"Any other natural cycles faster than stars and slower than pendulums?"

"At a guess we require sleep less frequently than you, just because we have better vision and better hearing and longer lives and osanwë and better self-governance and it seems like the designer of your species had different priorities. But we sleep once every day, for around an eighth to a tenth of the day."

"Once a day, and we average a quarter to a third.
Makes sense we'd need more, if your species was literally designed."

"Yours wasn't?"

"No. Well, probably not. There could be a real Prometheus or a Flying Spaghetti Monster or any other number of creation myth subjects, but if so humans probably predate them. Species ordinarily happen by a very messy process involving no magic at all."

"Only Eru can create thinking and speaking life. At least here. The Valar can do simple animals, automata."

"There are humans who can create thinking life. Not many, but not none. If you figured out how that kind of magic works, would you just not be able to? Would I?"

He frowns. "I think Eru might intervene and stop you. Or maybe it just wouldn't work. That's something your magic can do?"

"It's not common. Offhand I can't think of a situation where it would be better than altering something or summoning something or creating something that doesn't think. But it's not specifically impossible."

"Maybe don't try it here.


Will practicing bindings prepare us for the defense of the territory?"

"I wouldn't know how to try if I wanted to. Anything else like that to avoid?

Knowing bindings can only help. I'd be shocked if it didn't, but maybe we'll get really lucky and not need it."

"I'm not sure what else to avoid. Acquiring my cousins' precious Silmarils, I guess. Don't do that.

And let's try some bindings."

Practicing the diagrams and seals is easy, but attracting things to practice bindings on is less so. Once they're reliably catching hypothetical spirits, "Normally I'd have a hard time finding elementals in the first place. But then, I'm human. Would you see anything worth catching just by looking?"

So he shares everything he can currently see. Men have a lot of disadvantages, it's a bit ridiculous. 

The vision one already came up. No double-counting.

"That one might work." She sends back an image of one of the spirits that didn't dematerialize or burrow or otherwise flee immediately after being spotted. "You'll need it to keep it in place one way or another while you get to it, bind it before it bolts, and lock it down tight enough that it has to take orders. But you know all that."

"In theory." And he starts moving. Did can-run-on-snow already get added to the Eldar advantages?

That one doesn't make sense even if they're generically better at everything. Unless they somehow got math to play along. Whatever.

The spirit, a generic ice elemental of the kind that's depressingly common around here, does stay put and isn't powerful enough to put up much resistance.

"I feel vaguely guilty about this. You're sure they aren't sentient?" he says once it's bound.

"It's not. More like a computer program than a person or even an animal.

Sentience can get complicated, even some elementals are edge cases, but not ordinary minor ones like this."

"Computer program?"

"Maybe a bad choice of analogy. Automaton, if that translates any better."

That one is familiar; he nods. "How many of these do we need?"

"There isn't really an enough. We could try for something more specific, if there's an element you think is symbolically appropriate for your ring, but just filling numbers isn't going to change very much."

He raises an eyebrow. "Symbolically appropriate for the ring would be fire. I don't know that we can get that here."

"Not if it's fire.
May as well go with what we have, then, and try to avoid confrontations instead of winning them. The weather song will help with that."