By then the hour shine is at work. "Hey," Kib says, "do you know if there's any reason time should feel weird here? Besides it always being bright and the days being longer than I'm used to and stuff. Systematic bias in estimating how many minutes it's been, I always feel like it's been less."

"Maybe your world is differently paced? I'd have to go there myself to say, I should think..."

"What would it mean for a world to be differently paced, and not just differently - lit and demarcated?"

"Hmm, I think Valinor's designed to the sensibilities of the Valar, since they made it, with respect to time as with respect to everything else. I don't know how worlds would manifest having a pace, but if it feels somehow different than home there might be some way. Or could your clock be fast?"

"My clock could be a little fast but it should not be off by a factor of two."

"Hmm. I'm sorry. You can ask the Valar once they come, maybe?"

"Sure. It's just weird, I'm glad I noticed it this fast, I would've been annoyed if I'd lost a lot of time that way. Clock seems to confirm that I need less sleep here, maybe half as much, so it might be a wash?"

"Lost a lot of time as in you think you're slower at tasks than you'd be at home?"

"Don't have enough information on that yet. Tentatively no; I don't seem to be moving sluggishly. It seems like it'd be more likely to catch me when I'm not mid-task."

"Definitely ask the Valar."

"It's on the list."

"Oooh, there's a list? What else is there?"

Kib pulls out his list. "Level and type of access to my world; angle on the death thing at least for me even if I'm just stuck here and my world's on its own; other worlds - characteristics, level and type of access; and the time thing."

Maitimo's smiling. "That's everything I expect they'd be helpful on, yes."

"They're expected to show up pretty much at once after Tyelcormo gets there, right?"

"...at once as the Valar count time. They're millions of years old."

"...so, how long is 'at once'?"

"Anywhere between 'that day' and 'before the Year is out'. Tyelcormo will stay and wheedle. If anything's urgent - if you were dying or something - they'd come instantaneously, but something like this they'll probably have a discussion about and their discussions can get intensive."

"...if they take a local year I'm going to be, like, substantially older. Not enough to be imminently dying but enough that going home is no longer straightforward. I guess if I show up with my pockets full of diamonds I'll be able to resolve things like 'my teacher has reassigned my room' reasonably well but it'd be a huge gap for everyone I know."

"If they haven't shown in another few weeks I shall send another emissary to communicate that it's more urgent than they realize. For what it's worth, I wouldn't expect it to be a long time unless, for example, they can take all the extra babies and are debating whether to let us try to pull that off."

"They might not let you try?"

"It wouldn't be a unanimous vote in favor, at least, if they have the power to pull all the babies from your realm here. They might worry about everyone here working ourselves to the point of misery to save more children than we really have the capacity to - which they'd be right to worry about, we would do that, but we'd be doing that because it was worth it to us -"

"I mean, you wouldn't have to wait long for some babies to be grown up enough to be able to help. Nobody on my planet would mind if you didn't send them all back."

"They might also worry about population. Right now our birthrate is just below two - ah, places where babies are born track birthrates. For every existing person, in expectation they will have slightly less than one new person. My parents are overachievers. If the birthrate is below two, then even without anyone dying eventually the population will stop growing. Importing babies who we can grow up so we have enough to help us with millions of babies more will freak the Valar out. They might let us do it but they might not."

"So I guess the question is how viable offplanet colonization is."