Quite literally everyone in Tirion can hear her. 

They are, uh, concerned.

They are more concerned when they see her, hair loose, disheveled, in horrible pain -

- there are people who survived Angband, and that seems like an obvious guess for what happened here, somebody goes and gets one and asks, what do we do -

Don't sing, he says, back away, leave her alone, give her time.

They do that.

There's so much noise, and none of it makes sense... she doesn't know.. doesn't know anything, too overwhelmed.

Eventually, she notices that nobody's touched her yet. She has no idea how long it's been - could be five minutes, could be an hour. Probably they're just... on their way... to get her, to take her back... she panics all over again, and loses her train of thought in the fear and overload.

Eventually, she notices that she's had that thought before... a few times, in fact... what's taking them so long...

Eventually, she doesn't have enough energy left to keep panicking about a threat that's apparently not imminent, and she stops screaming and just lies there, curled up tightly, waiting.

Yep, continue to not do anything. 

If she gets up and starts walking around they'll hurt her when they find her, she's not going to do that.

They'll hurt her anyway, of course, but it'll be... later, less, safer, if she's just as passive as possible.

After a few hours she opens her eyes. It's bright; it hurts, but she's still far too overloaded for that to register - though when she goes to reach for her power, out of habit, to use her hearing to help make sense of what she sees, that does, and she gasps and screws her eyes shut again and whines, under her breath where no one should be able to hear it. A few minutes later she tries again, more carefully.

They're just routing everybody around those few blocks. No one has any idea how she got there - might ask a Vala about that, but right now she won't want to go near a Vala. It's as likely as not she'll refuse food until she starves. He hasn't pointed this out to people, but he doesn't think any of them will insist they try to prevent that. 

The unfamiliar and overly-decorated architecture is disorienting, but there are no person-sized things moving around; she's probably alone. That's either very good news - maybe she was just wrong about there being people here when she arrived? - or very, very bad news, if she frightened them enough to evacuate.

It's a city - she thinks, she's still having trouble making sense of things, but those seem to be buildings, this isn't asphalt or concrete she's lying on but it's not grass, either - so the first option isn't too plausible. The second one isn't, either, with how long it's been, but of the two it seems more likely.

Can she move? If it's the second thing... if she's sitting, quietly... there's really no way for it to go well, once they come for her, but sitting quietly, looking normal... helps, sometimes. If she can.

Her first attempt fails. Too tense, too tired, too overloaded. But she's gotten better at this, in the months since her escape; she closes her eyes and pays attention to each of her limbs in turn, wiggling her toes, subtly flexing her knees, and so on, until she's moved every part of each of them. Then she visualizes standing... realizes she did it wrong, tries again, pays close attention to the details... tries it for real. It's not graceful, and she nearly falls over again, but she manages.

One of the things she can see is probably a bench, but she doesn't have the wherewithal to figure out which one, right now. Instead she just goes for the nearest thing that's about the right height; it turns out to be the edge of a raised flowerbed. She sits carefully and waits.

Do you need anything?

She startles and pitches forward off the wall, barely misses breaking her nose on the cobblestones, and takes a sharp rap to the forehead instead. She lays there bonelessly for a few seconds, then curls up again and sobs.

Well, it'll be at least a week before she's in danger of starving. They can give her space at least until then.

She lays there crying for a while, and eventually falls asleep. Half a day later, she drifts back to consciousness; she immediately reaches for her power, and twitches with pain at the lack of it, and falls back asleep. Half an hour later, she awakens again, with the same result; it takes a dozen repetitions before she can bear the pain and stay awake. She tries to figure out where she is, and is still trying to figure it out when sleep claims her again after another half an hour.

Over the next few days her periods of wakefulness lengthen - an hour, three, four - with hours of sleep in between. She doesn't try to stand. She does, after a while, notice that she's painfully hungry, and over the course of a couple hours, get her backpack off and retrieve a granola bar from it; she manages to eat half, with shaking hands, before dropping it and falling asleep again.

Her ability to think, to understand the world around her, comes back slowly, but it does come back. She wakes up and sees that the building across from her is a shop, selling statuettes. She figures out what the road is - she's never heard of cobblestone before, but she works out the idea. She eats another granola bar; she's past feeling her hunger, but she knows it's been days, so she does. She still doesn't know what to make of the emptiness of the place, of the fact that no one has shown up to haul her back to the institution, to berate her for lying in the street, any of it. That feels like a problem but doesn't seem to be one she can solve, and exhaustion claims her every time she tries to think about it.

Eventually, she gets bored. She considers the impulse to get up and go do something warily, but it does seem to be the only way she's going to figure out what's going on here - not that she necessarily wants to know. She compromises by levering herself up into a sitting position - she's near enough to the flowerbed wall to lean on it, thankfully - and looking around.

The city is very bright and very pretty and, yes, deserted for a few streets around; there are people passing in the distance. There are fountains. The other stores are selling ceramics, parchment, fabrics. 

Well.

Wherever she is, it's certainly not the sort of place someone like her is supposed to be, even supervised, which makes it all the more baffling that nothing's been done about her yet.

She takes inventory of her pack: nothing's missing, and packing her tablet and bowl and sunglasses wrapped up in her spare clothes protected them when she fell; she puts the sunglasses on. She has a couple granola bars left, a little bit of beef jerky, some trail mix and packaged cookies (crushed, but still edible), a few days' worth of instant rice and mashed potatoes, and a couple bottles of water; food will be an urgent problem soon, but it's not an emergency just yet. She takes stock of her physical state, and then eats the last of the jerky and drinks some water. While she's waiting to get her strength back, she looks around more: Is there any route that seems like a way out of this bizarrely calm upperclass tourist trap? How about one without any people?

There's no obvious road out, let alone one without people; every direction has people once she goes a few blocks. 

Okay.

Well.

She can stay here and eventually starve, or she can not do that. Put that way it's a pretty obvious choice. If one or the other would get her sent back, that'd make it an even more obvious one, but surely they'll eventually come for her even if she stays. She pulls her pack on and gets moving, slowly and gracelessly at first but with more fluidity as she gets back into the rhythm of it.

The people leave her a berth, but less of one. There are vendors presumably selling food. 

It's noisier with people closer, and she's not going to be able to stand it long, but maybe she can find her way out before she gets to that point. She keeps going, ignoring the people around her as best she can.

It's a big city. 

So she's discovering.

She notices herself getting too overwhelmed to function early enough in the process that she's able to find a little alley to collapse in. She curls up in a ball again and cries, quietly, in pain and frustration.

...they still can't think of anything better to do than letting her be. Someone tries walking by with a glass of water and plate of food, setting them down, leaving.

She goes still and tense and quiet when they get close enough for her to notice, and stays that way for a long while afterward.

Well, yes. Ex-prisoners of Angband are known to do that. She still seems to prefer not to starve to death so they're going to have to get her food somehow.

She would probably appreciate the effort if she were in a mental state where that was even remotely possible.

She comes back to her senses, a little, after a while. Doesn't uncurl; something smells delicious and she's so hungry but she has no way of knowing where it is and presumably can't have it anyway; she's just going to stay here. She'll wait for night and try again, that sounds like a plan. It can't be very long, right? She's been awake - or, well, close enough - for a while now.

Several hours later she looks up at the sky and is very, very confused.

The sky is silvery and just as bright as before!

Yes. What the fuck.

The sky provides no answers. 

Well.

Okay.

That's not weirder than her not being dragged back to the institution, but it's still very weird. And more surprising; she's used to people being fairly incomprehensible, but the sky has never seemed inclined to do anything more unusual than thunderstorms or hail. But it doesn't seem to be hurting anything, and she has more pressing problems.

She goes to sit up, and that's when she finally notices the plate of food. She startles and scoots away from it - trap? - but after a few wary minutes her hunger gets the better of her.

There is nothing remarkable about the food except that it's now cold.

She eats it all, and then curls up in a corner of the alley and waits to see if anything will happen.

They'll continue avoiding the block she's on. They seem to sing a lot. They don't attempt to contact her again. 

She naps. She considers trying to find her way out again, but... it's seeming more and more like she's actually going to be left alone here. It might be safer to stay.

She thinks about it for a while and decides that she needs to at least know how to get out, and what's there. And perhaps leaving will give her her power back. She starts walking again; if she keeps going in the same direction she'll have to find the edge of the city sooner or later.

She does, but it's walled.

She makes note of her starting point and follows the wall.

There are a lot of people. They still give her some space. Eventually she comes to a gate.

The crowd is small enough that she could probably go through without being overwhelmed - probably - but it's guarded, and she's not going to mess with that no matter how inattentive they look. She heads back to the last little nook she rested in to sit and think about what to do from here.

If she's going to stay, she needs a place, and ways to get food and water. And someplace to wash her clothes, and somewhere to charge her tablet and get wifi, ideally, but necessities first. The fountains seem like they'll do, for water, but she has no idea what to do about the other two. Usually she'd listen for them, but that's obviously out of the picture, and she hasn't seen any of the signs that the kinds of infrastructure she likes to hide in even exists here, much less any clues on how to get into them.

Maybe she just needs to explore more. She'll do that. ...later, though, she's pretty tired from all that walking, and this is a good enough hiding spot. She's not sleepy yet, so she rummages through her pack for one of the books she has with her, and tries to relax enough to focus on the plot.

Eventually someone will bring her another plate of food, set it down near her, and walk away.

She doesn't scream, but it's a very near thing. How did they find her? She'll have to find a better hiding spot. ...food first.

It still doesn't get dark. The people don't approach her again.

So weird. Is this some kind of... creepy tinker's creepy underground bunker, or something? The sky doesn't do that.

She finds another hiding place, this one more complicated to get to and harder to spot her coming and going from. She sleeps. She eats. She reads. Eventually she feels like she's up for more exploration.

All of the streets of the city seem to sell homemade artisanal stuff! People continue to peaceably give her space. 

Is any of the homemade artisanal stuff food? What she really wants is a grocery store, but she's not very picky at this point.

There are street vendors handing out various things; no grocery store is apparent.

Yeah, street vendors aren't really an answer to the question of whose trash she wants to try digging through. If there're no shops selling food, are there any restaurants?

There are some restaurants! ...there is no apparent trash.

...okay. (Not okay. Starving to death is bad and that seems to be where this is headed.) She'll... just....

Freak out about that a little bit, apparently. Not the screaming crying curling up in a ball kind of freakout, just the quiet sort where she's very still and unresponsive for a few minutes, because she can't quite cope with the world.

She makes her way back to the street from the alley behind the restaurants, and finds someplace to sit. She'll head back in a minute, she just needs to get her head together first.

No one interrupts her.

Which is bizarre and she doesn't trust it a bit, but she is getting the idea that it's going to keep happening.

She notices after a little while that they're not speaking English - with as messed up as her hearing is, she's not surprised she can't understand them, but the language sounds different even beyond that. So this probably isn't America? Unless it actually is some creepy tinker's creepy underground bunker or something. But that might explain why it's so weird here.

She goes back to her new hiding place and goes to sleep.

When she wakes up food's been left again.

She really wishes she knew how they were doing that. Until she does, finding better hiding places is just going to show them where all the good hiding places are.

She's sure they'll stop eventually - she won't be surprised if this is somehow the start of a program, actually, and just as soon as she decides they aren't going to stop someone will show up to make impossible or incomprehensible demands that she's expected to meet if she wants them to continue - but for now, it's one more meal between her and the looming emergency, so she eats, and then she goes back out to explore again.

Wind chimes! Silks! Hand-carved furniture! Jewelry! So much jewelry!

Continued lack of grocery stores. Continued lack of trash disposal from the restaurants. The street vendors are just a tease, now.

Around midday, by her reckoning, she takes a break to sit and watch a fountain for a while.

People aren't exchanging money with the vendors, just walking up and taking food. 

A few children jump into one of the larger fountains and chase each other around, giggling.

...this 'just walking up and taking food', does it involve, say, talking? As a requirement? If it does, is there a pattern to what they say that she can memorize?

Usually things are said, but not always! After the food is exchanged, something that probably means 'thank you' is said!

Okay.

That still involves approaching people, and the mere idea is terrifying, but if it's that or starve she might be able to manage it. Maybe. If she has to. Oh look she's panicking again; she grips the edge of the bench and closes her eyes and waits for the worst of it to pass.

The children flop on the ground to dry off. One of them goes and gets them both some sort of sticky rice balls.

She flinches when she hears the kid pass close to her on his way back.

She's having a hard time calming back down with this many people around. She's probably going to be here for a while.

Someone scolds the kid for going near her. People leave her a wider berth.

...the person scolding the kid really didn't help, now she's freaking out about what might be done to them - there are so many things that could, in a stunning variety of types of awfulness. She whimpers and slides to the ground and curls up tightly again.

The kid looks abashed and says something in her direction and then backs off when she looks to be falling apart. He looks distraught for a minute and then runs to bury himself in his father's robes. Everyone gives her more space.

She's not aware of any of it.

People continue rerouting traffic around the block she's on.

She eventually comes out of it enough to make her way back to her hiding place, dazedly.

She doesn't seem inclined to come back out again. Or move, it quickly becomes obvious - if they bring her finger food and put it close enough, they'll find it picked at when they return, and if they don't, well... not that.

They'll do that.

After a few days, she starts watching them when they come with the food, instead of lying there completely passively. It's kind of creepy.

Usually someone, looking a bit sad and with immaculately braided hair, will walk up to within reach of her, set down the tray of food, take away the old tray of food if there's anything left, and leave again. If she eats something they try to make sure the next time there's more of that.

Sad is worrying. She doesn't know what's going on here, doesn't even have a good guess, but they're acting like staff, and upsetting staff gets you hurt. But the alternative is to go back out... and who knows what happened to that poor boy... so. She'll stay here. And whatever happens will happen to her.

...after she thinks about that the boy brings her food, the next time. 

Well, that narrows the possibilities down some, anyway.

He mutters something aloud that she doesn't understand, before he leaves.

It's good that he's okay, for whatever meaning of okay. Just, next time someone might not be. She stays put.

Food continues to be brought. ...what happens if they sing very quietly while they bring it?

She's tenser, but it's because there's something new at all, not because the new thing is singing in particular.

Then they'll tentatively keep it up. Everyone needs music. 

(How long? they ask. 'Might be Years', he says. They have forever. Years would be all right.)

She doesn't object. She doesn't do much of anything, especially when they might see. She sleeps a lot, though she's almost always awake when it's time for them to drop off the food. Her appetite gets a little better, slowly.

 After six weeks she tentatively decides that they might not be planning to punish her, and a few days later the person who brings her dinner finds her sitting up, reading a book. She freezes, tense with alarm, when they come in, but doesn't curl up or even look away.

They put the food down and walk away, singing quietly.

The next time they bring her a book. It's handwritten and looks fairly fragile.

That evening they find a second book next to the one they brought - a different one from the one she was reading. It's heavily worn, bound in thick paper with a faded picture on the front, and the language and alphabet are completely unfamiliar.

...for the first time they are confused.

Some people who find languages delightful are delegated to decipher it.

It's the sort of twenty-year-old third-string science fiction that makes it into the quarter bin at used book stores, improbable space fights and all.

They are so, so confused as progress at deciphering is made. 

They continue bringing meals.

She slowly calms down about them seeing her up and about. She does wonder vaguely if she's going to be getting her book back - the idea was that they'd recognize the language and bring books in it, if they wanted to bring books at all - but she's only vaguely curious, not upset or surprised; there's a reason she gave them that one rather than any of the others she has with her.

Once they've made a copy they give it back, but it takes a while. 

By then she's surprised to get it back, but she tucks it away carefully anyway. She's surprised she still has her pack at all, for that matter, for all that she keeps it carefully hidden.

By that point she's... settled in, sort of. She's still confused and scared and frequently overwhelmed, and she sleeps a lot, but she's... okay, more or less. She's not going to leave, but aside from that she's not going to provoke them, and that seems to be sufficient to avoid anything very bad happening; it's not an equilibrium that she trusts, by any means, but while it holds she can take advantage of it. She reads. She draws, a little bit, abstract doodles slowly filling the remaining space in the sketchbook she keeps hidden. She examines her hiding spot over and over in the vain hope that there's an electrical outlet someplace that she just hasn't managed to notice yet, so that she can recharge her tablet. She spends hours running her fingers over the detail work of the stone that walls her in. She doesn't sing, doesn't talk, doesn't braid her hair, doesn't make eye contact.

Eventually they leave a note, in English and handwritten but done to look like it was typed. Can you read this?

She seriously considers not responding, but they have seen her with books.

Yes.

Do you want to communicate this way?

...If she tells them what she wants, they know what to do when they want to hurt her. And if they're asking...

She spends a couple days curled up in a tight quiet ball, panicking and considering and panicking some more. She's oddly calm, even during the panicky bits; she knew this was coming, it's going to be awful, that's just reality. She'll survive it or she won't; it'll break her or it won't; there's nothing she can do, so there's no point in worrying, or fighting, or anything but surrender; the panic is just a thing that's happening.

They continue to bring food. They don't bring more notes.

She slowly calms back down, but she doesn't move.

A while later, another note: what about something we couldn't take away later, like an explanation of where you are now?

...they're trying to get her to trust them. Well, that's safe enough to play along with.

Yes. Please.

This city is called Tirion, and the continent is called Valinor. We don't know how you got here, we've been trying to figure it out. Most of the people here came from the Outer Lands, and some of us were prisoners in Utumno. They have been advising us on how to avoid harming you further, because your reactions remind them of their reactions when they were freed. There is enough of everything for everyone here, so you can just take any things you'd like to have.

I think a tinker trap put me here.

Is the sky the same in the Outer Lands?

In the Outer Lands it's always dark except the stars. A tinker trap?

Maybe you call them something different here. Tinkers are the people with powers to make things.

As far as we know anyone here can make things.

Tinkers are parahumans.

Parahumans are

Parahumans are people with superpowers.

I don't think there are any of those here. Maybe you're from farther away than we realized, or maybe they were breeding for powers somehow in Utumno.

I think I'm from far away. I don't know about Utumno.

Okay. Were there other things you wanted to know?

What are you planning to do with me?

I don't expect you to believe this but you're safe here. You can do whatever you want and no one will stop you, though it'd be good to have a way to communicate if other people needed you to give them space or something.

There it is. Communication program. Okay. Well, there's worse things they could do.

She doesn't write back; she waits for them to start.

They don't.

...maybe they want her to leave her hiding place first? She's not sure she wants to cooperate that much. On reflection, though, making them come here if they are willing to leave her alone if she cooperates would be worse in every way.

She goes and sits just outside it and waits, tense and watchful.

People pass by, singing! There are still street vendors. At the appropriate time someone comes by with food, smiles to see her out of her hiding place, sets it down, and leaves.

Being around people is still overwhelming and painful. She ignores the food; when no one else has approached her after another hour, she goes back in, writes a note, and curls up trembling.

What do you want from me?

Nothing. I don't expect you to believe me about that.

Yeah, she doesn't.

Who are you?

My name is Rúmil. I work in the palace here. I was a prisoner in Utumno when I was younger so I asked people if I could communicate with you. You said you're not from there but you react as if you experienced something similar.

I was

I

It

I'm

If I tell you you'll send me back.

I guarantee you I would never do that, but I do not expect you to believe me. I don't need an explanation. Expecting you to react as if you were in Utumno has worked pretty well so far so we can just keep doing that.

Well.

Can I ask you about Utumno?

Of course.

How did you get out?

The Valar found out about what was going on there and tore it down and freed everyone. I didn't believe I was free for a long time but I mostly do now.

I don't know about Valar.

Back where I was, her handwriting is very shaky, almost illegible, if you let them make you what they want you to be they'll let you go.

She's curled up and unresponsive again when they find this one.

There's nothing I want you to be. Promise. 

The Valar are powerful magic beings who make sure that there's enough here for everybody. I've asked them not to bother you because it seems likely that you'd find them very scary. 

It takes a couple days for her to pull herself together enough to respond.

Why?

Because they're powerful?

They tore down Utumno.

Yes. They are very good and I am very happy to know them. If you want to meet them you can.

What are they like?

What kinds of things do they want?

They want Valinor to be a nice place to live. They are - very strange, because they are a different species and don't know how to be like people, but they want to be people we can feel safe around. They would probably offer to help you but I do not know how much they could do, and they would not do anything if you said 'no' or got scared and didn't say anything.

Okay.

I think if they tore down places where I'm from people would just put them back.

They also took the person who built it and made sure she could never hurt anyone again, and they invited us here to Valinor where we'd be safe from the other people who'd been responsible.

There's lots of them. And lots of people. And everyone knows if we escape they're supposed to send us back.

Then maybe stealing all the prisoners from your world and bringing them here is the best way to do it.

That would be good.

I'll talk with the Queen and the Valar. I don't know how easily it can be done. Is there a way we can make it less scary for them when they arrive?

I don't know.

I escaped, I knew I was out because I did it myself, they didn't let me. Sometimes they move people from one place to another and they don't always tell us first. Moving everybody at once would be strange though.

Some people like the programs and might be scared without one.

Some people have friends and will be upset if they're separated. Sometimes they do that on purpose.

Some people will be on drugs and you'll need to know which ones. Some of the drugs are dangerous. Some of them are hard to stop. Some of them are both. Some people need the drugs, or think they do.

Some people will still remember their families and might want to see them.

Anything painful that seems like it's happening on purpose will be scary. Anything new or different. Anything nice that might be taken away. Anything nice that might be used as a reward.

Seeing bad things happen to other people. We're not supposed to care about that, and it's very hard.

If there's a way of doing food so it's just there and nobody can say no or take it away or control it, that would help a lot.

The food shouldn't be a problem at all. We can set something more like that up for you, too, let me think how. Some of the other things sound challenging, but we can talk about how to manage them. 

Okay.

There are other people who got out, too, they can help you figure it out. I can find them if I can get online.

We don't have the inventions described in your book.

That's fiction. We don't have spaceships or robots like that yet.

The internet is real but I guess I'd have to go back to use it.

I think so. Or teach us how to build it.

I don't know how.

There might be instructions online, there are instructions for lots of things.

That would require finding a way to get in touch with your world somehow. Do you want to talk to the Valar about doing that?

What would I have to do?

I think they'd have to look at you to figure out where you came from and if they could make a reliable way to travel there. I can ask them if they can do it without getting near you.

Okay.

I will probably be all right if they come here if I don't need to talk to them or anything.

I will definitely tell them that you won't want to talk. They should be okay with that; they didn't at first talk themselves, they sort of learned how because we did it.

Okay.

I asked about ways of doing food that would be less stressful for you. We could have lots of food out somewhere and you could take as much as you wanted back, would that work?

The nice thing about passing notes twice a day is that she has plenty of time to calm back down in between.

Yes. Thank you.

The next note contains a map. The place where lots of food will be put and people told to leave her alone is marked.

...she didn't think this through as thoroughly as she could have; if she empties her pack so she can bring as much stuff as possible back, then she has to leave all her other things here where they can be taken.

Well, there's some things that that's an acceptable risk for. Clothes, yes, full sketchpad and pencils, books she's already read. The tablet she keeps and wraps in the spare outfit she's not risking; the remains of the food supply from home she can't quite bring herself to leave. After some thought she leaves the hot water bottle and thin blanket; she might regret that eventually, but it's definitely not winter here, somehow.

She rearranges the things she's keeping to give her the most space in the pack's main section, makes a perfunctory attempt at hiding everything else, and follows the map.

As promised, there is lots and lots of food, packaged to be easy to carry.

She packs up as much as she can carry and brings it back to her hiding place.

Nothing has been touched.

Oh, good. She unpacks the food and packs it all up and hides it away anyway.

And a while later a note says the Valar think they could make a portal to your world. Are there things that might go wrong if they did that?

Probably. I don't know how people will react to it.

They might send some capes to check it out but their powers will probably stop working here. I don't think they'll send the army or anything.

If they only make it big enough for people I don't think an endbringer could come through but you definitely want to be careful about that.

What's an endbringer?

They're big magic monster things. The capes fight them. They only come sometimes, it's a big deal when one does and I think they can guess when it's going to happen soon, if you can close the portal you could just close it then.

Okay. The Valar could probably protect us but I'll make sure they know how to keep Valinor safe, it's really really important to them that Valinor always be safe.

Yeah. I don't know very much about them but there's more on the internet.

We'll go figure it out. The Valar might set it up so no one can go through from your end at all, at first, while we're learning. Since you said people might try to make you go back. We could stop them but it'd be better for it not to come up.

That sounds good. Thank you.

Of course. What else do you need?

Is there someplace it'd be better for me to stay? Since hiding doesn't work.

Would you like a house?

Um.

Is that normal here?

Most people live in houses, yes. Not all of them. Some people like platforms in trees, or boats.

Okay. I guess.

If you want something else that is okay.

If I ask for something I want then you know what to take away later. A house is fine. Staying here is fine too.

When the house is ready I'll send you a map of how to get there.

Thank you.

They do that. It has a basement where it's properly dark, in case that's something she misses from wherever she's from. It has whole rooms full of food. It has a door you can bar from the inside. It takes a while, but their conversations proceed very slowly. After a while she sends a map.

The house is absurdly nice - a bed, how long has it been since she slept in an actual bed, and chairs and a table and everything, and the food, and the lock, wow, a lock, it's even the kind you can't even pick from the outside - and she's going to miss it when this inevitably blows up in her face, she can already tell. She bars the door and closes all the curtains and makes herself a nest in the basement and gets the best night's sleep she's had in months.

There's a mail slot, through which they put a note saying if you like, you could make a list of twenty things, some you want and some you don't, and I could get you all of them and wouldn't really know which ones you wanted.

It isn't that much harder to take twenty things away than to take one thing away.

But thank you for trying.

...she's not actually sure what to do with the note. She ends up sitting by the window watching for someone to come looking for it.

They walk by and check her doorstep and then keep going.

...all right. Back out the mail slot it goes, then, she'd assumed wind would be a problem.

Doesn't seem to be. 

She gets occasional progress updates on the portals. The Valar want to put it far from the city just in case there are problems. They are going to only allow certain people through, at first.

That sounds like a good idea on all counts.

After a while she asks for drawing paper and colored pencils.

They get put in a package on her doorstep.

And she starts including drawings with her notes to Rúmil sometimes - detailed geometric or abstract doodles in two or three colors, mostly, but the occasional remembered scene from New York City, too, row houses and the sunrise over the ocean and the statue of liberty at night, buildings she favored, the entrances to a few hiding spots with particularly picturesque ones, none of it labeled or described.

The notes will compliment her artistry, and sometimes ask questions.

That's the city I lived in after I escaped, she explains. New York. It's the biggest city in the country and maybe in the world. I liked it there but I was afraid it would get too cold in the winter, so I went to a different city that wouldn't get so cold and that's where the trap got me.

Tirion doesn't get cold any time of year. Some places north of here do.

That's good.

The sky there changes more than here, that's why some of the drawings are dark and some are in the light. The yellow thing in the sky in some of the pictures is the sun, that's where the light comes from, and the ones where the sky is colors are sunrises and sunsets, where it's just coming up on one side of the sky or going down on the other.

That's very interesting. We don't have a sun here. 

Yeah, it's really different here. There's probably stuff I haven't noticed yet, too, I'm not great at that. You'll see when the portal's ready, I guess.

We'll tell you all about it.

Would you like to meet anyone in person sometime?

I could.

It has been getting pretty obvious that she's lonely.

Okay. Me?

Sure.

I don't know your language at all.

My people can talk mind-to-mind, or if that scares you too much we can keep passing notes.

We can try it, I guess.

Okay. When would be convenient for you?

Soon? I don't have anything planned.

Okay. I'll come by the next time I'd normally bring a note, if that's okay.

Sure, that's okay.

She only panics a little bit, and then she tidies up - not that she has enough things for it to get untidy, and not that she's left them out of place, but she checks on them all - and sleeps, fitfully, and when the time approaches she unbars the door and sits by the window.

And she knocks on the door.

Deep breaths. She can do this. It's Rúmil, she likes Rúmil. Rúmil's not going to hurt her, probably. Rúmil's not staff, Rúmil's Rúmil.

She opens the door; her eyes flash up to the Elf's face for just a moment - not eye contact, but close - before she averts them and steps aside to let her in.

She walks in. She sits near the door. She has a note; she hands it to her. It says hi.

She bolts the door again before sitting down, eyes still averted. She takes the note and reads it. "Hi," she echoes back, before taking a sheet of paper from the pile she set on the table to be ready for them and writing hi in return.

Do you want to try the mind-speech or would you rather talk like this?

It might be uncomfortable for you, I don't know how much you'd hear.

I can be selective. Whatever works for you.

Okay. She tucks her hair behind her ear nervously as she passes the paper over.

Instead of writing, she sends her Can you hear me?

She tenses, but nods.

Do you want to talk this way?

Okay.

This is how we found you earlier, you'd be shouting thoughts by accident.

Well, crap. Her head snaps up and she examines Rúmil's face for signs of anger.

She doesn't look even the slightest bit angry, just sad and worried. No one will ever blame you for being in pain.

This doesn't seem to be particularly reassuring, but she does manage to go from panicky to merely stiff.

Okay.

I don't know how to stop.

If you would like to know I can teach you.

aaaaaAAAAAAAAAAaaa.

Okay she can play along or she can not do that and one of those options hurts much more than the other, not really a choice.

How?

I don't understand what I did to upset you. Should I leave? We can do this later.

She takes a deep breath, raggedly.

What do you mean, 'teach me'. What do you mean, 'if I want'.

I mean that if you want me to try explaining it, you say 'yes' and I try explaining it. If you don't want me to do that, you say 'no' and I don't try. 

And then what. There's a bit of an edge to her tone.

We talk about something else, or if you would like me to leave I leave.

She stands and starts pacing along the far wall from Rúmil, tense, balancing on the balls of her feet.

This is how it starts, this is always how it starts, they say it's going to be teaching something and it's - they don't explain it, or they explain it so nobody could understand, or they want us to do something impossible, and then when we can't, that's when the hurting starts...

Nod. I'm very sorry. I'll leave.

If you need me to learn the thing I can try to learn the thing but you can hurt me or you can have me trust you you can't have both.

I don't need you to learn it, I don't need you to trust me, and I won't hurt you. And I know what it's like to see the setup for it to start again and I will leave now.

Pace pace pace. Okay. On the next pass she turns the corner and unlatches the door, then cuts across the room, giving Rúmil a not-quite-comfortable berth, and goes into the adjacent one, without stopping at all.

She leaves.

She locks the door. She paces. After a while she flops on the bed and curls up in a ball and bites her hand so she can't scream.

No letters arrive for a day. Then one says I hope you're feeling better.

I'm sorry.

If you want to send me back it's okay. I'll go.

I don't want that, and even if I did it wouldn't matter what I want, just what you want.

I don't want to hurt anyone.

You didn't.

The top half of the next note is a drawing, of some sort of... compound; long halls lined with rooms, arranged in squares. Most of the rooms are labeled with names and numbers, one or two pairs on each, girls' names on some halls and boys' on others, with none of the numbers smaller than four or larger than seventeen. Other rooms are labeled 'nurse's station' or 'drug room' or 'cafeteria' or 'group room' or similar things. One of the rooms is marked with a blue star and labeled 'me' and 'Emily (10)'; there's a line leading from it, through two doors labeled with four-digit numbers and one just labeled 'push', to the outside of the building.

This is how I escaped, it says underneath.

I used to have a superpower, but it stopped working when I came here.

That's more organized than the place where I was. It wasn't hard to get a little bit away, except when they had you chained down, but it was impossible to get very far and they'd punish you for trying.

Yeah, same.

I don't know what they would have done if they'd known about my power but I know they would have stopped me.

I'm glad they couldn't.

New York was nice.

I wanted to go back and try to get the other kids out, once I'd figured out how to take care of everybody well enough. And there's a picture of a room, with institutional white-painted cinderblock walls, a simple metal-framed bed and chair, and a plain white dresser with a whiteboard and calendar hung over it.

Maybe we can do that now.

I hope so. I don't think I can by myself without my power.

It might go back if you go back into your world.

It might be better if it doesn't. It hurts a lot when it stops working.

Okay, that's good to know. We could ask the Valar if they can do anything to make it come back, too.

Maybe.

It would help

I'll ask if they can do it.

Thank you.

And a while later - 

they're not sure, but they think maybe.

Okay.

If they think it might hurt me if they try and it doesn't work, I'd rather they not try.

I'll ask how sure they are they could reverse whatever they'd do.

Okay. And she draws her a map of the United States - a rough sketch, really - and tells her a little bit about its geography, and where New York is and where the portal will be if it's near where she was transported from.

Thanks. Everyone's very excited about contact with another world.

Valar are pretty sure they could reverse what they did if it made you worse.

If it's very bad I probably won't be able to tell you.

We can hear your thoughts, remember.

Okay.

She spends the next few days mostly hanging out in the basement, where if something strange happens to her senses she'll at least be less overwhelmed.

And after a while - something strange does in fact happen to her senses!

Well.

It doesn't hurt, so that's good. She sits down and tries to make sense of it - it's definitely not her power back again, but it's... something. She heads back upstairs and peers out the window and tries to work out how what she's seeing relates to what she's hearing.

Her range is nothing like it was before, but still improved; she can clearly hear things about a mile away. What she's hearing makes less sense, though; her old power filtered out everything but what she was interested in, and this seems not to; she doesn't even have an idea of what many of the sounds are.

They did it, she writes. It's okay.

Oh, good.

Yeah. Thank you.

Do you know when they're planning on doing the portal?

Before the Year's out, but probably not immediately.

Okay.

If they can do electricity, I have a tablet with some things on it that might be useful, but the battery's dead.

What's that?

It's a kind of small computer. It has some things on it from the internet - maps and books and things. But it needs power from the battery to work. I can find someplace to recharge it once the portal is made, but if we can get it charged before that it'll help.

I'll ask. 

She takes the battery out of the tablet and leaves it on the table, in case that helps.

I have a text to speech app, too, so you can learn to speak English. If you want.

I'd like that.

Okay. If they can figure out how to recharge it I'll show you.

I don't

It doesn't look like they can figure that out.

Okay. I can charge it once we have the portal, anyway.

She spends a couple more days getting a feel for the neighborhood - what her neighbors are like, when it's busy, when it's quiet, what kinds of things happen when, and then during one of the quiet times she heads out for a walk, just nearby.

It's a pretty quiet neighborhood! And exceptionally pretty, if she's calm enough to appreciate that.

She's listening to it much more than looking at it, and doesn't really notice - the singing and wind chimes and things are pretty, but she can hear those just as well from her house, now.

Nothing happens. It's not just that nothing happens were she can see it - nothing happens at all.

She goes back in after ten minutes, but a few days later she's out again.

Nothing happens this time either. People go peaceably about their lives.

She doesn't go much farther, this trip, but over the next few weeks she extends her range, little by little.

It's really weird, letting people see me and not having anything bad happen, she writes one day.

Nothing bad's going to happen here. Really. It's safe.

The next note contains a particularly intricate geometric doodle, and then underneath, I've never had that before. I don't know what to do with it.

I know the feeling.

Yeah.

What did you do?

Spent a long time waiting for things to go wrong again. They didn't, so I just - kept going. Let myself assume that the next day wouldn't be the day that changed.

New York was better, but it still wasn't safe. I know what to do with being free, a little bit. I don't know what to do with not having to worry about how I'm going to stay that way.

You have time.

Yeah.

Her sketches start including scenes from Tirion - no people, but the occasional fountain or bit of inspiring stonework or place where the light hits some stained glass just so.

That's probably a good sign. When she is likely to be running low on the food in her basement they leave instructions about where she can find it.

It takes her several trips to haul it all back. When she's done she writes a note thanking them for it.

She continues exploring the city, little bits at a time. She's curious about the palace, but she's still avoiding crowds, so she never gets very close to it. Mapping the places she has explored gives her a pretty good idea of where it might be, though.

The city has a pretty clear center, the streets spiraling out from there.

Yup. Maybe someday she'll go see it, but for now she sticks to the quieter back streets. There's still plenty to see.

Like this one artist's paintings - big abstract things with swoops of color that she could - and occasionally does, from a bench across the street - stare at for hours.

Someone asked me if you'd like his paintings.

I like what he does with colors.

Yes. Please.

And paintings are delivered to her doorstep.

This is slightly overwhelming and she hides in the basement for a couple days after bringing them in.

They don't bother her.

And eventually she goes back up and figures out how to hang them.

There's plenty of space in her house.

There is! It's pretty amazing.

She hangs out at home a little more often, but continues exploring.

Eventually people smile at her instead of just quietly avoiding her.

It takes a while for her to notice; she only rarely actually looks at people. She's startled, the first time she does; she knows there's not someone behind her that the smile could really be directed at, but her first thought is still that there must be some mistake.

They continue smiling at her occasionally.

It takes a while - not as long as it could; after the third or fourth time she notices, she starts paying more attention - but she gets used to it. And eventually, she even starts smiling back sometimes.

Oh, good. The Valar continue to consider at Vala-pace the portal.

She asks Rúmil about it, occasionally, and slowly starts acclimating herself to more crowded places. There seems to be a threshold she can't cross without closing her eyes and relying entirely on her hearing, or she quickly gets too overloaded to function, but that's okay.

No one bothers her about it, in any event.

Which is good.

It starts to get obvious, after a while, that she's growing up faster than an Elf of her apparent age.

They don't actually notice until it's been a little more than a Year, and even then they can write it off for a while.

She eventually notices she's outgrowing her clothes, and tells Rúmil she's going to need more; she includes sketches of some things she's seen that she thinks would suit her. (But I don't know how easy those are to put on, she writes, and that's more important.)

They can probably be made easy to put on.

Thanks.

Clothes arrive! All the patterns she asked for plus some.

She's getting better at this whole 'new things' thing and merely stuffs the package into her closet, unopened, for a couple of days.

Gosh, such clothes.

She looks like a proper Elf now!

The Valar finally settle on protections for the portal and open it.

The portal lets out on an orange farm; there's a highway off in the distance in one direction, and a house a ways off in another, but no people nearby at the moment.

They head cautiously out towards the house.

It's a modest two-story structure, slightly run down by human standards, with a porch in front and a decorative bush encroaching on the stoop in the back. It's not particularly soundpoof, and they can hear people talking inside.

They stop once in osanwe range. What are the people thinking about? Are they speaking English?

They are speaking English! They're planning a trip into town to buy food and things, and they're concerned about spending their money efficiently while still getting the things they want.

Well, that seems non-threatening enough. They head in closer.

The family remains oblivious; they decide on what bread mix-ins they want and start discussing ice cream flavors.

It's fascinating to actually hear English spoken! They practice with it.

The family continues to discuss their shopping plans. One of the kids wants to see a movie while they're in town; they talk it over and decide to get a couple DVDs instead.

The Elves keep trying English! 

Eventually they're done. They're going to actually make the trip tomorrow; for now they disperse to do various chores.

Thats good, gives them more time to practice. They practice.

After the chores they have dinner, and after dinner there's a difficult-to-follow discussion of what video game they want to play together, and then they settle in to play the chosen racing game.

The sun starts to set shortly after they pick the game out.

The Elves like sunsets!!! Sunsets are amazing!!!

...are they going to sing about it?

Yes! Out of earshot of the humans, though, they know how human hearing works.

They can sing about the sunset without attracting any unwanted attention, then.

The humans are still playing the racing game when they're done, but the parents shoo the kids off to bed shortly afterward.

Stars are also pretty! They'll sing about those too!

It rains, briefly, in the wee hours of the morning, but aside from that they can watch the stars all night.

Rain is great too! 

...Elves are maybe not quite serious enough for interworld exploration.

At least they're enjoying themselves.

A few hours after the rain ends, one of the adults wakes up and starts making breakfast; the sun starts to rise while they're working, and the sky is still colorful when the rest of the family arrives to eat.

Sunrises!!!

Earth might not have much going for it, but, y'know it does get both a sunrise and a sunset every single day?

Earth seems great so far! They approach the farmhouse to say hello.

The humans are confused and slightly alarmed at the interruption, apparently that doesn't happen very often at all here. The man answers the door; he's got dark skin and dark curly hair and is wearing clothes similar to the ones they've seen before, but slightly better constructed and definitely better fitting. "...can I help you?"

"Possibly! We just arrived here from another world, who should we talk to?"

He blinks at them. "The governor? Or the protectorate, I guess. We're headed into town after breakfast if you want a ride that far."

"Sure, thank you."

"Come on in, then. We're having pancakes." And he stands aside to let them in.

...okay! They'll have pancakes!

With blueberries or chocolate chips or both, if they want them, and gluten-free mix on offer if they need it (though she's not very clear on what exactly 'gluten free' is, just that it's somehow healthier), and sausage, and there's a few eggs left if they'd like.

They'll try everything! They will be effusive with compliments!

The humans relax considerably and make small talk while they eat. The man introduces himself as Sam, his wife as Shaney, and the kids as Chrissy and Oliver, and when they're done eating he brings the pickup truck around.

"We can probably squeeze all three of you in the cab if you don't mind being on top of one another, or you can sit in back if you want - I'm a pretty smooth driver."

"Sure, that works!!"

So they all get in the truck and off they go; it doesn't take long to get to the highway, and the traffic isn't too bad once they do.

Traffic is weird! Cars are weird! The Elves are delighted.

And giant shipping trucks! And toll booths! So many things.

The trip takes about an hour and a half, and then they turn off the highway and into a midsized town, and after another few minutes the truck parks in front of a building that's slightly nicer than the rest. Sam gets out and comes around to talk to the Elves: "This's town hall, they'll either be the ones you want to talk to or be able to tell you where to go. Do you want me to go in with you?"

"Sure, that might be helpful."

He sends Shaney and the kids off to get started with the shopping and leads them inside.

The clerk at the reception desk is a little weirded out by the Elves, but polite regardless. He asks what they'd like to talk to someone about.

"Does this world need any help? Our world can help, maybe!"

He only hesitates slightly. "Okay. What kind of help?"

"We don't like prisons and institutions, and would like to take all the people you're keeping in them and take them somewhere nicer! What other kinds of help might be needed?"

The clerk balks, looks from them to their guide and back, and then says, "Let me see who'll want to talk to you about that. You can wait down the hall." He points.

When they get to the waiting room Sam glances around to check for cameras and then speaks quietly. "I wish you'd told me - I don't want to get into this politics stuff, I have a family, but I can find you someone better to talk to than this."

"It's political?"

"...yeah? Of course it is. We shouldn't talk about it here, though. Let's go get Shaney and the kids and I'll tell you about it back home."

"It's so political you shouldn't talk about it? We're from a different world, how would we have any idea what's considered political here? Should we just empty all the prisons and institutions by magic, we can do that and it sounds easier than dealing with politics."

"Alright. Look. Somebody's going to be coming in to talk to you any time now, if they hear us talking about this they're goona try and find an excuse to arrest me. And you can't trust them, not about that. And I don't know what'll happen if you just magic everybody out, but I don't think it's that easy and you definitely need to ask somebody who does know."

"They'd arrest you for - that's way more horrifying than we anticipated, what the - okay -"

"Yeah. We're trying to get them to stop but it's slow going." And he leads them back outside and up the street to a strip mall.

It's ugly. They are kind of uncomfortable.

He notices and suggests that they can stay with the truck if they want.

Doesn't especially help. If people get arrested for disapproving of people being locked in cages then that sort of changes their mission here from 'be helpful' to 'dismantle the government', see.

...they really need to not talk about that here. They should wait by the truck and he'll be back in a minute.

He's back in a minute, alarmed wife and unhappy children in tow.

They won't bother any of them any further! Clearly they can't do this with any local allies. That's okay.

Uh. No, they should definitely work with the people who're already working on this, they'll more than likely mess everything up if they don't. It's all right, they're probably not in any danger yet - it's not like he gave the clerk his name or anything.

...okay, who should they talk to.

That's one of the things he's going to work out once they get back home.

Do they want to come to Valinor instead of going home. In Valinor they definitely won't get locked up for anything.

...

He would need to know more about it to make that call, and it's also much safer to talk about it at home than in this parking lot.

What sorts of dangers are there?

...well, for one, the longer they stay around the more likely someone is to get his license plate number - he gestures indicatively - and look up who he is and where he lives...

Because you can get thrown in a cage for discussing whether people should be thrown in cages. Yes, okay, let's go to the house.