"It's not tasty, and I think it is a bad idea to drink it in quantity so don't put it in soup, but - assuming the species have similar chemical reactions, anyway - it's not dangerous in small amounts, accidentally swallowed while swimming."

"Yes, but a pool that's not so pure and clear you can drink from it wouldn't be satisfying to swim in, either, it wouldn't feel like we were back aboveground which is what everyone is really aching for." She shakes her head. "I'll try a few things, see if there's a way it can be done. We're by the armory now, I don't suppose you want to take a look at that?"

"I might! I did have to cultivate some interest in the subject to make it through my upbringing without my brain leaking out my ears."

"Every time you talk about growing up I desperately want to give you a hug."

"You can hug me. It wasn't so bad, anyway, I had spare time and a fantastic library and tutors."

She does, careful again of the hair. "A library?"

"There are words? In all of those? Stories, songs, lessons?"

"Mostly lessons. And some of them have pictures in, too. But yes. Every single book - and it is usually only one or two of any given one - full of words." Allspeak doesn't seem to want to filter through an osanwë memory of Asgardian text, but here's the mental image of a book full of information on the otherworldly flora colossi, one on the history of Asgardian art from a certain period of two centuries long before Loki was born, one on comparative religion -

Wonder, delight, amazement. "Daeron'll be furious."

"Is that the composer fellow...?"

"He came up with a rule for making marks that represent words, so we could have stories like that, but no one was really interested except the Dwarves. He sulked for decades."

"Fëanor invented the alphabet the newcomers use, I think. Writing is enormously important on most developed worlds; memory's imperfect and even if it is perfect it lets your words be transmitted to people you never meet personally. Daeron ought to be very proud of the idea. I don't know what I'd do without writing -" She gestures at her little notebook. "I had no idea how long it would take me to be able to get another of these so I was trying not to write things down if they weren't important to remember very exactly, and now I have the idea of using illusion letters stuck to the pages and I'm going to be much more functional."

"Yes, once he gets over being upset that no one listened to him he'll be delighted he was on the right track. He's working on your song that calls us things other than Elves, though, so might be best not to drag him off course just yet."

"I'll leave that up to you."

"Anyway, the armory!" She waves to a few guards and opens it. "Nearly all of these are dwarven-made, obviously."

Loki goes in and peers at things. "Am I allowed to pick things up?"

"I can't think why not. Actually I can think why not, Father thinks since you're mortal and can't be held to your word and are strange you might go crazy and start killing everyone. But I don't think that, and he worries a bit much, and in any event I could probably stop you."

"I think I'll refrain, I'm only a little curious about the balance and weight. Purely theoretically I'm curious how you'd stop me." She folds her hands behind her back and investigates weapons.

"It's very attention-getting," says Loki.

"Not much use against enemies. That was not really a problem I'd expected to have. But anyway, even if I don't know anything about fighting I expect one is worse at it in the dark, so if you did turn out to be a servant of the Enemy I could definitely make you worse at it."

"Except it turned out when we checked that I could illusion darkness against your mother's forest-light," Loki points out.

"Right, but I'm not disadvantaged by the dark because my ability to hurt you in a fight goes from 'none' to 'none'. Or do you mean that you could illusion it light again when I told it to be dark?"

"The latter. Although I'd probably have to concentrate on it, which I don't have to do with an unopposed illusion, so I'd be either blindfighting or distracted."