"And we can figure out together what those exports should be and I'll see that they're provided in the needed quantities."

"Splendid."

He is smiling. "It's your move."

"So it is." And he writes up his move and passes it over.

They play into the evening, but not all night. Maitimo wins. Maitimo smiles at him, rather distantly, and wishes him good skill on the scriber.

Aly's picking berries. Aly's in the library. Aly's having dinner with a creche friend. Aly's standing in line to vote.

Kib's yawning in bed and getting up to start the day and get back to work on the scriber.

And Findekáno will stop by in the mid-afternoon with all the festival foods Kib is mostly ignoring. "Commissioned you a ring of grace. Five weeks was a good estimate, might be a bit longer because they aren't going to start with the festival ongoing." Free tonight?

"Thank you." I am.

South quarter of the city - it's the area with the natural rock formations? I don't know how much of Tirion you've seen - he sketches a mental map. There's a play, part of the festival.

Will you translate it for me? I'm picking up bits of Quenya but only bits.

I would love to.

Then I would love to be there.

"How's the golem coming?"

"I've got the outline of the program, just need to make sure I have all the details it'll need and that I've accounted for all the - see, the golem won't automatically know how to move, so I'm going to etch symbols into various parts of it and define certain motions in terms of bringing those symbols closer together or lining them up in certain ways. I need to make sure the program needs only as many of those as I think it does, and then I can etch them in and make sure I can walk it through the range of motion it needs without cheating and using a degree of freedom I didn't symbolize."

"Cool. How long are your apprenticeships, how long does it take to pick this stuff up? I can't read in your language yet or I'd tolerate Fëanáro long enough to beg him a book about golemmaking."

"Do you find him hard to tolerate? I like him. Anyway I started when I was almost seven, but I read up a little before that so I'd be able to impress the next servantmaker who came by looking."

"Wow. You grow up a lot faster than we do. And my family is civilly very distant with theirs. No grievances, exactly, just we do not ask each other favors and we do not go over socially. So if I arrived and asked for books that'd be a change of pace."

"Well, if you feel like a change of pace I am happy to teach you to read the common."

"I'd like that, but I don't want to interrupt you at your work."

"We can start with what's in the program, it's written in more or less plain language, just formalized oddly - same alphabet though."

So they do that. The tengwar are a less confusing and prettier alphabet but he manages to refrain from saying so.

Well, he's not going to hurt the common alphabet's feelings, but Kib doesn't ask what he thinks of its loveliness, just teaches the messy sound correspondences - "the language is popular because someone who spoke it conquered a bunch of stuff decades ago and it's got simple flexible grammar, not for its intuitive spelling" - and bits of programming on top of that as he goes through his outline.

And then it's time to leave for the play.