"Huan says he'll run rather than fly this time, he can keep up with us."

"Okay." She puts him down. "Sooo...I'm assuming the, what did you call them, the smaller gods, are less, um, problematic? Than the Valar."

"More variety. There are some truly awful ones, but there are also ones who are within their domain perfectly decent. And some who are very good, though very limited."

"So more like people in general, then."

"Yep."

"Makes sense. Is there any particular reason he didn't just tell me directly he wanted me to stop flying him?"

"...he's a dog?"

"I mean, yes, but he's also a person? Osanwe worked fine on the spiders."

"Right but if he wanted to communicate in language the way people speak it he probably wouldn't have chosen to be a dog. He can, but it'd have to be something really really important, because it's not how he prefers to orient his mind. Also osanwë with the Maiar is quite the experience."

"And you can talk to him anyway?" she sounds genuinely impressed.

"I can talk with animals, in general, and with Huan because he is a dog."

"Cool."

"It's useful. Even my father couldn't pick it up when he tried, which probably means it can't be learned at all, but still."

"How come you can do it, then?"

"Maybe Eru thought it was cruel to create a son of Fëanor who was unintelligent in a family of geniuses and not particularly gifted in anything our people value, and decided to throw something in for me."

"My universe isn't usually fair like that," she admits. "That sounds...hard."

"Harder in Valinor, where everything I was good at was an interesting hobby rather than something that created value for other people. Less hard here, now that shooting things and tracking things and battlefield medicine are bona fide value-creators."

"I can imagine. Um...I'm not sure what you think learning magic's like, but it's way more about keeping going despite pain and wanting things than it is about any kind of intellectual ability."

"That's interesting. ...no wonder Maedhros has taken to it, he's going to be a terror. He's also going to die the minute the Enemy does, but - 

How does one do magic?"

"So far all efforts to describe it verbally have failed. It feels like" this.

"Huh. And how do I test whether I'm doing it?"

"It hurts. Do you have any chronic pain issues that you might not notice it over?"

"It's not hard to tell who's been captured by the Enemy, they are always mutilated."

"That doesn't surprise me."

Not that it stopped her osanwe channel from being flooded with rage like a wildfire, for a moment.

"It surprises a lot of people. The extent of it. They can't really imagine what they'd do if they were evil, I suppose, or how long five years really is..."