She has an audience eager to figure it out from whatever crumbs she remembers. Rirosseth beams at her the next time they see each other.

Ee!

"I should have thought of coming here sooner! How are you doing?"

"I like it here. Dwarves are great."

"Aren't they? I very much regret that my mother never got to meet them, I feel like a version of my mother who'd grown up around Dwarves would be downright functional."

"Would have dovetailed well with the culture?"

"Tirion rather - idealized and pedestalized and demanded performance of - its inventors. Dwarves just go 'oh you can tell how much value you created from how much is in your bank accounts and these statistics on what share of value the creator ends up capturing, look, there it is'."

"And that would've helped?"

"Tremendously. One of my younger sisters was a lot like our mother and the Dwarves were the best thing that ever happened to her."

"On my world economies are more like Dwarf economies than like Elf ones but we sort of insulate ourselves from it a lot. I think I like having it all be clear."

"I like how enthusiastic they are about - it being good, to make something valuable and make money off it. And how they treat all tradeoffs as financial, even if the price to let Melkor live in their city would be 'more than the total production of the whole world in all of history' - lets you reason about policy..."

"Reason about policy?"

"They don't really have a government? Tumunzahar had a ruling council and Gabilgathol - the other Dwarven kingdom in Beleriand - had a Queen but they had really restricted decisionmaking ability. An Elven fiefdom would have people decide who they want to let immigrate, they do that all with their financial calculations. It kind of complicates going to war with them but I can respect it as a great way to run a society not literally at war with an evil god."

"Immigration and war and stuff is not bought and paid for like that on my world at all. It's - navigable, it's got that to recommend it."

"I liked the 'having absolute power' way but Dwarves make do, too - how did they do it in your home -"

"Noregr has a monarchy but it's been shedding actual power for a long time and is almost totally symbolic now. Political decisions like immigration quotas and declarations of war are handled by a democratically elected bunch of representatives."

"Does that work?"

"Mostly? I mean, there are complaints, but I'd expect complaints about most possible systems. Noregr's been peaceful and decent to live in since before I was born."

"That's good. I'm sorry this happened to you, I'm sorry you can't go back -"

"It's not your fault. The driver should have been more careful and the artifacts should have been more wrapped up."

"Yep, but. It sounds like a nice place and I'm sorry you got - this, instead."

"Yeah. But if the van had to hit somebody I'm probably taking it all better than a lot of people would've."

"Definitely. You've handled it all amazingly well and I imagine we don't even have the half of it - I wish I'd known what was going on so I could have been - more reassuring at the very beginning -"

"...I'm not actually sure that you trying to reassure me right then wouldn't have been paradoxically extra terrifying?"

"My sister very gently pointed out a while later that I did not even explain why I abducted you."