"Yep."

"Cool. See you in a bit."

She walks Mr. Wyndam-Pryce home. She makes a good-faith effort to listen to his list of complaints about her behavior, but only partially succeeds at paying attention. She assures him that she understands that from the outside her situation looks maybe kind of concerning. She leaves him at his apartment, after asking him to please at least give her a heads-up next time if he's going to insist on wandering the town alone or watching her slaying procedures.

Why does everyone want me to be more murdery. When I picked out my list of dumb teenager opinions I didn't really think 'moderately opposed to murder but can get over it in a pinch' was going to be one of the more controversial items.

Most everyone has a really narrow definition of who's people when push actually comes to shove.

There's a famous epitaph above this grave in Athens - "this memorial is set above the body of a very good man. Pythion, from Megara, slew seven men and broke off seven spear-points in their bodies. This man, having brought sorrow to no one among all men who dwell on earth, went down to the underworld felicitated in the eyes of all."

That's a good memorial to get.

Thanks for being cool about stuff. I guess it doesn't really matter what Mercy and Mr. Wyndam-Pryce think.

They'll grow out of it.

Maybe Mercy will, anyway. Any more evil afoot?

Nothing stalking the streets, at least. 

Fresh out of excuses not to do trig, then. Alas.

Ohh, hey, you doing anything for parent-teacher night this year?

I think people mostly don't come to parent-teacher night to ask how their kid is doing at gym, but I still have to be there. I'm gonna try not to punch any of them in the face even the assholes who hit their kids or don't let them see their friends or threaten them with weird human conversion therapy that doesn't even work.

A wise choice. I'm pretty sure you do more good as a gym teacher than as someone who was a gym teacher before Snyder fired him for assaulting someone's parents.

...is there non-human conversion therapy happening somewhere?

Well, y'know, paradise can't have gay people, and Quendi come out that way sometimes too.

I think I'm mostly concerned about the fact that paradise is still using sexual reproduction. This has a lot of worrying implications.

It's not a human afterlife, it's only a perfect place for the Valar and also Quendi live there for complicated historical reasons.

Ah. Well, if it's not supposed to be your paradise, either, then that explains why you didn't like it any.

I mean, most people think it's a Quendi paradise too.

Yeah, but you don't. And - hm.

When I was little I used to be scared of heaven? Because I had these teachers who would try to describe how good it would be there, and they'd disclaim that of course what they were describing didn't really bear any real resemblance to the real heaven, because of course we haven't been there, so we can't know, but everything they'd say would sound worse than here? And I used to worry that maybe I'd get there and I'd still be broken and unhappy and nothing else would be, and the only thing wrong with the world would be me, and I wouldn't have any excuses anymore for not being as good as I was supposed to be. And so I didn't want to go, because, well, that sounded kind of awful.

Anyway, eventually I figured that I can't imagine what heaven's like at all, so I shouldn't really try, but that whatever it is it'll be something that fits, a place that you go there and it's like coming home, and it works with the thing that you're supposed to be, whatever that is. And I feel like if I thought I'd seen paradise, and it sucked for me, and I didn't think I wanted to be the sort of person who would think it wouldn't suck, then I'd be pretty bummed about that, and think that maybe nothing would ever get to be OK, because maybe I was just sort of incompatible with OKness. But if the Quendi don't live in the real Quendi paradise, then maybe nobody's ever been to the real Quendi paradise before. And maybe the real Quendi paradise really is OK.

- I should should stop saying things. You know if you taught me to block telepathy I'd say fewer stupid things. - that was a stupid thing, too. Augh.

MAYBE if she puts up her imaginary waterfalls then Alex will PRETEND he can't hear her.

I think the problem's with the concept, really. Like, by far the most important thing wrong with Valinor is that the rest of the universe is still here. Even if it - polished away the edges - maybe it could've been so nice we wouldn't have left, and that would have been even worse.

She doesn't bring her waterfalls down at all, because she's pretty sure everything she has to say about this is really stupid, and pretending that there are giant crashing waterfalls in front of everything she says makes her feel maybe a little better about things, since at least she doesn't think anything she says is the sort of thing that shouldn't be behind a giant crashing waterfall that probably doesn't do anything. She also doesn't stop talking, though, because, well.

Heaven's not supposed to be like that, not while the rest of us are still down here. Everyone up there spends all their time praying and trying to help everyone down here. You couldn't just ignore it all.

He doesn't respond to that.

Maybe she has come up with something too stupid to be worth responding to at all. Or maybe he's ignoring everything behind the waterfalls because he feels bad that he can't tell her how to actually block anything.

Or.

She keeps her waterfalls up.

Alex?

Aaaaaaleeeeeeex.

Alexalexalexalexalexalexalexalexalexalexalexalex -

He hops in the truck and starts driving her home.

This is so weird.

Alexalexalexalexalexalexal-

She abruptly brings her waterfalls down.

-exalexalexalexalexalexalexalex-

" - sorry."

He looks back at the road. "Whatever floats your boat."