There really, actually, isn't that much to it. He follows the deer; they sprint off, but rarely out of sight; they're never hard to find again. They're faster sprinters than he is but much slower over any kind of distance. Eventually he catches up with one and slits its throat with his knife. 

Humans can eat meat if it's cooked, right?

Yeah. Cooking it kills the parasites and stuff.

He skins the deer, and shows her which tendons make good bowstrings and how to extract them, and does that, and then sings a fire into being and cooks them some dinner. I mostly eat plants, or birds, on my own, because this is going to be a bit too much for us.

She pays attention. It makes her, like, twenty percent less horrifically miserable about how she's never gonna see her Alex again.

Yeah. Birds are fine. Lots of plants are, too. And I can probably find... something edible in town, once I have money.

Are there any other towns? Since we might have been brought to this one by things that want to kill us?

Sure. I don't have a handy high-resolution map of the British Isles in my head - Scotland's to the north of us and Wales is to the west of us, Ireland's further to the west across some water, America's way further west across a lot more water, France is to the south across the channel, that's about all I know for directions - but yeah, there are towns. London's the biggest one, though, by a lot, and it's the first place I'd look for information on the mystical. Maybe Oxford or Cambridge after that, for my next very rough guesses, I know they at least have extensive libraries there. Council's in London, though, and - even if I don't fess up to being a slayer, there might be other ways to work with them - they're at least maybe less hostile to the idea that Asians might ever know anything than the average person around here - and they might be the only people around who have the info I need.

Ugh. Okay. And you can't invite them to meet you somewhere else?

- I mean I can try, but it's not like I have their telephone number. And I'm sort of still a sixteen year old Korean girl here, trying to get the attention of notoriously stuck-up English academic types. - I guess you probably don't know about England. England is currently lowkey trying to take over the entire known world. They may be gaining or losing territory right now, I'm not sure, depends on the century. - my point is that, uh, I think the council knows enough about international mystical nonsense to maybe think it's worth talking to me, but I don't know that they want to go out of their way for it. Also not really sure I want to call that much attention to myself, given the propensity for murder, I might just - do whatever the equivalent is of getting hired as a janitor and striking up some casual conversations and paging through their library.

Korean's the reason you look weird?

I don't look weird! I look Korean. My ancestors are from a different part of the world way to the east of here, and travel's not good yet so there aren't very many people from that area in this area. There're more Asians than there are white people, though, if you count everybody in the whole world. I personally am from America, though, which is way to the west of here.

Didn't mean it in a bad way. I obviously think you're pretty if we meet once I've had time to get used to humans. 

He traces a map in the dirt with Quenya labels, frowning at it.

- wait, what?

Hmmm?

Oxford, Cambridge, London, Korea, Americas. This is a very limited map.

I - don't know why I'm supposed to think that's obvious. Uh - but I can add more stuff to your map. France is down here, Germany by France, Spain on the other side - here, I'll just send you a map. She sends several pieces of a world map that get fuzzy in the areas that Karen doesn't happen to remember super well. It's gonna be rough. And it's modern - um, it matches how things were in the 1990s, I don't know exactly which countries exist in this time period. But it's better than nothing.

Yeah, I don't usually keep track of the countries since they change so much. He adds them anyway.

I'm from here. California. Only I don't think it's a state yet whenever we are. Any idea where Macalaurë is right now?

On the same continent as me which was... probably this one? I don't know where exactly.

That's not a ton to go off of, but I guess you'll find him, eventually. Assuming he's not very inconveniently moving around.

I don't have to get all that close to let him know I'm trying to find him, and after that it'll be no trouble.

How close?

Dunno. Not quite half the continent. Maybe a third of it?

Oh, OK. That makes it easier. Maybe it won't be so hard, then. It'll take a bit, but I guess you have time.

I'm not really in a hurry, yeah.

Well. I guess - you can work on figuring out boats. However that works. I guess I have - something resembling stuff to do in the meantime.

Have fun, I guess.