"It's not entirely warrior. The men are not supposed to be warriors, for instance. My friend who I've mentioned defies this convention and at somewhat less cost to his acceptability than I suffer, but it's unusual. And we have other hobbies between practicing fighting and killing roving monsters and keeping in good condition."

"That sounds stupid and arbitrary, but on the other hand, if we had that rule about men none of this would have happened. So."

"Ha. It sounded like you had that rule for everybody and it was men who instigated defiance of it."

"Did Findekáno tell you Fëanor held a sword to Dad's throat in front of the King and the King said, and did, absolutely nothing?"

"That particular anecdote did not come up. ...If my sister had a sadistic bent I could have seen it happening with our mother. Our mother was not a limiting factor on sibling rivalry by any stretch of the imagination."

"Sounds familiar. Was your sister the favorite, too?"

"Very much so. When I was small it looked like I was never going to be able to hold a blade without getting myself killed. I tripped walking down a corridor, let alone trying to perform any sort of combat maneuver. Things improved when I secretly invented myself a spell for grace and pretended to grow out of it, but Thor was still better, and more - temperamentally similar to Odin."

"My father's a better King in every conceivable sense: more principled, more cautious, more just, less paranoid. Finwë couldn't see it even when it was literally dancing in front of his eyes. The Valar stepped in to punish Fëanor for that one, and Finwë held a massive protest and moved in with Fëanor to show solidarity."

"Our succession was never formally decided either way. I had only a slim chance, because Thor is not a political disaster nor even strictly a worse option than I - she has people skills I don't, at least when interacting with the sort of people who you must exert skills at to rule in Asgard. I'm just smarter and would take to the other details of statecraft better. But I did think it was a chance, at least if I could keep hold of my secret."

"And now that's known, so you probably can't. That sucks. I'm sorry. Uh, were you set on ruling Asgard?"

"It is the only place of which I am a princess. Why?"

"There are very few people in the Outer Lands. There might be none at all, if we don't get there in time. If we win the war, we were sort of thinking - one way to do it, less stupid than the current system, would be to let anyone who pleased build a kingdom, and then the people who were good at it would attract a following. All those wide-open lands to reclaim from the orcs, or rebuild from rubble. If you're stuck here for a while you could have a go at it. Maybe show Asgard you have the talent."

"...I am not sure Asgard will be impressed in the correct way by a sorceress-queen but it is not an unappealing option."

Irissë sighs and sits down. "What do you think you'll miss?"

"My friend, my sister, my father. I'm not sure what you eat when you have food, here, but I'm sure it's not exactly what I'm accustomed to. The libraries. I will need to write very energetically as soon as I have paper to be sure I remember as much as I can, my own mind being my only reference."

"They took our books. We had as many as we could carry with us, and Fëanor said it'd be safer to load them on the boats. When he reached the other shore he set the boats on fire. I don't think he'd have burned the books. That would be unlike him."

"Why did he set the boats on fire, books aboard or no?"

"I have been painted quite the picture. You could see the fire all the way from across the sea?"

"We could see the boats the whole journey. It was a calm sea. Couldn't quite see them disembarking, not at that distance."

"A hundred, hundred fifty miles? I don't think I could swim that, but the Teleri - the Elves who live on the coast - possibly could. It's the closest the two continents get."

"I might be able to swim it but definitely couldn't see that far. Not boat-sized things, at any rate."

"Really? That's interesting. Your planet is much brighter, right? I wonder if that's related."