"I wouldn't be around to see whether it works either way, not without spectacular luck on one front or another."

"I'm sorry about that. Doesn't make much sense."

"What doesn't?"

"Giving people an absurdly short lifespan."

"Alright, dressed," Irissë says behind them.

"It wasn't exactly given. Not as far as anyone knows."

The ritual completed, both of them have had a chance to detect magic as far as the eye can see. Here, that means a fairly low density of spirits mostly representing the physical properties of the surroundings; there's little more abstract to say about objects in the middle of nowhere, and there are few Others that could be called alive and none that could be called people. With the exception of the three of them; Findekáno knows how practitioners look different to him from the before and after picture of Irissë; Irissë will have to wait until seeing someone who isn't one. The iron containing a heat elemental glows dully in the material world and brightly in the spirit one, and Amber's talisman shines. Everything that isn't magic fades into the background even when they look directly at it, at least until they refocus and use the normal kind of superhuman vision.

"What's the necklace?"

"My implement. There's a ritual, you do it with a tool or some other object and it improves your ability to do magic using that. It's one of the most important common rituals, along with the choices of demesne and familiar. There's a lot of symbolic meaning involved, that's one of the most important things in choosing an implement, and I have no idea how much of the symbolism even applies here."

He rolls in his hands the copper ring he used for his personal item in the awakening ritual. "How much cultural difference is there on your world?"

"There are a lot of cultures there, and sometimes what matters is what an object meant in the culture that popularized using it as an implement."

She spots the ring. "A ring implies secrecy and concealment partly because some philosopher used a ring of invisibility in a thought experiment long ago and the association happened to catch on. That almost definitely wouldn't apply here. And it's partly because the ring itself is inconspicuous enough to be worn unnoticed in public and not draw attention from non-practitioners; that part would."

"In our society rings are commonly used for powerful magic; this one was also a gift from someone who betrayed me, if that complicates things."

"What it means to you is almost as important as what it means to other people.
The outward symbolism is because an implement is a badge practitioners represent themselves by. If rings mean powerful magic here, that'll probably be a common choice here. Where you got it from does matter; in this case it would mean practitioners associate you with the fact that you were betrayed and this person owes you. If that's not the message you want to send, you do have a while before there'll be more practitioners to meet. But a choice of implement is permanent."

"That's a fine message to send. I don't have any personal implements that imply 'the Enemy really really needs to die'. So."

"And that would be an awkward meaning afterward if you win. That's why using a sword is usually considered a bad idea.

Is this particular ring magic? It's definitely not the same kind of magic. Irissë, anything you'd want to use? If not, it's not a decision to rush into."

"This one is not magic, no."

Irissë frowns. "Nothing comes to mind immediately, no. I don't have rings from our dear cousins, people'd take that the wrong way - not that they didn't for Findekáno."

"Oh. That wrong way. Rings mean the same on my world; it's just the conjunction of ring and magic that always implies invisibility.

It's usually a good idea for an implement to be at least partly magical. I can show you how to bind nature spirits and we could get one sealed into the ring, but adding something irrelevant might mess up the symbolism."

"We have magic jewelry as well. Probably something of my uncle's, though I don't know what that symbolizes."

"Might depend on why you were using it. There are very few things in magic with a definitive single meaning.

It does have to unambiguously belong to the practitioner, though; if it's his it can't be anyone else's implement."

"No, I mean gifts which were given to me. It just might matter that he's the creator."

"Probably emphasize the user's relationship to Fëanáro, or Fëanáro's skill in being able to create most of the selection of magic items. Though he'd have to be a practitioner to really take advantage of that, so it shouldn't come up.

What is magic jewelry used for here?"

"Enhancing concentration, healing, steadying your hand, greater physical strength, keep a sword in your hand. Mostly. You can do all kinds of things, but it takes decades to develop and very few people have the patience and talent."

"Sounds useful. How good is the healing?"

"It's not a miracle cure. We were in Valinor. It'll mostly stop injuries from worsening and enhance our natural abilities to patch ourselves up. We can heal a lot unless something's very serious, and we'd go to a Power for those."

"Of course you can patch yourselves up. I should probably be expecting that kind of thing by now.

Blood is a power source, a strong one. The physical injury isn't most of the cost to using it, but if you can get back to normal sooner it could be more useful to you than to humans."

"We probably want to save our capacity for self-governance - which is really what the healing is - for the Ice, which will be demanding of it."

"Capacity for self-governance, that sounds uncomfortably close to personal power and identity. Which is most of the cost to using blood. No infinite free magic there, I guess."