He thinks it's bad for our growth as a people to continue to live under the rule of the Valar. And there are some people out there and we ought to know what became of them, and maybe teach them the things we've learned.

:And what do you think of that?:

Apparently there are other worlds where people are dying and starving. We have got to get stronger, whatever that takes, and get where we're needed, wherever that is. 

This is not a lie but the process that produced it is rather smoothly dissociated from the history of how he arrived at this belief, and tailored to Leareth instead; that's not even entirely conscious, though he notices it after the fact and wonders if people who read all each others' thoughts constantly avoid it.

Leareth isn't reading that closely, he picks up on the disconnect but doesn't find it notable – it's not like he isn't doing the same thing all the time, and the relevant part is that it's not a lie. He just nods his agreement.

Are they nearly at their destination? They've been walking for a while but also the Palace is quite large. 

His father does not live in the palace and only after considerable to-do consented to a tunnel. They're not there quite yet.

Leareth is curious why his father objected so strongly to living in the Palace. 

"He, uh, doesn't actually get along with the King at all. They were estranged for most of my childhood" and Maitimo's the one who changed that. "And he dislikes incidentally running into his father's children and grandchildren by his second wife."

Leareth is able to follow along with what he's saying by reading his surface thoughts; it's helpful to have him speaking Quenya out loud, actually, he can nab a couple more vocabulary words. :I see. What led to this estrangement - was it related to his mother's death?:

"The remarriage. My father blames the King's second wife for - approaching the King when he was vulnerable and grieving, and persuading him that he should abandon hope that Miriel might in time recover and desire to return to life, and persuading Miriel that the King wanted more children and as she couldn't give them to him she would only hurt him by returning to life. I think - there was plenty of blame to go around, but it was a mistake for the King to remarry as soon as he did and a mistake in which his own culpability is probably slightly diminished by his grief and confusion."

:An awkward situation: Leareth agrees. He isn't sure what else to say, yet. 

My father ran away from home when he was thirty - uh, this tall - he gestures to indicate maybe a ten-year-old. Got an apprenticeship, got married, had a son, didn't speak to his father again until I was six. Nolofinwe's - account of this whole mess would include that the King expects his relationship with Nolofinwe to survive wronging him in this, and expects Fëanáro to walk away and never speak again if he thinks he was ill-done-by, and that he's letting that rule his judgment here.

:Plausible, I suppose. Is it - common, here, for children to run away from home?:

I know of only a handful of other cases and the children were much older. At the time it was wholly without precedent. And among our people to miss, for any reason, a chunk of your child's scarce years - when they are small - is counted among the greatest tragedies a person can experience.

:It is something that would deeply grieve most parents of my world also: And here, for several thousand years at least, there haven't been any greater tragedies to compare it to. Like, for example, a child pointlessly dead of some illness – still a horrifically frequent occurrence in most parts of Velgarth. 

He nods. I don't have children yet but I can imagine that it's unimaginably difficult, balancing the obligations of a parent and the obligations of a King.

Something in that was not quite a lie but skirting it.

Leareth is curious, but lets it slide. :And while grieving as well would make it even more difficult. Especially if - loss of a loved one is so rare and unexpected, in your world: 

Yes. It wasn't, in the Outer Lands, but here we thought we were safe.

Leareth nods. :The King would remember that time, correct? But not your father, or his siblings, or you: What a strange kind of generational divide. 

–It's one that his world will have, someday, if everything succeeds. 

That’s right. My father was the first child born to the Noldor in Tirion, after we built it.

:...That could only have caused it to feel even more important and precious to the King: Leareth guesses. 

Oh, no question. The whole thing's just a perfect storm of sacred things bumping into each other. And now they're at his father's house. These guards, too, know how to use a sword (and there are guards stationed in the tunnel between the palace and Fëanáro's house, which is interesting.)

Leareth will take a quick glance at the guards' thoughts, and pay attention to which direction they actually seem to be guarding in. 

They're guarding Fëanáro's house against trouble coming from the palace; Nelyafinwë so obviously isn't that they've relaxed, seeing him. Nelyafinwë is joking with them, now, all three of them in separate one-on-one conversations, asking after the fit of the helmets and promising jokingly that the next time there's drama he'll make sure it's in some vacation resort or something. 

- from the Outer Lands, yes. He thinks it's another world; they believe the oceans divide the worlds, there. Don't make fun of it, they had none of our advantages. If you don't mind -

The guards step aside. He opens a door into a library, thousands of books and scrolls on its walls, where another Quendi is seated. 

On his desk are three gemstones as magical as a thing could possibly be. They're radiating it, drenching the rest of the room with it so at a glance it looks like everything is magical; they also light it, brighter than the Mingling but not as obnoxious or as difficult to look at. 

He glances up at him. 

I don't buy it, he says calmly. 

The problem is that Leareth looks too much like a Quendi and isn't one. If the process that created him and his people is different than the process that created the Quendi, he should look very different; if it is the same process, he should appear to have been made by the same hand, not necessarily with the same criteria but with the same worksmanship, the same degree of optimization; he's a less optimized Quendi and shouldn't be. It's the kind of alien someone who has only imagined aliens would imagine.