"They make us fight. I had no aptitude for it at all but it's the womanly thing to do in Asgard and a princess can't get away with just not being particularly womanly. Thor's a prodigy. We weren't adults until we'd gone out and killed something nasty. She got a giant bear, I went along - I had my healing spells by then and thought I could bail her out if it went badly - and I got a wyvern." The scenes play out in parallel illusions: tiny Loki gingerly spearing an enormous bear covered in broken arrows and scars from the high ground while Thor clobbers it in the jaw. Larger Loki, Thor and friends looking on while she grounds a reptile and dispatches it. "Subject to the vagaries of my memory," she clarifies.

"I'm sorry. At first I thought that sounded appealing, not being something to protect all the time, but actually it sounds kind of horrible. What if you didn't want to kill anything?"

"Well, I did want to kill the wyvern. It was attacking people. I was fortunate enough never to be called into a war against actual people that I couldn't stomach." She dismisses the pictures. "Just frost giants who were hassling helpless Midgardians."

She nods. "I'm - glad it worked out for you. I very much desire to learn how to fight but it'd make everyone upset and never serve any purpose, I'll never be near any enemies unless everything's irrevocably lost and I do know enough to turn the knife on myself at that point."

"It makes an all right form of recreation if you're any good at it and have people who can practice with you, but yeah, it's unlikely to be of practical value to you."

"And it's not really that I'm looking for sources of recreation, just the ability to go outside without a hundred guards."

"Where do you want to go?"

"Círdan's, to talk with him about your orcs. Eithel Ivrin, it's absolutely beautiful and there used to be a thriving nomadic community in the area and I want to make sure they're all right. Tumunzahar, the Dwarf-city, I've been invited and it sounds magical. Lake Mithrim, where the newcomers have settled - I could surprise my cousins! Or just greet them, if they dislike surprises. I could make their crops grow faster by dancing and singing and things."

"I'd really like a map of all these places and a list of all these people," she remarks. "The newcomers that have your cousins with them are not the ones at the lake." Pause. "It's probably a terrible idea to suggest it but I wonder how many guards I'd count for."

"Oh!" Her eyes light up. "Probably none at all, the ways my father thinks, but I could ask him. And I can sketch you a map, if we go to my rooms or somewhere I can find chalk. There's more than one group of newcomers? I thought it was Finwë's remaining children and grandchildren."

"I think I might rather not have him thinking of me as the possible equal of a hundred excellent archers like that. And Finwë's children and grandchildren are leading their respective groups, but there are many other people with both sets and the two factions aren't speaking."

"Wait, really? Why not?"

"...I'm still not sure of how to expect people here to react to descriptions of things like what happened with them on the shores of Valinor and suspect I'd do someone's reputation a disservice if I tried to relay it secondhand, non-diplomat that I am."

"So that's another reason to wish I could leave, so I could get it firsthand. Do you want me to go fetch us chalk?"

"...Actually, I think I might want to keep the map and chalk is not very durable, and there's something I've been wanting to try with the illusions... draw it in the air and I'll trace your hand."

She tries it, illustrating the map with flashes of the locations as she goes. "Brithombar, where Círdan lives. Eithel Ivrin - the waters have healing powers - Mithrim."

Loki follows the movement of Lúthien's hand with lines, and embellishes the map with symbol and legend as she elaborates.

"That's very useful. Can you dismiss them and call them back perfectly later, like storing a tapestry? Or is it from memory, which fades?"

"I can't dismiss them and get them back. But they persist as long as I don't get rid of them altogether, and I can manipulate them almost like they were real." She peels off a duplicate map. It shrinks and clings to the back of her hand. "And I can stick an illusion to a person. So I can wear it - maybe under my clothes or feathers - and then -" She shakes her hand illustratively and expands the image. "It loses a little fidelity in the process. But not so much that I can't just sharpen it up again, good as new." She does that; it matches the "original".

"Oh, lovely. Can you do moving ones?"

"Yes? You saw some. What do you have in mind?"

"Like, imagine if I wanted to say to my cousins hello and I am charmed and delighted to learn of their existence and my home is theirs, could you capture me saying that and then they could see it almost like I was in front of them? And very uniform in temperature for some reason?"

"I can't wear an audio illusion the way I can wear a visible one, but I could put a tiny Lúthien in my bag, animated in the same way over and over."

"Yes," she says delightedly, "do! But does that mean she'd have to be silent? Hey, I wonder if animations of me are revitalizing or make crops grow. Probably not but I don't know how exactly that works, and you have to see me for it to work, so maybe you only have to see me?"

"I doubt the illusion carries the effect," Loki says. "I could add illusion of your voice but it would be dependent on my memory; and anyway, my memory of faces is good enough that I don't think there'd be much loss of fidelity if I made a new illusion of you when I arrived instead of carrying one along. The idea's very cute but I'm not sure it improves on an osawnë memory or a new illusion."