He lands on her lap! 

That was part of the plan.

He has never encountered a bunk bed before and bumps his head immediately. That was not part of the plan. "Ow Bella Bella Bella ow I'm rescuing you!" he says.

"Mmmrg?"

"Glurp?"

"Ow. I'm rescuing you. We should probably leave before Materia eats us."

"Sofa, you up?"

"Yes."

"There's a one-year-old sitting on my knees talking about - something - in alien, can you hear it -"

"I... heard something..."

Ooooh, what language is that, that's not Pax - why is your ceiling so low -

"- did you hear that?"

"Nnnno?"

- there is somebody on your ceiling? Why is there someone on your ceiling.

"What is going on?"

Sofa hops down to have a look. "...well, uh, I can see him too if that was in doubt..."

Oh. Do you - not remember me?

"...in the sense that I don't have memories of you, not in the sense that I acknowledge having forgotten you."

Oh.

I don't think the Valar did that but maybe they wouldn't have said since I was mad at them anyway.

Now there is a crying tiny child on her lap.

...she hugs him. "What's a Vala?"

"Springing is weird," whispers Sofa. "What if you hug the alien and then it turns out they're allergic what then."

The Valar are the gods of my world. It might also be the gods here who did it I don't know.

"...I don't think we have those."

...are we not in Materia?

"What's a Matelia?"

Apparently the alien in her lap is just going to confusedly cry and cling to her for a minute. 

And then - Pax has an r.

"Anitami doesn't."

But if you are Bella and the Valar wiped your memory you would still have an r I think.

"...like I said, I don't acknowledge having forgotten you."

"This conversation is weird."

"He's telepathic or something. I'm going to freak out about that later. Because alien."

You look like Bella and the teleport was aimed for Bella.

"I don't know who that is. I'm Pelape."

"This is just like Friends From Katme."

"It is not like Friends From Katme."

- cling. Then where is Bella.

"...I don't know, because I don't know who that is."

And here is a tinier little child crying in a beautiful cluttered room somewhere and here is a woman who looks a lot like Pelape but brown-haired, appearing out of nowhere and stumbling and catching herself and blinking and looking around in confusion, and here is Fëanáro explaining that she is in the palace, which alarms her, and here is Fëanáro hiding in her guest room a while later and climbing out to demand to be taught how to read -

"...okay, she looks like me, except the hair -"

I can't see your hair and I'm saving my mana to leave, is there a light?

"Sofa, can you get the light?"

"You get the light."

"Sofa, I have an alien on my lap."

Sofa gets the light.

Blink blink. Yeah okay you look just like Bella except the hair. You have Teleri hair.

"What's that?"

His species comes in Teleri (brown or silver or bronze), Noldor (black or red), Vanyar (blonde). 

"...okay. Where did you come from?"

Valinor.

"Where is that?"

Another world.

"Okay, but around what star?"

- uh, what?

"Where is your planet relative to Amenta?"

I have no idea. I was aiming the teleport for Bella. I haven't teleported to other worlds before.

"Do people of your species often teleport to other planets?"

No one knows how. It took me most of a year to figure it out or I'd have rescued Bella sooner.

"- what does she need rescuing from?"

"You could at least tell me what you're talking about, Pelape."

"Trying to figure out where his planet is, sorry Sofa."

The Valar kicked her out back to her home world and it kills people for thinking too highly of themselves.

"...it does what now?"

It kills people. For science and for thinking arrogant things. It's not a good place for Bella I need to rescue her.

"...yeah, that sounds bad. But maybe not urgent on a scale of hours, since it's waited a year?"

Yeah I will have to figure out why my targetting didn't work.

Except I am scared that maybe it didn't work because she is dead.

"I'm sorry."

Cling. Crying.

Pat pat.

Bella got a house in Tirion like this and she taught him her world's magic which is different than his world's magic and works better if you can do science to it and she figured out healing and healed Rúmil and she taught him to fly and she found out about the timeslide and fixed it but the Valar were mad and then they got even madder and made her leave and he screamed at them that they were evil and horrible and then he researched how to get her and it should have worked.

"I'm sorry you lost your friend."

More sobbing.

Poor tiny child alien. Hugs.

I guess since you're not Bella you aren't a subtle artist?

"No, I don't know what that is."

"How come the alien's only talking to you?"

"Because I look like his friend."

Who is she?

"My sister."

Oh.

Bella doesn't have a sister.

"Well, I'm Pelape, and have a sister."

Hi, he says unhappily to Sofa. 

"Whooooa telepathic alien."

She already told you that.

"Yeah but you didn't do it at me."

Do you not have subtle arts here? 

"No, what are they?"

It's the thing Bella was studying before she landed on us, it's reading peoples' minds but she doesn't do that except in the way osanwë works and mental blocks and therapy things. She healed my mom, my mom was dying.

"Well, nobody on this planet has psychic powers."

Weird. What do your blind people do?

"...they have audio-based tools and sometimes trained dogs."

He seems satisfied by this answer. He is still kind of clinging.

Hug. "Are you here all by yourself?"

Yeah. I was not supposed to rescue Bella because Materia might kill me for being arrogant.

"...well, this planet won't kill you for being arrogant. Do you think any other people you know might want to come here?"

Bella would if she's not dead and this planet doesn't have any mean gods. 

"Well, I'd love to meet her when you figure out how to find her. How about people you already know how to find?"

I don't want to go back to Valinor they probably won't let me leave again.

"...oh dear. Uh. Can you talk to them without going there?"

I guess I could maybe invent a spell for that but rescuing Bella is more important.

"- it's just that people here have wanted to meet aliens for a really long time, and if you don't have a way that any of your people could find us again, like if you go to Matelia and it's too dangerous there, then nobody gets to meet aliens except me and Sofa."

Oh, that makes sense. I can teach you Quenya and Pax before I go to get Bella.

"...I'm sure some people would love to learn Quenya and Pax but it doesn't tell us where to find your people or how to make it so they could hear us."

I could teach you wizardry too I guess but you really shouldn't go to Valinor it is terrible the Valar are evil.

"...that's pretty scary, but we really really want to meet aliens, so somebody might want to try it just in case it worked out."

Why?

"We're running out of places to live here, but aliens who know of more places to live or could show us how to find them would be able to help with that faster than we can work it out ourselves."

Well I think I should get Bella and then she can help you with that, she would be good at it.

"That sounds good except I'm worried about the thing you said where going to Matelia to get her is dangerous."

Yeah. I don't know what to do about that. I was just going to go anyway and leave really fast and hope it didn't squish me.

"Maybe some people here could help you? Since we definitely have people who would do really dangerous things in order to travel to other planets."

I am worried they will try to stop me from going. Would they not do that?

"They will want to make sure we have ways to get to other planets without you, and they will be worried for you since you look like a little child of our species, but I think they will want to try really hard to make you happy."

I am not that little I am thirteen.

"I didn't know how old you were since you aren't an Amentan, but you look like a one year old Amentan."

One year old Elves look like this. Mental image.

"Awwww."

You look like an eighty year old Elf maybe. Bella looked younger than you but that's because the Valar made her not get older.

"I'm five, and Sofa is three."

You guys grow up fast. Are you a species like humans that dies?

"Yeah, we live to be maybe forty."

Are your afterlife planes nice?

"...we don't have those."

...where do you go when you die?

"We get cremated?"

...I don't mean your body, I mean you.

"...we die."

You said that already. When Elves die we go to Mandos and he makes us a new body, when people from Materia die they go to an afterlife plane....

"When we die we cease to exist."

Are there any worlds that aren't completely horrible?

"Don't know, I've only been to this one."

Oh. Well. That's completely horrible. 

"If we lived forever we would even more not have enough room."

Oh. Huh. We don't have that problem, we just started. I don't know if Materia has that problem.

"If your friend didn't mention it it probably isn't as big a deal for them as for us."

She did not mention not having enough space, just the not having science and the universe squishing you and the kings being meaner than our king which must be very mean because I don't like ours at all. 

He's my dad.

"That sucks that you don't like your dad."

"This is like the most boring telepathic alien ever, I want to sleep, go somewhere else."

"Okay." Pelape scoops Fëanáro up and manages to hold him in one arm so she can use the other to touch the wall for balance, and she goes into the living room and sits on a couch with him.

I'm not boring.

"I think you're really interesting, but Sofa's too tired and too three to be interested."

Snuggle. You're sort of like Bella aside from looking like her.

"Am I?"

Yeah. Just a little.

"She sounds really cool."

She is amazing. She is my favorite person. The Valar were horrible and awful and they should not be allowed to be in charge of people anymore.

"Sometimes our rulers mess up really badly too. I'm sorry."

What do yours do?

"Depends. Some of the things they're stuck with because of the not enough room thing, like telling people how many kids they can have or not letting people immigrate from other countries, that's not their fault, but other times they make tradeoffs it's not so obvious they have to make."

...and you can't just wait to have kids until you have planets for them to live on because you die all the time. That's awful.

"That and waiting is really hard."

...why?

"Once we're all grown up, especially in the springtime, we really want to have babies. We have to wait and only have as many as the government of wherever we live allows, but it's awful."

That is not how any of the species that I know of work.

"...that's kind of surprising but maybe magic changes things."

Why is it surprising?

"In species that die, and have kids that are like their parents, parents who want kids more and can have more of them because of that will be ancestors to more of the population."

It seems like that would take a long time. 

"It does, millions of years."

There have been Elves for a hundred thirty-two years.

"...and you started existing magically?"

Eru put us there when he thought it was the right moment. Eru is a - bigger god. 

"...huh."

And I bet Materia doesn't work that way because it hates science and the thing you just said sounds like science.

"...studying it is the purview of science..."

Shrug. I don't know how old Materia is either. Maybe not old enough for the thing even if the thing isn't science. 

Science is great it was Bella's favorite thing about Valinor.

"Science is pretty neat. I mostly do math though."

I like languages. And magic.

"I don't speak any other languages but I bet I'd like magic if I could do magic."

You can probably do magic.

"Really?"

I think so? I can't think why you wouldn't be able to learn magic.

"...cool."

Yeah. Magic is amazing. Everyone should have magic.

"What kind of magic can you do? Teleporting, telepathy..."

Osanwë isn't wizardry it's just the way Elves are. I have a flight spell and a bouncing spell that isn't as much mana as the flight spell and I can make diagrams in the air - I needed that so I could design the spell to rescue Bella, because they took away all my paper and pencils and things - and I can heal people and make a bungalow and go invisible and make an anti-time-slip necklace.

"They took away your paper and pencils? That's horrible. - no computers? Anti-time-slip?"

What's a computer? They took away all my ways of writing things because they knew I was trying to invent a spell to go get Bella and they thought I would die. Valinor has a time-slip thing so you never feel like you're in a hurry and it makes it hard to do things fast and Bella found a way around it but the Valar got mad.

"- that's a computer," she says, pointing at her mom's laptop on the kitchen counter.

- okay. We don't have those. We didn't have wheels or glass until Bella invented them, and we didn't have writing.

"- I guess that makes sense if you're such a new species."

And if computers are science then Materia wouldn't let someone invent them.

"...okay."

But if you can use them to write you can use them to design spells probably.

Can we go somewhere prettier?

"Prettier?"

Valinor is like so.

"Wow. Uh, I'm not sure where we can go in the middle of the night that's pretty like that, plus people might notice you and get prematurely excited."

Okay. Snuggle.

"Sorry."

It's kind of distracting, everything being ugly. I think it would bother me less if I weren't worried about Bella being maybe dead.

"That's scary, yeah. I'm too young to remember the last war we had but people talk about being worried for their soldier friends like that."

Stupid evil Valar.

Hug.

The people who were born during the war with Melkor are scared of lots of things. My dad is scared of not knowing where I am. He is probably very sad right now.

"That's too bad."

Yeah. But I don't want to live where the Valar are anymore.

"Well. You are welcome here."

I guess here is a good place to be while I teach you magic and figure out what went wrong with my spell to get Bella.

"Cool. My parents will wake up in a couple hours."

If I go flying around will that scare people?

"People here can't fly, so unless you're invisible too, yep. And I'd be worried about you running into a helicopter."

What's that?

"A flying machine that moves by spinning blades really really fast."

I guess it would not be good to run into one of those. 

"It'd be really bad, yep."

I could probably eventually figure out how to do magic disembodied but it would be really stressful and maybe I couldn't. I will stay here. 

"Being disembodied sounds generally pretty bad, yeah. Once it's morning - uh, the government will probably really want to know about you. I do think they will try really hard to keep you happy, and I could get in trouble if they find out you're here and I wasn't telling them. Is that okay?"

If you might get in trouble I will rescue you.

"...that's really sweet but it might not be a rescuing kind of trouble."

Why would you get in trouble?

"We really, really need more space. There might not be a specific law about aliens appearing on your lap in the middle of the night, but if I somehow managed to mess up with you, thirteen billion people wouldn't get more places to live, all because I tried to do something complicated by myself. That'd make people really mad."

That is a lot of people.

"Yeah. That's why we're running out of room."

I don't want you to get in trouble and if you think they're okay then they're probably okay.

"I think they'll probably manage to be careful and responsible with this one thing. Do you want to tell me more about where you're from so I know what to tell them?"

That sounds good. 

"Great. How does the telepathy work exactly?"

Uh, you can notice other people if they're not too far away. It's farther for people you know. It's never across the ocean. You can read public thoughts and senses if they leave those public. Most people leave their senses public but probably they wouldn't do that if they were in an ugly place like here. You can send things to particular people or to everybody.

"Thoughts are - 'left public'? - do you want me to put the TV on a scenery channel or something."

That sounds good. Yes, you leave thoughts in public if you want people to read them and you make them private if you don't. Are you not doing that?

She pokes her pocket everything till she finds a scenery channel and puts it up on the wall screen. "No, I don't know how. We don't have telepathic people here usually."

Huh. I think you could probably still do it, I don't think I use osanwë to do it. Bella could do it already but she is a subtle artist. You just - come up with a way of thinking private thoughts and public thoughts separately. Some people imagine private thoughts being underwater and public thoughts being abovewater, or private thoughts whispered and public thoughts shouted.

"Okay, I think I can do that."

Everyone should do that or wait until I speak the language because it is going to be hard to only get the meaning of the things you're saying out loud and not listen to other things which are public and not meant to be.

"I will warn the government."

And you can teach me the language! He peeks past her at the scenery channel and seems to relax slightly.

"I wasn't exactly offered teaching track but I can try."

I guess without subtle arts you wouldn't be a therapist, what do you do?

"Well, I couldn't be a therapist anyway, same reason I can't be a teacher. I do statistical analysis of arcball, mostly."

"You couldn't be a therapist," he tries out loud, carefully. "You can't be a teacher. Reason you can't be a therapist, teacher?"

"I'm grey." She touches her hair. "My mom is orange, but this is a patrilineal country so I'm grey like my dad."

...you have the wrong hair to be a therapist or a teacher?

"If I'd been born with orange hair I'd still be grey and I'd have to - well, not strictly have to, just it'd avoid misunderstandings - dye it."

- I still don't see what that has to do with being a therapist or a teacher.

"Our castes are hair color coded. What caste we are determines what jobs we're allowed to have."

That sounds stupid.

"Yes. I know."

What happens if you just go do whatever you want anyway.

"You aren't allowed to make more than one sixth of your total income from things that aren't for your caste."

Do you think your government will stop that if I tell them it is stupid.

"...uh, you could probably get them to liberalize it some, but it would be really hard to suddenly stop altogether and they'll probably not want to."

Why not?

"A lot of people like it. It works unusually badly for me. And a lot of stuff is built on top of it. There's one casteless country in the world but they're very weird and started from scratch a few years ago."

It still sounds stupid. Would they not let everyone learn magic?

"I don't know how they'd caste magic. Probably depends what it's being used to do."

"What does - grey - do?"

"Cops and soldiers and athletes and dancers. I categorize my thing as 'bookie', we have that one too."

"What is - cops and soldiers? And bookie."

"Cops enforce laws, soldiers fight wars. Bookies do betting."

"We no have those ones."

"...that's interesting. Not even cops?"

"Not even cops."

"Huh."

"We have dancers but not a job, dancers."

"That's less surprising."

"We have a Vala of dancers."

"Is it useful to have a Vala be of a thing?"

"Not really because the Valar are evil and stupid."

"You've said."

"Sometimes people at home forget if I don't say it all of the time and very loudly."

"Maybe I should be taking notes. Do you mind if I put you down and get my pocket everything?"

"No."

She does that. She taps out an outline in her note app.

He looks at the scenery and adjusts his clothes and sits down and sings quietly.

"Oh that's pretty."

Do people here not sing?

"Sure they do, but you've got a lovely voice."

"Lovely voice," he repeats. "Is singing a color?"

"Green."

"Green, grey, orange..."

"Blue, purple, yellow, red except reds are being phased out."

"What things are reds?"

"Collecting dead bodies, dealing with wastewater, taking away garbage. We came up with ways to do those things that don't need to be all segregated into their own caste; now they're purple jobs."

"Collecting dead bodies is a job? What a bad job."

"Doesn't sound fun to me either."

"We don't have the other ones either. Wastewater, garbage."

"...not as their own jobs, like dancers, or you somehow don't need them at all, like soldiers and cops?"

"Not at all, like soldiers and cops."

"...how do you not have garbage?"

" - I think it is hard to say how you do not have something."

"...yeah, I guess. Uh, on any given day I might throw out food wrappers, packaging, swept-up dust and crumbs, tissues, worn-through socks..."

"Food does not wrappers, socks does not wear through, packaging I don't know, tissues I don't know - I don't know those things, not I don't know how we throw out. We do not dust, crumbs go in a flower basket where they turn into food for flowers."

"...huh. Not wrapping your food sounds inconvenient."

"There are kinds of food that are not good to eat while flying, food gets everywhere? You eat it with -" dishes.

"Dishes. But like, how do you get butter from cows to your house?"

" - the kitchen has a big dish. You pour milk in from a -" pitcher - "and then you move it until butter. I think. I have not made butter."

"...okay. How do you get milk from cows to your house."

"A pitcher."

"...I guess there aren't very many of you. Why don't your socks wear through, do you have magic socks?"

"No? I don't think so. If they were not magic they would wear through?"

"Yeah. The same way you can sand wood into a shape. - sawdust, do you not throw away sawdust? Or is that flower food too?"

"I think flowerbeds can turn sawdust into flower food. I don't know, I do not sawdust either."

"Gosh. An entirely refuse-free society. The government is going to be worried you'll think we're gross."

"The colors thing is stupid but I don't care about the garbage. Maybe with magic you will not need garbage."

"Maybe."

"I don't know if you will need cops and soldiers."

"Probably. They solve problems that are about how people act."

"Would they have stopped the Valar being bad and evil because then maybe we need them too."

"...I mean, they're not equipped to deal with magic people of any description. I guess if the Valar would obey laws then they could have made laws against what they did but they'd have a hard time arresting them if they didn't want to be arrested, probably."

"The Valar make the laws."

"Yeah, then cops and soldiers wouldn't help at all."

"Then I am glad we don't have any."

Snort.

"Bella was trying to convince the Valar of things but then they got unreasonable about it."

"What was she trying to convince them of?"

"That they should not insist on fixing people before making them alive again and that it's okay if -" vague confusion, something to do with people wanting to kiss the wrong people? 

"...fixing people?"

"They can change things about them. Bella can do it too with subtle arts and she's better at it but she wouldn't without them saying okay and the Valar won't make you alive again unless you say okay and Bella said that doesn't count as them saying okay if they have to to be alive."

"...yeah that doesn't sound like much of a choice."

"Yes that's what Bella said. She was scared about saying it because in her world gods are mean and will not like you if you say they are doing a bad thing, but we thought the Valar were okay but then they weren't."

"That really sucks."

"If this world does not have any gods then maybe we will just stay here after we have rescued Bella. I think Bella would like to have a planet. She would be good at it. What color is having a planet. What is a planet exactly, is it the same as a world."

"Blue is ruling things. A planet is the thing we're standing on, a world can sometimes mean a planet but in science fiction it sometimes means an alternate dimension instead."

"I don't know if Bella will want to rule things. Maybe. It would be a lot of boring things instead of learning magic."

"I mean. The planet is already fully settled, you'd have to find her a different one or fight people over this one."

" - I mean a different one, it sounds like we need to find you more ones anyway."

"Yup."

"And then you can have babies. If you really want. Babies are pretty boring."

"No they're not. They learn things in such fascinating increments and they make funny noises and they're soft and snuggly."

"Pillows are softer and snugglier."

"You must have pretty amazing pillows. Are pillows also warm and heavy and capable of love?"

"If you wanted a warm heavy pillow you could probably get one."

"Anyway, babies are great but you don't have to have any."

"I am too small and will be too small for a long time."

"Yeah. Maybe you will like them when you're older."

"Maybe. Are those all the things you need to know about my world?"

"I could stand to know more things! How many of you are there?"

"There are around a hundred thousand Elves in Valinor and about that many who did not go to Valinor in the first place."

"...that's not very many."

"It is less than thirteen billion. It has never really felt like not enough."

"Yeah, sounds like you don't have the same problems as us."

"I guess maybe eventually we will because we do not stop existing permanently for no reason when we are only forty."

"Yeah, that'll overpopulate you eventually even if everybody only has two."

"The Valar will probably fix it."

"I'm not sure I'd want them in charge of population controls."

"I mean fix the space, not say people can't have children. People wouldn't have children if there wasn't space for them."

"Gotcha."

"Anyway since we don't randomly stop existing for no reason we would not mind waiting until they got us more space."

"Sounds nice."

Snuggle.

Snuggle! "So you're pretty low-tech, if glass and the wheel are new. But I guess you have magic doing a lot of the things technology does for us."

"What things does technology do for you?"

"Get us around cities and between countries, let us talk to people far away, let us build really densely so we can fit more people, cure and treat diseases, go to moons, handle data in all kinds of useful ways..."

"I think magic does some of those things and some we don't really need."

"Yeah, sounds like. Are you all one country?"

"The King of the Vanyar is Ingwë and the King of the Teleri is Olwë."

"And your king is your dad and is that it?"

"Yeah. Some people who didn't want to have kings went down south I think."

"Only three countries on a whole planet isn't much."

"How many are there here?"

"Almost two hundred, I think."

"Wow. Do people pick their favorite one?"

"No. Most don't allow immigration because of population problems - the ones that were nice would soon get too full, and then the people who lived there first wouldn't get to have as many kids as they could otherwise. You can switch countries if you find someone who wants to trade with you. In the same caste as you, so the balances of different jobs don't get too off."

"...why wouldn't everybody still get two kids?"

"- everyone's accounting for people dying. If everybody dies, and everybody has two kids, the population stays the same. But if a billion people move to Voa, the population doubles, and if you think Voa only has room for a billion people then they can only have one each to make it go back to that in the long run. And it's still too crowded in the short run."

" - huh. Is Voa where everybody would move to if they could?"

"It's hard to get into because a lot of people want to go there. They guarantee two children per family, most places don't do that. Most places auction credits."

"Huh.

If you could pick a country which one would you pick?"

"Do I get to retroactively have always been orange if I pick a matrilineal one? Are we assuming I have to learn the language?"

"How long does it take your species to learn languages?"

"Depends on the individual. I have no reason to think I'm any good at it, so probably at least a season if I were focusing almost exclusively on that, which I couldn't be because I'd need a job and stuff."

" - you can't just spend a season learning a language?"

"...not if I want to have a place to live and so on - I mean, in credit countries there are usually good social services but I think that'd probably break down some if they had a lot of immigration -"

"Oh, you need money to get a place to live?"

"Yeah. I live with my family still because I don't make enough to move out. I'd have to get a job that paid better if I wanted my own place."

"That sounds bad for people who don't want to do a job. Or don't like any of the jobs that are their color. Or want to have a baby, which apparently all of you do.'

"It's bad for the first two groups of people... people do manage to have babies while they work."

" - but that's terrible."

"I thought you said your dad was the king."

"And people think that's why I am such a terrible child and even then he doesn't have work very often."

...hug.

"Well. It's pretty normal here for people to work while they have babies. Sometimes they bring the babies to work."

"Elves mostly don't work until the children are all grown up."

"That sounds really nice. It wouldn't work very well here but some people might do it in Voan style countries."

"I think it is nice unless the baby is a very stressful baby who makes their parents miserable. Then maybe it is better if they work."