You should wait until I tell you how my King died. It is the most utterly ridiculous nonsense. All of them. I wonder sometimes if the Avari–those of our people who stayed in the east–were not the wisest of us all. We call them unwise, and the Noldor call them worse because they neither saw the light of the trees nor did they even attempt the journey but I am not sure our people ended up better off for leaving the lands of our awakening.

[Mithiel had been born in Doriath, she wishes now that she had died there too before all of it came to ruin, but still, she had felt the tug both east and west when her home still stood. She never did fully believe what was said about their most eastern cousins. It was only a pity that Morgoth had tormented them most of all.] But I am prattling on again. You may end up feeding me to these hippos of yours.

No doubt. I am ...sheltered, I suppose, despite all of the death and war I have seen. I do not pretend to understand more than I know. Thoth seems like he has a knack for working through problems. [And managing people. He probably has a whole host of skills hidden in his clever head that Mithiel could not easily guess at.]