"Most realms are; decay is ubiquitous absent intervention of some kind as far as I know and your ability to just pause your physiology is a rare one."

"The other realms seem oddly unplanned. Like there are lots of things you should obviously have and don't."

"They are unplanned, by and large."

"I'm not sorry we have the Valar. My mother isn't perfect but she's trying very very hard."

"She has made a safe space on a continent beset by a powerful evil and that's no small good."

"Thank you." She draws to a halt. They're on a series of elaborate stone walkways overlooking a very deep chasm. "I suppose I don't need to give you the talk about caution, you've got the bird."

"Yes. This does look like quite the safety hazard for people who don't, though."

"We have very good balance - we grew up in the trees and these paths are not so narrow. But lots of people don't go through here, which is reasonable, there are other ways to get anywhere you might be going."

"Makes sense." And Loki has perfect grace, which is quite good for her balance. She steps onto the walkways.

Lúthien practically dances across. "It took a long time to talk anyone into living here, even with how nice everything is. The Quendi aren't really meant to live below ground. But in the worst case, we can seal the doors of Menegroth and survive here forever. Well, not if the Enemy is roaming the continent free, he could slowly crush us. But anything short of that, we'll barely notice. Everyone else has stopped having children but there are still children born here. We are very lucky. Want to see the river?"

"Please."

The river is several hundred meters across, slow-moving, glassy; fixtures in the ceiling above give the impression of stars on the water. "Like Cuivienen," Lúthien says, plucking a wilting flower out from beneath her feet and dipping it in the water; it immediately looks good as new.

"Cuivienen?"

"Where the Elves first awakened, beside a great lake under the stars. The legend says the first thing - well, the legend can't be right, but one of its features is that we awakened to see the stars on the water, and they have always been the first thing on our hearts."

"What about the legend can't be right?"

Oh good, Loki had been vaguely wondering if the flowers were supposed to be treated with some kind of special respect. "What I heard is that the stars thing - I hadn't heard about the men thing - was the Valar's story after the fact and before that, Quendi liked, well, words. Of course, I heard this from someone who cannot be diverted from being an enormous linguistics nerd even when he's dying and the source of the new language is also a source of healing magic, so."

"The name of the Eldar was given to us by the Valar, that's true, but I don't think that's when we started loving stars. Maybe the Tatyar loved words most? That seems consistent with what I know of them. See, the three first men founded the three tribes of the Elves - Imin the Minyar, all of whom now live in Valinor, Tata the Tatyar - some of them went to Valinor and became Finwë's people, the Noldor. Some of them refused. And now some of the Noldor have come back. And Enel became the first leader and the forefather of the Nelyar, our people, our very extended family. Some of them went to Valinor and became Olwë's people there, and some of them were left behind when my father went missing. We are the sundered tribe. I'm sad Olwë didn't come with the departing Elves himself."

Loki can just take notes on everything now! Why wasn't she doing this from the beginning? Notes notes notes. "I didn't realize there were tribes from the very start."

"Well, it is a legend, mostly used to teach young Quendi to count. Imin, Tata, Enel, and the legend goes on with all of the other Elves who joined their tribes. Perhaps they formed a little later. Certainly no one is alive who remembers a time before them, but Morgoth harassed us beside Cuivienen and lives were not long."

"And if they came back they did it in Valinor so you can't solicit confirmation," says Loki.

"You could ask the new arrivals. The Valar want us all in Valinor eventually, so they don't permit the reborn to return to Middle-earth."

"One of the new arrivals is the one I have the origin story of the word 'Quendi' from."

"Then perhaps it's true. Mother wouldn't know - she was in Valinor at the time, the Valar didn't even know that the Quendi had been born."

"Why'd your mother leave?"