" - yeah, about humans, they - they'll do that - I don't really have an explanation there, they're not terrible individually, but -"

"The one I talked to seemed nice, just questionable from a biological design standpoint."

"It's partially that, they don't really have time to - but it's only partially that."

Nod.

"They murder each other in anger fairly often, they sometimes beat or starve their children and they often do it to children who don't have caretakers - orcs are the larger risk of going out alone but it is not unheard of for a human to find an Elf pretty and kidnap them-"

"...are they faster than they look? I would be mildly surprised if they could catch an Elf."

"One couldn't. Ten could - or pretend to be injured and count on someone going to help -"

"Ah."

"Plenty of them are great! But with Elves, you can trust - even with the Elves who are furiously angry at us for one reason or another, if one is down on the ground crying out in pain I can be entirely sure it's not a trap, when that disintegrates it's so hard -"

"Well, your border guards thought I might be the Enemy in disguise."

"There aren't really miscellaneous Noldor who I wouldn't know."

"Well. I know you. Sort of. She's younger."

"I remember that age. I was so angry and had so little to be angry about. And now there's so much and it's just -" Sigh. 

"She has even less to be angry about, I take it, and manages to keep it to 'prickly' most of the time."

"Sounds about right. - so Lúthien petitioned Mandos to share the unknown fate of humans, and Mandos agreed, and set her and Beren up to get old human-paced together in peace. Thingol was devastated, yelled at the Dwarves who were putting the Silmaril in a necklace for him, got stabbed by one -"

"...wow. The Dwarves I know are pretty even-tempered."

"They were probably provoked, there were cultural differences and he could easily have threatened them without meaning it -"

"And he didn't have even a cursory subscription to a dispute resolution service?"

"He did not. Thought the whole idea was ridiculous."

"Ah-huh."

"Anyway, people panicked, tried to go after the murderer - couldn't tell Dwarves apart -"

"...it's not that hard."

"It isn't! I honeymooned on Endorë, I met a lot of Dwarves -"

"Well, most people hadn't met any, maybe that made it worse."