"How are you lost -"

"I am very confused about that part. What seems from my perspective to have happened is that I was out for a walk and was eaten by a bizarre monster," looked like this, "whereupon I was a few days' hike that way," point, "near a town full of a species I'd never previously heard of. It is entirely reasonable that you'd find this a ridiculous story."

"Where were you when you were, ah, eaten by the bizarre monster -"

"Not far from Taniquetil but I currently suspect some combination of alternate universes and time travel so you should possibly not make all inferences you'd normally make from that."

"- okay. What, uh, leads you to expect some combination of alternate universes and time travel -"

"I hadn't heard of Men and would, if they existed, have expected to. The year at home is 1512 as counted in Valian Years from the Elves' arrival in Valinor. Orcs are the peaceful neighbors of Endorë Elves and Dwarves and have tourism bureaus so nobody has a reason to wander around carrying bows and arrows - hunting isn't even very popular anymore -"

They glance at each other.

"Men would have been very new that long ago," someone says tentatively, "and word of them might easily not have reached Valinor yet. But I don't think orcs ever had, uh - the word's not familiar but what I'm getting of the concept -"

"There is routine word between Valinor and Endorë. Ulmo is usually over there in case the people of Endorë need anything and he's in constant communication with the other Valar. I talk to the Valar all the time as my day job. If Men had existed for a week I would have expected to have heard about it."

"That," the same person says, "is not the case and never was."

"You can see why I would have jumped to 'alternate universes' in addition to 'time travel'."

"All right. 

There's a war on at present."

"That seems on par with the apparent general quality of this alternate universe. What's it about?"

"Ah, Sauron is close to conquering the southern kingdoms of Men and presumably means to come north after that - no one else has anywhere near the strength to field an army -"

Deep unimpressed sigh. "- Is the way the Men were living solely reflective of them being in a terrible hurry because they're going to die for no reason in a few Years or does it have anything to do with the local technology level."

" - there aren't things known to us which haven't been taught to Men but I don't really know how they live, we don't leave the protected areas."

"It's - I don't want to say that in my world they would not be allowed to live in those conditions if for some reason they reflectively preferred it, but certainly they would have been asked first and would not consider an Elf showing up and looking at a map and singing them a song a story for their grandchildren."

"If we go out in numbers smaller than a hundred word gets to the orcs and they come raiding. If we go out in numbers greater than a hundred then maybe it's all right unless word gets to a really substantial number of orcs and then they come for a proper war."

Sigh. "Was Melkor never caught in the first place -"

"You should perhaps speak to the Queen, she was born in peacetime and remembers it and could tell you how it happened - but they caught him and then they paroled him and then he escaped -"

"...ugh."

"He's captured again now, and won't get a second parole."

"But they just left Sauron running around."

"The war with Melkor took fifty years - our years, but still - and the continent crumbled and then the aftermath was separately a disaster and they concluded they shouldn't interfere directly in our affairs so they sent some Maiar to do it for them but I think the Maiar are perhaps inadequate to the task."

Sigh. "Which Maiar, where are they -"

"Uh, Mithrandir wanders, he might be in Imladris presently, they're holding a council of war with Men and Dwarves and Elves to decide what to do - Saruman is at Orthanc -" 

       "Mithrandir is Olórin in the Quenya," someone else interrupts, "And Saruman is Curumo - and the others are Aiwendil and Alatar and Pallando but their locations are not known, and haven't been for some centuries - Aiwendil surfaces occasionally -"