Anything that won't go bad if they leave it around for a while. Canned fruit or vegetables, sealed dry crackers, salted jerky, honey...

...nothing will go bad if they leave it around for a while. Why would it do that.

That sounds really fake. Where they are from most kinds of fresh food rot and make you sick after a few days.

That's probably because they are from a world that is practically ruled by the forces of evil.

They're pretty sure even the normal world was like that, although admittedly they can't remember it that well?

Maybe he can get them some obviously nonperishable food and also some fresh berries that aren't from this weird magic forest and they can see for themselves whether fresh food rots here.

Well he would like to learn French but Nerdanel and Maitimo and Karen can go get those things.

Then one human will teach him some French and a couple other humans will follow the cart back, if that's OK.

Sure that's fine and how would you ask it in French?

They'll just leave them to that and go get some stuff, then.

"So wait, food doesn't rot here?"

"Your food gets old and wears out just like people do?" He has hopped back onto the cart now that there's space and mentally nicknamed the humans who are coming along.

"Yeah, that's why we keep so much of it in the fridge, if it's cold it stays good longer. Do you people not - do you never get sick, are there just not any bacteria here - if humans have bacteria in them are we going to introduce a bunch of plagues and accidentally kill you all - ?"

"People get sick sometimes. The Valar could fix it but they don't, I don't know why."

"It's important for your body to get practice at noticing when there's things in it that shouldn't be there, and that means sometimes you get sick."

"So there can be things in you that shouldn't be there, but they're not the sort of things that cause rot. Do you know why you get sick, more specifically?"

"Yes, but not in English -"

There are little tiny things in the air that try to live inside of people instead if they can. We were created with the ability to defend ourselves against them, but it needs practice. The Valar could make them all go away, but all kinds of creatures are supposed to live in Valinor and also then we wouldn't get the practice. So instead they exist, except when they really shouldn't, like around little children or animals who don't have any defenses.

OK. Well. On Earth there are little things like that in the air and the water and the ground and in people, and sometimes if they live inside of people they make us very sick, and we can defend ourselves against them, too, so usually we recover, but sometimes we don't, and we die. And if we've encountered the kind of thing before, we can defend against it. really well, but when new tiny things have been introduced lots and lots of people have died, and this isn't much of a thing in my country anymore but mostly because we have medicine that the people in Lorien don't have right now. And these are the same kinds of little things that get on our food and eat it and cause it to rot, the rotting is actually the process of the food slowly being eaten by bacteria or mold or whatever and turned into waste that'll make us very sick if we eat it. I am confused about how you have some parts of that but not other parts of that, and also confused about whether food will just continue being safe for the humans or not.

I think the Valar decide - species by species and maybe even person by person - how things should work.

OK. So we don't know what's going to happen to them.

We should probably ask Aulë but I really don't think they'd make food start decaying, that'd just be really bad for people and when they decide that's what they're thinking about.

OK. Hopefully. ...Thank you.

The people who founded Valinor were not coming from easy lives. They did all right. I think your species will do all right too.

Here's hoping.

Elsewhere in Lorien, there is a VERY DISTRAUGHT leather bag that contains a somewhat ambiguous number of people. Everyone in the bag is VERY UPSET ABOUT IT. 

Lórien is not actually very equipped for the purpose to which it's being put but....birds could...tug at the fastenings on the bag until it opens?

The bag is very old and hasn't been opened in a long time, so it takes a bit, but eventually it opens. 

A person wrapped in cloth emerges from it. He falls on the ground and notes that he has skin again. He hasn't had skin in a very long time.

Everything is strange and different here. It's better than being trapped, but he still doesn't like it. He opens his mouth and reaches down his own throat until he finds his vajra, sharp and humming with the power of the human souls inside it. He is still powerful. But he is not safe.

He channels energy through the Vajra and out of his mouth. He blasts the leather bag until it is a charred and crumbling husk. It cannot be used to contain him again. But still, he is not safe. 

He looks around and finds some fruit. He licks it. It tastes like fruit, but it may be poison. It would take a very powerful poison to affect him, but but he doesn't understand this world and doesn't know what to expect from it. He tucks it into his cloth wrappings for later.

He flies up high above the trees and takes in his surroundings. Are there people? Structures made by people?