Awww, she actually feels really good about that. "OK!"

So he goes down a big list of vocabulary and is much more fluent by the time he's through with it. "Do the Alteri have creators?"

"OK, so - technically no, they don't, but there is another species that found them on their planet and gave them space flight and and other advanced technology, a really long time ago."

"How did they come about without creators?"

" - I am really really not a biologist, I'm sorry, I don't know where life comes from when someone else doesn't make it. But it's happened at least a couple times."

"Huh. Who are the people who gave the Alteri starships?"

"The Carthons. I've never seen one in real life but they're supposed to be these sort of cone-shaped shells, and the tops open up and they have tentacles and stuff. They're aquatic. They've been at war with the Alteri for - I don't know how many years. Longer than the Liars have existed."

"That's terrible. Over what?"

"Well, the Carthons colonized the Alteri and then the Alteri didn't like their rules, so they rebelled and tried to destroy all of the Carthons. But the war is pretty intractable because the star systems are so far apart and it takes so long to send ships anywhere."

He bites his lip. "I don't know how we'll fix that but we will. Endless war sounds horrible for everyone."

"It's not great," she agrees.

"Do you have questions about my people?"

"Oh! Yeah, but I don't know if I know enough to know what questions to ask? And I just - don't want to be a problem. Or anything."

"Why not?"

" - because causing problems for people is rude?" she says, looking faintly puzzled. It's also dangerous, under some circumstances, but she is not going to say that.

"Asking questions can't be rude! One can always not answer them."

" - wow, OK, that is not how things are where I come from, but if you're sure that's, uh, convenient, thank you."

"Of course."

"So. OK. What are the Valar, exactly?"

"They are the people who created us. They have extraordinary abilities - many of them just exceptional proficiency with things we can do ourselves, but some of it things we can't. They can read minds, they can be many places at the same time, they can communicate instantaneously anywhere in the universe - which is important, because we can't communicate any faster than our ships can travel - and they do not need to have a physical form at all, and can choose any one they like."

- oh wow OK that sounds terrifying.

"Wow. And they're the ones in charge in Valinor?"

"Yes. Elves were made on Endorë, but after Melkor was destroyed they invited us to come to Valinor. Some accepted, and their descendants live on Valinor today - unless they've left to found their own colony planet."

"I see. And - you said something about Melkor before, who was that?"

"Melkor was a Vala, but the others are good and he was very terrible. He attacked Elves and took slaves and hurt people a lot just for fun. The Valar stopped him."

"Ah. OK. That's - good that they stopped him."

So Valar can be evil and technically any one of them can always jump ship and the others may or may not be able to stop them next time. That's, you know, not reassuring but not appreciably worse than her previous situation.