"Huh. You don't even improve at lucid dreaming by lucid dreaming?"

"I set that up before I go to bed."

"I will endeavor to not die."

She sighs.

"Good. Nobody ought to die."

"I know! Yours is the species that does it left and right!"

"I'm aware, it's very annoying, let's fix that."

"Working on it."

"Thanks."

And food is served in many many courses and eventually Laurië starts singing and the engineers get into a technical discussion and Nerdúnar watches his firstborn thoughtfully and Huan starts snoring.

(She's not even asleep, Tyelcormë says, patting her, she just thinks it's funny.)

It is a little.

Yeah. It's good to see you, you should come around more. You energize my mother. Not that she needs it.

I'm easy to entice places, just offer me food.

I will keep that in mind!

And there is food here. Nom.

There is! Food, and singing, and technical debate going on in Mandarin for the practice with the language. Maitimë leans back contentedly and watches Isabella finish all the food.

Isabella has not previously made any attempt to pick up Mandarin but she has an eidetic memory and there's osanwë so she'll pick some up as long as it's going around.

It is totally going around. Earth has so many languages it's going to be Years before she speaks them all. It's intolerable.

And at some point they come up with something they want to check and run off to the nearest computers.

"I think we'll be heading out," she tells her father and snoring-Huan and the twins, who have fallen asleep on snoring-Huan's belly.

"Okay - are you happy?"

Ummmmmm.

"Never been happier."

"You could stand to be careful-er."

Blink.

"...okay."