Odette will help with that as needed.

...The day before she needs to go to pick up the House of Beor the dwarf she's spent the most time magicking around picks up the sense.

Oh, good! Just a matter of exposure, then! There is Dwarven rejoicing. It is made clear that she is owed lots of recompense for all this knowledge.

Can she, hm, pay someone for advice on how to effectively use this recompense on behalf of Beth Miqlat?

She could establish a local community of Dwarves there for all her community's metalworking needs, assuming that Men mostly don't have the expertise and it takes time to acquire? She could buy a lot of weapons, but magic changes the game in terms of which are useful weapons. The Elf-lord Maedhros has been pressing all his considerable credit towards persuading the Dwarves to join in an alliance of the free peoples of Beleriand.

She might consider the first thing if it turns out that she and her also-a-mage much-more-knowledgeable-about-metal sister are insufficient between the two of them for the city's metalworking needs. What kinds of magic weapons are native to this world? ...Also, if she buys chocolate, is it going to be problematic if she increases the amount magically, should she be buying a licence to a particular chocolate recipe from a particular chocolatier, chocolate is not actually a meaningful priority compared to the war effort but if she can prevent small children from growing up without experiencing chocolate she should probably do that.

Oh, licensing now that you can duplicate things trivially is going to be a mess, buying a recipe license is probably the way to go on that, thoughtful of her.

She recalls very little about specific licensing laws from Genosha so she can't really help with the general problem but she would definitely like to buy a recipe license and accompanying piece of chocolate to copy from from someone. ...Creating matter hurts a lot, she can do it trivially because she just doesn't really mind pain but unless things go in a way she's not expecting it's probably not going to be trivial for most people. Not that you can't copy things without creating matter.

Okay, that's useful because it means they won't have to invent tons of new distribution deals, but they weren't panicked. Obviously magic wouldn't make markets stop working.

Obviously. Anyway she is short on time right at the moment and they have banks so aside from the chocolate thing if she can resolve that quickly she doesn't have to make any significant economic decisions right this minute.

They will keep track of how much is owed her. Chocolate is licensed.

Excellent.

And then the week is over and it is time to head down to the House of Beor again.

They are packed and ready to go!

Being flown really is much more pleasant with warning well in advance and no immediate crises.

And to a beautiful city destination.

Yeah.

Odette updates Andreth on the details of the Hybrids Incident and also describes her stay with Dwarves. Dwarves are pretty great.

Andreth is glad to hear that there are efforts being made. Stupid thoughtless Elves.

"Sure is a good thing Aegnor never knew for sure that accidental soul-bonding wouldn't happen."

"i am absolutely certain he'd have married me if there'd been a child. I'm not even sure of 'with my agreement' as a caveat."

"I promised the women there that I wouldn't let the Elves push them around about--what happens to them or the kids because of this. And I do trust Celegorm not to be that particular kind of horrible."

"At least in our community it - wouldn't require much pushing around, a child outside marriage is a disaster and a marriage to an Elf would be a dream."

"The woman I talked to wasn't even sure it was a good idea to introduce the kid. Estolad's different from here."

"I have definitely heard that. An interesting approach."

"I honestly find it kind of hilarious that Fingon says that they don't interact with humans as much over there but he didn't even know sex doesn't equal marriage for us."

"It sounds like it was just a few people who knew that, and once the Elven command found out they reacted accordingly."

"It's possible, if slightly hilarious. I was confused when Maedhros asked if I needed chaperones when I told him how young I was, mentioned that I didn't care about the opinion of anyone who refused to believe I hadn't been having sex with him..." she spreads her hands. "His reaction."