"He'll stay up all night but then he'll be a grouch tomorrow," his parents say dubiously. "Hithui, kiddo, she'll be there in the morning, and you should let her sleep, okay? They had a long journey -"

"Mean place!"

"Yeah, a long journey from a very mean place. And we can help them -"

"Love them!"

His parents beam at each other.

Her mom starts crying again. The dad attempts to coax her away from Hithui without actually grabbing the Elf kid.

Hithui lets go, pouts. "Bye bye."

"We can see her again in the morning! We can come by first thing to help them cook!"

"Mean place -"

"Yeah." His mom scoops him up. "But they're safe now."

"They're going to get everybody," says his father. "Everybody who they're mean to, they'll let them come here and everything will be okay."

"There's a lot of us," says the dad, "we aren't even all the ones from one small country -"

"The refugee project description said that if resettling smaller groups works out okay then they're expecting to eventually resettle upwards of fifty million. Not all here, of course - Ossiriand and Averut said they'd take some, Erdegar said they'd take some, Doriath is dithering but Círdan said he'd have words with Elu -"

"All - like this -"

" - I think they're trying a mix of environments? Small communities and big cities and places that mostly produce their own food and places that don't, and places with different kinds of governments, see where you all fit in best - but all with people who think your old planet was terrible and that it doesn't make any sense to say people are inherently filthy, yeah."

They nod slowly. They go put their kid to bed.

In the morning Elves are there to help them cook if they'd like! Hithui brought as many of his toys as he could carry. More, actually; there is a trail of toys.

The parents tentatively accept cooking help. Is Nini allowed to play with the toys or is he just showing off?

"Yours," Hithui says. "Gib em."

"He means they're a present, he picked them out for her -"

Annnnnd Nini's mother's crying again. Maybe she just does that a lot. Nini whoops and flings the nearest toy and then chases after it with her arms flung in the air.

He giggles and chases after her. His parents explain which spices are tasty with oatmeal and then show them how their bracelets work - "they're supposed to substitute for our chips, since you haven't any chips -"

"That's really thoughtful," says Nini's dad.

"Chips're better - I don't know what you're supposed to do in an emergency if you don't have your bracelet, or if someone grabs at it - but it'll be Valinor that figures out how to do chips for you, if anyone does, we wouldn't even know where to start."

"We've managed without. The bracelets are lovely," says Nini's dad.

"I feel like there's lots more to explain but I don't know where to start - oh, we could describe how the council meeting goes -"

"- how does it go?" (Nini's mom has moved on from crying over the idea that somebody would give her daughter toys to crying over how cute they are playing together.)

"Everyone who's interested goes down to the music hall, and we usually all sing things together until it starts, and then people who want to speak go give their names to the organizers and they order it so it's a mix of opinions getting heard, and then you give your speech - there's a time limit, usually five minutes - and then people can ask you questions for another three - and then after a few hours someone can call for a vote and if nine people in twelve think we should vote we vote - a couple hours later the threshold is eight people in twelve, and after a day it's seven, and after three days it's six - and then however most people vote, that's what the rule is, with some exceptions that don't come up much."

"Why does the threshold change?"

"Well, if it were higher than half forever, then you could stall a rule that had more than half support just by never letting it come to a vote, and that wouldn't be democratic. But if it were half at the start, then lots of people might disagree and not get a chance to speak. So this way, everything gets at least a little discussion and things that are divisive get more discussion but you can never stop something from getting voted on that's going to win when it comes to a vote."

Nod nod.

Nini flings herself off a chair and her mother has to dive to catch her.

Hithui looks concerned. So do his parents. 

Nini is okay! To prove it she jumps again! This time her mother is ready.

Hithui looks at his parents inquiringly.

" - it seems like a bad habit, if you might do it when we're not there to catch you, or jump in places like the boats..."

"Okay."