Mmhmm.

We should head back, I'm getting hungry.

Sure.

And off they go. She gets lunch; if Findekáno's still around when she's got it she'll sit with him, but she's pretty much expecting him to head off to do things.

Yep! Without any breaks. She is getting to know him well.

Yep!

She works in the city for a couple hours and then heads back to Mithrim for the rest of the afternoon, sneaks in another half-hour of flying with Tyelkormo before dinner, and checks back in with Maitimo before bed.

It is a couple months before any problems arise with the humans but then a major problem arises with the humans: some of them are pregnant and the Elves are freaking out.

...why are they freaking out about that?

Because the humans weren't trying to have babies! And didn't even know that they could have babies and had no idea why their bellies were swollen with something moving inside them until the Elves told them!

...trying...to... Eldar, man, they are ridiculous.

Well, okay. Sounds like humans are more like kobolds than like Eldar, with this, which means it's important that the pregnant ones get good nutrition - shouldn't be a problem, they've got a bunch of plants tweaked for that now - and stay away from poisons and most medicines, and if any of them don't want to be pregnant, well, she knows how to make that happen for kobolds but there's no guarantee at all that it'll work for a different species; might be dangerous. Do they seem to have a heat cycle - are the pregnant humans all similarly far along? If so, the stuff that works to disrupt that in kobolds might be worth a try; if not, there is a plant that blocks pregnancy without messing with that might be, but it's not used often and she's not very familiar with how it works; that's an extra risk on top of the cross-species one.

They are not all equally far along. This is horrible. What do kobolds do if children are born who aren't wanted?

Kobolds don't have that problem - they lay eggs; in the very rare case that there're more eggs in a given year than people who want to raise children the extra ones just aren't hatched. That is in fact really rare, though, maybe humans will be similarly open to the idea of adoption?

Seems less likely when humans have never had to deal with small humans before and none of them know how and none of them wanted to raise children because they didn't even have the concept of children.

True, but it might still be the best option they have, the obvious alternative being to have Eldar adopt them. Which is also a horrible idea, people should be raised by their own species, that's important.

Some people who've actually raised kids should probably go teach the humans how to do that, at least the 'how to keep babies alive' part.

Yeah, definitely, but also they should look for healing spells that prevent this and in the meantime get all the humans to stop having sex this is such a disaster.

...that sounds pretty implausible as solutions go?

Uh, wouldn't you stop having sex if it meant a person would start uncontrollably growing inside you.

Anyway don't be surprised if that doesn't actually work.

Then they'll have to come up with something different. No better ideas besides 'dangerous plants', right?

...her world's humans appear to be the same species, if they really get stuck for solutions they can probably drop some babies off with them. But for stopping this from happening altogether, no.

Do her world's humans have this horrible disastrous problem.

Probably? She's never heard of people choosing to have kids before, it seems like that's probably an Eldar thing with all the other body-related stuff that she'd also never heard of before.

But her people do choose to have kids! Choose to lay eggs, maybe not, but there won't be a baby unless someone decides they want to raise one!

Well yes that, but kobolds still don't get to chose whether they're pregnant or not, they just have a bit more choice about what happens afterward. And eggs going unhatched is rare, they are more like humans in actual practice, it is possible to run a society that way.

But kobolds who don't want to have these plants, right, and humans don't.

The plants aren't actually used for that, most of the time, letting someone who wants an egg have one is generally considered the better option. Look, this is weird and different and scary, that happens when you're dealing with a different species, panicking almost never helps. Calm down, tell the humans what we've come up with, see what they think about it all.