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Tumunzahar makes Menegroth look like a contract project. Which, the Dwarves assure her, it was. The stonework is astonishingly careful and beautiful, silky to the touch up close while from a distance it gives the impression of stretching on forever above, a sky of stone with crystals for stars. Vast natural cave systems are connected by dozens of perfectly smooth, gently sloped broad stone pathways from which the fall, if she fell, would be several miles down. There are handrails. "We use those to move materials carts," someone explains to her, "we're not going to be reckless."
There's an amphitheater, a place where a hundred of the stone walkways twine around to create space for a hundred thousand people to sit in close proximity, and someone is giving a lecture or a demonstration at the base of it, the seats closest to him filled with eager, tiny, bearded Dwarf-children.
And they spiral down, and down, and down, past waterfalls and egg-sized gemstones left half in the rock and halls of crystal. Everything grows gradually more ornate and more perfectly maintained and the clang of hammers fades behind them. "People say," her guide says, "that we only have a council instead of a single King because there were nine winners of the competition to design the throne so we couldn't just select one person to sit it." And they push open the doors to reveal, indeed, nine thrones so elaborate it would be hard to choose between them, and nine squat bearded people sitting them.
purposeful_glory
"I'm sorry, first of all. Again. Since you threatened to go catatonic if anybody from your family spoke to you I've got a recorded message from Macalaurë which I took down and will play with my Allspeak off." She soundproofs the place, detranslates herself, unbaffles the loop and scoots it back to the beginning.
purposeful_glory
"We're supposed to have a conversation that makes it look to any local espionage that I'm convincing you to go out for a recreational flight so that I can switch to kidnapping later once we're out of your room, which I had soundproofed."
"There's no reason to refuse you this, you don't learn anything from it and if it's real it'd be worthwhile. No reason at all except I desperately don't want to do it, and that's cowardly."
For a minute he is perfectly still. Then he stands up, easily, gracefully, and pulls the door open. "I haven't tried flying over the mountains, swifts can handle that much altitude?"
purposeful_glory
"Sure, I'd take a lot longer to cross the continent if I had to go around," Loki says. She's not a great actress, but the intended audience knows she's faking, even if they don't know what she's faking. "Nothing to eat up there so I don't think the actual birds tend to go but we can."
purposeful_glory
"I bet they're looking forward to that. I thought nothing was rare in Valinor?" Walk, walk, walk, aaaaaaaugh.
purposeful_glory
"Yep, your brother gave back the finished pieces the other day. Good as new as far as I can tell."
"They're good at that. I really want to introduce them to the Dwarves. My insistence that Quendi can be good at metalworking is going to ring a little hollow as long as I can't show them anyone who actually is."
purposeful_glory
"I think they would get along splendidly with Dwarves," she agrees. "Dwarves are great."