"Well, I'd be upset on your behalf but it's hard to know if that counts."

"Why're you upset -"

"The kids'll miss me."

"Whereas Rúmil and I were waiting for faster than light travel."

"Well, now you've got it."

"We'll keep trying to figure out how to reach Ardas."

"Is our Eru different or did she just, like... wander off?"

"I don't know. There are some prophecies about the end of the world? Maybe she wandered off, maybe she's waiting for that, maybe she matured somewhat and contents herself hovering in the neonatal intensive care unit drinking tears, or something."

"If you have to have an evil god it really shouldn't be an omnipotent one."

"Well, he used to delegate it more."

"The world Annie and I are from now isn't very Eru-flavored. It has bad things but they have obvious not-divine causes and nothing gets in the way of improving them."

"I'm glad to hear that as far as it goes."

"I'm curious whether it's Eru-flavored compared to other no-magic societies of its tech level - ours, or Cam's Earth, or any place Anaander knows of -"

"Annie, what year is it?"

"2005."

"Has it got, like, Earth stuff - World War II, Diet Coke, penguins, denim, Paraguay, Buddhism, hamburgers, the Pacific Ocean, one moon with good eclipses, the United Nations, malaria, bad airplane food, Ferris wheels, Chinese Communism, Nobel Prizes, rubber ducks, Wikipedia, feral pigeons..."

"Yes. The continents match my original also for some reason, or are close enough that they seem familiar if I'm near a relief globe."

"- are the languages familiar - I guess you wouldn't be able to tell -"

"Norwegian is structually similar to what I grew up speaking and is from the right place but they aren't mutually intelligible. I don't remember enough samples of languages from elsewhere on my original to have tried to make more matches, it was a long time ago."

"Huh."

"When I encountered the globe I realized I'd never been near a relief map of Arda and thought maybe every planet would have them the same for some reason but now I don't know."

"Our continent is not plural."

"We've got several -" He waves for someone to get a map. 

"Neither the space Valinor nor the space Endorë resembles my world or Earth," she reports.

"Now I wonder if the cities are alike at all - here's Tirion seen from a helicopter, Rirosseth -"