Her world has not been that low-tech for a long time now. It's like those deliberately retro towns with no electric lights or cars allowed because aesthetic. Or like it's a few yeni ago.

Well she can magically walk on water now right? Right. Over the river.

Their arrival wasn't expected until they got within osanwë range, but it's expected by now; the guards hop out of the trees on the other side of the river to greet her and her escort. In Sindarin. 

...well, that's presumably what happens if Quenya is illegal, everyone gets used to something else. She speaks Thindarin just fine. "Hello."

"Welcome."

        "The Queen wrote Lord Elrond," says someone in her escort, and hands over a letter. 

"Good of her. It sounds like a bit of a complicated story."

"Very. I'll fill in if there are any questions I can answer that the letter doesn't cover."

"There're probably things that wouldn't wisely have been put to print, if nothing else." And they are escorted to an elaborate music hall built rather distinctly to Macalaurë's sensibilities.

...huh.

There are Elves, singing. There are Dwarves, talking eagerly and quickly mostly in a signed language she doesn't recognize. There are a couple of - human children? Maybe? Squat and with curly hair and large hairy feet but otherwise human-looking - wandering around. There are more conventional humans. They look healthier than the ones she saw - aside from the hair growing on their faces they could be Elves.

She saw human children in the human town and they were not proportioned like that, but maybe there are several kinds of humans? She osanwës one of her escort to ask.

Oh, they're called hobbits, or halflings. Different species. They're mortal too, though.

Ah. Thank you.

I don't know why there are any here, they usually stay out of international affairs.

Maybe we'll find out.

And that is when something else makes itself known to Ambela's attention. It is in the room across the hall. She knows this because it is informing her. That's all it is doing, just information. It is one of the Rings of Power Tyelperinquar made. It makes a weak-willed bearer a slave of Sauron but it makes a strong-willed bearer more powerful than the Valar and the right person more powerful even than that. The One Ring, they call it, and they are afraid to take it up, because they do not trust themselves to rule the world.

And that is what it does. It is seductive, but not falsely seductive; its promises are entirely sincere. Tyelperinquer was afraid he had too much of his grandfather in him; everyone else still alive has far too little. And so it has tumbled through the eons, the means to end this war and all war -

"Mirelótë?"

"- I, um." She's staring fixedly at the wall between her and the ring.

Sauron used it to make the humans who served him immortal but you could make them all immortal just as easily - Sauron did not figure out how to bring back the ones already dead because why would he care to, but she could. The shapes Sauron warped them into were ugly and terrible but she could make them stronger, resilient to illness and injury, as easily as he made them ghoulish and frightening. The Elves won't touch it but they sequester themselves away in these places where they can forget why there is need for it -

"Lord Elrond wants to see you."

"If he happens to be on the other side of this wall I might need to glue my fingers together first."

" - no, his study -"

aaaaaaaaaaaaah

"- okay -"

Elrond's study is in the opposite direction. The ring ceases to provide helpful information as they head that way.

oh thank fuck

"Mirelótë. Thank you for coming. - are you all right -"

"I do not think I should have whatever it was that really really wants me to have it in that room we passed."