My father probably won't even do that. It's not actionable information for him. What is actionable information is whether I'll defy him the next time we're at odds, and what he's terrified of is that I'll hate him, or be angry with him, or hold him in contempt - that's what he'll be looking for.

I don't have nearly such confident reads on my family. I don't know whether Frigg lied to me my whole life or genuinely didn't know I'm a frost giant; Thor I'm certain didn't know but I don't know how she'll react on a spectrum from 'now I despise you forever and may try to kill you' versus 'okay but you're culturally Asgardian tell me again about the giant spiders let's go kill some'.

Bet I can meet them and make accurate predictions within an hour of doing so.

I bet you could, it's spooky.

There isn't a trait for 'giftedness', it doesn't make sense that Valinor's greatest linguist and engineer marrying her greatest artist and metalsmith would produce a diplomat, a musician, someone who can talk with animals and has a Maia as a personal companion, an economist, another version of our father, and two of the kind of person who, tossed a world, change it. Maybe we were all driven by fear of inadequacy in our father's eyes, but if so, it drove us much farther than it drives anyone else and it's a common insecurity.

...There kind of is a trait for giftedness if you get a lot of statistics and shake well, but admittedly the distribution of types in your family is weird.

People used to say, in Tirion, that I couldn't possibly be my father's son. I see similarities, but perhaps I'm motivated to find them.

Well - I think I'd be inclined to put it as 'I'm not sure who else's son you could more realistically be'. Out of people I've met, anyway.

He laughs. The Eldar can't be mistaken about paternity. I suppose if I were an adopted frost giant there'd be no way to tell.

Yeah, I didn't think there was an actual question about the matter, but if there had been that would be how I'd describe my opinion on it.

One of the werewolves went missing, a while ago, but so far nobody's retirement age or anything, and, uh, I'm around. I made sure the pregnant ones just kind of constantly wear healing songs because that can be a very hazardous condition, sometimes suddenly. We've been lucky that nobody's gotten all the way drowned or bled out before someone could get them stable and fetch me.

It sounds like it would be useful to have you stay.

If you like, sure. Economy-wise I've been more focused on making sure there's plenty over making sure it's allocated intelligently but I've introduced the concept of money - Dwarves helped, when they came by - and as they've learned more things to do and found and honed talents, they're specializing more and having more use for the idea. For lack of anything convenient to base a physical currency on I have them trading in time - I can do clocks with looped illusions, there's clocks all over the place. This'll break down when the value of a person's time starts to be less similar but it's doing all right for them so far including for a few things that aren't literally spending time on favors for one another.

No, I agree. I don't mind staying here with them and you don't have to pretend to like me personally or anything. Gave up on ever finishing that game years ago, etcetera.

The game was helpful to me, good practice at a few things I subsequently needed. I don't dislike you, you just know too much for me to properly keep you at arm's length and I can't trust you enough to enjoy having you close.

Okay. Well, I am extremely poorly equipped to manage that for you if it involves taking your various remarks at anything other than face value, so I advise you don't invite me to dinner if you don't want to have dinner with me, but I'm not going to make a fuss over being snubbed.

I have never asked you for things I don't actually want you to do. I am less confident if you break down 'wanting' - I think I'm giving my stability appropriate weight in my evaluations of what I want, but if I'm erring, it's by caring too much about it.

If you say so.

How have your Quendi helpers been? That's - an important job and one I think the Valar did poorly, with us.

Prissy about sexual mores, which the Men are happily mostly ignoring them about. Other than that they've been doing very well and very helpfully and I've been delighted to have them.

...unless it happens to occur to my father independently to announce that the old rules are lies the Valar spun us, I have very little latitude there. We won't enforce our laws with them, of course.

I am pretty sure they have concluded that Quendi are just weird. There's Dwarves and there's me for countervailing perspectives. As long as no one is going to bother Tep and Riaz if they hold hands walking down the street with their adopted orc, we're fine.

Bother them, no. Ask me to look after the welfare of the child, probably.