He'd told her he'd explain politics next time they had the time, but she doesn't seem like the type who actually wants to know about politics, just the type who feels obliged to not feel stupid for not knowing, so he's not going to bother.

Well, the primary reason she wanted the information was to help her solve a problem he wants solved more than she does, so she won't bring it up immediately either.

And they're back. Huan is up on the ramparts waiting, and he apologizes as soon as he's in range, explains Odette - not her abilities, that doesn't really matter, her needs, how they can help her. She can't bring anyone back yet but maybe eventually.

Huan understands.

"He's lovely."

"Thank you." He's distractedly explaining as much as he can to Curufin. ...so we have to make her stronger, or get that strong ourselves, but eventually it will be possible, she thinks.

"What's his name? Is he going to be upset if I just randomly levitate him?" she asks.

"Huan, and I just explained the situation, so no, but he'll appreciate you asking."

"Explained?" she asks, levitating the dog. "Is he sentient, too?" She thinks back to the spiders. "Is this a general feature of animals here such that I should be avoiding meat and being less cavalier about killing deer to use in magical experiments?"

"Huan is exceptional in that he's more intelligent than either of us. Most animals prefer not to die. Is that not the case where you're from?"

"Most animals where I'm from...aren't smart enough that I usually worry about it. Why is Huan more intelligent than either of us?" And why are you making assumptions about how intelligent I am, she very firmly does not say, out loud or by osanwe.

"He's a Maia. They're - servants of Eru, minor deities, they helped create the universe. Any one you see in a biological form understands physics, chemistry, and biology so intimately they were able to build it from the atoms up, no 'tell the universe what shape you want' for them."

"Holy crap, that's amazing."

Men don't usually understand that explanation at all. "Yes," he agrees.

"Which way--actually, I've been meaning to upgrade my vision, can I copy your eyes?"

"Of course. What does that require?"

"You don't have to do anything, but where I'm from it's considered rude to copy a feature from someone without asking first." And she closes her eyes, and concentrates for a minute, and when she opens them again they are slit-pupiled glowing silver.

"I really don't know what Eru was thinking when he created Men," he says, watching her. 

"Me neither. If you can make anyone immortal, why make people who aren't?"

"That bit's supposedly something to do with the fate Men have after death, and with not being tied to the world." He shrugs. "There are people to ask if you want that argument explained in a way that makes any sense. I'm not one of them."

"Okay. If you didn't mean that then what did you mean?"

"Don't think there's any proposed justification for the inability to see and hear well, or the involuntary childbearing, or the death during childbearing, or the way they die when they're old."

"Fair enough. I actually have a handful of hypotheses about the childbearing thing, but those are more along the lines of mechanics than reasons."

"Do tell."

"Well, I know how it happens with humans, my hypotheses are mostly about how it happens with elves. So the human female reproductive system looks like this--" she sends him a very clinical diagram of a uterus, birth canal and ovaries-- "and the male reproductive system looks like this" a similarly clinical image-- "and those bits and those bits" the ovaries and testes "produce really tiny pieces of biological matter that are almost nothing but underblood and a carrying system called birth sparks, and each spark has half of the parent's underblood, and when the spark from a man gets in contact with the spark from a woman they fuse and attach to the woman's uterine lining and grow into a baby."

"We work the same way, but can choose how our body functions to the relevant level of detail, and by default don't choose to have it capable of producing children."