"- not really but I'm about as fine as can be expected under the circumstances and it's nothing to worry about?"

"It's nothing to worry about is... worse if I worry or just the same if I worry or better if I worry but not as much as I expect or something else?"

"It's, um, unnecessary to worry? I can't, like, tell you what to do - I don't want people to have to worry about me but I guess if they're going to anyway they can do that, just - " 

Aaaaaaaaaaaa she doesn't want to explain this it's dumb. But she looks at the ground and digs her nails into her palms and does.

" - I'm really nervous about everything because everything here is weird and I don't want to mess up and cause the Alteri to kill anyone. And sometimes I see things that remind me of something bad and it takes me a second to be OK, and then I wait a second and I'm back to regular nervous. Sorry."

And also because nobody remotely important ever talks to her about anything ever unless something really bad is happening but she's not thinking about that.

"Oh! There are people who Melkor hurt who he didn't hurt the way that means they wanted to be dead forever. Just other ways, to make orcs. And they get very scared, sometimes. And the best thing is for the world not to have things that seem bad, so they aren't scared. So they live places that are like that. I am - not very good for places like that but we have them and you can live in one."

"OK," she says weakly. "I mean I'm gonna be fine but - maybe."

Is she even allowed to have opinions on this it's actually not entirely clear to her.

He does not seem offended by her answer and can't think of a linguistic clarification immediately either. Their shuttle takes off. "The shuttle will take us to a bigger ship. The bigger ship goes planets."

"Goes to planets," she says, idly.

"Thank you! Goes to planets. Goes between stars, and stars are far."

She seems somewhat cheered by thanks. "Stars are far away, usually. I don't think 'far' by itself is wrong but it does sound unusual."

"Stars are far away so it was hard to make a ship that goes between stars."

She nods. "It sounds hard. How long does it take to get to Valinor?"

"Five days."

"...wow." She can't remember now whether he already said that but if he did she probably immediately forgot it because that's a really short time for interstellar travel and it sounds pretty ridiculous. "It took ten years for me to go from Yahi to Earth. So that's. Better."

"What years?"

"Earth years. Um, a year is how long it takes a planet to revolve around its star, so they're different lengths for different planets. I'm twenty-five Earth years old. So ten years was a long time."

"Can I ask more questions so I can figure out how many Earth years in ours -"

She nods.

"Do you know how much of an Earth year it has been since you arrived?"

"Since I came to this planet? It's only been a few hours, so - that's like a fifth of an Earth day, maybe, and there are three hundred and sixty-five Earth days in an Earth year. So, uh - "

He nods. "The journey between Valinor and Endorë which my parents made was twenty or thirty Earth years. It was hard. But ships now are faster."

"Wow. We make journeys that far, but yeah, it's hard."

"The ship we will transfer to is small, too small for ten years."

"Ours wasn't that large a ship, probably not larger than the one that picked me up. But, uh, I don't have infinite years so not spending ten more of them in space is good."

"Infinite?"

"Unlimited? Something that doesn't have a number because it's bigger than all the numbers? Liars live for maybe seventy Earth years. I think maybe eighty or ninety if nobody kills them."