Fair enough. Uh, we can just sit down and have snacks and compare notes on worlds, if you'd like. Or find somewhere shady if you find it too bright. 

I would love to compare notes on worlds with you. The brightness is--well, I had better get used to it, right?

Valar'd probably do something to your eyes if you ask them. Tell me about working, can anyone learn it? What kinds of things does it let you do?

I thought anyone could, but I'm not sure how you'd learn if you don't reflexively react to strong dreams in the first place. Workings involve taking stuff from dreams and putting them out into reality. You can conjure objects or create illusions or sometimes apply attributes of a dream-self to yourself but that's hard. Oh, and it has to be stuff you remember from dreams. If you uncover a note to self from three years ago that describes a dream you had in vivid detail but you can't remember it then you can't use it.

Huh, yeah, might not be learnable then. Oh well. I generally can't learn stuff, it's the way it goes. He rips up a few plants from the ground. Snack? 

I don't know what confuses me more, the fact that you think you can't learn things or the fact that you expect me to eat grass.

I can't. I've had lots of time to try. He takes a bite of the grass. What, humans can't eat grass? Really? Are you sure?

I think grass is supposed to be really hard to digest and that's why cows have four stomachs? What do you mean you can't learn things? She's genuinely puzzled.

I just suck at it. Name a thing, I'm pretty bad at it, except archery and riding and talking with animals and field medicine, and those are a different category of skills. Everything in Valinor is edible. It's paradise. It wouldn't be paradise if everything wasn't edible, would it? Tasty, too.

I won't pretend "everything is edible" would have been on my top ten list for "features of paradise" but okay.

She plucks a stalk and nibbles on it. Tastes better than cut grass smells, I'll give you that.

What would be on your top-ten list? We probably have those, too.

I think "my parents and paternal grandparents" would top the list and I doubt you have those.

We don't die. Our dead, if we do manage to die, come to Mandos and he puts them back alive. I don't know if he has yours. If you're from a different world, possibly not. 

I don't know that our dead have an afterlife at all.

I'm sorry. 

Thank you.

Do you want to talk about what happened?

Dad--made a mistake. Someone else reacted badly to the mistake. Things escalated. A lot of people ended up dead, my parents among them, and all the blame landed on their shoulders.

We were the only ones at the funeral, and we had to skip town because people were--not sympathetic that we didn't agree with the official allocation of moral responsibility.

I'm really sorry. Really sorry. That's awful and I can't even imagine - Want a hug? 

That would be really nice.

Hug.

He is uncomplicatedly certain that her parents didn't deserve this and that even if they messed up a little bit it's completely awful of people to hate them for it and good people'd stand by them to the bitter end. He projects this as much as he can without projecting why he believes it. He is still determined not to tell them who he is. Not being a grandson of the King is too good to pass up on. 

Okay, Idaia's going to be crying on his shoulder and clinging a little, if that's okay.

Thanks.

I'm so sorry. I wish I could actually do something. 

Sympathy from someone other than me is going to help her a lot.