"There are bad gods. The only way to fix that is with good people who are better at everything than them and can fight them."

"I'm not sure you have to be better at everything to fight someone."

"I thought I just had to be good at magic but situations like this might happen and to solve them you need to be good at other things that are not magic."

"Sure. But you can probably skip basket-weaving."

"But then it'd be weird whenever I used a basket."

"...it would? Why?"

" - because I'd be using it without understanding how it was made, or being able to make it myself."

"Most people do that all the time."

" - that sounds really frustrating. Maybe it is why you have so many people who are not nice."

"It's never occurred to me to try to correlate the two, but the world's actually getting less violent over time as more things get invented and they get more complicated."

"Huh. And it doesn't bother you?"

"Not especially."

"Maybe it is another species difference."

"I guess that could be. So everybody in your culture learns to make everything?"

"Well, there aren't many things to learn to make yet. But I know how to make baskets. And furniture but I am too small to do some parts like sawing. And clothes. My mother weaves really pretty things and mine are not that pretty because I am not patient but I know how. I know how to make sunglasses too even though I'm not allowed to use a forge myself."

"Sunglasses!" giggles Pelape.

"Bella wanted them! We don't even have a sun!"

"Then why'd she want them?"

The Trees are like so.

"Okay, yes, that's very bright. I wonder if we'd get brown."

"Brown?"

"If Amentans spend a lot of time in the sun we get darker. If we stop then we get paler again."

"We don't do that. Maybe someone could if they wanted to on purpose. The Vanyar are browner than us but I think that was true by Cuivienen too."

"I wouldn't expect it in aliens. It's a useful protection against sun damage but there's presumably other ways to do it."

"The Trees do not damage us. That would be kind of bad even for the Valar."