"Really? Even though you've never been?" 

Sure. You'll have to show me what it looks like.

"Sure, I could do that. It would be so nice to see Starwind and Moondance again - oh, and Brightstar and Featherfire, they're probably walking by now..." 

Those are your friends' kids?

Vanyel turns bright red, all the way to his ears. "Um." 

...I can't think how it's therapeutically relevant, if there's somehow an embarrassing story you'd rather skip.

"Yfandes thinks I shouldn't be embarrassed about it and you aren't going to judge me. Which is true. They're my friends' kids but they're, er, technically my children by blood. It's complicated." 

- oh, huh.

I think you shouldn't tell any Elves you meet about that unless you want to have a really awkward conversation.

"Mmm. I don't want to have an awkward conversation, so I won't." He fidgets. "Um, for context, it's an accepted practice among the Tayledras. Starwind and Moondance are both men and I guess they weren't up for bedding a woman just to get kids out of it – I'm not sure why they thought I'd feel differently, but they do also like bringing new blood into the Vale, sometimes, and I could deal with it, to do them a favour. Anyway it'd be pretty awkward to bring up here in Valdemar, but it sounds like with the Elves it's something more than that?" 

Elves are pretty rigid about everything to do with sex and kids. I don't think I ever specifically pitched them on the concept of sperm donation but I think it'd really throw them. Nice Elves will be okay, or at least have heard of it before, if you tell them you like men. Even nice Elves will need to go through a couple paradigm shifts to cope with you having children by blood your friends are raising and this all having been on purpose and you not being in an ongoing relationship with their mom or anything.

"Er, good to know."

But Yfandes is right that I'm not going to judge you, not being an Elf. I think you should go ahead and visit. Even if it's more than 300 miles away I have the new earcuff now, I'll be able to check in and even still get you to sleep at night if it's not in a much later time zone.

"Time zone?" Vanyel says blankly. 

Oh, uh, is this planet round? I guess I shouldn't assume, since Arda is flat. My home planet is round though.

"Oh, do you just mean the thing where sunset is later if you go further west? Hmm, I guess k'Treva is a good bit west of us. Maybe three hundred miles? I don't know how big a difference that ends up making, it's not like I remember the time of day when I went by Gate - I was extremely drugged. Anyway I'd be happy to go to bed earlier." Incredulous face. "What do you mean, Arda is flat? How does that even work?" 

Yeah, that thing, the sun gets there later so it also leaves later. Arda's flat and also doesn't have a sun. Valinor is lit by the Trees, all the time, one and then the other with an overlap and no period of darkness, and farther away it's night all the time, but Elves have good enough vision to get by with starlight.

"How do the stars work? In our world the theory at least is that they're like our sun, just really really far away. It's not like you can go and check though. Does Arda have an edge?" 

...well, Materian stars aren't like our sun just really far away, so the question didn't occur to me. It does have an edge but visits are prohibited because it's not very safe.

Vanyel snorts. "No wonder! What's on the other side of it?" 

Rocks. Nothing much interesting.

"Huh. I would've thought there'd be just nothing, at some point." He makes a face. "Sorry, digression. I'll tell Savil I'm having a bad time lately – I can see if it goes better if I say it's not about 'Lendel – and ask her to talk to Lancir about getting leave. And I'll go to k'Treva for a day or two and - if I still feel like I can't deal with any of this, then I'll figure something else out." 

"Good plan!"

"All right!" He gets up, looking a lot more cheerful. "Thank you, Bella." 

"Anytime."

And off to lunch with her.

Vanyel joins Savil for lunch instead, and conveys that he feels overwhelmed lately and wants to take some leave, and tells her about Bella's offer to teleport him to k'Treva for a day or two. Savil doesn't seem to find it at all odd that he wants her to ask Lancir for him; in fact, she offers spontaneously before he asks. She hugs him, and doesn't pry when he tells her that the thing bothering him isn't related to Tylendel, and agrees that she can cover his work for the afternoon. 

A couple of candlemarks later, Vanyel knocks on Bella's shields to pass on that Lancir signed off on him taking the next two days as leave, and that he can be ready to head to k'Treva that evening.