Right, and she never actually arranged anywhere to sleep in the city. Maybe she should talk to the prince about that.

He's still in his office. "Imliss! Were you able to find the lectures all right? Were they on anything interesting?"

"Yes! To both!"

"Oh, good! And did you manage to grab dinner? I realized I should have recommended you some places! Oh, and I went out to one of my favorite magic ringmakers and they had a ring for better memory that struck me as the kind of thing you'd like..." he pulls it out. 

"I am beginning to understand why everyone is in awe of you. I may have forgotten to grab dinner. Or arrange a place to sleep. Not that I know how to do that. Speaking of, do you not use money here?"

"I shall have someone bring us some food. What's money?"

"Wow I don't know how to start explaining money. Uh, I'll take that as a no, makes sense if you don't have scarcity. So, in societies where there isn't enough of everything for everyone who wants it, people have to exchange resources rather than just giving them away, because if you have some of one resource but none of another resource that you need, the resource you have is your leverage to get the people who have the resource you need to give it to you instead of someone else. If you have a lot of chickens, for example, and you need cheese, you can give a chicken or some eggs to the cheesemaker in exchange for cheese. But maybe you need cheese and the cheesemaker doesn't want chicken or eggs. Then you can try to make a complicated series of swaps with people who want things you have and have things the cheesemaker wants, or, you can use money. Money is arbitrary tokens that everyone agrees are worth a certain amount. So you can sell your chickens and eggs to people who want those things in exchange for these tokens, and then give some to the cheesemaker in exchange for cheese, and then the cheesemaker can give them to other people in exchange for things they want."

"What a useful way of arranging it! How do you disincentivize people from just making tokens?"

"Tokens are generally either made of something that's really rare and not useful for much else, or they're made so they're really hard to make and only the government knows the secret. Making tokens while not being the government or authorized by the government is super illegal, it's called counterfeiting."

"I kind of expect some people I know'd take 'secret only the government knows' as a challenge. It's still a clever system, though. It'd make taxes much simpler."

"Why do you have taxes in Postscarcity Paradise?"

"We have public works projects! We need input on that and conscripting people for it puts the burden on them rather unevenly! We have a system to instead spread it around, and it's not really a terrible burden, but your system would make it rather trivial."

"I'm not sure how you'd go about implementing money when there's no scarcity."

"No material scarcity, there are still only the three Silmarils and only the one of me and my time and attention... but yes, it'd be difficult."

"Silmarils?"

"Recent project of my fathers'! He went for 'prettiest thing in Valinor' and succeeded so thoroughly that everyone's decided they're probably the prettiest things that will ever exist. He was a bit disappointed by that, it wasn't the sentiment he meant to inspire."

"What was the sentiment he meant to inspire?"

"We came to Valinor for the light of the Trees. The Outer Lands are dark. We can't leave and establish an independent Noldorin civilization, out from under the guidance of the Valar, because they are the source of all light in the world.

And now they aren't."

"That's a much better sentiment."

"I think so too. Don't go shout it in the square, though, some people think it's terribly treasonous."

"Because actual present gods are terribly compelling even when they have completely alien psychology such that they absolutely cannot be relied upon to get what's best for you."

"Yep. And because our ancestors risked so much to come here, and the King is King because he brought us here back then."

"I suppose I can see why it might seem ungrateful to want to go back after that. Ungrateful's not the same thing as treasonous, though."

"People get funny when the wisdom of the decision that incidentally underpins the monarchy is being debated."

"I dunno, it can have been a good idea to come then and still be a good idea to leave now."