She has never been offered singing as a substitute for food before, but - OK. Sure. 

"Yeah. If you'd like to."

He would like to sing! He sings. 

She listens. More people should sing in more situations. She has had no practice and is not going to be one of them, but it's true in principle.

When an Elf starts singing other Elves will randomly join in with the harmony. It's kind of bizarre. They must all know all the same songs. He sings for a human-appropriate length of time, like twenty minutes.

Elves are so cool. Maybe someday she'll be able to do something cool. Nothing immediately comes to mind, but something, someday, if she manages to live through the next stage of alien contact.

She thanks them for singing and then asks to continue with language-learning. Her concentration isn't great today; she keeps feeling like she's missing things she's supposed to already know.

"Is the ship too small," asks Ettelië worriedly. "Not all Elves can do this, we pick crews from ones who are unusually able to handle it - you might just need more space -"

She ducks her head and doesn't make eye contact. "I've spent my whole life in smaller spaces, promise. It's just harder to focus some days than others. I think I might turn in early tonight, though, if that's OK?"

"Of course!"

She smiles and returns to her room. She doesn't sleep.

She sits on her bed and stares straight ahead for hours, counting back days on her fingers. Not because she thinks anything is wrong, that would be stupid, there are plenty of reasons to be nauseous and tired and not want to eat delicious Elf food even when you're hungry. Nothing's been done to her recently. She's pretty sure something has to be done to you for the explanation she's thinking of to be the right one. 

She counts back on her fingers once, twice, three times. Twenty-four days with the elves, fifty-three days since the last time she was knocked out for chip maintenance. Missing one period would be stress or happenstance; she's missed two. But there could be two instances of stress or happenstance in a row, it happens, it's not impossible. 

She hugs her knees and lies to herself about whether she's crying.

"It's that star system."

      "How confident are we in that?"

"Nearly certain. It's also not very costly to be wrong - if we send a ship there and it's some other system, we can just come right back- -"

      "Yes, all right. And it's got three sets of aliens, two with near-totally unknown capabilities, one with capabilities we know to exceed ours and mindreaders."

"I'm not worried about the mindreaders," says Lord Maedhros. 

     "....no? I'm worried about the mindreaders."

"We'll send people who have the beliefs that we would like the Alteri to read off them. I'm not worried about the mindreaders."

     "All right."

"I am worried they'll be able to reverse-engineer a lightleaper from a captured one without our cooperation." 

     "Not - impossible but very nearly impossible and would take a very long time, during which we'd be positioned to make it substantially more difficult. It is an argument for contact at Earth rather than at some other alien-controlled star system with which they have more regular travel and communications."

"Yes, I want to go to Earth. Fewer variables, more reason to ally with us, easier to handle if they choose instead to make a mistake."

She waits until she thinks it might be very early morning, then leaves her room to go find Ettelië. She is not sure in what direction she's being stupid, but she's definitely been stupid at some point, and since she's not going to be able to focus until she knows for sure which point it was, she might as well get it over with.

Ettelië materializes predictably quickly. He looks like he might have hurriedly gotten out of bed. "Imrainai!"

"Hello," she says, momentarily warmed by the use of her name. It's not enough to get her to actually stop looking worried, but it's something. "I'm - I'm sorry if this is an inconvenient time to ask for things, or if you had to get out of bed, I should have thought more about that, but uh - you said to ask for things that would be helpful."

"Yes, of course. - I'm supposed to help you find your way around here, it's not inconvenient, it's my job."

"OK," she says. "You're - you're really good at it and I hope I'm not making it harder than it has to be." She looks down at the ground and clasps her hands in front of her. She pauses.

Idiot, idiot, idiot, just say the thing, this isn't hard.

"It's probably nothing and I'm probably imagining things but I need to ask if - do you possibly have a way of testing whether someone is going to have a baby."

"Uh. Aside from - asking them?"

This is.... not the reaction she was expecting. She is momentarily too confused to sink into the ground in mortification.

"No, I mean, like, if they don't know yet themselves?"

- Ettelië is visibly so confused. "You can't have a baby without knowing it. ...can humans have a baby without knowing it? ...humans can - that's horrifying. Ah. Uh."

She stares at the ground. "I didn't - they don't let us decide but they usually tell us - I don't know but I think they might have - I'm sorry, I'd have told someone sooner if I knew but I don't - "

"...do you know who the baby's father is?"

Headshake. "They don't let us decide that either, they - artificial insemination is standard practice but they're supposed to tell us - I didn't do anything, I didn't even know they'd done something, if they did it was when I was knocked out for chip maintenance - I don't even know if there is a baby I just think there might be - "

She's trying very hard not to cry now.

Hug?

Hug. She needs a hug so much right now. She hears herself apologizing but isn't entirely sure what she's apologizing for.

Ettelië scoops her up and sits down and pats her and sings quietly.

She cries for a while. Eventually she's quiet.