"Oh." Karen cannot actually remember the last time in her life when she wasn't pretty habitually sad. Maybe for a bit right after she and Azalea started the stupid business that caused half of her current problems.

She keeps following him. "Well, it's good to have someone focused on that, probably. And good that you haven't needed it."

"People say that the windows of Nienna's house look outwards from the walls of the world and I did not really think about it much but it makes sense if there are lots of worlds to see."

The forest ends abruptly and instead there's a field of vegetables, fat and plump and colorful, and behind it a strikingly pretty little farmhouse, and beyond that a shining white city on a hill. The whole thing is bathed in silver light from a pillar behind the city; there's no sun or moon in the sky.

Maitimo takes a plump thing that might be sort of like a tomato off a vine and eats it.

Luckily, she has recently had pizza and doesn't have to figure out right this second whether you're allowed to do that if you're not a prince of the Noldor.

She keeps following him. She idly checks whether her pants still have a bunch of blood on them.

They do not. He charges ahead to the farmhouse.

There's a woman in the field just near the house; she has long braided black hair and is wearing a long white dress covered in little crimson flowers and smiles at the sight of him, but not like he's been missing for a week.

She kneels. He hugs her. 

They chatter in Quenya. 

She'll just hang out back here and not get in the way.

It's the next morning.

So you haven't been gone for a week? That's good.

Yeah! My parents would have been worried. 

Yeah, I'll bet.

Are you tired? We don't have to walk there, I could tell them to send a carriage for us.

No no no I'm good. Unless you're tired. Which would make sense.

I'm not tired. How would you like me to introduce you to people, I have just been saying you are Karen from Wolfram and Hart.

That's... fine I guess. You could say Karen Tiu but that might be less explanatory. Or tell them I'm from Earth.

If you don't want to meet my family you can stay in Lórien, that's allowed. Or go somewhere else.

Nah, I gotta drop you off. And I - kind of don't know anyone else here. I'm sure they're lovely.

Okay. 

He skips off to the next farm. This one has orchards and he steals four nectarines and eats them all and then gets a hug from a large, tall man with a baby in his other arm and kisses the baby and introduces Karen (the man waves) and then heads off to the next farm.

She waves at people when they wave at her. She otherwise keeps her hands in her pockets. She doesn't take any food and doesn't try to talk to anyone.

They zigzag towards the city. Maitimo eats something on every farm. And eventually they come to a bigger house which is the first one to have glass windows. It's surrounded by lots of different kinds of tree instead of rows of the same kind. All the stonework has gold detailing. There's a man standing in the front yard, holding a little kid, pointing out something on the far horizon while the child tries to eat his father's hand --

-- no, there's a sculpture of that, an impossibly detailed and realistic full-color one.

That's me, says Maitimo happily about the sculpture.

And then two people walk out of the house and he races into their arms.

They talk for longer than Maitimo talked with his neighbors. Maitimo gestures at Karen, and says some things aloud in English in the midst of all the fast chattering in Quenya. He gets passed back and forth for a lot of hugs. 

"Karen?" she says aloud after about twenty minutes of this.

" - hi. That's me." Wave.

Are you all right? 

- sure. I'm fine. She isn't actually fine even by her own standards, but she doesn't really want anyone else to feel like they have to do anything about that, and wow, this is probably exactly how Maitimo has felt about her for the past week. 

Maitimo's home now and that's the important thing.

Maitimo thinks that the Valar should get your children and a library and we should build you a house and a, uh spaceship. Would that actually be a good idea?

Well I don't think the spaceship should be a very high priority. But I don't super have anywhere else to go, having burnt pretty much all of my bridges in the process of getting him back here. Not to whine about it, but.