Nod. 

"Where I'm from everybody's a human, and people have managed to have all different ideas about what happens to us but most of them are pretty silly."

"I'd like being a human," Elian says. "They're happier and busier than Elves."

"All of the Elves? I haven't met very many but I didn't think they were all always this solemn."

"It's because there aren't any new Elves," Eliel says. "They're all older than the war, and sad."

"They mentioned they don't have kids when there's a war."

Nods. "People were mad when our parents did."

"They wanted you to be born in a safer time."

"But now Dad's dead so we just wouldn't have been born at all."

"Yeah. Most people who could be born are never born."

"I'm glad we were, though, I like being alive - at first I thought they were going to kill us if we slipped up and said something wrong, or bored them, or cried too much -"

"They brought you here because they didn't think you'd be safe if they just left you, and they want you to be safe. They're very scary but that's not because they want to be scary, it's because Elves have oaths and oaths are a problem."

Nods. "No one knows if half-Elves have oaths but grandpoppa said just never ever swear any no matter what."

"That is a pretty good policy."

Nod nod.

She comes in. They go quiet. She smiles at them. "I knew your grandpoppa when he was very very little, he was my cousin's son. He is very right about oaths."

Huh. Annie had no idea they were related.

"Then why'd you -"

(Eliel elbows her sister.)

"That's a very good question. I was wrong, and scared, and made a very bad choice."

"And now you're stuck forever?"

"Yeah."

...twitch.

And after the girls run off to the courtyard to try to catch leaves falling off the trees before they hit the ground, which Rirosseth says is good luck in Valinor and probably not here but it's still fun - 

- "you okay?"

"I'm okay."

"I'm not really stuck forever, in Mandos you can't act on oaths so they don't bother you."