"I can if necessary do without food. Not comfortably, but indefinitely. You think they'd attack a lone stranger?"
"Unorthodox applications of magic. For that matter, I can do this for others as well, although I really cannot recommend it as an alternative to any sort of nourishment."
Shrug. "As many as I can touch - I don't know how quickly your people normally starve; I cannot improve them much beyond that with a healing spell."
"...I have some misgivings about providing this service to one side of a conflict I know little about but I have no reason to actually want you and yours dead and no other pressing engagements, so."
"I would need reasons to dislike you that I do not currently have to make such a condition."
"Well. Thank you. Really, sincerely, I don't know if you know what it's like to watch people who trust you slowly starve to death, but - thank you. You should meet my father, he needs to know this right away - I mean, if you don't mind - it's just that there are people who actually might die today while we're figuring out logistics."
"Nolofinwë," he says, "it's a pleasure." And privately, with his thoughts, Finno, I don't like this.
You will, just listen.
I'm listening. But in the meantime - you went out alone and came back convinced that a stranger with no reason at all to be there needed to meet me immediately.
Yeah, he thinks, I realize.
Will you hand your weapon to Turukáno until I decide what's going on? It's not really a request.
There's no power Findekáno knows of who can command someone's mind in the space of a five minute conversation, but he complies.
Loki observes this but does not know the local mores on weapon handling and doesn't comment. "Hello. I'm Loki Odinsdottir of Asgard."
"I cannot improve on anyone's comfort much. And I can do it only as fast as I can touch them. But I have a healing spell which will put someone in a state of 'not starving' and 'not, at that moment, freezing' - even if they then resume starving and freezing in short order."