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She is slower than the mirror-faced snake, and for some reason it is choosing to chase her, and she is not in dense enough forest to lose it by going up a tree or between a couple too narrowly spaced for it. So it catches her before emergency services can turn up.

And then she is somewhere else, in a not particularly attractive room next to a person who looks sort of off somehow.

"Excuse me," she says, taking a step out of his personal space.

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"Rúmil."

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"And yours, if it's different?"

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"...my name is not the same as his, isn't that a confusing practice? I'm Mirelotë Ambela."

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"People say Mr. Rúmil and Mrs. Rúmil, to distinguish them, but it doesn't work well if you've got several wives. That's all the questions. I'll take you back in, then."

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"Thank you."

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And they walk her back into the palace, up some flights of stairs. 

"You kneel for the pharaoh," an attendant tells her, "and wait for him to address you and give you permission to look at him or stand or speak."

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"All right."

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"This is the interplanetary visitor?"

       "The pharaoh wanted her. Your grace."

"I'm pretty sure he's occupied, I was just talking to him."

      "Then we'll wait for him, your grace."

"But I could talk to her while she waits. What's her name -"

      Sigh. "Mirelóte Ambela."

"Mirelóte Ambela," he says delightedly, with immense care for the words. "Did they pronounce that right, Mirelótë Ambela -"

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"They have accents. It's Mirelótë Ambela. I'm half surprised the translation effect didn't just translate my name."

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"It's a horrid spell and I hate it but it doesn't translate names and sometimes you can get anywhere with that. Mirelótë Ambela." This time his accent is correct. "Did you know, we didn't even know you could have a livable planet around two stars. Why do you look so much like we do? Species that were created independently on other planets usually don't."

        "The pharaoh's father, the Price Fe-Anar," says the attendant, bowing and looking less than delighted.

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"Don't they, are there many? I don't know, perhaps Eru took design inspiration from you or vice-versa from your inventor. I believe the planetary engineering was an enormous headache and the god of the sea in particular complained but was outvoted because the double sun arrangement is so pretty. What does your name mean, mine is 'jewel beyond'."

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"Star-souled. They managed two habitable planets in the system with two stars, or is Endorë elsewhere?"

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"Endorë's twenty-five light years away.

I have a friend named Fëanáro which means 'spirit of fire' and you are uncannily reminding me of the time I came home from my honeymoon and he wanted to know everything I had picked up about orc dialect speciation in case they had changed since he'd last got an update."

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"Yes, orcs have a lot of children very quickly, compared to Quendi languages it's really breakneck and everything I told him was probably out of date by the time I got there to tell it."

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" - but how long could that possibly have taken? If you've got two worlds you must have a gate between them?"

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"...no, it's twenty-five light years away and it took twenty five years."

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" - huh! Your species doesn't age? Or just very slowly?"

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"...don't what?"

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" - the gods on this plane got frustrated with how people'd get all upset when they died when their time was up, so they invented aging. Life gets steadily more unpleasant and the body steadily less good at functioning, until you die."

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"That's stupid. Where do they live?"

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" - lots of different places? The god who advises and guides this country is Abadar and he's in Aktun but he's not the one who did aging. I think that was mostly Pharasma."

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"Well, where does Pharasma live?"

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"The Boneyard. I don't actually know more specifically than that. You are not allowed to, uh, just go visit her."

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"I'm envisioning a multi-step process, so I suppose the first several steps can be arranging that in some way."

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