Hrávanis has had a very long time to craft and refine her view of the world and her place in it. She has quite a lot of unique perspectives and positions of understanding when it comes to such questions, not just for her yawningly long life but even for how that life began. Loss and struggle were very early introductions and, even before Morgoth’s intervention, Hrávanis lived a life that was in no way magnificent or mighty. She was the oldest daughter of a small community that were learning to exist as they went and had to put effort into simple questions like what to eat, how to eat it and how to stay warm.
But most importantly Hrávanis' life gave her questions that elves raised in Valinor could not answer. And whilst other elves were born and raised into a race that felt the pull of the sea and a burden of grief that they had no tools to surmount, Hrávanis had context for those struggles and a belonging so fierce that she refused to believe Middle Earth could not be her home any longer.
Initially, she feared the affection she felt growing for many of the mortal creatures she met and grew to know. She had lost much already and was shy to that sting in a bitten and teeth baring way. But after Beleriand’s destruction she spent time in Khazad-Dum during the influx of refugees from Belegost and there she met Svava. And Svava, a merchant head and the adoptive mother of five orphans from the wars, taught Hrávanis more about life than any wisdom the Valar had ever offered her. Hrávanis learned about change and community and the memory of earth and the immortality of mortal love and she learned about living. And Svava left her with such a fevered desire to know more that she has spent the rest of her life since trying too. And this learning has allowed her to manage and heal from the griefs and hurts that Arda offered her in a way few other elves can.
For a long time now, Hrávanis has believed that mortal races know more about life and living than she or any other elf ever will. She believes they were all robbed of vital tools by the Valar’s tempting of the elves across the sea. The Atani lost the help of a people who should have been their fellows and neighbours, but they still managed to struggle and claw their way through survival anyway. Hrávanis considers the elves far more broken by the loss. The elven race is as morose and somber and lifeless as it is because they did not live amongst the impermanent, nor learn to understand a society of duality. Most elves are now so beholden to an uncomplicated paradise that they can no longer even live in the lands of their birth.
There’s a painful note to this where Hrávanis eventually realised this was a wound that could not be healed. Not by her, not unless the elves gave up ages of history and found modesty. By the third age, Hrávanis has decided her greatest possible purpose is to preserve the thoughts and memories of mortals whom have so much to teach them but so little time with them to do so.
