I'd need to be more familiar with the setting to have a fair playing field that wasn't roughly equal capabilities.

Makes sense. I'm game.

Findekáno mentioned, in his last letter, the talk you gave them, about what would have happened if your sister'd been the one dropped on them.

I mean, I was speculating, but - yeah. What about it?

Well, if we're on speaking terms when I've revisited the circumstances of my home planet I will introduce you to her too.

I'm trying to imagine the stir it would have made in Valinor if, exiled for a hundred twenty years, my father had come back having saved another universe, learned to teleport, commanded the most powerful artifacts of your universe, killed some gods, and brought some immigrants. I do not know if Asgard is comparable.

Where'd the hundred and twenty figure come from? And you forgot 'turned out to be another species'.

I did. That's how long he was exiled from Tirion; we did not manage to make anything so interesting out of the time, just lots of engineering papers and the undying loyalty of our people.

They're very undyingly loyal. It's sort of weird. Anyway, it has already been noted that I am impatient compared to Quendi.

And you are not in Valinor, which is fond of letting its days slip by without anyone noticing. Are people in Asgard not particularly undyingly loyal to your mother?

Not like that. She's quite popular, people certainly do what she says, but I think their loyalty would run out under tests that your people's would survive.

It's the deep-seated conviction that someday my father will be a god. Makes my life rather easy. Except when I disagree with him.

Odin already wields vaguely incalculable power, just sparingly.

In that case I can pretend it's entirely the force of our personalities.

I'll be curious to hear your updated judgment when you've gotten a less outlying source on Asgardian culture and met my family.

I actually wonder if it's related to what you've called the extreme Quendi monogamy, though monogamy isn't really its notable feature. Persistence of deep and unconditional loyalty.

...Could be.

I should let you work.

Let me know when and where you want illusion roofs.

I'll start designing it at once.

And she gets back to work.

A while later he has a series of illusions for stages of construction of an uninteresting outpost in the desert. Actually, for ten uninteresting outposts in the desert and another thirty scattered across the continent. "Seemed safest."

"Delightful."

"I know your time is valuable. I hoped it might be a diverting break from spell-research anyway."