Ugh.

Yeah. Where is Valinor relative to us, anyway?

No idea. We're pretty sure it's not on the planet anymore.

Huh. I guess they could do that.

Also, the planet is round now! And it has friends, and a sun, and a moon--she sends her an image of the solar system. Not to scale, she adds helpfully.

Huh. My world's got a sun and a moon but they're not quite like that and the planet is surrounded by a crystal sphere that keeps out gibbering horrors.

I approve. Of the gibbering horrors being kept out, not that they exist.

Every now and then there's a crack and somebody epic manages to get to it and fight them.

Epic?

Loosely, "might not lose if they fought a god".

Aha. Well. I think we're going to need to surpass that, collectively if not individually.

Yes, although it's not exactly the same - my world sort of enforces a power level divide as a fundamental regularity, which I don't think is compatible with a really science world.

Yeah, I don't think there's anything like that here. But I think trusting that Melkor is dead is a bad idea, and--I like the way Idaia put it, once: "I don't believe in revenge but some people just cannot be trusted to continue existing."

I agree on both counts.

She also believes that there are situations where someone theoretically could be trusted to continue existing in the future but their victims' need for closure carries more moral weight than their right to live, if they've been terrible enough in the past, and I dunno if that counts as revenge or not but she doesn't see it that way.

I'm less sure of that one but I guess it's not conceptually impossible.

It doesn't seem likely to come up. I really doubt we'll encounter anyone who was that horrible in the past who we could trust to leave alive regardless of their victims' wishes on the subject.

Yeah.

I'm not as pessimistic in general as Idaia, but.

At some point I'm supposed to get my fake passport replaced with a real one and find someplace else to live. What are my first steps on that?

Probably learning English.

Okay! Has it got an alphabet?

Yeah, uh, fair warning, our spelling's kinda...on drugs.

Pax has that problem too. Not everything can be as phonetic as Quenya.

Pity, Quenya's so convenient that way. I think English's spelling is on stronger drugs than most of the other languages in this world, but I could be wrong.