Sure, why not, better than sitting here nervously.

So she places loops, and goes to Doriath.

No excursions today. He is reading her books when she comes in.

Did I pick you good stuff?

It's very interesting, yes.

Do you actually cook? I had no idea.

I haven't since I was rescued. I used to, yes.

That'd explain why I didn't know.

Lúthien wanted to cook things with me but her father said perhaps I'd poison her that way.

With all the poison they no doubt have lying around in their kitchens?

I might know how to combine innocuous ingredients into poisons! And they don't really have kitchens, they mostly eat magic fruit and nut variants which don't particularly require preparation and certainly not baking.

Yeah, I've been foraging in the garden here before. My own cooking skills are basically "spit and roast".

Both my parents forget to eat and I had six younger brothers. We could have had household help but I had an instinct that people'd judge my parents for not remembering to feed their children.

I doubt Odin's ever cooked anything beyond "spit and roast" in wilderness situations. It's not Frigg's hobby, either, though I'd be less surprised to find that he dabbled in it once. We just have cooks.

My parents sort of eloped and were estranged from the King for the first century of their marriage. We have cooks now.

Estranged? For eloping or other reasons?

My father got on very badly with his stepmother, and he married underage, and people had all sorts of very nasty comments about that, and then the King had just had two more children in quick succession.

Ah.

The comments were to the effect that he could have done much better, my mother's not particularly pretty. I think the degree of offense he took was entirely warranted.

...Somehow I was not imagining that was in the top ten factors in his decisionmaking, although I suppose I could be mismodeling him.

It wouldn't have been at all. It's - a typical top criterion, though, and 'the crown prince will marry the prettiest girl in Valinor' would be obvious to most people.

This seems like an even worse criterion with magical soul bonding than it does in the standard case. I suppose you don't age so there's no concern about people's looks inevitably fading, but still. I pick up pretty people for casual flings but I'd need so much else going on to settle down.

The Quendi value beauty very highly. And - I think there's a common mindset that it's most important to desire your spouse, everything else you can get from other relationships, that you can only get there. Which of course wouldn't be true on Asgard. Bed, pretty children, someone on your arm for public appearances - if you don't actually like your wife that doesn't matter as much.

People are frequently monogamous on Asgard, at least by the time they get married. If I met somebody I wanted to marry I think I'd prefer it; I mean, I could probably make it work with Sigyn if I wanted to turn it into a romance instead of a friendship with benefits and he could never pull off monogamy in a million years, but it'd be a compromise. And it is considered horrible to be married to somebody you don't like.

Huh. That's another cultural difference. I mean, marrying for love is common enough, but it's usually love at first sight which doesn't have much to do with personality.