Some of them have a perfectly-harmless-in-context ongoing devotion to Melkor, of whom they feel sort of possessive; they have Thuringwethil around for the occasional miracle if they don't want to go to Ulmo for something. They love children, so much, thus the thirty-story playgrounds and all their careers being friendly to bringing babies and toddlers with you and the sprawling apartments and kids' toys of such loving design that even Elves import them. (The orcs don't make things ugly; just non-Elfy, efficient, squarer and darker.)

...huh. It's hard to imagine a harmless ongoing devotion to Melkor - what if he escaped -

Oaths don't do the oath thing any more. If he escaped she expects his supposed servants would be fairly appalled at his instructions as soon as they became violent.

He did spend a thousand years subtly working people up to it.

Her Valar are better at their jobs. If Melkor escaped he would not have a thousand years to do anything.

That sounds lovely, too. 

They go on. They cross the mountains.

Tromp tromp tromp. Singing.

And eventually a river and beyond the river a valley and another low-tech Elf city. This one's Noldorin, you can tell - stonework and aqueducts and arched bridges.

Her world has not been that low-tech for a long time now. It's like those deliberately retro towns with no electric lights or cars allowed because aesthetic. Or like it's a few yeni ago.

Well she can magically walk on water now right? Right. Over the river.

Their arrival wasn't expected until they got within osanwë range, but it's expected by now; the guards hop out of the trees on the other side of the river to greet her and her escort. In Sindarin. 

...well, that's presumably what happens if Quenya is illegal, everyone gets used to something else. She speaks Thindarin just fine. "Hello."

"Welcome."

        "The Queen wrote Lord Elrond," says someone in her escort, and hands over a letter. 

"Good of her. It sounds like a bit of a complicated story."

"Very. I'll fill in if there are any questions I can answer that the letter doesn't cover."

"There're probably things that wouldn't wisely have been put to print, if nothing else." And they are escorted to an elaborate music hall built rather distinctly to Macalaurë's sensibilities.

...huh.

There are Elves, singing. There are Dwarves, talking eagerly and quickly mostly in a signed language she doesn't recognize. There are a couple of - human children? Maybe? Squat and with curly hair and large hairy feet but otherwise human-looking - wandering around. There are more conventional humans. They look healthier than the ones she saw - aside from the hair growing on their faces they could be Elves.

She saw human children in the human town and they were not proportioned like that, but maybe there are several kinds of humans? She osanwës one of her escort to ask.

Oh, they're called hobbits, or halflings. Different species. They're mortal too, though.

Ah. Thank you.

I don't know why there are any here, they usually stay out of international affairs.

Maybe we'll find out.

And that is when something else makes itself known to Ambela's attention. It is in the room across the hall. She knows this because it is informing her. That's all it is doing, just information. It is one of the Rings of Power Tyelperinquar made. It makes a weak-willed bearer a slave of Sauron but it makes a strong-willed bearer more powerful than the Valar and the right person more powerful even than that. The One Ring, they call it, and they are afraid to take it up, because they do not trust themselves to rule the world.

And that is what it does. It is seductive, but not falsely seductive; its promises are entirely sincere. Tyelperinquer was afraid he had too much of his grandfather in him; everyone else still alive has far too little. And so it has tumbled through the eons, the means to end this war and all war -

"Mirelótë?"

"- I, um." She's staring fixedly at the wall between her and the ring.