"Mission accomplished, then, if it tastes tolerable." He takes some. "Eh, I can live with it." Neighboring countries?

There are lots of different countries in my plane with different cultures and rulers and, well, food.

Oooh! Tell us about it while I pour these out and wait for them to cool, since it'll be a while.

Uh, what in particular did you want to know?

How do the nations select who is in charge, how are disputes resolved, how is the land protected, that kind of thing. He starts pouring the melted sand out onto a flat metal sheet.

My country is an empire, which is sort of like a kingdom but... bigger, I guess, there may be a technical difference but I don't remember what it is. The rulership is hereditary. Disputes between regular citizens are sometimes handled by smaller institutions they belong to, like, if I got into a dispute with another student at my school the school would handle it, but otherwise the disputants hire professional legal experts who are good at arguing, called lawyers, and the lawyers go and argue in front of a judge, who decides who wins and what they win. There's an army and a navy and an airship corps and for some possible threats there's the paladin orders and other groups like that who don't formally work for the Imperium but will help sometimes.

Is it a nice place? He takes some more sand and puts it on the fire again. I think I'll try a few more mixtures, see if anything has a better texture.

It's - okay? There's a lot of things wrong with it and here seems mostly nicer.

Well, yes. This is Valinor. If it's not as nice as imaginable, that's just because we haven't quite figured out how yet, and it certainly will be that nice soon. Then we can start working on unimaginable. Do any of these resemble the thing you're imagining?

She goes and looks at the lenses.

He's trying again with different variants of the sand. Putting some through a screen, sifting some, sorting out certain specks by hand, putting everything back on the fire.

These ones look like glass of some kind, at least.

Oh, good. While these are heating, I'll try to sand them down and see if they're workable for the thing you desire.

It'll have to be really fine grain sand to not leave scratches that make it hard to see through.

Alright. He goes to pull more tools off the walls. We'll probably need to go ask Aulë, I just want to have explored independently before we go so I can learn more when we do.

Do you need me along for that part?

He looks at her curiously, Not if you desire to stay here. It is a great joy to be in the company of the Valar, though, and I may not be able to explain it as well second-hand.

I was yesterday, someone said he needed to reenchant my knife so I went along...

Awww, tiny child.

That's okay, Bella says. I'm not very good at anything useful at all. It's nice to meet you, Nerdanel.

Tiny children are mostly not terrifying!

Even Fëanáro? He's a bit terrifying. I think he's old enough to learn how to ask for things instead of commanding them, but people generally ignore him when he asks and obey him when he commands which seems the wrong way to teach children kindness. He shrugs helplessly.