"Idaia said she'd share but then she got distracted so I haven't yet. Also, your dad is super adorable when introduced to a new language, it's almost a shame that Idaia and I only know two of the ones from our original universe except that I have things to do with my life besides enable your dad's adorableness."

He hands her one of the fresh croissants that are still melted all the way through. "I think linguistics is his real passion; all the spectacular feats of engineering are just in the service of people being sufficiently impressed with him they'll listen to him about the language."

"Adorable," she repeats, and takes a bite of croissant. "...This is really good but I'm not sure it merits the kind of faces you were describing. Anyway, he said he'd write me with grammar and vocabulary questions and I said I'd reply when my penmanship in your language was presentable and he said he didn't care about that and I said maybe I'd just write in my native alphabet and he looked like a puppy that had just been told the Solstice festival had been extended a week."

He laughs. "That sounds about right. You know he invented writing, right?"

"...That did not come up!"

"My father invented writing."

"Wow. I don't know how to respond to that. What'd you do before him?"

"Sang! And drew! We told our histories in song. We did have a sort of rudimentary letterset for accounting and so forth."

"Huh. Kudos to him, then, I'm impressed."

"He did a good job of it, all the Elven societies in Valinor have written mutual intelligibility which is tremendously useful for those of us less good at languages than my father."

"How many of those are there?"

"Only three, but over the Ages there'll be more. And as the dead of the Outer Lands are reembodied."

"Outer Lands?"

"What did Tyelcormo talk to you two about for months?" He puts on gloves and pulls out a map. "The world, as we know it."

"Archery, wildlife, how to dye wax and weave hay, how to speak Quenya and keep thoughts private, how great my sister is..." She looks at the map. "And you don't have any communication with people over there until they get reembodied here?"

"We do not. My father harbors an ambition to leave, someday, but it's a dangerous trip and would mean being cut off from progress and research here..."

"...So the people who die there and come back here, they can't go home to their families."

"Not yet, no. Someday we'll have safe passage across the ocean. And people do not die there frequently."

"Still sucks. What d'you need for safe passage across the ocean?"

"I am not sure. The Teleri have boats. What we might need is permission of the Valar."

"...Right. Tyelcormo said if it was just up to Orome he might let people leave but the others felt differently. Why do they feel differently?"

"They want Valinor to be a paradise, not a waystation or a stronghold from which we can exercise power elsewhere."

"Mm."

"My mother's been working with Aule on describing a sort of emigration plan that assuages their fears."

"Good for her."