"Nobody said anything. There are guards? If there are guards I'm probably not allowed. Anyway I don't know how I'd ask for directions, you can't have all learned Yisi."

" - Lord Curufin did and then he wrote it up and sent out an update and now anyone who's used a language update before and has the phonemes should be all set. And that's most of us, I mean. This is a Noldorin city."

"I don't know what most of that means."

"Right. Um. Elves aren't like humans, we have computers in our heads, they do nice things like translation. It takes a little bit of practice to use your computer for translation right, but it's practice that most people have, and once you know how to do it at all you mostly know how to do it for any language if the language contains sounds you know how to pronounce."

"...what's a computer?"

"Um. It's a little bit of metal with electricity running through it, that can do whatever you want."

"...whatever you want?"

" - well, it can't kill Melkor. It can talk to people and do translation and play music or movies and tell people where you are and you can explode it if you want to die."

"- okay."

"No one's figured out how to give them to humans safely, but you can definitely talk to anyone."

"That's really neat!"

"Yeah. I'd go crazy just sitting in my room all the time, you should do something."

"What's there to do?"

"Um, there're gardens and concerts and VR games - and VR combat simulators if you want to be a soldier when you grow up - and sometimes we go exploring the tunnels that were in use back when there were more people... there aren't very many kids. ...there're four, specifically, I guess five with you."

"I'm sixteen. And I don't know what VR is."

"It's - you can pretend you're somewhere else. It's for the computers, but there is a version for Dwarves, I don't know if it's as good."

"What's a Dwarf?"

"Other people without computers in their heads. I've never met one. Seen them, though. They're short and squat and hairy."

"Huh, okay. Does anybody have feathers? Strangers have feathers."

"...birds have feathers."

"But none of the people here?"

"No. - well I've never seen an orc up close but no one's mentioned them having feathers. There're combat sims where you see orcs up close but I haven't done them yet."

"Huh. I guess I'm really far away."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay. Nothing much to miss."