"She cares about most people, she's good to all of them, she's rarely impressed by them."

"I wonder what in particular impressed her."

"I wasn't actually listening to your conversation with her, sorry." She gestures at the back room. "Mouths to feed, minds to nourish. Our people consider parenting as properly a full-time occupation for both parents for the duration of the children's youth, with the exception of hobbies that are good for the wellbeing of the parents. Now, I feel spread a little thin."

"I wasn't expecting you to produce informed speculation," Loki assures her, "just thinking aloud."

"Meril respects honesty and a tendency not to wait for cues from others. And competence."

"I like to think I have these traits."

"There you go, then. Do you want to sleep, or talk a little longer? I'm dying to hear about our new northern visitors, but you're the guest."

"I can stay up a bit longer; what did you want to know?"

"Competent? Kind? The Valar didn't send them. Some people are bothered by that but I take it as an encouraging sign."

"I have yet to see the Nolofinwëan host at their best advantage in either domain but suspect they'll do respectably at both when they're recovered from their journey. The Fëanorians are, let's say more competent than kind, which I mean mostly as praise for their competence."

She smiles. "That is both an honest answer and a reassuring one. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"If they asked the same question of us?"

"A higher kindness-to-competence ratio, almost entirely as praise for your kindness and with the caution that I issue the statement knowing comparatively little about what resources you've had to work with."

She smiles. "Less than the Amanyar, in intellectual resources as well as physical ones, but we've made out all right."

"...It occurs to me that I'm not sure if I've seen evidence of anyone farming animals. The newcomers have horses but that's not quite what I mean."

"We farm oysters. Aboveground - before the new lights everyone had to travel a great deal a day to gather enough food, it'd be cruel to animals to keep them penned up and I'm not sure we could have gathered enough for them anyway. I suppose that's changed, now, but we don't know which'd be suited or what they would need."

"I was actually thinking in your case about aquaculture. You can pen up fish off the coast, I don't know what kinds of fish you have here or what they normally eat but some of them would probably take some lobsters off your hands. Most other readily farmed food animals need some plant food, although there are egg-laying birds you could keep that can get a lot of their nutrition from insects, if they exist here - chickens? I know the continent has turkeys but I haven't seen chickens."

"There's some out east, or were before we lost the east. I'm sure we could get an exhibition improved to go and check. Insects we have aplenty. I don't know how Ulmo'd feel about penning up fish."

"Right. Ulmo. Well, chickens, maybe. You might be able to feed some on nothing but bugs and grass. Eat most of the males and take eggs from the females."

"I'll ask," she says happily. "Children should eat more than lobsters. And if Ulmo objects, it'll be because there are consequences we don't foresee for the health of the sea and our coastline, not because he takes issue with meddling with nature in general."

"I see."

"You can't have had much cause to think highly of them. If you think of them as resources - dangerous powerful forces of nature, but ones that can end up being conducive to our thriving as a people - they're less frustrating than if you try expecting them to lead."

"My understanding was that they tend to lead whether anyone expects it of them or not."

"In Valinor, maybe, but not here. Here most of them forget us entirely."