"Maybe everything's better here. But we have sunsets and music and babies and ice cream."

Nod. "And people. We don't think the people are terrible or anything."

"Thank you."

"Of course!" And she explains how to reach her if Peka needs her.

"Thanks!"

And she slings her baby to her chest and goes out shopping.

People mostly don't have very good Tapap but they are super excited to have the chance to try it out on her!! Several places will give her free things if she'll take a picture with the things for them to post online as advertising! Some woman taps her on the shoulder as she's leaving to tell her that she's selling herself short and should demand more free stuff, or some money, for the advertising. The man behind her in line has a baby the same age and has questions about Katin! 

Everything is outrageously distractingly pretty.

The monthly allowance for living in Valinor is a lot of money! The woman who gave her the bracelet advised her that if she wanted an apartment in the city half of it would go to rent - "but you can get a place for a tenth of this if you want to live four train stops out, it's only twenty minutes to the palace anyway -"

The idea of a business actively wanting to be associated with her is so exciting. She super wants to do all of that and will beam at the cameras. She will answer questions about Katin! She will look at pretty things!

Yavanna makes the Tapai so much food. Then she makes all of their farmland higher quality and makes all of their plants edible. She does this in a glittering gold and silver spray of light that perks up every plant in the country, including flowers wilting in vases.

She'd like them to withdraw from the neighboring country now, do they mind?

They run some numbers on how sustainably they can maintain food security with the improved farms and start backing out of Imde province.

Elves appreciate it tremendously. 

(Elves send envoys to all the rest of the countries; these two are the largest, but there's no shortage. They are offering advanced technology and medicine and divine assistance with specific individual problems, and they would like an end to baby murder for population control reasons and forced abortions and executions and employment arrangements the employee will be arrested for leaving and how do people feel about robots instead of reds.)

Most people are positive on robots instead of reds. One country's theologians has convinced them that sufficiently careful rotation of traditionally red occupations could be performed by other castes without long-term pollution of the person or their descent at all, as long as no one is doing too much of it and they make very sure to bathe; the Elves can take those reds whenever, they've already driven them out of this pilot program city.

- good for the theologians, where are those reds now -

Some of them have fetched up in other locations' red districts, some of them are camping out in an abandoned mine town slowly starving, a few of them died on the forced march out, some of them stole a boat and made it all the way to another country where they were shot...

He is so unsurprised. He resents being so unsurprised. 

They land a ship in the abandoned mine town and bring food.

The reds there appreciate that. They're very obsequious about it.

He endeavors not to look murderously angry; they will probably assume it's at them. "Would you all like to get on this ship, we can take you somewhere with enough food that agreed to take in reds -"

- Círdan's actual letter had said 'anyone is welcome here but are you sure they don't need Lórien, after all that?' but Maitimo is pretty sure they don't need Lórien -

They are nervous about that idea. Where is this place. What is it like. They were sort of planning on attempting subsistence farming.

"Another planet. It's nice and peaceful. We're not going to force you, but I think you'll do better there, if it's a bad crop season they won't let you starve."

Maybe some of them could go and check it out and come back.

Sure, sounds good, who wants to go?

Some old people and somebody with a health problem that reacts really badly to short rations and a smattering of others.

He welcomes them aboard the ship and apologizes for it being so small and wishes them a safe journey; he'll stay here negotiating with a few neighboring countries.

........small? What's he smoking?

Neighboring countries: er, how are they supposed to enforce employment agreements? This one doesn't do executions, it just shuns people, which usually incidentally means they can't buy anything or go anywhere they don't walk and sure sometimes this kills them but it's not an execution. How are they supposed to do population control if at no stage of the process can they do anything about somebody deciding not to have their contributions to the population controlled?

Most places get by fine just only paying people for the work they do, no arresting them involved. People are still pretty motivated to work in order to get paid, see. Shunned people should know the Elves will pick them up. They can make people infertile until purchasing a credit, if they'd like, and again after birth, the idea is just not to kill any already existing babies. The Elves will take babies too if they're otherwise going to be killed but aaaaah.

Some things can't be abandoned midway through even if people suddenly decide that they don't care that much about their next paycheck!

Surprisingly few shunned people want to go with the Elves. They hear they're taking reds. They're not sure they're cleaning the ships sufficiently thoroughly afterwards. They get two murderers (yellow, purple) and a rapist (purple) and an embezzler (orange) and a deserter (grey).

One country is willing to give Elves babies they would otherwise kill for population control, but only if they won't take the parents with them.