Melian is shining the same silver as her kingdom; she is taller than her husband, who is himself the tallest Elf Loki's seen, and their hands are clasped between their thrones. "Daughter," Melian greets her. "Welcome to my home."

Loki straightens up when addressed. "Your welcome is most appreciated, your majesty."

She laughs again. "It was at first reluctantly extended; now that you see what it is I have to protect, I hope you can understand why."

"The place is exquisite. Would it be amiss for me to show illusions of it to others after I've gone? Missing some colors; I see fewer than Elves do."

She hesitates. "The difficulty of navigating Menegroth is one of its greatest defenses."

"Small pieces only. Not a map. Or I will refrain if you ask."

"I would first hear more of who you'd share it with. The arrival of visitors from overseas was unexpected. We had petitioned the Valar for aid, when we combatted at once the Enemy and his greatest and most terrible ally; the Valar communicated that no aid was possible, and not much afterwards we heard of a great fleet afire on our northern shore. A surprising turn of events."

"Some of the Valar's prisoners did not care to remain so. Their escape and its aftermath were destructively dramatic."

She goes oddly expressionless. "If our new immigrants have told you they were prisoners of the Valar, I cannot believe that they speak truthfully."

"The wording is my own. They told me they were not permitted to leave."

At this her husband speaks. "I believe that."

"It did not sound implausible to me, but I have never met a Vala. I will happily use some more neutral term if you have one to suggest?"

She squeezes her husband's hand. "We are ill-equipped to rule your kind; our hearts move differently and the Ages rush by for us. That is why Elu rules here, save in questions of the land and the safety of our protection against the Enemy. It does not surprise me that some terrible misunderstanding resulted from the well-intentioned efforts of my sisters and brothers to do right by the peoples of the world they've so struggled to make a safe one."

Loki glances at Melian's husband, wondering if this is yet another Extra And/Or Alternative Elf Name. "It sounded desperately unpleasant and was in some cases deadly for the participants," Loki agrees.

And now she is entirely expressionless. "They committed violence? In Valinor?"

"That is what I have been told. It did not shock me as much; my culture is different."

"...I was not expecting that," says Loki.

"Well, I do not think the Valar exhausted their options in preventing the event," Loki says.

"I have neither the patience nor the powers of a Vala," the King says, "and no obligation to them besides. I will not risk the wellbeing of my people to let strangers prove themselves better than their own recent actions, least of all actions they are not confessing to me on bended knee but permitting a stranger to convey without profound apologies."

"I do hope it does not turn out it was supposed to be a secret; but nobody told me it was one."

"If it were, that would speak even worse of them," Melian says.

"Regardless, I fear I am badly navigating something that someone who had been in the world for more than a couple of weeks would have managed more diplomatically even without skills at diplomacy exceeding my meager ones."