At first she was too relieved to no longer be staring death by homicidal professor in the face to wonder where Odette had taken them. Then she pulled herself off the ground and noticed that Odette wasn't there.
Then she noticed that she had no flipping clue where she was.
They dance for a while longer until he has responsibilities to get to.
And Illia can get back to her studying, much psychologically refreshed. That was a good break.
They can definitely take dance breaks, if it helps her with statecraft! Dance is nice.
As is dancing!
Illia confers with her sister over this period of time, and learns statecraft, and designs things. At one point she asks Fingon, Possibly a weird question, but do you know if there are any sources of the elements aluminum and chromium I could use?
Um, in pure form they're like so, but I don't need 'em pure--do you have, like, a periodic table of the elements? Anyway I have a decent crown design picked out, I think, and aluminum is the primary non-oxygen ingredient for corundum and chromium is what you use to tint it red; I want to make a pink star sapphire.
And you can make it magically but only from the materials? We have a periodic table but lots of things on it only exist in Valinor.
Well, I could generate the matter, but since I am not my sister I would really rather not. And even then it would be easier if she had something to make more of. Aluminum is 13 and chromium is 24 on the periodic table.
And she can draw the oxygen from the air, and handle the starring with a pinch of iron...
It takes her a while, but when she's done she has a gold-starred pink sapphire shaped like the face of a rose.
"What, really? Can't you carve them like this, even if you can't form them out of whole cloth?"
"Yes, but - only the Valar can do it your way, and I've seen them do it, and it's a little surreal."
"Making anything complicated is just as much an art as you would expect, pretty much, but--want me to show you how to do diamonds? The clear ones are just carbon, it's pretty trivial."
"Sure. I think the Dwarves would be excited. Diamonds are rare on this continent for some reason."
"Huh. Back home, diamonds are cheap like borscht. We use diamond for window-panes and drinking vessels and stuff."
"They were very common in Valinor though you couldn't use them for window-panes, too small, and here they are somehow scarce."
"I think natural diamonds might be rare back home? I don't know, no one really cares about the difference and it's usually more of a hassle to get them out of the ground than to make them. Anyway when you're making them you can make them in whatever shape and size you want, so, windowpanes. We need a source of carbon, is there any reason not to steal ash from a random fireplace?"
"Okay, so what you want to do is focus on the carbon to the exclusion of all other elements in the mix, and focus on the crystalline structure of diamond--for your first try you probably shouldn't attempt to do any fancy shapes, just focus on building out from a point--" Illia stirs her fingers through the ash and plucks out a diamond the size of a walnut.
"Oh, right, that's trickier when you're starting out. I...sort of forgot."
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