everyone."

"I mean, I can just draw up the plans. I see no reason to bother making the thing if it's just going to offend someone."

"He might have grown less stubborn since I last saw him, it's been centuries. But the plans should be enough."

"As long as he's not so offended that they won't get used it's all the same to me. Everyone should have printing presses."

"They're a very clever idea, if limited in applications because we don't have that many people."

"So they're more useful here, where they can be useful for humans, than over there. True enough."

"Yeah, my cousins more or less ignore their human population."

"Well, not completely. Maedhros had me evacuating a bunch of them when the mountains blew, and when I was asking for magical things to do they mentioned them to me as being present and in need of things like ameliorating a drought and learning magic so they don't all die, but they do certainly seem to have significantly less formal interaction than here."

"The ones he had you evacuate are from Ladros, they're vassals of my other cousins."

"Ah."

"It's a complicated situation. As I imagine Illia told you, I tried to introduce her to all opinions on it."

"Yeah. I don't have serious objections to your approach or theirs. I'm, um, worried, by the third approach on the other end. For reasons I imagine she told you. From my perspective what really matters is that they get taught magic and don't die of old age, and if there isn't an infrastructure in place that specifically enables this, well, I can fly faster than the speed of sound."

"Once the fighting is over we're happy to enable that by any means we can."

"I'm not going to wait. I mean, yes, I'm going to spend a significant chunk of my time killing orcs, and Balrogs if he's stupid enough to throw them at me again, but if I wait until the fighting's died down to teach anyone magic--I don't know how long it will take, but I don't want to bet that no one would die of old age between now and then that I could prevent. I hope you understand--bringing back Elves is an achievable goal. Bringing back humans--isn't, right now. I have to take that into account when I'm deciding where to allocate resources."

"If we lose the war everyone's dead. Even a small chance of losing the war is a number of human deaths so vast it may as well be uncountable."

"...That's true. Thank you for reminding me of it. I don't think I can do essentially nothing but kill orcs and eat and sleep, though. Not and not burn out. Teaching people magic is a productive break."

"In that case by all means design a schedule that's good for your happiness and sanity."

"And therein lies the challenge, and the reason I haven't been scheduling things very far in advance. It's going to take me some time before I recalibrate my long-term needs for this situation."

"What are your long-term needs?"

"In broad strokes? Sustainable mental, physical and emotional health. In specific? I imagine it's going to involve amounts of killing orcs, seeing my sister, helping assorted individuals and populations as they come to my attention, attempting increasingly difficult magical feats as benchmarks of progress, and getting prodded into eating and sleeping when I'm in the middle of something interruptible that I've been doing for too long. In what ratios, and with what other elements thrown in, I'm not yet sure."