"Any with both Sindarin and Adûnaic? I can't pick up a language if I don't have any reference points for it. Spoken language has accompanying body language I can extrapolate from. Written words don't."

"Doubt it. Uh, can you do it if you have a few words to start with? I do know some Sindarin, I just usually don't speak it for political reasons."

"Hmm. To pick the rest up from context, I would need a fair bit of starting vocabulary. Could you translate a few pages of one of the Sindarin books into Adûnaic?"

"Maybe." She scowls, heads over to the bookshelf. "Yeah, probably."

"Why are you so opposed to Sindarin?"

"Because it's used to enforce class hierarchies that make slavery and oppression easy and make it impossible for anyone to have a voice in their government if they weren't born to it, or to ever rise about their station."

"People can't learn Sindarin without being in the upper class? Then how did you learn it? What is your background, actually?"

"People aren't raised speaking it except the upper class. For us, learning languages as an adult is very hard and you always have an accent and can be distinguished from a native speaker. I don't have a family or a background."

"...What do you mean 'don't have a family or a background'? Did your family die? That still leaves a background, though..."

"No, I just want nothing to do with them and don't talk of them and don't consider myself as owing any part of me to them."

"Oh, I see. Are most people close to their families? Do people care a lot about their entire extended families, or just parents/siblings/children?"

"Most people care about their families and extended families. Lots of work and trade happens on the strength of extended families."

"And why did you decide to separate from yours?"

"We disagreed on everything that mattered, and disliked each other."

"OK. How did you first meet our benefactor?"

"School. Why do you care so much?"

"Natural curiosity - plus you're interesting." She says, trying and failing to look casual. "Do people of different social classes go to the same schools?"

"At some universities. The rich merchants trying to make something of their children subsidize the nobles who get admitted automatically. Being a noble is an expensive lifestyle, you know, they can't all afford tuitions."

"And who teaches? Other nobles? Clergy? Professional instructors?"

"Mostly people who are noted for their academic work."

"OK." She looks around at the tapestries and tries not to be too annoyingly curious.

"She explained them all, didn't she? Mostly noble-sanitized versions of real history. The Elf-wars probably did happen, though I'm sure most of what people say of them is false."

"Well, she wasn't exactly overflowing with detail. How did the wars start?"

"The Elf-wars? Supposedly one of the Valar murdered the Elf-king and stole all of their prototypes of advanced Elf-technology that could cure death or something, and the Elves went to war with him to get it back."

"So, the Elves weren't always immortal? They became that way through technology? Is there any way to gain access to that technology?"