"...Ah." He turns to the typewriter designs, focusing on them more intently, a furrow in his brow.

"A mechanical aid for writing. Like the printing press, it uses letterblocks to stamp the page, though in sequence instead of all at once."

He flips through a few explanatory pages. "Not as useful for notes or sketches, but it would simplify creating drafts for manuscripts, as long as it was machined well enough to not catch on itself... The exact spread of keys for each letter and mark would also need some thought..."

"Of course."

He goes through the designs in detail, asking the rare question but mostly muttering comments. He seems perfectly happy to make this one, too.

"What do you want for giving me these blueprints?" he asks abruptly in the middle of a discussion with Mygwainor about optimal typing speed.

"For you to work out any kinks in their design, draw attention by using them yourself, and either arrange for the wider-scale manufacture or give the completed plans back so that we can do that."

"I can do all those," he says. "Though if wider-scale manufacture requires talking to too many sensitive people I'd need to outsource that."

"Fair enough."

"Do you have any other documentation for them?"

"This is all we have written down."

He hums, turning to focus again on the writings. "This will be enough, though you can write me a letter if you think of more."

"All right."

"We'll let you work then, if you don't have any more questions."

He shakes his head. "I don't."  He goes to clear the second drafting table of papers, dumping both projects on it onto one of the many piles around the room.

And Mygwainor sets the printing press notes on the second table. "Where should I leave our contact information, if you want to talk to us?"

He waves a hand negligently, pauses, squints around at his office, then digs out a blank piece of paper and a metal pin from a drawer. "Write it down and stick it to the board on the door," he says, gesturing over to the door into the library.

She does so, and mentally nudges Luthien to check if she wants to ask for permission to poke around his library. He probably has interesting books.

"Would it be all right if we took a look at your collection, while we're here?"

"The books? Sure." He doesn't stop sorting papers or look over at her. "Two of my sons get annoyed if the pages get bent or stained or if you leave a book lying open with the pages down, so don't do that. Put them back where you found them after. Don't move any bookmarks in them. Red, gold, or blue bookmarks mean a book's being used by someone; don't wander off with those. If you wander off with a different one tell one of my children I guess, they're probably around somewhere."

"All right. Thank you."

Into the the library.

The library is larger than any others they've seen in Aman, about the size of the public library of Nargothrond in the last loop, though all of the books are on technical subjects, with histories and fiction and poetry and the like presumably elsewhere. They're grouped fairly strictly by topic and then sub-topic, with sub-topics arranged to be nearby related sub-topics. (Books on crafting musical instruments are, for instance, on the border between the music theory and collections of sheet music and the craft books, next to the wood-working sub-topic.) The grouping is a bit complicated, with notable horizontal bands - most of the shelves have a split where books on natural sciences or theories are on top and books on crafts or activities are on bottom, with a fairly close correspondence between topics of the top and bottom band.

(There's also a sign, not in Feanor's handwriting, describing the sorting system, and a less firmly affixed sign next to that with 'FOR THE LAST TIME, PUT BOOKS BACK WHERE THEY BELONG' written in a very large, eye catching font on it in the same handwriting. Someone's scribbled under that 'He knows where you sleep after all' in a different, sloppier handwriting with a sketch of a comically angry face, and then under that, in a third handwriting, 'Congrats on entering the library Tyelko, try not to have an allergic reaction to all the paper.' (There are patches elsewhere on the sign that look like someone scraped away or covered over ink.))

"I think perhaps I do not wish to read any of these books strongly enough to interact with the personalities on display here," Luthien says of the notes.

"Maybe you can request they be copied with the printing press," she says, sounding a bit entertained.

"I'll put that in a letter."

"Sure."

And, over osanwe:

'You might not find all of them annoying - I shuffled templates I like as two of Feanor's kids - but the sorts of people I like might be different from your favorites...'

'Invite them for dinner sometime, maybe.'