Okay!

He finds a satisfactory one a little while later. Thanks Yavanna, cuts it down, starts whittling.

"Yavanna is Vala? A Vala?" she corrects herself.

"Yep. She is the Vala of living and growing things. It is okay to cut down trees if you only cut down a tree that takes fifty years to grow every fifty years."

"That makes...senz? Sense. That makes numbers sense."

"Numbers sense? A lot of sense?"

"Uh...two and two is four, four and five is nine? Nine nines is six-twelve and nine? Make numbers do things?"

"Makes mathematical sense. Yeah. If you want to study math Valinor has some great tutors in it."

She shrugs. "Math is good for many things."

"Nice for mathematicians."

"Mathematicians like math for math. When I like math I use math for not-math things."

We call that engineering and pretend it's a completely different field. But yeah. Lots of stuff to do with that around here, too. Our magic works off complicated math.

It's useful for non-engineering science, too! Why d'you pretend it's different?

Stupid social rules, again! Noticing a pattern? Pure mathematics is considered effeminate.

You have really stupid social rules, she agrees. Does that mean that engineering is irretrievably masculine? Because it's like my sister's favorite thing. That and art.

Nah, engineering's, like, a little girly but not enough that anyone'd raise an eyebrow. Because of the association with mathematics. The masculine disciplines are cooking and hunting.

Weird. Cooking's kinda feminine in Kilaiuossa.

You mean different places have different stupid arbitrary social conventions? Can't be.

It's so mysterious.

It's as if there's no basis for them, or something absurd like that! Anyway, I have a cousin who I'm not speaking to at the moment but you'll like her once I am again on speaking terms with her and she's as good as me at archery, there's no innate difference in aptitudes.

Didn't think there was. Why aren't you on speaking terms?

Politics. Ain't it grand.

Politics is a decent chunk of why my parents ended up with all the blame for the Incident. Bitter? Her? Surely not.

I'm sorry. I have no right to be so sour when no one's even gotten hurt. But - we were good friends, and I'm mad at our respective fathers for messing it up.

Yeah, no, you're not--just because worse stuff happened doesn't mean you don't have a right to be upset over your stuff. Politics sucks, is all.