"That can all certainly be arranged."

"Oh, and I want to learn your alphabet at some point. I've been getting better at the spoken language but I hate being illiterate."

"Everything is spelled exactly as it sounds, it shouldn't be hard to learn. We have a library here if you want to look through things, and someone can sit down and teach you the characters."

"I'd appreciate that. I don't know when I'm likely to do that, but accumulating different kinds of things to do when I'm running low on one kind or another of mental energy is always a good thing."

"By all means. What other kinds of things did you do back home?"

"Back home I did whatever I happened to want at the time, unless I was doing something I had to do, like go to classes or make dinner or something like that, and those were never onerous enough to strain my mental resources, because I did not consider myself and my magic to be necessary apart from my general value as a person. I didn't even particularly bother to strengthen my magic apart from whatever exercises of it I happened to wish to do for their own sake, because I was going to be a Great Mage someday, and what did it matter if that day came later rather than sooner? Here not pushing myself has a cost measured in lives."

He nods. "I remember when we'd recently arrived from Valinor. I hope the adjustment is doable for you."

"I think it will be. But it's going to be a while before I know who I'm adjusting into and what that person needs."

"We're happy to host you as often as you and Illia would like to see each other."

"How much good am I even doing here, while the fighting's going on? It might make sense not to stay in one place the whole time."

"Until the Enemy rolls out the real horrors on his side - who I don't think you can fight - we're mostly capable of holding on. So are my cousins, though."

"Horrors worse than the Balrogs? Like--" she sends an image of the dragon.

"I don't know how many of those he has, no, and he's only got one of Sauron but that's really plenty."

"Clearly. Illia, if you think you'd be more productive doing something other than just killing orcs, of course I'd be happy to ferry you wherever, but you don't have osanwe to teach people magic with, which is the obvious other thing to do..."

"I think what I need to do is get around to talking to some engineers. These people don't have ballista, for example."

"Is conventional siege weaponry effective against Angband?"

"It might get you somewhere. It probably won't topple the whole thing, but we can combine it with magic."

"I have been assuming that the stone walls of Angband were magicked to hell and back and that conventional weaponry wouldn't scratch it and therefor there wasn't much point int trying to magically assault it until I was stronger. I think I need to rethink that assumption."

"We don't have the conventional weaponry that I think is known to your world. We didn't have any weapons at all four hundred fifty years ago, and haven't been in the best circumstances for learning."

"Regardless, it's probably worth dropping a few boulders on the place and seeing if they do anything."

"By all means."

She considers the subject probably reasonably concluded, considers and discards a handful of possible conversational topics, and decides to simply apply herself to the frankly excellent food until she thinks of something better or he brings something up.

Instead the Elves all start singing after a while.

Ooh, wow.

(She's fully aware of the difference between what she's hearing now and her own singing. It doesn't bother her at all.)

He's already told Illia that one can leave after they tire of the singing, and she can presumably communicate this to her sister. They'll keep singing.