Oh, good!

Nod. Remember how we didn't know why they stopped trying to kill us? That was them, they talked them into it somehow. Snuggle.

Oh, good. I'm glad they did. I'm glad you found out.

Yeah.

I wonder if Tyelkormo knew. It seems like they should have, but they didn't tell me, even when I asked about them.

Probably not, then.

Shrug. Yeah, probably.

Squeeze. I'm glad it went well.

Grin, snuggle. Yeah.

Some of the humans go into labor. No one's been counting how long they've been pregnant exactly but it's definitely much less than the year Elves are pregnant, and the babies are not ready. Some of them make it. 

There is a lot of singing. The Elves are stressed and unhappy.

The less-supervised group of humans has a better survival rate. The Elves can't figure out why.

Ugh, this is much less unpleasant with eggs; they don't all hatch but the ones that don't just don't; it's sad, but not like this. She schedules extra time for cuddling her friends, and dedicates a morning to watching the other humans, looking for opportunities to mage-sense the pregnant ones and the new babies - maybe she can figure something out that way.

Sometimes she can get a sense of something that's likely to be a problem - certain positionings of babies - but there's not too much anyone can do.

She can do something about baby-positioning, actually. It's slightly fiddly to mess with that with movement spells, but not too bad; the problem there is that the babies tend to move back where they were within a couple days, but they can keep track of people with that problem and call her in when they start going into labor, that should work.

She doesn't find any major differences between the groups, though; if anything, the ones the Eldar have been helping are slightly better fed. The mystery continues to be mysterious.

Nidela, meanwhile, has noticed the singing. Tyelkormo? Whats going on?

Quendi - don't die at all, under good conditions. We've been trying to help these humans, and some of them had babies far too early - not many of them, most of them are fine, but some - and the babies weren't all okay...

Oh.

Where are you? And she goes and finds him and hugs him.

Thanks. I'm okay. Haven't been working with the humans much at all, don't really know them.

That's good.

She wonders idly if they've worked out why, yet - occasional preemies are pretty normal, but this sounds like there were a bunch - maybe they got a bad batch of food or something, there's some plants that can do that...

There were also just a lot of babies - there are two tribes of humans, about ten thousand humans in each, and they didn't even know babies were a thing that could happen...

...how does that even happen?

They're new. Do you remember how elves started? Quendi started about seven thousand years ago, around this lake way east of here. Humans started just now.

She doesn't know how elves started in that kind of detail - there are myths - but, wow. Doesn't this place have gods? They're not doing their job well at all, this is definitely not best practice for introducing creatures to a new place!

West of here's the place with the gods, Valinor. They don't like humans, much, I don't think, couldn't be bothered.

...why do it at all if you're not going to do it right. Ugh.

Yeah.

At least they've got help.

She stays for a little while, and then goes to take care of the horses - 'a couple hours a day' is quickly turning into most of her time being spent there, with Ila perched out of sight downwind, napping or people-watching.