"Your mother throws people out of her country for practicing magic while also being a girl, when it saved someone's life, and you're disgusted with our gods for things said in anger after a Kinslaying?"

"Oh, have I claimed any affection for Odin either? I'm told I talk in my sleep but you should not give the remarks any credit; they're quite random."

"We've been trying not to listen to you except when you're deliberately speaking aloud and to us; the different Elven communities in Valinor had very different norms about catching peoples' unconscious thoughts and it seemed likely that Asgardian opinions would run even farther afield."

"I'll take that as 'yes, we do'? There are different Elven communities in Valinor. In some of them, it is rude to converse mostly by listening to unspoken thoughts; in some of them, it is rude not to. You're very upset. By what?"

"By the idea that anyone may have been investigating my unspoken thoughts. At all. Ever."

"Oh. Well, I'll tell everyone to keep trying to avoid that. Have you not been directing them away from us if they're private?"

"No one I have met before I came here has this ability at all, so how would I have that skill? My thoughts are always private unless I happen to be reciting them aloud!"

"You mean you can't hear ours? Asgardians can't, at all?"

"No. At what range can you do this? Are you even sure that someone with no ability to hear thoughts can fend off a casual listener?"

".We teach children how to have private thoughts. Some communities much younger than others. So we know how to teach it. I would imagine you can learn, but I've never met anyone who can't hear in the first place. Range depends on familiarity. Two people close to each other and actively trying to contact each other could potentially do so over several hundred miles. Most people, you wouldn't notice unless you're nearby and they're crying out or you're speaking to them."

"But holding a conversation amplifies it so in order to avoid this problem on an immediate basis as opposed to after however long it will take you to teach me the privacy skill if I can learn it at all, I will have to travel the rest of the way alone, is that right?"

"No! Right now I am very pointedly not listening to you! I can still tell you're panicked but that might just be through your tone of voice! If you trust us, this problem is avoided as soon as I communicate to everyone that it's a problem in the first place!"

Her hands clench. "It might be my tone of voice. You can't even be sure if you're succeeding completely or not?"

"I can always tell if someone I'm talking to is experiencing very strong emotions. It never occurred to me to wonder whether this was because I'm picking up their emotional state with osanwë, because I am reading it in their face and voice, or because I am imagining what I'd feel in their position and experiencing it myself. The distinction wouldn't be meaningful to anyone I know, and people would find all of those about equally invasive - like, some people might wish that no one could ever discern their emotional state, but they wouldn't be more bothered by someone inferring it from osanwë than inferring it from their voice. I know how to stop listening to verbal thoughts, because that feels distinct from information I'd get another way. I have never had cause to consider exactly what distinguishes the various types of nonverbal communication in a conversation. I am trying."

"If I don't want someone who isn't telepathic to know my mood I can not speak, or do so levelly, and compose my face, or not look at them. Now that I'm openly using magic I could turn invisible and compose all my speech with auditory illusion if I wanted to be very thorough. I have no such defense against osanwë. How long does it tend to take some unusually paranoid and motivated child to pick up the habit of hiding thoughts?"

"Fëanor famously went thirty years broadcasting absolutely nothing, starting when he was sixteen. I don't know how quickly he picked it up, a week?" He sighs. "You, uh, could try turning invisible and composing all your speech with auditory illusion, and I will see whether I have an intuition about your emotional state?"

She is promptly invisible. "Although you could just be extrapolating from a moment ago," she points out.

"You're right. Think about something else, and we'll check in in a few minutes?"

"I can tell you're there. Like, I can sense that there is another thinking person present; I can sense this because they are thinking. I am not listening and beyond that I have no idea of your emotional state or thoughts."

"Well. That will I suppose inform any attempt at stealth I might have ever considered, so much for invisibility. But it at least means that I can tolerate receiving instruction in case it works and do not have to instantly flee and live as a hermit in some random wilderness."

"That is what you'd do if we couldn't stop ourselves from sensing your emotions?"

"I am sure on occasion I would have an unusually calm and mentally disciplined day and would venture out having no thoughts that were not about how badly my various magic might be needed. I would not live near you."

"Okay. Uh. Usually, protecting one's thoughts is taught by showing you what varying degrees of broadcasting my thoughts at you feel like, and describing what I'm doing to achieve that level of broadcast. But you said you cannot hear me at all?"