"Sounds rather nice, in many ways. And - you still did fine, invented magic and complicated cities and your own laws."

"Of course we did."

"A lot of people seem to think that Men wouldn't, left to their own devices. Just wallow in the mud dying prematurely."

"That's ridiculous. I will grant that Elves seem to have achieved a great deal more per generation, considering how long their generations are, but still. Humans adapt beautifully."

"And they didn't have to worry about food and shelter and safety, when they were inventing all their nice things. No one invited us to the garden of the gods."

"You have to survive before you can thrive," she nods. "I don't think an elf child would have much advantage if any over a human child if both were born in Genosha."

"I think per-year they achieve less. They just get more years than we."

"Yeah. Hey, do you want to see some stuff we've built? Elf telepathy can totally do that, and it doesn't hurt at all, it's awfully convenient."

She grins. "I'd love to."

Odette shows her the Great Pyramids of Egypt, the Step Pyramids of the Aztecs, the Shinto temples of Nihon and the Wall of Zhongguo. She calls to mind the great palaces of European and African kings and Hindi Rajas. Every time she thinks of an interesting bit of architecture she imagines it and pushes it as crisply as she can.

She is delighted. "Oh, it's marvelous. Someday we shall have to figure out how to travel between worlds without a Great Mage ferrying."

"Obviously things not done by Great Mages is nnnot my area of study, but I look forward to seeing how it's done."

"Are most of those buildings palaces and music halls of various types? Those are the nicest buildings in any of the Elven cities..."

"The pointy pyramids were tombs, and the stepped pyramids and the things with the red gates and the stairs and some of the other ones were temples, and the really long wall was a military fortification, and a couple were universities, but yeah there were a bunch of palaces in there. I don't think any of them were music halls."

"...why would you build something that big as a tomb?"

"Weird afterlife beliefs."

"There's an afterlife for Men in your world?"

"No one's been able to prove one but we have a wide variety of religions, most of which claim to provide one."

"Huh. Do you think any of them are true?"

"I was raised in one, so, you know, there's a level on which I think if any of them are true it's that one, but I'm not going to go around claiming it's true because I have no actual evidence."

She nods. "I have seen no evidence that the Eru the Elves believe in exists, either."

"I think the fact that the Valar demonstrably exist is at least weak evidence in that direction."

"If you were a very powerful entity 'educating' the first species on a planet, and you were as self-serving as the Valar seem, are you sure you wouldn't claim that the creator of the universe sent you as his deputies?"

"I did say weak evidence."

"The Elves have never seen or spoken to him."