They’re still about three miles off, but Luthien hasn’t gotten slower, so within ten minuted they arrive at a stone bridge across the ravine, far above the water below. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the architecture is entirely unfamiliar, but the creators were clearly skilled; even to Sue’s eyesight, the seam in the stone cannot be seen, and it is impossible to tell just where cliff ends and bridge begins. On the other side of the bridge, the door is similarly well hidden within the rock, and it opens to a passageway leading down into the earth, carved into the solid stone. The walls are lit with torches and lanterns cleverly hidden within intricately carved mouths of dragons - in the flickering firelight, their jeweled eyes seem almost alive, and their teeth indistinguishable from real bone. 

"Your artists are good," she arranges to say after a few moments. "These weren't made with magic?"

“They were well carved.”

Luthien seems somewhat confused by the question, actually.

" - How would you define 'magic,' actually."

“The works of the Powers, and the Arts they taught.”

"So carving is magic?"

This doesn’t seem to alleviate the confusion!

”No? The Naugrim were created by Aulë, but Eru Ilúvatar granted them life. They aren’t extensions of him, or anything like that.”

"Iiiiii think we're using two very different meanings of 'magic.' I'd define magic as 'breaks conservation of energy.' Like, you can get more out than you put in. Actual magic I know about is hope-magic, and whatever witches do which I've been assuming is despair-magic. Some girls - and one boy I know of - are potentials. Some potentials can make a single wish between age seven and seventeen. The wish's power depends on how strongly you feel about it. That sets a high point for magical strength. Using magic burns hope, and produces despair. Magic does things - conjures items, heals people, damages things, moves things, warps space, and a bunch of other stuff. Wishes produce more effects than spells but I think that's degree, not kind. People who haven't wished can't use magic."

”What’s the conservation of energy? And that sounds a lot like the Powers, I think mom can do all of that, but I’ve never heard of a human who could and certainly not anything about wishes.”

Then suddenly from up ahead comes the sound of laughter in the halls, a silvery mirth that seems to fill the air and stone, and with it the sound of birds - nightingales, if Sue knows her songbirds - and a voice that sounds much like Luthien. Just around the next corner is a massive hall, showing even onto the sky, but a sky unlike any Sue has ever seen; the light is like day, but the vault of the heavens glitters with stars. Great trees stretch up from the ground to the heights, and their branches are covered in leaves of brilliant emerald green despite the winter outside the halls, and the branches seem almost golden. On the trees perch songbirds, the nightingales whose song Sue can hear, and within the forest stand beautiful fountains that - that doesn’t just look like gold, this is all carved stone and metalworking

At the end of the hall sits a pair of thrones upon which sit a a pair of figures with hair of silver and black; if Sue had not seen Luthien, these would undoubtably be the most beautiful people she had ever seen. Upon their heads rest crowns, one of flowers and one of of metal, somehow wrought to be silver and green. The person with silver eyes turns to look at Sue, and she feels a prescence that somehow makes it perfectly clear that this is a king. His grey eyes burn as though lit by an unquenchable light, and it suddenly becomes clear that he is very tall. 

Alrighty then, luckily Sue has zero awe of (or respect for) authority and is entirely unaffected by the presence of a king and queen.

She will nod solemnly, say - and telepath - "Greetings, your Majesties," and then solely over telepathy: "Or whichever mode of address is most proper," to both figures as well as Luthien. And with not much of a pause because she spent several hours stringing words together in her head: "Your lands are very beautiful. Thank you for hosting me for even a short time. I apologize that I do not know your language, but I am from very, very far."

To just Luthien: "I'll explain conservation with the general audiences magic explanation?"

“Thou art skilled indeed at thought-opening, for one not of the Quendi. Who art thou stumblest hither? What wouldst thou here? What hither led thy wandering feet, O mortal child?”

“That would probably help.”

Uggggh she hated the old fashioned talk in English class.

"I'm not from this world. There are incompatible concepts. I am Sue Uccelo, daughter of Makena and Fredrick Uccelo, ward of Shayne Uccelo. I am a magical girl - magic is restricted to a few people in my world, and I believe works differently than here. I would like to get home. I came here by accident - I was fighting a witch, another type of magic user who can warp space to greater extents than magical girls. This one seems to have warped space more than usual."

"I am also not mortal. No magical girls are. We cease in battle, of exhaustion, or of despair, and nothing else."

“It seems Andreth’s reckoning had more truth, than any among the Quendi gave her credit for, if indeed those Men born beyond the grasping reach of Melkor are not so fiercely hunted by the shadow of death that they remain for mere decades, and are blessed by The One Above All with the gifts befitting his secondborn children. To know that they live on beyond his reach is beyond anything which we had hoped. Yet it also fills my heart with dread, for it seemeth we hath dearely underestimated the malice and power of Melkor, that if he might change the Doom of a whole Children, and deny them of their birthright, then mayhaps all our resistance is for naught. And yet Mortal still I judge you, a guest, for the Fae of Men, though indeed close to the Fae of the Quendi, is not one and the same, and thine is not confined to Arda, nor is Arda thine home. Thine Fae and Rhaw art in Harmony, but thine Fae departs for lands unseen when the Rhaw can endure no longer, and does not endure within Arda for all the Ages of the world."

If he sees anything unusual about death from grief and exhaustion, it's not in evidence.

"Most humans aren't immortal back home, either. Getting my world's hope-magic separates us from our bodies, and allows us to heal them easily. If I had enough magic, I could rebuild this body even from nothing, and I'm rebuilding it constantly whenever it's injured. Possibly we could heal older humans of accumulated damage, resetting the clock, but there aren't that many magical girls, and fewer who can heal, to the point where it's more reasonable to leave lifespan extension to medicine."

If Sue is good with faces, Thingol is very surprised to be spoken to like this, and to be so contradicted, and annoyed by it as well. It’s not casually visible even to an elf, but Luthien can tell easily. To one less experienced on the subject, he seems merely mildly surprised.

Beyond that, and more obvious, is a sense of relief and even curiously - Thingol is hardly a Noldor, much less a Feanorian, but he was not one of the few among the elves willing to scout the uttermost west for no reason.

 “To say such tiding are good news is to understate the affair, child. It seems unlikely in Our eyes that Melkor would be permitted within the later works of the one above all to meddle, and if he were he would not refrain from warring; that thine home is free from his marring, and still comprised of the same fundamental nature, is perhaps something of a relief.”

"I'd be surprised if humans were very different, though I already know our concepts of magic differ. I can explain some of my world, if you would prefer."

“We beleive that would be wise.”

Ughhhhhh okay so, she prepared this speech.

"Humans are the only known sapient species on my planet. There are other planets, at least one of them with another sapient species, the Kyubey. I believe there are more than just them, though."

"Magic is - discreet. Most people don't have it. It requires emotions that work a specific way, and as far as I know currently only humans qualify. We'd define it as stuff that breaks conservation of mass and energy - in my world, left alone, matter and energy can't be made or gotten rid of, only changed. People aren't born with magic. People who can get magic - almost entirely girls - are called potentials. Potentials can make wishes. The ones who're allowed to is currently controlled by the Kyubey."

"Wishes - range a lot. On the useful end, I've heard of everything from 'a lot of money, non-suspiciously' to 'mass mind control' to 'grant someone invulnerability' to 'resurrect the dead' to one girl who made herself unable to die at all. Because wishes are granted to kids, most people don't optimize them and make weaker wishes than their potential."

"Wishes grant the ability to use magic. The magic used by magical girls is powered by - and burns - hope. If I'm very hopeful, which usually means joy but I've managed it with anger, I can do more powerful things. If I do powerful things, I start feeling despair. If a magical girl uses too much magic, or separately falls into despair, she becomes a witch. I'm unsure if witches are sapient. They feed on people's emotions, and usually kill people - they'll cause someone to commit suicide or murder-suicide usually, sometimes just assault if they're weak. There's a way of offloading despair into grief seeds, which witches leave when they run out of magic, and I have a collection, so I'm not worried about running out of magic myself."

She has to pause, then. "There's more but I'm getting tired."

“Thine world must be wholly different from Arda, so much so that We cannot learn all there is to know in a short conversation. Thine magic is different from the acts of the Powers that created Arda, but through thought-opening its nature is more clear, and it does not seem wholly dissimilar save in scale. For one dying of grief to weigh down others onto death seems a great tragedy to these eyes, although perhaps the same cannot be said of Guests such as thou.

“In these times of war, Menegroth is more crowded than it might otherwise be, but not so that we cannot house visitors. You have Our leave to do so.”

The last bit goes to Sue as well, through telepathy, but does not seem to be directed towards her.

She - doesn't know whether to curtsy or bow so will quickly ask just-Luthien about basic niceties. (She might not respect anyone, but she has eventually learned the basic concept of not immediately pissing off people who think they have power over her. (She doesn't pass this thought along))

'Thank you, your Majesty.'

“Normally, you’d kneel, right leg back, and bow your head, but you’re human and from far away; Dad’s not going to insist on you knowing protocol.”

She'll bow in the human style, then - it seems close enough. Her skirts, being magic, don't move inconveniently. 'I would like to rest now,' she sends to the same set as earlier. 'If I may be excused, and shown to a place to recuperate.'

Thingol does not take issue with this, at least not detectably.

”Thou hath Our leave to do so.”

Luthien smiles at that, radiantly, and if the hall doesn’t literally get brighter at that it doesn’t seem to be for lack of trying on her part.

”Come on! I know just the place!”

She heads out into the forest - no, cavern - with purpose, off to the left of the throne.