:That would be helpful, then: He frowns. :Ideally I would make sure their horse returns to them, but I am not sure of the best way to do so, if I stay in the city: 

Well, you could let the horse go when you get to the city?

:And the beast will make its own way home? Perhaps your horses are cleverer than ours: And almost certainly their roads are less subject to bandits. 

I should expect so! It's hardly far enough that a horse might get lost.

:Good, then I will not worry about it: Leareth borrows her eyes again in order to check if the sky is still glowing or if the light has changed now. 

Still glowing. 

He'll make polite conversation until it's a little less blindingly-bright for sleeping, then, and hopefully pick up more context in the process. :You mentioned your daughter is studying biology in Tirion. What sorts of academies exist in your world?: 

All kinds - uh, there's plant biology and animal biology and small biology, and all of those kinds have branches for going out and cataloguing things or breeding new variants. There's artifact magic and song magic and glassblowing and composition and all the musical instruments and ceramics and woodworking and geology and astronomy and the study of gods and linguistics and historical linguistics and child development and cartography and poetry and theatre and cooking and theology and architecture and dance and light studies and you can apprentice with a smallgod who does something particular you want to learn about, like ...healing, or designing new animals, or making waterfalls pretty.

:That is impressive. Your scholarship is very advanced – there is no city in my world with so many fields of study: 

The Noldor are the greatest of the peoples of the Quendi at every discipline except mathematics and tile mosaics and silversmithing and fishing, she says. 

Leareth tries and fails to pick out a connection between those domains. :What are the other peoples of the Quendi?: 

The Vanyar, who live on Taniquetil, at the seat of the gods, and the Telari, who live on the coast. And the left-behind, but we don't know anything about them.

:Might you tell me more of this 'seat of the gods'?: 

He points at a mountain in the distance, well beyond Tirion. The gods all have their own domain but they meet and hold council at Taniquetil, at the heart of the domain of Manwë, King of the Valar. The Vanyar lived in Tirion with us when they first came to Valinor, but they wanted to live closer to the gods, so they moved a long time ago, to settle about Taniquetil.

:I see. Do you know what sorts of things do the gods discuss at these councils?: 

It's where they discussed....whether the King ought to be permitted to remarry when his first wife wouldn't return? And the parole of Melkor. 

And, of course, he keeps running into new cultural gulfs in the places he leasts expects them. :Why is it the business of the gods whether the King can remarry? In my world, it would certainly not be something that needed Their permission: 

Well, they're the ones who taught us that a man should have only one wife, and a woman only one husband, for all of time with not even death parting them. When we were ignorant and lived in the Outer Lands we didn't know things like that.

And of course they took it completely literally, and earnestly went to ask permission from the gods when unforeseen circumstances came up, that's exactly what the Quendi would do and what humans wouldn't. :I see. I suppose it would not have arisen before, if your people do not usually die and, when they do, they generally come back to life: He pauses. :I am sorry if this is impolite, but - may I ask why his first wife wished not to return?: 

Well, I have no idea. People say that giving birth to Fëanáro stole the life from her, and that's how he ended up with so much of it. And people say that she thought her husband would be happier without her - he wanted more children, and she was too sick to bear another -

Leareth isn't sure if that's biologically possible here, but he isn't sure his hosts will either, and he decides not to press, it could be a sensitive subject. Also, the fatigue from the Gate is catching up to him. Is the sky any less bright yet? 

Not yet!

Gods, the days are long here. If 'day' is even the appropriate word when there's no night. Maybe he'll give in and try to sleep now despite the light. :I find myself quite tired: he admits. :I know it is not the usual time to rest, but I would very much appreciate borrowing one of your beds:  

Of course!

Their room does actually get, if not properly dark, at least very dim. It has wall tapestries of Tehlan and Wilindë holding hands and then ones with one, two, three, then four children; the two of them look the same as they do today in all of them. The children seem spaced such that one is grown before they have the next one. 

The bed is soft.

Leareth makes a mental note to ask a bit more about child-rearing traditions here. And another mental note to ask for something he can write on so he transfer the accumulating notes from his head to a more durable substrate. 

He closes his eyes, but before sleeping he briefly extends his magical senses further than before, now skimming over several miles around him. What's there to be noticed?