"I don't know anything about Noldor weddings, but Genoshan weddings don't have those. And we're not getting married anytime soon, and you're going to want to go home before too terribly long."

"Nuh-uh."

"Yes, you will, on the relevant timescale. Do you want to spend a week here?"

"...Maybe."

"It's going to take us more than a week to get officially engaged, let alone married."

"Hmph."

"Among my people engagements are supposed to last a Valian year, and you're not supposed to spend time together during them, so you can be sure you made the right choice."

"A Valian year."

"I wasn't planning to follow the custom."

"Oh, good, that would be really difficult here. I think I like my engagement traditions better, they involve giving each other presents."

"We have that too! They're generally, among the Noldor, things you made yourself, and I don't know if Bar has the right kind of workshop or forge - I guess if we're here long enough for you to be a god we might be here long enough for me to turn things in the park outside into stone or metal with magic."

"Creating rocks is actually not that hard! Pure crystal especially, gems are a lot easier than something practical like marble or granite. The custom where I'm from is--something relevant to starting a life together. Something expensive to demonstrate you can afford to support a family, or something skillfully made to prove you can make a living as a craftsman, or something useful around the home. The proposing partner gives their gift with the proposal and then the other partner takes it and then--some prearranged period of time later--returns it as a refusal or gives a reciprocal gift in acceptance."

"Awww. Designs for a castle together for after the war, and then you can build me it? Families usually give them too. If we wait until my father's alive he will probably have an extravagant one."

"From you to me or vice versa or both? Because while I have many talents, I'm afraid I'm not an architect."

"No, no, I design you a castle and you build me it, that being our comparative advantages."

"Oh, of course. That makes perfect sense. And it sounds lovely."

Smol Edie is bouncing with glee at this conversation.

"Thank you for reading my mind without permission, Edie. Worked out quite well."

"You're welcome!"

"Don't do it to other Elves you meet, 'kay? The Enemy can do it and they might have bad associations with the concept."

"I'll try."

"Try really hard."

"Okay."

"It's really important. I hate it when people tell me to do things but you could hurt them quite a lot."

"I don't want to hurt anyone," she agrees. "I'll try really hard."

"Thanks."