She's on her way home from Taniquetil, sitting on the train reading a logic paper, singing idly along with the tune a kid three rows down started up, when there's suddenly a creature in her train car and it lunges at her.
She and her bench and her newsreader are abruptly all elsewhere.
At least she and Rúmil waited on children?
"...okay, I guess that makes sense, you have two, you'd name them different things. We only have one, so it's just 'the sun'. ...we have a moon, does Valinor have a moon? It comes up at night, usually."
"Has, again, it has a moon. Okay. Our moon doesn't have a name either. I guess we just don't name things as much as you do? ...What species are you, what species live on Valinor?"
"Valinor has one species, Quendi. Endorë is a world, Endorë has Quendi, orcs, Dwarves."
"We haven't named our sun, we haven't named our moon, we haven't named our world... wow, we're really behind. But, wait - if the thing that brought you here isn't something you've ever seen before - how do you know about Endorë? Have you been there? How would you get there?"
"Oromë is... uh," hand-wiggle, uncertainty, "Valar a species, Oromë a Vala. Oromë find Quendi in Endorë."
"Valar are... maybe a species but you're not sure?" he guesses. "And they can go between worlds and take people along?"
"Valar can go between worlds and take people along! Valar are... not maybe a species, if I get 'maybe', they..." She spreads her hands, she doesn't have words. "Oh, and Maiar, like Valar, but -" Hand gestures to suggest that Maiar are small Valar.
"You should tell all this to Stalas next time we see him, I'm sure he'll make better sense of it than I am," Tev predicts.
And then a thought occurs to him.
"Uh. ...In Valinor, nobody shoots at anybody - people don't shoot at people? Ever?"
...she has no way to explain special effects, so she hesitates thoughtfully but then says "People don't shoot at people."
"Are there... other dangerous things? Dragons? Things more dangerous than dragons?"
"...uh." More gestures to indicate that bigger than Valar is "Eru, on Araman, but - he was dangerous thing but then not dangerous thing." Pause. "I think." She looks around her in annoyance. "And a dangerous Vala named Melkor, and dangerous Maiar, but Valar - eight and six not-dangerous Valar - not-dangerous Melkor and Melkor-Maiar."
"...eight and six is, uh, fourteen - eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen - is Eru a god, is that what Valar are that's not quite a species - they made Melkor not dangerous? Melkor was dangerous and now isn't dangerous because of something the other Valar did? —'not dangerous' is 'safe'..."
"Yes, Melkor was dangerous, the other Valar something did and now Valinor is safe and Endorë is safe."
"Thedas is. Not safe," he says. "...'did something', is how you would say that, the other Valar did something - Thedas has dangerous things, we're trying to make Thedas safe, but - could the Valar just, bring everyone from Thedas to Valinor - the elves and dwarves and humans and golems and qunari, all of us—? Some - I guess some of the people might still be dangerous. The people in Haven are a little dangerous. But darkspawn are more dangerous, people should get to live somewhere with no darkspawn, even if they're dangerous people."
"Numbers...? One two three four five six seven eight nine ten, eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty...?"
"Twelve twelves...? Uh - ten tens is a hundred, twelve twelves is..." he puzzles over it for a second or two, counting on his fingers, and then says, "...a hundred and forty-four? Four tens is forty. A hundred and forty-four of what?"
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