"Thirty thousand years. Give or take. I can figure it out more precisely if it's important -"

"It's not." He shakes his head slightly at Mirelótë.

"I'm sorry."

"Maitimo, any revisions? - you might also want to pick a nickname, we're expecting more of you."

"No revisions." He repeats it as she said it. "What might distinguish me from the other ones you are expecting, or should I pick at random -"

"Of the three you're the only magic Elf; mine and Cam's are both chip Elves instead."

"...chip...Elves?"

"Instead of Ainu-style osanwë and such we have metal things serving for us as magic souls do for you."

He glances around as if hoping more context for this might be on one of the walls. Bows his head again. "I guess you could do 'Magic'."

"Well, she's magic, and so's Khemet, but it'll do as a stopgap when they show up if no one has a better idea."

"My legal name right now is Lisa Anderson."

"What's your world like right now?"

"Elves and humans mostly live separately, and have for at least twenty thousand years; humans do not remember Elves except in legend. The humans live in big hideous cities. They have machines that do computing. They've been to their moon."

"What have you been up to? How did you meet Annie?"

"Annie dropped on me in a magical accident. I died shortly after that. She lived in Valinor and did healing and eventually died, I assume of old age. Mandos eventually decided to bring me back, almost thirty thousand years after I died. I spent a while becoming more functional. Then I got a human job."

"Okay. It's been impressed on us that being a Maitimo isn't a consistent character reference, in this case with respect to worrying about people who don't have months to practice getting mindread, but I think it could be important to figuring out what's happening that everyone be in one place. Do you have any suggestions?"

"Where am I?"

"Khemet has his own miniature world and brought us there, since I know private thoughts and the other three are fine with the risk."

"Okay. Are people conscious if they are turned to stone?"

" - no."

"Would you please -"

"What happened to you?"

"A lot of things."

"Utumno?"