"'Bout an hour and a half."

"Excited?"

"A bit."

"Thank you for building the city."

"It was my sister who designed it. It's...very pretty, and mostly not in an elfy way, she borrowed from a bunch of architectural styles back home. Back where we came from, anyway, I guess I should stop talking like Beth Miqlat isn't home now. Anyway I'd never built a city before, it was an interesting magical challenge, and I'm thrilled by just about everything about this project."

"I bet you are. Do we get to meet our Queen?"

"She's actually still hanging out with the Elves right this minute because they convinced her there was safety in numbers and it would be more effective to bring her to the city after I had gotten you there rather than leaving her in an empty city while I got you, but I'm going to fetch her as soon as you've gotten settled enough."

"That's reasonable. Though it's more safety in you than safety in numbers, we couldn't hold a city."

"I can't be everywhere at once," she sighs. "I--suppose I could have gotten her first and brought her to get you, but I didn't think of that."

"It'd make people nervous traveling with our Queen."

"Oh, good, my thoughtlessness is validated."

"I am eager to meet her though."

"I think you'll like each other."

"I am sort of betting quite a lot on it, so I hope so."

"She likes your books, so I think it's a pretty safe bet."

"I'm glad the books survived. I was worried they wouldn't."

"Printing presses make that less of a concern."

"Those are a brilliant idea. But - I was honestly expecting everyone in the world to die, there'd be no one to preserve the books..."

"Oh. Yeah. That's not going to happen now."

"So we've been told."

"Sorry if I'm--belaboring points."

"No, it's just hard to revise overnight assumptions you've had your whole life."

"Fair enough."

"We grew up in the shadow of Angband, we were - t's not that w weren't optimistic, m'lord King thinks Men are inherently so by temperament, but we also knew very well that those walls weren't going to fall by any effort of ours."

"Effort, along with Sympathy and Conquest, will do a lot more now."