"How did you meet Findekáno?"

"...he brought me lunch? He's interested in the scribe?"

He stands still for a second later. "Right. How's the scriber coming along?" And then the tension melts away to be replaced with a wry smile, "are you one of those people who works better when annoyed, or worse? Not that I'm going to terrorize you over the next cultural misunderstanding just to get books a little sooner..."

"I mean, I was sort of feeling like I had fewer other things to do with my time but I don't think my quality improved any. The chassis is about done, it puppets very smoothly."

"What does that leave?"

"Programming, quadruple-checking the programming, etching, checking the etching, and waking."

"Exciting. Did you want to finish our game of Governor sometime? Tonight?"

"Tomorrow? I don't know how long it's going to take you to trounce me and an evening start seems like a bad plan." And I have a date and is this what scheduling around dates is always like here aaaaaugh.

"Tomorrow works." He walks him comfortably about the palace gardens, recommends some tasty plants.

"Oh, I was thinking maybe eating flowers was an Elf thing. Humans don't usually eat flowers."

"Everything in Valinor is edible and technically nutritionally complete."

"Huh, that's interesting." Kib tries some tasty plants.

"It's useful for extended travel."

"I bet it would be, yeah, don't have to pack food, just eat whatever random things."

"Can't end up lost and low on supplies. I used to travel a lot."

"Where to?"

"Ah, Valimar, Alqualondë, various locations where one could go cave-crawling or cliff-diving - there's a song for cliff-diving - mountain climbing..."

"Why'd you stop?"

"I've really just slowed down. But I've had more responsibilities here in the city."

Nod, nod.

"If there's anywhere you'd like to go -"

"Is there anywhere I should be going? I'm not much of a traveler by default."

A teasing smile. He is still allowed teasing smiles, right? He has been forgiven and so theirs can be a friendship that includes teasing smiles. "Why, everything is exceptionally pretty! Is that not sufficiently motivating?"

Kib does not chide him for the teasing smile. "But things are also exceptionally pretty right here!"

"Differently exceptional, and differently pretty. And you might like some of the people in the south, I hear they're charming and eccentric and think the Valar are wrong about all sorts of things..."