"The entire point of this exercise is to come up with a way to accommodate those sensibilities," points out Loki.
"True, but - still. It's nice of you. Want me to lead you to a tree that wouldn't be harmed overmuch by pruning?"
"Sure. And I'll need either nails or a quantity of twine-or-something to hold the branches together in a lattice."
"I could use vines, instead of twine? Some of them grow really, really quickly. For plants, anyway."
"Vines work as long as they'll hold up to being hauled on and tied into knots. And too many leaves would get in the way."
Loftily, Zeviana replies, "I can get them to tie themselves. I can be very strategic with leaf placement, too."
"All right then, what do you even need me for?" laughs Loki.
She grins, "Sawing off the branches. Squeamish about trees, remember? If it's one of the ones that are on their way out anyway I won't mind as much, but I don't think I could do it myself."
"All right. I'll help you with the sawing. Show me a tree."
The tree-squeamish companion points at it. "That one would be best, I think. I'll start getting the vines in order while you work? They'll still need some persuasion."
"Sure." Loki unsharps Lævateinn while she starts hauling herself up the tree, then finds a relatively stable place to sit, renders it a Threatening Bread Knife, and starts sawing.
Light elves don't think of trees as people, or even as animals, but her magic-sense gives some feedback. Sometimes it's unwanted. She can deal, as long as she's not the one doing the work. Under her care, several vines slowly become longer, thinner, and stronger - better for binding together a trellis. She doesn't flinch a second time.
She can lower cut branches to the ground gently without having to jump out of the tree if she turns Lævateinn into a long pincer sort of object to do it.
Eventually she has enough that she thinks she'll be able to lash them together into a square of wood mesh.
"Alright - shall we arrange them into a trellis?" she asks, when Loki's safely on the ground with the branches.
"Should we cover it in plants to test it first, or see if just this works? I can't tell with it on the ground like this."
"If it blocks you like this, would adding plants to it help? If it doesn't block you like this, could adding plants make it worse?" inquires Loki. "If the answers are no and no, we have a fine test without attaching anything else."
"Right then." Loki stands up the trellis carefully on its edge.
"It's not nearly as bad as walls, but I think if I were completely surrounded by them it might freak me out a little. That said, it's certainly an improvement, by a large amount. Maybe if there were some kind of - in the buildings we have we have a lot of windows, to go with the copious amounts of plants. If we did a trellis thing with lots of windows, along with a roof that's entirely plants, I think that would work well enough," she pronounces, after some consideration.
"Maybe trellises could serve to build treehouses, with plenty of windows and something broad-leafed on the roof. You'd still need to grow trees to support the treehouses, but they'd just need to be trees, not entire skyscrapers that are made entirely out of live tree."
"Yeah, something like that would help, certainly. I don't know about others, but floors being solid doesn't bother me - we just get used to not feeling anything down there, usually. So a treehouse of sorts would work! This was a good idea - thanks, Loki."
Zeviana nods. "It was! Though we're probably going to need help to do anything... Tree-choppy. So it might not be very viable, unless we grow them ourselves and just stop worrying about keeping them alive."
"I wonder if you could just import lumber. The Bifrost isn't really suited for cargo, though."