That's my hope. Although the ensuing conversation prompted the concern that the animals here may be smarter than I'm used to and eating them may be a more morally dubious prospect.

I'm sure Eru has a plan for them.

I'm planning to ask Tyelcormo, who can communicate with animals, for more information. Plan or no plan I'll put the extra time into foraging for nuts and berries if they're bright enough to worry me.

We don't eat animals anymore for the security reasons, but I miss it. Mother'd know if it was wrong.

I'm not going to ask anyone currently relying on animal protein to starve, but I still feel more comfortable eating only things that have not contemplated their own existence at any point in their history.

Hmm. Why that specifically?

Not very specifically; there are other things I could learn about animal intelligence that would put me off too. But that's a classic threshold for people who, say, land on a new planet and wonder about which of the things on if they can have for lunch.

I suppose it would have been good to have checked when we hunted Dwarves.

Yes, that's pretty much the scenario that worries me. I wouldn't miss a spoken language, but if the turkey I hunted down the other day were just too scared to talk or using a form of telepathy I couldn't hear at all or has abstract thought without the communicative focus common to people I've met...

I think Mother'd know, she says worriedly.

And maybe she would, but maybe we have different thresholds of discomfort, or she isn't bringing it up because no one in her kingdom is eating meat except these already-dead lobsters anyway and she has time to think of a way to present the restriction, or she thinks it's like the orcs and they may as well die because there's a plan for them later which doesn't hinge on their living out their lives unmolested...

Unhappiness, worry. How were your travels aside from that?

All right. Artanis is likewise excited to meet you and will probably come here in a few months.

Oh good. Are you nearly at the gates? I'll come out and say hello.

Maybe halfway there. I'm not especially fast at a walk.

If you try to fly I think the trees will all simultaneously kick up a terrible wind storm. They were testing it earlier.

I hope they've tested it to their satisfaction and don't expect me to get flung into a tree for the purpose.

Mother convinced some real birds to try, I think. Nightingales are hers - she personally designed them I mean - so they were happy to.

Are the nightingales okay? Will they ever be able to fly again without a windstorm kicking up?

Yes, they're fine. Once we established that the windstorm makes it hard for a bird to make progress, she added an exception for all nightingales.

No other flying birds in the area?

Adding them on a case-by-case basis. We like having birds in the woods, but what if some could be disguised enemies?

I can only turn people into one kind of bird, Loki says. And if you didn't expect the Enemy to try it before I'm not sure why it would seem likely now, and if it did there seems no reason for him not to choose a nightingale form.

He can't, Mother knows them all personally. But perhaps we can only exclude your kind of bird. Though then it seems specifically hostile towards you, when what we fear is the Enemy.

I was under the impression this entire defense was being constructed in reaction to me, if not to hedge me out.