...the student jumps. But climbs the stairs and finds him. "Um. Hi."

"Hi!!! I approve wholeheartedly of the entire field of linguistics I've been reading about it and it's great! I have a bunch of vocabulary questions -" He has twenty books spread around him on the table.

"...we can start there if you don't want to go to McDonalds first, I was told you were hungry enough to eat leaves."

"- I mean, yes, but this is way more important."

"Okay. What are your vocabulary questions?"

He goes through them all! They are mostly linguistics-specific words he couldn't figure out from context but then there's also 'chimney', 'overdraft', and 'divorce'.

"...have you discovered dictionaries yet -"

"No - what's that -"

"Books of definitions."

"Oh good - okay, I'll get one of those -"

"Reference section. Uh, but a chimney is a hollow column leading up from a fireplace in a house to let smoke out, and an overdraft is when you try to withdraw more money than you have out of a bank account and they charge you a fee for the unexpected credit, and divorce is getting un-married."

"This place is weird. Okay. Did the incompetent government people explain why I asked for a linguist -"

"...they said you were a weird cape classification and showed up talking about being from another world and that if I fed you occasionally and explained that you shouldn't eat leaves and stuff you would teach me your language which supposedly isn't related to any, uh, Earth ones?"

"It's not related to any Indo-European ones and it's not related to any Polynesian or South Indian ones and it's not related to Mandarin or Cantonese or Japanese and I meant to get to Mongolic today but I should actually probably eat first, if that's possible. I don't expect it to be related to those either because I'm from another world."

"I can get you McDonald's."

"I don't know what that is but sure."

"It's a fast food place." He heads back to the stairwell.

He follows.

"I'm Dylan. People're calling you Library Elf."

"My name is Curufinwë Fëanáro."

"That's really long."

"Not especially. I usually just go by Fëanáro."

"That's not as bad." Out the library, down the street. "McDonalds has burgers and chicken nuggets and fries and stuff."

"I haven't heard of any of those, you can pick something."

"Long as you aren't a vegetarian or something."