"Huh."

Swoop. Maybe a little bit of aerial showing-off.

She practices turning.

Turning is doable! She might fumble it a few times but she is unlikely to require outright rescue as long as she refrains from panicking. The Emperor is delighted by her progress.

She's good at not panicking.

A useful quality to have!

After they've been at this for a bit and she's starting to get more confident in the air, he causes a small island to rise from the sea so she can practice landing and taking off with fewer complications than she'd find in Skygarden.

"Ooh, thank you."

"You're welcome!"

Landing! Taking off! Landing! Taking off!

Flying around delightedly!

Diving and swooping up again! Neater landings! Skimming the water without falling in!

"Oh, nicely done!"

"Thank you."

He lands on the island and beams at her.

"I think I will probably keep these."

"I'm glad! It's very rewarding to see how much you like them!"

Flutter. "In our early history before we'd invented money Elves operated our economy almost entirely on it being rewarding for people to appreciate things. We do use money now, although differently than it's used here."

"That sounds like it would've been nice."

"Some people complained about the introduction of money. I think we would have kept with the gift economy if we'd had a smaller population - it was so cozy. But Dwarves convinced us that markets were the only sensible way to handle large amounts of information about what people wanted to have. So we do basic income."

"'Cozy' is a good word for it."

"You'd just go out for a stroll and everyone would give you stuff!"

"And - I like it when people are happy that I made them nice things, I've known that for a while, but until you came along I hadn't known what it was like when they're also not terrified of me - I think I could've been very happy in a society like that. Well, as long as I hadn't grown up in it. Nobody deserves having me grow up near them."

"Tempestuous childhood?"

"I was a horrible kid and an even more horrible teenager. If you wanted to say I'm still horrible I wouldn't argue but at that age I was a lot worse."

"How so?"

"Well, I killed my own father because I was impatient to get at his empire, for one."