"Uh, wow."

"Melkor is bad."

"And might be behind this somehow, though we don't know how or why."

"I dunno what anyone could possibly get out of dropping me on you."

"Me neither!! Beka at least made more than zero sense. He has been known to do things that take a thousand years to pay off, though, so."

"I'm not even gonna live that long. Or Katin."

"I know. I'm sorry."

And if they can't get home Katin's gonna spring with no non-Mama members of the species around and maybe they'll permaspring here and that's gonna suck.

Spring? Permaspring?

...spring, permaspring.

Huh. Humans are fertile all the time and Elves only when we want to be.

Huh. Well, aliens.

I'm sorry about - the not being able to have more kids. You might be interfertile with humans? Elves are.

Yeah right they're keeping her as a prisoner and they're gonna let her have more kids pull the other one.

- I mean the objecting to anyone having sex with you kind of precludes it but aside from that why in the world would we object?

Wow, letting prisoners have kids is really extreme not-population-control.

Also that only applies to the people who are actually themselves jailing her, none of whom seem to be whatever a human is, but she's not sure she wants to stand on principle there anyway especially if she permasprings.

It seems like a dumb principle to him but whatever suits her. There are humans here in the army. Humans not in the army live farther south. We did say we'd never heard of population controls. 

She mulls over for a moment her time in the army and flinches away from the thought.

Humans here all serve - or nearly all - from eighteen to 25. Uh - here is a human at eighteen and at 25. Some of them reenlist then but if they want to be done we pay them for the rest of their life.

Wow at home it's just greys doing actual fighting.

What are those, or is that a secret too?

They're a caste - she's thinking of people with grey hair - but then she starts singing in her head again.

Sigh.