"I was planning on hunting squirrels when it turned out this world has terrible leaves. I guess if you imprison the animals or something then that wouldn't be okay but why would you do that."

"...uh, so they don't get away?"

"Are you all really really really bad at hunting?"

"I've never gone hunting in my life."

"Do you keep the animals in, like, pastures, or little tiny cages."

"I've never been to a farm? I think it depends."

"- maybe I will be on the safe side and not eat any animals here unless I catch them myself."

"...okay, uh, fries and... a... milkshake?"

"From cows in tiny cow prisons?"

"Fries and a salad?"

"I am sure you've done something appalling to carrots but I can't actually think what it might be and I can't fix it if I starve to death. That's fine."

"Okay."

They arrive at McDonald's. Dylan gets Fëanáro fries and a salad and a Coke and gets himself chicken nuggets and a milkshake.

The food is weird but he's really really hungry. He eats it. While he does he explains. "I was born in Tirion, which is the largest city of the Noldor, one of the three Elven nations in Valinor. I've been there for thirty-eight of our years which I think are at least four and possibly as much as twelve times longer than yours - I think humans grow up faster or something. I was bringing some materials in for the forge I work at when suddenly I was here instead - and you had writing, so I was really excited. I don't actually have any powers. All Elves can do the things I do and the Ainur can do more than that."

"Powers are defined relative to human baseline," Dylan says.

"Okay, but also there's a whole set of expectations about capes - that they triggered, that they'll find being a hero or rogue or villain appealing, that their powers are - coherent, a suite of related abilities - and none of those apply and that's kind of important."

"You're still more like a weird cape than anything else we have words for."

"Elf is a word. And eventually it's likely that my people will find me. Not guaranteed, though, it might be even the Valar can't do interdimensional travel. Anyway, do you want to learn Quenya -'

"Yeah I was going to do fieldwork in Senegal but my funding dried up so I'm doing this."

"I can send meanings while I talk, it goes faster," he says, doing that.

"- cool. Uh, you were impressed we had writing, does that mean no alphabet - I can just transcribe in IPA I guess -"

"I was working on inventing one but there's not a proper one yet, no. We're really new as a species - humans've thousands of years of recorded history -"

"Okay, IPA -" He has a little notebook, writes downs the sounds he's sure of and asks about the ones that seem ambiguous.

IPA is such a good idea! He can explain how he was planning to do his alphabet - a character for a sound, which modifiers for whether it's voiced and for the point of articulation -

"That's very systematic - the Roman alphabet we use wasn't invented all at once, it's descended from others -"

"Yeah all your languages are so old it's amazing but Elves're very systematic and they'll be easier to convince to adopt it if there's a logic to it - plus it's just nice -"