"The Quenya's prettier, isn't it? And they each have a mothername and a fathername and in many cases also nicknames which seem to usually be derived from whichever name they use less, and it just got to be very silly in my opinion."

"I mean, I don't think that's meaningfully more complicated than a given name and a surname and miscellaneous nicknames."

"I have a given name and a matronymic, which I have stopped using since I found out that its source kidnapped me, and people have taken to calling me Godslayer, but all you actually need to know to be clear on whether I'm being talked about or not is 'Loki'."

"Fair enough, I suppose. The Quenya really is prettier, I think Celegorm's the closest to being as pretty as the original, but I'm friends with him so I might be biased."

"I wound up friendliest with Maedhros of the lot but Celegorm's lovely too." And not gay.

"He is. I like Maedhros fine but--well, Thingol can't catch me here--Tyelcormo's good for me to be around. He says things that actually help when I'm having a frustrated episode and he nags me into eating enough and getting enough sleep when I'm too focused on magic and he's--lovely, on a personality level." And so fucking pretty.

"You've been warned about the weird soul thing, right?"

"Fuck, was I being obvious again? Anyway, it doesn't happen with humans, there's been empirical evidence of this. Relatedly, there's been empirical evidence that it's possible for elves to have accidental children with non-elf species, you might want to warn yours about that."

"Will do." She appears an illusory notebook and makes a note and tucks it away again. "Just enough that I thought I'd check. My Elves don't oaths anymore so it's not a thing except for anybody who very urgently wanted them back - I can do individual reversals of the free will thing but it hurts, can't keep it up long enough to go through the whole population."

"Huh. Anyway, yeah, I have kind of a massive crush on him, I think he genuinely likes me and I think it's possible that he might like me like me but I don't really have time for romance right now what with needing to do as much magic as possible in order to get strong enough to kill Morgoth, and there are a bunch of people who dislike the Feanorians enough that they wouldn't trust me if I ended up involved with one like that, so it's not--really on the menu, right now."

"Pity, he's good in bed."

"It would be a violation of his privacy and unbehoovingly voyeuristic to ask for more detail than that," she says, more to herself than Loki.

Loki giggles. "And Elf hair is very soft."

"Andreth said that too," she sighs, "and then he mentioned that platonic hairpetting is sometimes a thing and I was so tempted to ask but it wouldn't actually have been platonic so I'd have been taking advantage."

"Unless something has changed by the time you showed up he does go for casual sex... I didn't touch any male Elves until the oaths were out of the picture but that was me being paranoid."

"I don't want to have casual sex with someone I'm half in love with, that seems bound to end messily. And, of course, if anyone found out we're back to the 'if anyone knew I was sleeping with a Feanorian' problem."

"Pity."

"It's not that bad. I mean, the situation as it stands is 'not until Morgoth's dead' not 'no, never'--at least in terms of talking to him about it, the not considering a fantastic lay worth a broken heart part is still in effect if it turns out he was never more than physically attracted to me."

Nod. "D'you have a timeline? What's your limiting factor on speed?"

"My speed? As fast as I can push myself and still muffle the sonic boom, usually. Faster if I'm in a hurry. I don't have a very complete timeline."

"I mean your getting-stronger speed, not your airspeed."

"Oh. It's kind of hard to measure and there aren't units for it but I got from zero to where I am in seven years--I can fly faster than the speed of sound, regrow limbs, conjure mass directly, I have a range of a few hundred miles, limiting factor is mostly a combination of power level and focus."

"Still not what I was asking - what factors could be altered to get you stronger faster."

"...Focus is the salient thing in what I said there, it's basically a combination of how--persuasive or stubborn or commanding--you're being with how much attention you're paying to the task. Something that expanded my attentional capacity or sped up my thinking or otherwise gave me more brain to magic with would be the most effective thing."

"Have you tried Macalaurë's perception pseedup?"