"But what would Ulmo do if you started a fish farm without permission, or if orcs made a boat and went to the island?"

"Orcs he might attack, because they're orcs and sworn to Melkor and I know you think you've succeeded at rerouting that but I'm not sure the Valar'd agree. If we started a fish farm and that was a bad idea he'd probably heed the fishes' requests to not be on the fish farm, if they preferred that, and then we'd have no fish."

"Which is, if not leadership, at least enforcement."

"Except when I asked who you'd name to the job, you've claimed no Kingship; but if people were penning up others, and the others wanted out, wouldn't you let them go without regard to what authority this implied you had? And if you saw orcs traveling - not your orcs, just ordinary ones - toward a strategic position, wouldn't you stop them?"

"Yes, but I do not equate the preferences of fish with the preferences of people, and if I saw the orcs were escorted by someone not conventionally understood to be on the side of ordinary unconverted orcs I might trouble to ask them where they were going and why before I attacked. I suppose it's possible animals are just smarter here than I'm accustomed to, but that prompts the question of whether everyone shouldn't be scrambling to eat exclusively plants and maybe eggs and milk as quickly as possible."

"As I understand it, that's one of the things the Valar disagree on. Whether one should eat animals, I mean, not how smart they are. You could ask blond dog-boy about the latter."

"Maybe I will." She writes that down.

She watches, fascinated.

"I have a pretty good all-purpose visual and audio illusion spell," Loki says. "Useful for notetaking, although it doesn't dovetail especially well with shapeshifting or turning invisible. And unfortunately, it's less useful here than it would be some places because I can't compose an illusion with colors I can't see, and you have a broader spectrum of them than I do. So nothing I make is going to be quite perfectly convincing to a Quendi."

"I was more impressed by what I assume are designs to remind you of the contents of the conversation? They're very regular."

"Oh, writing. That I can't claim credit for, my people have had it since long before I was born. The newcomers use it; most realms invent it eventually. I'd offer to teach you but I don't actually know your language, I'm only using translation magic - also not one of my own creations."

"We'll ask the newcomers, they seemed convinced they'd pick up the language quite swiftly."

"I can't comment; I can hear the actual sounds people around me are using through the translation, but they're typically not my focus unless the rhyme scheme matters."

She shrugs. "Fifty years is as good as now, to me. Better, because then these guys will be grown and I'll have more free time for strange new ideas. If they're not as good as they say with languages, we'll manage as we always have."

"Quendi are so patient," Loki says.

"Perhaps your people are very impatient."

"Midgardians are more so, but they have a very good excuse. And I'm more impatient than most Asgardians."

"There's a kind of impatience that brings the future faster, and a kind that robs the future to rack up debts in the present. We should really have different words for them." She smirks. "The Tatyar probably do."

"That's an elegant distinction," Loki says. "Although debt, used intelligently, isn't universally negative."

"Oh?"

"It's easier to explain in a context where money's a background assumption, but I could probably think of a different example...?"

"If one comes to mind."

"Okay... imagine you meet someone who's very hungry. Too hungry to pull a bow without shaking. And imagine that you were short on even lobsters, so you can't just give out food whenever someone wanders by, you have children to feed. But, it turns out she's a hunter; and if you give her some of your food, even though you might not be able to afford to give it out as charity to everyone who comes by, she promises that once she's perked up she'll go bag a deer and give you half, which is much less food than it takes to get her in hunting condition. Sensibly managed debt is like that - it gives you more ability to get the sort of resources you're indebted in in the first place, or something you can convert into those resources, or something you want more. It doesn't always work like that, which is why the debtors owe the creditors more than they borrowed - to cover for the people who metaphorically go out and don't find any deer, in the long run."

She nods. "That's close to the example we teach children, of when you'd give your word - if people'd aid you if they could trust you, and they can't trust you, and there is a narrow promise that can be made."

"At home people who don't trust you in the first place are often unwilling to accept your promises," Loki says.