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Loki is not technically banished. This is just - giving her mother space. To think. About what to do with her wayward child. She will be called back in a few years for a more permanent decision. Midgard's nice enough, anyway, and Sigyn's coming along.
The Bifrost lights up in all its colors and -
- this might be Midgard, but it is not a part of Midgard she ever saw and not the place she was expecting to be dropped, and there is no Sigyn with her.
She holds Lævateinn ready as a glaive. Maybe her mother feared her sorcery and thought she'd best be sent somewhere deadly under the impression she was meant to survive the trip -
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purposeful_glory
"All right," she says, "uh, my cousins are speaking to each other, right? You said the two hosts aren't speaking but they're not on different sides of that?"
purposeful_glory
"All your cousins are with the newer arrivals and as far as I know they're getting along."
"Oh, good. I can't imagine having brothers and sisters and then losing them to whatever this mysterious disagreement is."
purposeful_glory
"I'm not aware of any siblings apart from Finwë's children themselves who are estranged, although I didn't demand a complete accounting of the entire hosts."
She nods. "We'd still have time to meet Dwarves before dinner, if that's in your plans."
So she starts walking. "We call them the Naugrim. They say their ancestors awoke beneath the mountains, already knowing where to look for metal and how to build the tools they use."
purposeful_glory
"I assume that in accordance with policy, since they're here, they don't have free will?"
"No one's sure, since they're not El- Quendi, but none of them have ever been recorded to have broken their word, and Queen Melian my mother says one of the Valar created them directly as a personal project, and in any event we wouldn't have Menegroth without them, or metal weapons and armor to defend it."
purposeful_glory
"I heard someone say the Valar can't create thinking beings?"
"So the story goes, this was before the Quendi awakened in Middle-earth - that's this continent, the world outside Valinor - and one of the Valar, Aulë, lord of earth and metals and ores, was tired of waiting. And Morgoth was running around destroying as much of Middle-earth as he could, and Aulë was concerned about the durability of the Quendi. So he made a new people, resistant to injury, impossible to mind-control or enslave in the fashion of the Enemy, built for tunneling in the mountains he so loved.
And when he had finished, then Eru spoke to him, and said 'you have sinned against me, child, in overreaching yourself and trying to equal me; the Valar cannot create life, only I can do that. These are but automatons, extensions of your will.' And Aulë, weeping to have disobeyed his god, raised his great hammer to destroy them - but they screamed and cried and begged for life. And Aulë said to Eru, 'how can this be, if they are automatons?', and Eru said that, impressed by the sincerity of Aulë's repentance, he had given them true life."
And when he had finished, then Eru spoke to him, and said 'you have sinned against me, child, in overreaching yourself and trying to equal me; the Valar cannot create life, only I can do that. These are but automatons, extensions of your will.' And Aulë, weeping to have disobeyed his god, raised his great hammer to destroy them - but they screamed and cried and begged for life. And Aulë said to Eru, 'how can this be, if they are automatons?', and Eru said that, impressed by the sincerity of Aulë's repentance, he had given them true life."
"But Eru said that he would not have his own creations supplanted, so the Dwarves were put to sleep to awaken again only once the Quendi had been born."
She looks a bit astonished. "It's Eru. All of creation is his gift to us."
"I'm not going to get angry with you if you disagree with me, you know. My convictions aren't that fragile."
purposeful_glory
"But it doesn't seem like it'd wind up being a very friendly conversation even if it were not an angry one either."
"I'd claim expertise in friendly disagreement but actually no one ever contradicts me about anything so perhaps I would take it very badly." She sighs. "This way."
purposeful_glory
"I have not met many religiously inclined people at home, but there are some and it's a notoriously touchy subject. Maybe I will disagree with you about something smaller first."
"It's not that I am religiously inclined, it's that my mother is a god. It seems possible that I have unusually accurate information on the topic, compared to superstitious Avari or something."
purposeful_glory
"I'm willing to take your word on the matters of fact. I am concerned we would run into conflicts of value judgment."
"We're here anyway," she says. The trees have subsided into geometric shapes, and the flowers have stopped - "they make dwarves sneeze." It's also much darker. She walks straight into the dark.
purposeful_glory
"I cannot see in this low light. Will they mind if I light the path with illusions?"
"They probably won't, if they're dim. Don't think much of sunlight but then neither do we. The new arrivals from Valinor are the only ones who can stand it. Didn't you tell my parents that you wouldn't?"