"Weirder than caring who people marry?"

"Caring who people marry is like... it involves failing at the right thing?"

" - okay, fair."

"Singing to geese. I suppose that's at least harmless until someone gets hungry and wants a goose."

"Whereupon it stops being harmless. We usually go out and check an area before we hunt in it, so anyone with objections can let us know."

"Are they generally courteous and competent enough to do that, if you wander through saying 'attention Maiar, geese are tasty'?"

"Yes. Not always, but at that point we're talking about a risk comparable to the risk of being struck by lightning."

Nod. He takes notes.

He conveys a couple other minor concerns - has magic been tried with disappearance points two worlds away yet, the following plants are poisonous - and that's all.

It seems to work fine (Ranary was hooked into the new point when she took Cor there) and the notes on poisonousness are appreciated!

"Then you're all set. Or - not, but there's nothing else we can presently add."

"Ranary will probably take the messages but I think she's planning to mostly loiter around here in case I suddenly die or something. Spare mage."

"A useful thing to have."

"Please do not take it as encouragement to push me down the stairs."

"I have met lots of people who didn't even teach me two languages and I have managed never to push any down stairs."

"Two? You got Gatetalk already?"

"Oh, Elves have really good hearing and I work across the hall from you and tried guessing whenever I heard it, should I not have done that? I'd have to leave the city, languages are just way too tempting."

"Eh, initially I was holding on to it for paranoia reasons but I'm pretty sold now, it's fine. Ranary's other language is Quima, you should get her to teach you."

"I would be delighted." He turns eagerly to Ranary.

Ranary will teach him Quima!

Yay!

Cor does sketches! And chats with Ranary! And sends her off with messages! And does more sketches! And takes breaks now and then!

Maitimo invites Cor to play elaborate strategy games with him. "If it relevantly qualifies as downtime, of course, it'd be hard to excuse drawing you away from work this urgent just because I want to see how you do at it."

"...I mean, as long as the elaborate strategy games are fun and don't involve assigning properties of Melkor to curlicues and triangles, we're probably good on it counting as downtime."

"Oh good. That's not how it's played at all -" And he explains!