It's a bunker half a mile underground, but it'd take a little while to notice, because the ceilings are outrageously high and made to look like tall trees with sunlight streaming down through them. There are people walking around, in uniform. When they see the two of them they freeze. The nearby ones draw weapons and the farther ones start running.

Master Huo has his eyes shut to concentrate through the pain, and Qiri can't even finish contemplating warning him in time. Huo doesn't abort the spell. It goes off, in a sickening frission of vertigo and fever through Qiri's magic.

The spell identifies the most injured person in range and fixes him right up.

This means that a third person appears crumpled on the floor of the bunker. The people with weapons drawn hesitate. "Don't move," one of them says uncertainly. 

(Behind them all, heavy concrete doors slide shut). 

I'm not even sure I know how to move, the new person says drily. He's shaking violently, but his voice is calm and bored and tired. The other intruders aren't Elves, are they?

       No.

Confine them. I don't know how they did that and I don't care to have it keep happening until I do.

       Fast, tense discussion follows over whether this is Lord Maedhros and whether they should listen to him. Eventually they get confirmation of the order from the copy on the ship.

Some Elves move forward to get a look at the first two mysterious arrivals.

They are:

- one corpse, who was cutting it really close on the spell timing
- one frightened teenage boy, conveniently already in chains (wrist to wrist and ankle to ankle, loose enough that he could walk but not run, with an additional length of chain from his wrist to the corpse's limp hand), staring up at them in bewildered terror.

The Elves look unhappily at one another and then gesture that he should follow them. One of them has his hands up, palms out, as if to say he's not dangerous, but the other still has a gun drawn. 

The newly-created person on the floor sits up to observe this, still trembling violently.

Qiri looks between various Elves, still bewildered and terrified. He winces when he stands up, and favors one foot, but drags his chains after him where they beckon.

An Elf smiles at him encouragingly. 

Qiri has no idea what to make of that, so after blinking at the smile, he ignores it and shuffle-limps along, not less bewildered nor terrified.

He stands. Standing feels nearly impossible but when he directs his body to do it it happens, somehow. He is really loathing experiencing this kind of sensory input; he closes his eyes and looks out of other peoples; which is much better. It feels sort of like - but not exactly like - something is protruding out of his spine. He can see through other peoples' eyes that nothing is there. 

It is so so hard not to die. He could. This heart will just stop if he tells it to. It'd be a horrifically stupid thing to do, this is potentially quite a strategic asset and has implications for every dead person whose chips they've retained, but he could do it and so he has to spend most of his attention making himself not do it. 

It still feels like there's something in his spine. He tries not to think about it. 

They don't have prison cells but they have supply rooms that are currently empty. The Elves lead the sudden arrival there. They watch him warily. They hand him a Dwarven earpiece and close the concrete door.

Qiri takes the earpiece, but has no idea what it is, so he just sort of holds it, till they've closed the door, and then he risks setting it down, and sits and rearranges the chains as comfortably as he can.

They sweep the area for invisible people or small robots or other things which the magical arrival of the humans could have distracted them from. They get Lord Maedhros some clothes. 

They try to talk to the captive in seven different languages. 

Qiri doesn't know any of those languages, just one dialect of Yisi, which he'll mumble through a sentence of in case that helps: "I don't know your words."

They look at scans and review memories of the incident. The teleporting human seems typical of a human aside from the teleporting. Huan says he's not a Maia.

Lord Maedhros is skeptical. Lord Maedhros doesn't explain why.

     After a short while, the door opens again and an Elf, singing to themself, starts trying to undo the chains.

The chains are locked, but not particularly sophisticatedly. The mechanism will need picking but not telekinesis. Qiri doesn't resist, though he continues to look bewildered and terrified.

More Elves come over and there's a flurry of conversation in their language and then someone gets an appropriate bit of wire and they manage to pick the lock. They lead him out.

Lord Maedhros is looking out of his own eyes by now, and when he sees Qiri he starts scowling.

Well that's bewildering and terrifying but what isn't, really. Qiri shrinks a little closer to the relatively friendlier Elves but not enough to encroach on their personal space.

One of them pats him, a little cautiously, and assures him that they're going to get him a room and medical attention, which of course he doesn't understand. They gesture at an elevator.

He does not know what an elevator is, so he's assuming they're going to lock him in here instead of the larger room because they need the larger room for something, but in he goes.

The room moves! It's sort of nauseating. When the door opens, it opens on a hallway, smaller but still exceptionally decorated. They gesture him down it, open a door, and go in. 

This room has a large bed and a glass screen on one wall and a glass false-window on another wall, with a spectacular view outside. There's a bathroom and a closet. 

...well this bodes horribly.

The Elves smile encouragingly and leave; they're still right there in the hallway, and they don't close the door, but they're trying to give him some space. Or something. 

"We've got a doctor coming," someone says, unhelpfully.

(Lord Maedhros watches through other peoples' senses. There's no mysterious extra limb through other peoples' senses. Other people don't even have the sense which would detect it.)

Qiri, unbeknownst to Maedhros, can sense magic just fine. Qiri is currently paying attention to Maedhros's own, somewhat uncomfortably, and also paying attention to the bed, more uncomfortably.

The Elves fetch their doctor. Her clothes would communicate to an Elf that she was a doctor, but will probably not do that for Qiri. She comes into the room with a case of equipment and attempts to communicate that she'd like a look at Qiri's injuries.

Qiri will let her pick up his hands and look at his wrists once she moves to do so, and she can pick up his feet and look at his toe if she's noticed the swelling - he's wearing sandals; it's visible - and check out the the manacle marks there too.

She sings and takes a look and applies a cream to the manacle marks and a brace to the toe and says something vaguely scolding to the other Elves and then offers him the bottle of cream to reapply as needed. 

      "-what's occupying Curufinwë, this is ridiculous, I can't give him any medical instructions -"

"On his way. Lord Maedhros didn't want him to talk with him remotely, apparently." 

       "Hmmm."

"It's nothing life-threatening, is it -"

       "Humans are fragile and if it were he wouldn't be able to tell us. But no, I don't think so."

Qiri winces but makes very sure not to yelp when she splints the toe.

"And leave him alone, he looks terrified - locking him in a box -"

        "Honestly, he seemed less terrified in the box."

"Maybe it's the window."

The window changes from a scene of a waterfall in a jungle to a scene of some sand dunes. 

How bewildering and terrifying!!!!

The Elves aren't sure what to do in that case. They retreat outside, and this time shut the door.

Qiri does not know what to do. He puts down the bottle the doctor gave him - it's some weird material and he doesn't care for the texture - and, since he'd rather not waste any effort on being defiant right this minute when he doesn't have a clue what's going on, kneels by the side of the bed and waits.

Maedhros is back. 

He's been back for a while, but this is different. He was back on a computer, back as a voice giving humorless orders, back as an extra set of attention on any problem that involved talking to people. This is Maedhros, in person, hair hastily and clumsily braided. It is the first time he's actually felt like Maedhros is alive. He suspects he's entirely wrong to feel that way.

"Hello."

"Thank you for coming." He watches himself anxiously through Curufin's eyes to see if he got the smile right.

He didn't, at all. He lets him try again until he has it. "Is this an improvement -"

"You're here to learn a language."

"Ah huh, but you've got to practice faces on somebody, and I may as well ask questions while you do."

"This is not an improvement."

"Are you going to keep it? You could say it didn't last -"

" - it almost isn't lasting -"

"What, it's injured or something?"

"It's really hard not to kill." And it has a sense which I am reasonably confident my original body did not have, which senses limbs on some people which they don't have, which is constantly aware of the little human upstairs -

- he doesn't say that, because he can guess what is going on and sees no reason to make Sauron's job easier. 

"Where's the language?"

"Guest room." He sends the location.

He goes upstairs and finds the door with the guards and goes in.

Qiri looks over his shoulder, shaking just a little.

He pulls up a chair for Qiri and sits down.

He can take a hint. He sits in the chair. But now he really doesn't know what's going on.

"Curufin." He points at himself. He points at Qiri.

"- Zhi Qiri."

He nods. He smiles, a little. He gives the words for all of the things in the room.

Qiri is never going to remember any of these. By the fifth vocabulary word he has forgotten Curufin's name. He nods along anyway.

- okay, but can he get Qiri to say anything.

It's not in his first five guesses about what his host might want, no.

He orders food for them. He tries handing Qiri things and looking very curious about the words for them. He tries pulling out a map to see if Qiri can point to where he's from.

Qiri does say "thank you" when offered food. He doesn't recognize anything on the map.

"Thank you" is something. He repeats it and smiles. Can Qiri draw his own map.

If he is offered a pen he will study the pen in puzzlement till he touches the tip, notes the ink, and then, yes, starts drawing a map. It's not a very good map, and it's pretty small scale - a river wider than a line, some individual mountains.

If he gestures at the things on the map will he name them?

Yes! It might be the names of the individual features; there are no shared syllables between this river and that river.

....well, this might be slow going but that's not nothing. He tries to act very pleased whenever Qiri talks. 

He pulls up video of Qiri and the other human arriving in the bunker and plays it on the screen on the wall.

Qiri does not have anything to say about that to someone he hasn't yet figured out is trying to learn his language. He just double-takes until he figures out that he's looking at the past, then glowers a bit at Huo as he expires.

He points at Qiri. "Qiri?"

"Yes?"

And if he points at the other person?

"Master Huo."

He now has like six words of vocabulary. He lists them all. "Zhi Qiri, yes, thank you, Master Huo..."

That isn't a sentence. "I don't understand."

Delighted! "Zhi Qiri, yes, thank you, Master Huo. I don't understand!"

"- wait, you want to learn Yisi? I'm the one who - everyone here speaks whatever you speak, don't they?"

What a happy Elf. "You want to learn Yisi? Want to learn Yisi? Learn Yisi?"

"I have no idea how to teach you my language! I barely speak it, no one talks to me!"

He has no idea what that means but repeats it slowly.

"I - uh - you're pronouncing everything right?"

Can he elicit vocabulary now?

Yes, if he points at things Qiri will name them, albeit sometimes as "grey... thing???" if he doesn't have a word for the object.

He's happy enough with that. He'll use the viewscreen to give himself more things to point at. Does Qiri recognize any of these locations? 

He will name things in them, but no, he doesn't seem familiar with them.

He returns to the arrival video a few times, trying to ask how it happened. And whether it will happen again. 

"Oh, uh. I think that was the strangers. We were fighting them, and while Master Huo was trying to heal himself, they did something, and then we were here."

"The arriving here, that was the strangers? Strangers here?"

"I haven't seen any here. I don't know what you are, you seem more human than strangers but still weird. Maybe just really foreign."

"Don't know you home. You you home?"

"- I don't think I understand the question, I'm sorry."

"Quendi no -" he replays the videos, the moment of arrival. "We can't. You can?"

"- you don't have magic? I mean, I can tell you don't, but that one fellow, the one who appeared -" Point. "He does -"

"Magic is -" he replays the moment of appearance.

"I think that is a thing the strangers did with their magic. Master Huo and I didn't do that."

I think I know what he means.

Well that's great, because I haven't the slightest idea.

Ask about something else.

"This room is good?"

"Uh? The room is... I don't think I understand?"

"Hmm.... Quendi no send you back. Quendi put you here first -" the supply cabinet -" then here. Can put you other place. Can put more things here, things for you. Asking, trying to ask, trying to understand, this place or other place or this place with more things..."

"- this room doesn't already belong to somebody?"

"Belong to Zhi Qiri."

"...uh. Okay. It's, uh, it's nice, it's nice enough I figured it had to be somebody's."

"Nice is, this place not other place?"

"...yes? I think? I'm honestly really impressed you're this fast with Yisi but I still don't understand everything you're saying, I'm sorry."

"I don't understand everything I'm saying. Saying anyway so you can say, no, different words. Nice is - I should not look for a different place for you to be?"

"No, uh, this is fine. It's nice."

"Good. You need other things?"

"I'll need to eat eventually? I don't understand how most of the things in the room work?"

- in that case he will delightedly spring up and demonstrate faucets and bathtubs and showers and awkwardly demonstrate hair dryers and toilets as best as one can without interacting with them in their intended way.

Qiri does not know why hair dryers are awkward but follows along, providing vocabulary whenever there's something handy to name.

"Food you call for," he says, demonstrating the Dwarven earpiece. "Say food, we bring food."

"The thing hears?"

"Yeah."

"All the time?"

"Yeah. You can put it in the water room, run the water, if you want a bit of no-listening."

"Okay."

"- something is not nice?"

Qiri shrugs awkwardly.

"I can't change it if I don't understand."

"It's fine?"

"...bad, fine, nice?" he asks, trying to mark out a spectrum on the table.

"Uh - yeah."

"You don't run out of water?"

"No. We're good at water."

"Magic?"

"No. Just -" He can pull up an instructional video, actually.

- wow!

Awwwww. He'll talk to him until he's fluent in the language or Qiri shoos him, whichever comes first.

Qiri does not shoo him. He tries to be helpful.

Then eventually he'll get good at the language. "Okay. I need to write this up. I suspect my brother will want to talk to you once I have it. Should you get some sleep?"

"Oh - yeah, I guess so."

"Okay. - is something not fine -"

"No, just thinking."

"Alright. I'll go. Thank you for the language."

"You're welcome. Thank you for being nice to me."

He heads off, humming.

Qiri doesn't have another set of clothes so he takes off the outer layers of what he's got on, and his shoes, and sleeps in the underrobe.

No one disturbs him.

He wakes up about eight hours later. He goes to the sink and drinks water from his cupped hands.

He picks up the earpiece. "Uh. Food?" he says into it.

A few minutes later an Elf brings him a tray with sugared oatmeal and fruits and strips of something that smells like meat and eggs and biscuits.

"Thank you!"

"You're welcome! Do you need anything else?"

"- I might need new clothes eventually but it's not an emergency."

"Of course, I'll get something made in your size."

"Thanks. Uh, do you need to measure me?"

She blinks. "I've looked at you, we can use that for measurement."

"Okay."

"Anything else?"

"I think that's all, thank you."

She leaves him to eat.

Which he does! The food is very good.

When he's done eating, he'll notice the other magic user moving towards his room. If he's paying attention to that.

Yep. He twitches his magic a little, a sort of abortive greeting mostly trained out of him.

The guards stand aside and he opens the door.

He glares at Sauron. "Hello," he says. "Did you sleep well?"

Ahhhh why is he mad at him. "Fine. Thank you."

"I'd like you to explain magic to me."

"Uh. What about it?"

"How does it work, who has it, how do you turn it off, how did it produce the result we saw earlier, how does it send people between worlds, and what other uses of it are familiar to you."

"Um, um, I have it and you have it and other humans have it and some strangers have it? It doesn't - turn off? I don't know how the strangers did it, there were four of them and they were far away, I don't even know what radicals they all were! Master Huo usually used me for healing and Master Yu could do some things to the weather and Master Zao could do some things with light and I think Huo and Yu could do things to animals and Yu and Zao could do different weather things and all three of them plus me could make rivers change course and - and mess with buildings, and once I saw Huo and Zao kill someone by magic?"

"What is a radical?"

"The kind of magic you have. I'm paper. I don't know what you are, I haven't seen them all, but I can rule out paper and fire and rain and morning. Oh, and insect and salt, I saw those once, and you're also not any of the kinds I saw on the strangers but I don't know which ones they were either."

"It takes combinations to do magic?"

"Yeah."

"I see."

"Is - that all you wanted to ask -?"

"When they killed someone with magic, how'd they do that? Was the person nearby? Human?"

"He was maybe a couple of blocks away and just fell over dead. He was a human. I didn't get a very good look, they didn't use me for that."

"How do you know what magic can be done by a specific combination?"

"You just sort of think about it? And trial and error, some."

"Do you have guesses from thinking about it, for this combination?"

why is he so scary help

"I um. Things with lightning maybe? Or metal? I'm not good at this, I never directed spells, they just kept me around to use for them."

"You could describe what you're going off, what makes you think lightning or metal -"

"- do I have to -"

He takes a step back. "Sorry. No. I'll - I'm not going to hurt you, I just want to know the rules and then I'll leave."

"Uh, it's - this bit -" He flicks a bit of his magic. "Uh, and the bits you're holding by your ears right now. I don't know what else to explain about that."

He shivers. "All right. 

They had you chained, when you arrived, was that necessary for the magic or -"

"No, that was so I couldn't run away."

"What's the range limit?"

"Of - the spells or of how close people have to be to each other to do them?"

"How close people have to be."

"Close enough for their magic to touch all the ways it needs to for the spell to go off."

"They have to touch."

"- not with their bodies, necessarily? But the magic does?"

"Does it feel like anything?"

Qiri nods.

He closes his eyes. He mutters something in Quenya. He opens them again.

"I'm so sorry," he says. "I just got magic, and it was very upsetting, and I've been feeling bizarre and afraid, and I blamed you for it. But it isn't your fault at all, and I've been scaring you half to death for no reason whatsoever. I don't think I want this strange gift, but that isn't your fault, and I deeply regret frightening you. You may tell me to leave and I will."

Qiri opens his mouth but does not manage to actually utter a dismissal.

He takes a couple careful steps back but accordingly doesn't leave. "We don't have magic here. I think you must be from some place very far away. I'm so sorry we can't send you home."

"Um, that's okay."

Are the cages more comfortable here? - no - 

"We'll do everything we can to arrange for you to be comfortable and happy here. I'm Maedhros. I was dead for a long time, and am not very good at being alive again, but I won't hurt you."

"...you were dead? I - it was just me and Master Huo, I don't see how two people could do that, I think you need at least four and they have to be the right kinds..."

"What should the spell you were using have been able to do?"

"He was trying to heal himself. It would've hit someone else if they were more injured than he was, but not if they were dead."

"Huh. Elves're different in a way that might be relevant. When our body is destroyed we can use machinery to keep running our thoughts."

"Oh. - Huo is dead, right?" Please be dead please be dead please be dead.

"Yes."

"Then I can't do that again. I'm sorry." He doesn't have to do it again -

"....are some kinds of magic more unpleasant than others?"

"I've never liked doing it. I guess some more than others, yeah."

"Do you need the cooperation of all parties to do magic?"

"Sorry." I should be better at pretending I care about your feelings. "I should think before I ask things like that. I'm not going to hurt you."

Sauron's getting better, or at least didn't care for him to have access to any memories where he was this good. 

I promise, I'd rather die than touch you - no - "how long were you with Master Huo?"

"About ten years. It was Master Yu who found me, he joined her a little later."

"So that's - I'm sorry, I'm not very familiar with human ageing - since you were pretty young?"

"I was five or six, I think."

"I see. In the parts of the world that the Enemy doesn't control, that kind of treatment of others is not permitted. We would arrest the people who did it to you if they were here and alive."

"Um, thank you."

"If you don't care to ever do magic again, you don't need to. We can find you a tutor and you can find a job you like once you've recovered. And if I ever figure out how to make magic go away I'll tell you."

"- I don't want to chop it off, it's, um, it's attached, just..."

"You can also keep it and never use it again, that's fine. I want mine gone because I am not accustomed to it and -" shiver.

"You didn't have it before you died?"

"I did not."

"That's weird."

"It really is!"

"Is the rest of your body how you remember it?"

"I don't have a very good memory, but nothing is notably off."

"Huh."

He can think of an explanation, but he doesn't expect this character to volunteer it. "Did my brother get the chance to answer your questions about where you are and so on while he was learning your language?"

"Uh, I got little bits and pieces."

"He tends to forget things like that when he's learning a language. Are there things you'd like to know?"

"- every...thing?"

" - fair enough. This is an underground city called Himring. We're at war, and the city is underground so it's harder for our enemies to attack it. My people are called the Noldor, and we have been fighting this war for four hundred years. We are like humans in some ways, but we learn languages faster, unlike humans we do not get old and die, and as far as I know none of us have magic. People who are not equipped to serve in the war work here in our cities, on food or supplies or in medicine, and you can try things and pick something you like. The war is with a thing called Melkor; he is powerful and evil, but he mostly doesn't bother with humans."

"He's a thing?"

"He is not like an Elf or a human, though he can pick his shape and picks an Elf shape sometimes."

"So he's magic?"

"- yes, that seems accurate enough."

"So there's a bunch of them?"

"Melkor has allies but there's only one of him. If he's magic it's not your kind, where it takes a big group to do anything."

"Oh." Well now he feels stupid.

"Are there stories in your world of what sorts of things can be achieved with a large group?"

"Yeah. Um, there's one about the dragons being driven into hibernation with a group of ten, and about continents being made with - twelve or thirteen, it varies story to story. Um, phases of the moon, I forget how many that was supposed to be. Inventing rice."

"...wow."

"I don't know if any of them are true."

"Mmhmm. Melkor could do those sorts of things, though it would take him a long time."

"The biggest group I've ever heard of for sure existing is six, the strangers had six when we were fighting them."

"Why were you fighting them?"

"I think the Tiger Emeperor told the masters to do it."

"Tiger Emperor?"

"He rules my country."

Nodnod. "And he's fighting the strangers?"

"Not most of the time, I think? But these ones I guess. Nobody told me anything."

"It really doesn't sound like they treated you well."

"Zao was okay some of the time."

"That's good. Is everything here okay?"

"It's, um, weird but it's nice? The breakfast was really good."

"I'm glad you liked it."

"- what's this thing on the wall? If it's not magic?"

"It's not. Technology."

"Wow."

"I don't remember how it works but I am sure someone here knows it and could explain it to you. It has very small pieces, so small they look to us like they're not pieces at all."

"What do they look like instead?"

"Like it's all one image! Or, for the window ones, like you're looking through glass at the outdoors."

"Oh, I'd - even when it's not doing anything? Or does it always have to be doing something, even if it can do different things?"

"It's just black when it's not doing anything." He turns it off.

"Huh."

"In the places you've been how do people light their homes?"

"Lanterns. With candles in them."

"We used to do that. Our system now is more complicated. Those cities might not have come up with it yet." Which makes no sense, everywhere on Endorë has electricity, but he's just establishing the premises, not trying to figure out how they'd make any sense in reality. Which this isn't. 

"I don't think I've seen anything like it but I haven't seen much."

"Was there anyone who would have objected to people dragging a chained child around, or was that allowed?"

"It was allowed. I guess sometimes some people would give them funny looks if they hit me in public."

"What share of people are magic?"

"Hardly anybody. Nobody else in my village where I was born, nobody else in towns we passed through, nobody else in the city we lived in..."

"Are the children of magic people likely to be magic?"

"I don't think so. Yu and Huo tried it and their kid wasn't magic."

Nod.

"I'm not sure what they did with it after it turned out not to be magic."

"They sound like truly charming people. You're very imaginative."

"Imaginative?"

" - sorry, I misspoke."

"Okay."

"I'm not really expecting anyone else to come through, but if they do, I take it we should house them somewhere far away?"

"If it's someone I know, I guess? I'm not afraid of people in general."

"Or magic users in general?"

Probably the kid is scared of him because he was scary at him. That's entirely fair. 

"If... they might try to force me to do spells with them, I guess?"

Sigh. "Okay. Once we've examined this whole situation a little more we can get you some human friends, by the way, humans usually get along better with other humans."

"Okay."

"I think that's everything. You've been very patient. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

He leaves.

Qiri is kind of bored. He does stretches, and then he meditates for lack of any better ideas even though he's terrible at meditating.

He meditates too, if 'trying really hard not to stop your heart' counts, and then tries to get back to work. It's hard to work. He's so distracted.

He keeps one channel of attention on the magic human.

The magic human meditates until he feels hungry enough to eat lunch, then summons lunch.

Lunch is soup and a sandwich and fried meatball-things and a potato salad, brought by an Elf who doesn't look much older than Qiri.

"Thank you!"

"Of course! Are you okay?"

"There's not a lot to do in here but I'm worried I'll get lost if I wander around."

"You could ask one of the guards to go with you, probably. Or I could. Or you could go alone and then ask someone the way back once you were done? I'm not totally sure if you're allowed to do that."

"I'm not?"

She looks flustered. "I'm not totally sure? If no one said anything then probably it's fine."

"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."

"Is your family dead?"

"I don't know, I haven't seen them in ten years."

"That's awful."

"My parents sold me for two cows and a sack of silver."

"Wow. Uh. Do you want a hug?"

"- yeah, that would be nice."

She hugs him.

Hug!

"You wanna come explore and meet people, I think you should do that probably."

"Yeah, that sounds good."

She opens the door. There are four guards there, two against this wall and two against the other. 

     " - he's not a prisoner, right -"

"Bit complicated. I can ask if you'd like to do something in particular."

       "We want to go exploring."

The guard winces. "That's a bit open-ended."

       "You can't just leave him in there being bored -"

"Lord Maedhros visited."

       "That's worse."

"He's a scary guy."

"He's mad," the girl says in a conspiratorial whisper. "The Enemy did it."

       "That's enough," says one of the guards a little sharply. 

Qiri takes a step back into his room.

"You scared him," the girl says reproachfully. 

       "You are saying things you don't understand."

"Lord Maedhros asked me to be here."

       "To deliver food!"

"He's lonely!"

"Maybe, uh, there's something I could do to pass the time in here."

"I guess we could watch a movie."

      "That sounds like a great idea," says the guard.

She shuts the door. "They're really not scary, you don't have to let them scare you. ...Lord Maedhros really is scary, but everyone else is just people."

"I'm not sure how to not let people scare me. What's a movie?"

"It's a story on the screens. I guess I don't mean don't let them scare you I mean - are you scared of a thing? Besides them saying things sternly?"

"Uh, it seems like you don't work how my masters worked but that means I don't know how you work instead."

"In a war zone you do what soldiers say without asking. In a city you don't actively go doing things they're saying not to do, but you can argue, they don't always have a good reason or even care that much and there are hardly any children so they're very vulnerable to children making sad faces at them. How'd your masters work?"

"Uh, they told me what to do and if I didn't do it like they wanted they'd beat me."

"Soldiers won't beat you if you break rules. They'll just stop you and explain why you shouldn't." His viewscreen has started scrolling through movie posters.

He watches movie posters go by. "This is a story? I can't even really read in Yisi."

"Nah it's a list of the stories we could watch. What's your favorite kind of story?"

"Um, my favorite stories from home are Divine Tiaobu stories but I bet you don't have those."

"No but if you tell me what they're about I could pick something similar?"

"They're about Tiaobu, who started my religion, which is also called Tiaobu, and how he figured out the Holy Knowledge and defeated evil things and stuff. There's better and worse ones, my favorite is one where he meets a talking fish."

"Hmmm. We could do the story of Oromë meeting the Elves?"

"Sure! Will it make sense if I don't know who that is?"

"I think so. He's our god. Mostly the Noldor's god, really, I haven't met him." She stops on one of the pictures.

"What's a Noldor?"

"When Oromë came he took some Elves back to Valinor with him. The rest of us stayed here, on this world, Endorë, and there used to be many nations of us. They've mostly fallen to Melkor, except Doriath and no one is allowed to go to Doriath. The Noldor came from Valinor to fight him, and they had the knowledge of the Valar, so they've held out longer. They took us in. Well, not me, I hadn't been born yet. 

Lord Maedhros is Noldor, and his brother Lord Curufin who did the language, and the soldiers outside."

"How come Lord Maedhros sent you with lunch?"

"No one knows why he does things, he's mad."

"- then why do people do what he says?"

"I mean, he's not the kind of mad where he's wrong, just the kind of mad where you can't guess why he's right. He's won us centuries of peace and safety, no one else was managing that. And the Noldor like him because they remember what he was like before the war."

"Oh."

"Technically there's also a King and if the King and Lord Maedhros disagree I think we're supposed to listen to the King and I think Lord Maedhros isn't the King on account of being mad. But I'm not sure. The Noldor complicate their politics."

The movie starts. It features scared Elves cowering in a mountain valley, beset by monsters and hunted down by Melkor.

"This is just a story, right?"

"It happened but a long time ago. All these places are radioactive wasteland these days."

"And you can show it over again like with how I wound up here got showed over again? What's radioactive?"

"It poisons any living thing that goes there. And this is actually a recreation with actors because we didn't know how to put memories in a replayable format way back when all this happened, but yes, we can play it over and over now that we have it in a replayable format."

"Ohhh, actors."

"I think Oromë might've starred as himself." 

Oromë goes hunting monsters, and stumbles across the Elves. He's very surprised; he wasn't expecting them to exist yet. He goes to war with Melkor to make Melkor stop preying on them.

The story is very absorbing.

Oromë asks some of the Elves if they want to go to Valinor with him, and a few heroically agree to check it out. Valinor is miraculous and full of wonders, and they return to guide their people there. "Because it's a Noldorin movie," she says.

"Did this part not happen?"

"Some people went to Valinor. About half of people didn't. It's probably accurate about the ones that went, I think."

"Oh. So a movie by somebody else would focus on the people who didn't?"

"Yeah. And on the ways the Valar were creepy and weird. - they were."

"I'm not going to meet any of those, am I?"

"No. They live in Valinor. People wish they'd come help, because we're losing the war, but they won't. And since you're human you won't even end up there when you die."

Qiri nods.

"Anyway that's a movie. Are you sure you don't wanna go to the gardens or anything?"

"It sounded like they wouldn't let me."

"They said exploring was awfully open-ended. Going to the gardens isn't open-ended, it's specific. What're they even scared of?"

"I don't know! I can't even do magic by myself and it's not like I'm a monk or something."

"What's a monk?"

"Someone who goes and lives in a monastery to live an ascetic life and meditate a lot on spiritual truths and depending on the kind of monk sometimes learn martial arts."

"I think at the very least you should tell them that it's very sad being trapped, so they have to think about whether it's really necessary."

"It's not like it's new."

"...no?"

"No, my masters didn't let me go places."