It does not take Fëanor very long to notice the note, even though the light hurts and breathing hurts and having a physical form again is so profoundly disorienting that he can't figure out how to walk. The note is after all the only interesting thing about the environment. He reads it.

He asks the trees a lot of questions. The trees, unhelpfully, don't answer; they do sort of part to show people in the distance but he's not ready to go ask the people yet, he can't walk, he's not sure he can speak aloud, his eyes have trouble focusing, he's not in a place where 'go out there and accept the pardon' feels workable - and whose pardon, what crimes do they believe themselves to have the authority to pardon -

- he figures out how to walk and how to talk and he practices sentences until he's as sure his voice is normal as he can be, and then he goes and weaves through the trees and into his son's arms.

He's been ignoring the note, because fuck it, and ignoring the forest because fuck the Valar as well, and is just starting to think of climbing a tree to see how much trouble one can make in Lórien when his father appears. 

And then everything is okay, of course. If they're all here then everything is going to be okay. 

They cry, a lot. He reads his note. Same contents. His father wants to speculate and so of course Lórien spits out Curufin and there is another tearful reunion and then speculation, so much speculation - 

- he cuts down a tree and carves himself a bow and shoots a conveniently-right-there wild turkey and feels mildly condescended to by the stupid forest but it looks like they'll be here a while so whatever -

- Lórien very gradually gets brighter, the ground less annoyingly like lying in cloud fluff -

"Alright," he says, "let's go to this Vanda Nossëo and request an explanation."

And they find themselves exiting the forest.

The promised Mîr staffperson is a human teenage girl in a yellow and pink outfit, reading a book and chewing gum. She looks up when they come out and pops her bubble. "Oh hey," she says. "I'm Wilhelmina, staff teleporter-and-miscellaneous, empire of Mîr, welcome back to being alive. Can I get your names please?"

...that's a human, don't recognize the fabrics, don't recognize the alphabet, don't recognize the - uh, edible - don't know any human languages that'd produce 'Wilhelmina' -

"Could we first get an explanation of what the empire of Mîr is?"

"There's somebody on Vanda Nossëo who's supposed to do explanations but yeah sure, Mîr's, uh, an empire, the capital is this planet which is also named Mîr that we are standing on, empresses Isabella 'Gem' Swan and Lúthien 'Joy' I don't think she technically has a last name, mixed population of Elves from one world and humans from a couple and some more recent immigration from the neighboring discoveries, lot of protectorate sort of deals that aren't like actually part of the empire but if you mess with them the empresses get mad? You're here 'cause it was a convenient place to convalesce or whatever you were doing, Mîr and Vanda Nossëo are like, bros."

"You have a fascinating dialect. Are you native to here? And Vanda Nossëo, what's that one -"

"Lúthien runs this place?"

"I'm from, uh, Earth, or, like, the Earth in this world, but I live on Mîr now, Vanda Nossëo's an Elf... thing... not sure what kind of government it technically is... a bunch of worlds away from here... and yeah her and her wife."

"Uh -"

"Fascinating. Who's in charge in Vanda Nossëo, do you know -"

"Did her husband decide to be a girl because I am completely behind that but she definitely had a husband, was very attached -"

"Isabella, Swan, Gem, Joy, what language are those -"

"I don't remember who's in charge on Vanda Nossëo, I totally passed my multiversal literacy test to get my promotion to 'miscellaneous' but half the politics just, whoop, out of my brain as soon as I turned it in. I'm pretty sure Empress Bella isn't trans? Like, I feel like that would've come up? Also all their wedding pictures they're both girls. And I think English, 'cause Empress Bella's American? 'Isabella' might be Italian or something, I dunno, I'm not a languages person."

"...you said there's someone to explain all this on Vanda Nossëo?"

"Yeah man I just need your names first."

"Curufinwë Fëanáro and these are Curufinwë Atarinkë and Turkafinwë Tyelcormo."

"Yeah-huh -" She has a chiplocked computer; she levitates it rather than take her hand out of her pockets or put her book down. "Okay cool, and now I just have to call Daisy in to sit here in case somebody else comes out and I can pop you along." She does more computer things. "Oh my god Daisy learn to function without coffee," she mutters after a moment.

They watch with tremendous confusion.

And eventually Daisy (black-and-white-and-green) turns up and chides Wilhelmina about chewing gum on the job and Wilhelmina rolls her eyes and does not compose a caffeine-themed retort and then they're all four somewhere else else else else else "welcome to Vanda Nossëo!"

"Where is the person who explains things."

"She'll be here, she's like, busy and a princess and stuff and we didn't know when people would start coming out of the foresty thing, but I told her who you were and that you were out..."

"Is she the only person capable of explaining things?"

"I dunno, there might be somebody else who'd be better at it than me. Hey Vanda Nossëo people I've got some undead Elves here and Elspeth's not here yet?"