Torture god. They did just cover this. Not that he's going to complain.

Well, knowing all this vocabulary will help with learning magic faster and - 

- okay, maybe he just got distracted. Perhaps they should have a magic lesson.

...If it's at all possible he'd really like some time to think about the lesson. He could try and do it the way he was taught, but that's aimed at terrorized nine-year-olds and doesn't work especially well even for them. 

Sure! More linguistics, then. 

In the evening he lets Elie go with the promise the human commanders will be there in the morning. The King may also visit; details are still being worked out.

That's fine. Élie can go back to his room and scream. 

He's going to teach the Quendi magic, that's not in question. Their Enemy is clearly a servant of Hell, and he's opposed to Hell wherever he might find it. It's also clear that they'll use whatever power he gives them to maintain an alarmingly complete tyranny over their human subjects. The prince seemed very proud of his rebellion against their gods, but he probably won't like being on the other end of one. 

He wants to go home. It's not like the compromises were any better, but at least they were his, familiar to him since childhood. He doesn't like being ignorant. 

He also doesn't like wallowing. ...No, he's lying to himself, he likes wallowing very much, but if there's no one around except Félix to make him get ahold of himself then he'd better not start. He doesn't have to make any permanent decisions today. As long as he knows more magic than the Quendi, he has leverage. It takes humans five or six years of study to master first-circle spells. Of course, his Quendi students will be starting as adults, but that could go either way – and a species, they don't seem inclined to speed. He could re-derive a lot of spells with that much time.

He's more excited about his plane to use this world's native song-magic to power conventional spell-casting. Getting it to work might not be any faster than waiting for one of the locals to be able to cast Plane Shift, but it could change the course of the war back in Galt – if Galt still exists by the time he gets there. 

At this point, Félix hops into his lap and bites him. 

"Feeling neglected?"

        "You looked like you were about to have bright idea and I thought I'd better do something about it."

"Really?"

        "People might get hurt."

"...You know, if I didn't know you better, I might guess you're trying to comfort me." 

         "Lies and slander."

(He stays there for a long time). 

Curufinwë reports to his King. I like him. - you'll like him.

But will he like me? That seems like the crucial matter.

- are you in doubt?

Not especially. - get him some impressive humans. It was bothering him, how we treat them - I don't know why exactly -

He doesn't know anything about how we treat them!

 I don't know what he was picking up on, but he thinks that we're the Valar, or might as well be. I don't think you should have lied. I get the sense he's better at assuming we're lying than we in fact are at lying. Certainly than you in fact are at lying.

You want to come yourself, come yourself.

I plan to.

The next morning, Élie will have a lesson plan! He definitely didn't stay up all night with this. He made a particular effort not to stay up all night with this, since he needed to prepare spells this morning, but it was a near thing.

He's got a lot of opinions about magic pedagogy. 

He has an eager audience of ten Quendi much older than him, six men and four women not that it's particularly easy to tell, all of them very well dressed.

Are any of them proficient in their world's magic? 

Yes, they all know the song-magic. 

(Too bad. Élie was hoping he could get a sense of whether knowing one kind of magic made it easier or harder to master another). 

Chelish education is organized around the principles of strict discipline, competition, and relentless drills. A class of newly-identified potential wizards spend the hours of seven to noon on history, theology, and languages (Infernal everywhere, Azlanti and Draconic at the better schools), and one to five on mathematics and magical theory. Classes were large, so they'd be divided into groups of ten, with the ablest or most obedient student as decade-captain. These decade-captains heard recitation, administered exercises, and collected written work; they were permitted – and required – to administer minor punishments. Magic itself was taught by rote. Children learned cantrips by their component parts, mastering the mathematical formalization and energetic structure of each loop and whorl before assembling them, piece by piece. They would never be taught what these building blocks did or meant – they didn't need to know, as long as they could reproduce them perfectly. After a year or two, everyone in the class could. After a year or two, the class was much smaller. 

Élie's not doing any of that. 

He speaks over osanwë. May I share my vision with you?

Yes, he can absolutely do that.

Then he'll cast Detect Magic. And he'll ask one of the students to sing that song they'd been singing in the courtyard yesterday. 

What, just him? Okay. 

Yes, let's start with just him for now. Can the others describe what they see?

- oh, that's very cool. There are various proposed visualizations of the effects of magic, useful to composers, but they can't actually just see it. And now they sort of can, through Elie's eyes. 

They are delighted.

It's wonderful, isn't it?

He's asked for paper, colored string, and some soft clay to be on hand, if any of them want to try recreating it physically. 

Sure!

All Quendi, it seems, are gifted artists and sculptors.