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there is no exquisite beauty
Mirelótë and Theodore in Muse
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The gravity is heavy, the sun is singular, the plants are indigo and black.

Also, she got here via the mouth of a spotaneously appearing snake-monster, which would all by itself be suggestive that she might not be in Valimar any longer.

"Hello?" Mirelótë calls.

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This isn't where he was going. 

 

This isn't - 

- he doesn't know where the fuck this is, actually.  Maybe it's Africa. Maybe it's Mexico. Those are the most exotic places he can think of offhand. 

 

Someone shouts. He turns around.

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"Tyel...cormo?" the someone says when she spots him, not particularly hopefully.

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Maybe that's African. Or Mexican. She's - really hot, and really tall, and not African he doesn't think though this is really far outside his area of expertise. "I don't speak your language, sorry."

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Sigh.

She points at herself. "Mirelótë Ambela." She points at him.

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" - Theodore Way. I don't know Ambela."

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She gestures at him and makes a hand-opening-and-closing gesture near her mouth with her free hand. Points at more random objects in their environment - ink-black bush, the sky, the sun therein, a rock.

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"Well this is going to take fucking forever, do we have to? I'll be leaving as soon as I know what direction to leave in." He points. "England? England? England?"

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She shakes her head.

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"I've got, uh, French, Latin -" He tries both those, badly.

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Headshake. She pauses, then tries a few more languages herself, none of which are any more familiar than the first.

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He glances around for England, or rampaging elephants or something else better than language practice. Nope.

 

He picks up two rocks. "Rocks. One, two. I have two rocks." He offers her one.

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"I have one rocks!" she says, taking the rock.

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Apparently Mexico uses the his-father school of language-learning. "I have one rock." He scoops another off the ground. "I have two rocks. I have one hand -" holding it up - "I have two hands. I have one ear..."

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"You have two ears, I have two ears. I have - two two two two two -" She wiggles her fingers.

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"Ten, you have ten fingers. You have one rock, you have two hands, you have ten fingers. One two three four five six seven eight nine ten. You have one rock, I have two rocks, we have three rocks."

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She picks up another rock. "We have four rocks." She points at the sun again.

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"We have, uh, one sun. The world has one sun."

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"I have two suns," she says.

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"That doesn't make sense, the world goes 'round the sun and it couldn't do that if you had several of them, how'd it know which ones to go around? Uh -" he gestures with rocks - "world goes around the Sun." Three examples, the rule is. "I go around you." He does that. "I go around the shrub." He does that, too.

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"I have world goes around two suns." She arranges rocks, two big ones closer together, and moves a littler rock around them.

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"Huh, okay. How'd you get here? Never mind, that's too many new concepts. This rock is on the ground. Theodore is on the ground. This drawing -" he scuffs the ground with his feet - "is on the ground. England is on the Earth. The Earth goes around one sun."

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"Valinor goes around two suns. We are on England? We are on the Earth?"

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"We are not on England. Not - this is not a rock, this is not a hand, I am not Mirelote Ambela."

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"We are not on Valinor, we are not on England - we are on -?"

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"Good question! Uh, good question is I have no word for where we are."

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"Word is - rock is word, sun is word, goes is word?"

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"Yeah, sorry. Rock is word, sun is word, goes is word. No word for here, because I've never been here before. I - " He apparates a few feet over. "Probably. But I don't know how, I wasn't trying to come here."

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"- word -?" she asks, pointing at where he came from and where he went.

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"Apparate. You cannot Apparate?" She looks too pretty to be a Muggle but they can't all have smallpox probably. That means technically he shouldn't have shown her that but he hadn't really known she was a Muggle or for that matter that she hadn't seen him arriving, right, so it's only sort of his fault. Maybe Mexico's government isn't hardasses about things like that. Maybe they are hardasses about things like that and she will want to marry him for the exemption to the statute - okay, that's stupid.

She'd get along with his family, though. 

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"I can not Apparate.

- one, two, Theodore Way, four, five, six-seven?"

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" - so you do know the family name? You could've started with - yeah. Timothy Way, Michael Way, Theodore Way, Aaron Way, Minor Way, James Way, Samuel Way."

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She tugs on her ears. "I have - not you ears -"

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" - yes, you sure do."

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"I have not-you-ears seven - Nelyafinwë Maitimo, Canafinwë Macalaurë, Turkafinwë Tyelcormo, Morifinwë Carnistir, Curufinwë Atarinkë, Pityafinwë Ambarussa, Telufinwë Ambarussa."

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Well that's super confusing and he doesn't have anything to say about it. 

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Shrug. "You not have you-ears Mirelótë?"

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"How'd you know me? Turkafinwe whatever-it-was looks like this?"

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"Yes, Tyelcormo sure do..." Handwobble, tugging her ear again, shrug.

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"No you at Hogwarts when I was there, then, maybe there's one Timothy knows in France."

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"Hogwarts? France?"

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"See, I'm really bad at this. Hogwarts is - in England, it's for - Apparate, and -" he draws his wand and levitates a rock - "Wingardium Leviosa - and -" he frowns and with visible effort turns it purple. "Magic. Hogwarts is in England for magic. France is not in England. Timothy is in France. If Mirelote-with-ears is in France, I wouldn't know her. I don't talk to people. Talk is - 'see, I'm really bad at this', and 'Hogwarts? France?', that's talk."

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She nods. "We are people?" she inquires.

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"Yup." Maybe she's a veela, they look like really hot people when they don't look like monsters. "That's us, people." He doesn't sound spectacularly impressed with members of the category.

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That's apparently endearing. "We go..." She looks around in the available directions, squints, picks one. "People?"

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"No idea. And they'll be Muggles, if this is Earth, who are - people not magic. Their cities kinda suck. Cities - ten ten ten ten ten people in one place, that's a city."

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"People," she reiterates pointing. "City. Go - four sun-arounds?"

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"Four days. Sure. I guess I can't leave you out here." Sigh.

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"Go not people five days," she suggests.

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"Can you say that a different way?"

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She arranges some rocks - a little heap, "city", two farther away, "we". She hops the pair of rocks towards the city in increments. "One day two days three days four days? - I four days, you maybe three days, five days -" Shrug. Then she hops one of the rocks back out of the city. "You go not-city?"

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" - I'm out of here once I get you to civilization. Yeah. Sounds good."

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She smiles and heads in the direction she chose. "Me-ear-people word Quendi. Maybe Quendi city. City... hmm..." She thinks for a while about how to circumlocute for what she's looking for, finally shakes her head and says, "Maybe Quendi city."

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"Will they eat me?"

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"Eat?"

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He pantomimes.

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"Quendi not eat you!"

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"Well good for them. I don't eat Quendi either."

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Giggle.

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"How'd you get out here alone?"

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"Uh..." She pauses in walking to draw the snake monster. "That eat me."

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"I don't know what that is."

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"I don't know what that is," she sighs. "Valinor not have that."

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"I don't know whether England has that but I think not."

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She doesn't have the vocabulary to speculate further. She sighs and walks on.

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None of these plants are familiar so he has no idea which ones will poison him. He hates talking but eventually he starts up again so he can teach enough vocabulary to convey this.

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She appreciates the vocabulary. She says, "I eat a plant and find out, you maybe different but maybe not?"

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"Downside of that plan is that if you're wrong you die, but if you don't mind that then go for it."

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"If I die - um -" She taps the back of her neck, delicately moving a braid aside. "Thing in there. If person looking for me, tell where thing is - with this or not." "This" is a gesture at the rest of her body.

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"- huh. If I die, no thing, nothing to tell anyone."

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Sad nod.

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"You can tell my family if you want but they'll be more interested in the language."

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"They will also want to know about you!" she insists.

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"I didn't say they wouldn't, just that they'd be more interested in the language. Lotsa people, not lotsa languages."

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Sigh.

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A while after that he makes himself some water by magic.

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"I eat water?" she asks.

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“Yeah, sure.”

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She accepts some water and drinks it.

When it's been a while without any vocabulary she starts singing.

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Deeefinitely veela and the music is probably mind-control though it’s not reaaally mind control, just pretty. Super pretty. Makes Michael sound like a dumb amateur. He debates whether to deafen himself defensively and decides that that’s kind of paranoid probably.

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She stops when the song is over, then picks a leaf off a common indigo plant, sniffs it, and takes a little nibble.

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He watched to see if she dies, but not that worriedly.

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"It isn't hurt me but it isn't eat-thing," she reports.

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“That’s most plants in England.”

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"In Valinor the plants are all eat-things." She tries another one, then another, and reports the same results, over and over.

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“I can turn stuff into kittens if we get desperate.”

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"Kitten is?"

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"Uh..." He picks a suitable rock. He stops walking, concentrates for a while, scowling at it. 

The rock turns into an animal.

"Kitten."

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"I not eat four days, find people."

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"I'm not gonna want to go four days without food but I'm not in a kitten-eating mood just yet." He turns it back into a rock, instead.

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"I taste more plants."

She tastes, more plants, whenever she finds a different kind. For the entire first day, none of them are food.

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This is basically in line with his experience of plants! When it's night he wants to sleep.

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"I not sleep, wake if something -" She runs out of words, waves her hand.

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"If you need me to fight something?"

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"Or go away from something."

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"Okay. Thanks."

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"Mm! Uh -" She sings a half-measure. "- that, not that?"

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"If you're gonna eat me while I'm sleeping you won't need the music."

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"I not eat you."

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"I obviously don't think so or I'd have left but you saying so isn't really very convincing."

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She snorts. "Music yes?"

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“Whatever floats your boat. Uh, that is, yes if you want.”

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So she sings, softly, lullabyeish.

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He sleeps.

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She wakes him after six hours. "Something go here," she whispers urgently. "It not see us I think -"

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He rolls to his feet and draws his wand. "Did you see it? Hear it?"

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"See it. That way."

It's super dark; there's starlight but no moon.

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"I can't see when there's no sun."

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"I can. I can carry you if you need?"

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"I can do a - handsun - but then things might see us."

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"Do that or I carry you?"

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He makes a little light at the tip of his wand; it sheds light maybe ten feet, by human eyesight, and a thousand, by Elf eyesight.

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The thing is too far away for him to see clearly by that light, but the thing makes a weird shrieking noise in response.

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"Sorry," he says back to it. "We're just passing through, and we're not very tasty."

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"You can do that?" she murmurs.

The thing shrieks again.

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"It's pretty unlikely she speaks English but hey, one can try, right? We're the ones're not supposed to be here."

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"I - it's - Tyelcormo can do that," whispers Ambela.

(Shriiiiiek!)

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"I get on really well with animals but we're not - it's a weird thing about people, really, that talking at them makes them put their shells on and be civilized no matter how much it hurts them, most things don't think that sounds like a good deal."

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The thing approaches close enough to see. It's a sheep-sized monster, with wings for back legs it's tottering along on and claws all the way down its forelegs like sharp fringe. It has eight eyes. It shrieks again.

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- well, okay. Is it gonna let them keep walking or no.

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Its posture is hard to read, since it is a space alien.

"I carry you?" she offers again. "Go away from it?"

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"- okay."

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She scoops him so he can look and presumably cast spells over her shoulder. The thing shrieks again. She takes off at a brisk jog perpendicular to its approach. It doesn't follow.

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This is a little bit awkward but only a bit. 

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Eventually she sets him down.

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"I guess I'll want to sleep in trees or something."

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"It had - go up parts."

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"Yeah." Sigh. "I'll think of something."

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"I can not sleep four days."

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"That's cool. I need to sleep every night, if we're moving at this pace during the day."

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"I can carry you. I need sleep and food at people but four days I can."

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"I guess if we have to, but it's kind of weird."

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"Weird?"

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" - I don't have three examples I like. Eating a few more kittens and risking a few more fights is better than being carried the whole way."

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"Okay."

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He tries to pick up the pace but even at his absolute best is a fair bit slower than her.

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She keeps watch at night again. She has to wake him after just three hours about another one of the apparently nocturnal monsters.

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He's in a worse mood about it than the previous night. "Fine. Great. Guess we'll keep moving."

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"Maybe you sleep again after it is far?"

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"That'd be nice."

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She puts him down after they've gotten a good distance away from the thing.

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He falls asleep again very quickly.

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No more monsters that night, but the night after there are three.

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He eats a lot of kittens the day after. He looks visibly less healthy than when he arrived. He's walking slower, too.

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"Still weird to carry you there?"

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Sigh. "Is it not, for Quendi?"

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"I don't have words. When - Tyelcormo was -" She hovers her hand a couple feet off the ground. "I carried him." Shrug. "Now -" She holds her hand quite a bit higher, taller than herself. "Now I don't but -"

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"Kid. You start out a baby, then you're a kid, then you're an adult. It's not weird to carry babies. It's weird to carry adults - kind of because you carry babies? It's not a way adults interact with each other, it's a way they interact with babies. Interact - talking is a kind of interacting, fighting is a kind of interacting..." He rubs his eyes. "Anyway in England you don't really carry grown healthy adults just because they're very slow, and also there are - expectations about how men and women interact.

Dumb ones."

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"I was an adult when Tyelcormo's -" Gesture. "- person he come from was a baby! And you don't look like an adult."

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"I'm done with school, I work, I support myself, I'm a legal adult." As of three weeks ago, but whatever.

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Sigh.

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"Are you - scared we won't make it to the city? Because we will. I'm tired but that just means slower, doesn't mean I won't get there. And those things seem more scared of us than we are of them."

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"Scared is -?"

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"A monster tries to eat you, scared. There is no food anywhere, scared. You're badly hurt and might die, scared."

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"I am scared. If you die you die. If I die -" She taps the back of her neck. "But not you."

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"Hmm, okay. I think - 

- I fucking hate languages, what a stupid idea, we should all just settle on one - 

- it seems like we are not actually running a big risk here. If I injure myself bad enough I can't get up, you carry me. If you injure yourself, I float you along. If we wake up surrounded by a bunch of those things, more than I can stun, I have to light a fire and then we have to run. But - none of those we die? I can't really think how we die except by something way bigger and scarier coming along, and I've wrangled dragons, right? How are you expecting that taking longer to get to the city means we die, and did you catch anything I said because I haven't taught most of these words."

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"I catch some." Sigh. "Not a big risk. But a risk."

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"I mean, everyone's gotta die of something."

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"...no."

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- shrug. "Cats eat mice and lions eat gazelles and the world eats people? I'm not saying I like it."

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"Quendi don't die, orcs don't die, Dwarves don't -" neck tap, "but nothing eats them, they don't die. Humans... die? Everyone?"

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"Yeah. Not just humans, all the things I know of, they all die of being - of having been for a while, if they haven't died of anything already."

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Shrug. "You can carry me if you care that much."

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"Less weird if you sleeping?" she asks.

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"I guess, yeah."

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"When you sleeping, then." Sigh.

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They keep walking.

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The monsters don't come out in the daytime. Once he's firmly asleep she scoops him up and trots the rest of the way to town by starlight.

When he wakes up he is tucked into a bed in a very elaborately pretty hotel room and can just hear Mirelótë talking in enthusiastic might-be-Greek with someone next door.

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Greek? Really? And here he was thinking she was from some other planet or something. He must've translated a word wrong. 

He gets himself some water and gets up and goes to the door to sort of attempt to listen.

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It's a weird dialect of Greek, but concerted effort can make out some words. Mirelótë is speaking in fragmentary sentences; she might still be learning it.

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Maybe this is Greece but she's from elsewhere? This place is definitely too fancy to be Muggle. 

 

He examines it for food.

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There is a covered dish (the dish and its cover are both gorgeous) on the (exquisitely carved) nightstand. It's a bowl of rice with very prettily colored vegetables and raisins and spices in it.

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Weird but he's so so hungry. He eats it.

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It tastes okay, not really quality in keeping with the presentation but still pretty good.

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Yeah these people or their servants seem kind of obsessed with presentation. Whatever.

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When he's done eating there's a knock at the door.

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"I'm awake."

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She opens the door. "Hello! These people had your language in their records, I should be better at it now and I'll be able to translate when I know more about theirs. Are you still hungry?"

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"There was a rice thing. If they have something fried that'd be good?"

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"I'll see if I can get across 'fried'!" She turns and talks to someone just out of view in Greek about that. Presently she says, "They have fried chicken."

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"That'd be great. Do they want money? Not that I have any on me, but, good to know what we're committing to."

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"Someone bought a layer of my clothes very enthusiastically and I believe the hotel room is comped."

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"Oh, good. Did they say where we are?"

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"The planet is called Muse and this town is called Toicho."

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"Do they happen to know where England is?"

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"They say it's on Earth and they don't have the technology yet to go back and see what happened to it."

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He looks very confused on several different levels. "Mmm," he says after a second. "Thanks for asking."

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"If you have followup questions I can ask them?"

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"I don't - or, uh, I don't think I have anything I need to know."

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"Okay. Well, they seem friendly. The monsters are called okzo and they're dangerous, people get torn apart by them pretty often if they go on hikes, and they say none of the wild plants are edible, only what they farm."

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"Are they Muggles?"

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"That word wasn't in the dictionary I read."

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"Can they do magic?"

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"I haven't seen any."

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"Muggles are humans who can't do magic, though dunno how they'd do all this without it. Ours are constantly miserable and dying and their cities run with sewage because it's really hard to do stuff without magic."

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"- Quendi and orcs and Dwarves can't do magic, and Elves get help from Ainur who can but the orcs and Dwarves do that much less and their cities aren't like that."

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"It makes sense that the not dying would help a lot."

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"Yes. Maybe that's most of it." Sigh. "Uh, I'm still learning Greek but I think the locals want you to change clothes for some reason and they took the liberty of picking something out for you."

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"You told them that I'm leaving, right?"

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"I told them you were likely to want to do that and they told me an okzo would tear you apart and you'd have nothing to eat you didn't bring with you, and I said I wasn't sure you'd find that a compelling argument but I'd be sure you knew before you left."

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"What kinda fence do you need for the okzo to leave you alone?"

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"They use a moat, not a fence; okzo can fly but apparently don't like crossing water."

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He looks really, really unhappy, for some reason. "If you leave I'll put on the clothes."

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"...okay." She points out where they are (folded up at the foot of his bed) and closes the door behind her.

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He changes. And paces.

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She's still talking to someone in Greek.

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Eventually he comes on out.

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"Hello, Theodore. Your fried chicken is here." She points it out; it's another covered dish on a narrow table lining the ornate hallway.

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For some reason this seems to make him even less happy but he heads over and eats it. He does seem a little less miserable by the time he's done.

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"I'm happy to buy you some food that will keep okay if you want to risk the okzo."

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"Not a very permanent solution, though, is it? Eventually I will have eaten it all."

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"Yes, eventually you'd need to come back and pick up more."

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" - you said you knew me, so d'you, uh, understand -"

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"Yes. Tyelcormo lives on a less managed planet so he can hike around in the wilderness constantly with his pet dog-shaped Maia. We don't see much of him. This is not an ideal environment for it but I wasn't expecting you to look out the window and notice the town is pretty and decide to stay."

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"I don't want to run around doing nothing and then show up so you can feed me like a stray dog for no reason but I don't think I can do this place. It's horrible."

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"I'm sorry."

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"Is there anything other than - like, do they have farms, do they have people who live far away from everything -"

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"They have farms; you were asleep when we crossed the ring of farms. I can ask."

Greek Greek Greek Greek.

"- some people go on, uh, she's calling them artistic retreats, and there are little houses within the moat and in food-shopping distance of farms that aren't in the main town area."

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Nod.

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"I do not have an artistic retreat cottage amount of money but she says they have very low unemployment. So I might be able to make enough to afford one for you soon."

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"I don't wanna take your money. It's really - it's fine. It doesn't matter."

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"Maybe it will be easy to make a lot, I don't know yet what they need but they seem interested in us being from other planets enough to provide a free hotel room. I don't want you crawling out of your skin because the only way to eat is to be in a town."

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"The complete list of things that have me crawling out of my skin also includes depending on other people. - actually it's primarily depending on other people. For towns to work everyone is depending on everyone else to be civil and predictable and a bunch of other stuff and that's particularly noticeable but it's not -" shrug. 

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"Well, you'd know better than I would - I don't know how much to generalize from Tyelcormo and anyway we haven't been close since he was little."

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"Cause you know the rest of his family, right?"

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"I married a friend and advisor of his father's father, Finwë, who is the king of my tribe of Quendi. Fëanáro - Tyelcormo's father - is a dear friend of mine, has been all his life. I think most of his children like me."

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"You have a king? - the Muggles in England do too, but wizards don't. France doesn't either."

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"We have a king. Maitimo's going to succeed him when he's done raising his children."

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"I bet he'll be very happy."

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"Yes. I assume so."

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"Do you want me to stop talking to you, I don't get better at it than this and it's not gonna talk me out of leaving."

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"It's fine. I just want you to be okay."

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"I'm trying to think how to pull that off. I need a moat and a way to grow food. I guess a way to get clothes, too. Maybe I can come into town and do magic for them and pay for my own stuff and live on an island in a river, are there some of those nearby? I can't Apparate as far as we walked but I can Apparate as far as we walked in a day, maybe."

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"I don't know if there are river islands, but I can ask for a map." She asks. The person she's talking to runs off.

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"Are those the only dangerous things out there?"

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"In this part of the continent, that is the impression I have - I don't have the Greek vocabulary I'd want yet to be positive, I was looking at English while speaking in Greek and speaking is slower. There are other, smaller things but nothing that will outright kill you, just bite you a little bit before they run away."

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"Okay. Then I guess the only thing left to ask is what they'll pay me for. I can - I dunno. Turn rocks into kittens, stun things, stab things, teleport - oh, if they want wizard kids most kids by a wizard are wizard kids, you can check if any of them will pay for that."

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"What?"

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"If you want to ask these people if any of them want to pay you to have your potentially magical children you can learn Greek to do it in."

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"Oh. Sure."

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"I'm sure they'll have a use for something else you can do - is stabbing things magical?"

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"Can be."

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"Can you teleport with passengers or cargo?"

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"Cargo."

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"Can you do several hops in a row to cover more ground?"

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"Two. Three if I really have to and then I'll be dead on my feet all day."

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The map arrives. It's very pretty. Mirelótë and the hotel person chat in Greek.

The map shows the moat, and a river that feeds the moat, and upstream a ways there's a little fleck of green just visible at this scale.

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"Great. Thanks. Lemme know how you want me to pay you."

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"Do you need anything before you go? Seeds, tools -?"

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"Later once we figure out how I can pay for things."

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"She says there are likely to be people who will want to teleport things, what's your cargo limit?"

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"Gotta be holding them, pretty much."

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Greek Greek Greek. "She says that's less useful but will still probably earn you a living if you can do it once or twice a day and have an advertisement out."

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"Well, I can't do that, can I, because I can't speak Greek."

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"You do not need to write the advertisement yourself."

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"Maybe later. Will you be here?"

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"I will probably stay in this hotel for at least a few days before I find somewhere else to stay."

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"Okay. I'll try to come back tomorrow."

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"Okay."

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He Apparates for the dot on the map.

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It's a little island some eighty feet across long ways in the middle of a river. It has Earth-looking plants on it, though they don't look cultivated.

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It takes him some hiking to get there because his accuracy is shit. When he lands he flops on the ground and stares at the sky.

 

He can figure out how to duplicate food, eventually, it's not that hard, just because he couldn't learn in school doesn't mean he can't, and then he'll be fine. And eventually he'll know how dangerous the critters really are, and he'll be able to go explore more. It's fine. He hasn't actually lost anything by replacing one set of terrible people with another set of terrible people. Everything is entirely fine. 

He is not motivated to start practicing duplication spells, though.

 

He lies there for a day.

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The sun moves across the sky in a bit less than an Earth day. The stars come out. The water burbles around the island.

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He lies there and mopes. 

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The stars turn slowly in the sky, and eventually the sky brightens with the new day.

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Mope. Sleep.

If he can't figure out how to duplicate things he can divert a little bit of the water to run through a garden when water levels are unusually high and not otherwise, and figure out how unusually high they'll need to be to water the plants as often as they should be watered, and he can have a little garden, and he can supplement his diet of kittens. People who eat only rabbits die of a strange sort of starvation and it seems likely that this also applies to people who eat only kittens. Kittens and potatoes and greens? Well he can try it and see if it feels like he's starving.

Maybe there are wizards here who'll come and arrest him for doing magic errands for the locals. He doesn't remember what they do to you for that in Greece and it's not even clear it'd apply. He can't think how to check. Do some fireworks and see if anyone drops by to give him a lecture? 

If he needs to wear these clothes to be acceptable in the city he shouldn't wear them outside of it; better to keep them in a box or something and change whenever he needs to visit. He'll go back, pick up his, figure out whether you can skin an okzo for when he needs replacements. The box, unlike the rest of these plans, is something he can start on now. He leaves his island to look for good sources of wood.

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There are trees, which are made of wood!

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Yay. He makes the first furnishing for his island; it's a tall wooden post that can hold its contents well off the ground, in case his island floods. He makes a box. He experiments for a while with spells for sealing wood. He doesn't have something he's satisfied with until noon.

He's in a better mood. He goes back for his clothes.

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They're not in his hotel room any more; the room has been tidied up and there's a suitcase on its bed.

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Containing...?

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Somebody else's stuff - pretty clothes, mostly.

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Ugh. 

 

He ventures out of the hotel room looking for Mirelóte.

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She's not there, but a staffperson recognizes him and smiles and says, "Mirelótë?"

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"Mirelóte."

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She has a town map on a device and shows him where the hotel is and where Mirelótë may be found.

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He walks.

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Mirelótë is giving a concert in an open amphitheater to a full house - and then some, some people are sitting on each other's laps to hear her.

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Well, okay. He'll wait. Somewhere away from people. 

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He can find a little park that isn't too crowded. It's gorgeously landscaped.

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Yep, very wealthy Muggles with lots of servants, he gathered that already. He waits in the little park.

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Mirelótë apparently spotted him; when she has an intermission some half an hour later she makes her way to the park. "Hello."

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"Hey. Do you know if the clothes they didn't approve of are still somewhere?"

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"I had them washed and put them in my room, would you like me to get them?"

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"It seems like you're in the middle of something? But I'd like them at some point, that and seeds for things that aren't too hard to grow and a list of what people want teleported where to pay for it."

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"I have time to get the clothes now but the shopping will need to wait until I don't have the venue any more, around dinner time. I did get an ad out and it has one reply from someone who wants to move a delicate musical instrument if your spell can handle them gently."

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"I might wanna practice with something comparably delicate first? It's not spectacularly gentle."

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"I can keep an eye out for something to practice on."

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"Everything here okay?"

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"Yes, it looks like I'll be able to earn a living singing. Hopefully the Valar will find me eventually but in the meantime it's not an uncomfortable place to be stranded."

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"That's good. Where should I come back to next time I stop by?"

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"I'm in room 211 in the hotel, they use the Arabic numerals like English does - I don't know if those are the same as letters for you - it's second on the left as you come up the main stairway and turn left."

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"Okay. And  I dunno how you'd know this but - any signs there are magical people here?"

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"No. They're assuming you're from a different planet Earth colonized and your people found something there that lets you do these things."

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"Magical people on England hide but I don't think they would if the Muggles were like this instead of being the way our Muggles are. Maybe they still would? But none of the reasons would apply except, you know, that people'd do disgusting things like intermarry."

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"That isn't allowed?"

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"It'd be hard to disallow. But everyone has to act all horrified. You don't need to worry, you did it just right."

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"I was upset about the idea of selling the fatherhood of children, not about the possibility that you might marry somebody here."

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"People don't get upset about that as much but I guess maybe if anyone talked about it then they would."

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"It's an objectionable way for children to start to exist. If you want to marry someone here I have no objection at all, even if you then want to have children with them."

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"Oh, that! Yes, okay, that's an opinion people have."

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"...good?"

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Shrug.

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"Well, I'm glad of the chance to clarify."

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"My pleasure."

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"I'll go get your clothes now, then?"

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"When the concert's done is fine."

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"Okay. You're welcome to stay for it if you like but I assume you wouldn't."

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"I can hear some from here. You're really good."

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"Thank you! I'm not very good for a Quendi but we're understood to be very singy."

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"Mmhmm."

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"How is the island?"

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"I like it fine."

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"I'm glad. It's supposed to rain for a few days the day after tomorrow."

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"How do they know that?"

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"They have instruments that let them tell things about the conditions that cause weather. They can predict imperfectly but better than guessing a week out."

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"Huh. Okay. Do you know how much the waters rise when it rains?"

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"No, but I can ask."

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"I'd appreciate it."

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"I'll let you know when you come back for your clothes and shopping. Do you want to come shopping, to pick seeds, I don't know what things you like."

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"I don't know what grows here. I guess if there's a lot of choices I can come look."

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"There seem to be a lot of different crops in the food I've seen available."

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"All right."

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"I'll see you then."

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He spends the second half of the concert pacing.

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She comes to meet him when she's done.