"Curufinwë Fëanáro."

Her nametag says Hollie Blake. "Right, ah, look, you can't just go around eating leaves and acting crazy and avoid the only people who might be able to help you just because they lock up criminals. Eating leaves isn't against the law as far as I know but it makes people uncomfortable and things can escalate from there."

"And when you are uncomfortable you torture people to death. I didn't even like Valinor very much but this library is the only thing nicer about Baltimore. I won't eat leaves. I'll get a job. I continue to not want to deal with any of your many locking-people-up organizations."

"I think you may need help to tell what things are like eating leaves and what things are normal, and this is especially important if you have powers."

"Do you want to recommend me a book that covers that?"

"There aren't any books that say things like 'don't eat leaves' and 'people don't die of being locked up' and such things because it's common knowledge. I think you need people to help you with that and the Protectorate is where you go if you're a cape and need people help."

"That's great for capes but I'm not a cape."

"You have powers," she says.

"I am a perfectly normal Elf. By your definition of powers maybe all Elves have powers but that's not a very constructive definition."

"The Protectorate is still the organization we have for dealing with people with powers."

"They might lock me up."

"Only if you hurt people."

"Or if they think I did or if they think I will or if they think I'm crazy. And I might do something that hurts people that I didn't know would hurt people - like if, I don't know, your toes are really sensitive and they will break if I accidentally step on them - and it is not really fair to torture me to death for that."

"I think you are likely to accidentally hurt people. Is that what you want?"

"No!"

"You have powers, today it was eating leaves but tomorrow it could be something else, you need help and you have powers and that means the Protectorate. Capes are usually kind of eccentric, they're not going to try to send you to a psychiatric hospital for thinking you're an Elf or anything, they'll want to work something out where you can use your powers safely to help people."

"I just want to stay in the library and read until I'm caught up enough on everything to fix it."

"You can't get a job like this. What are you going to eat? Where will you sleep? Are you even old enough to be out of school?"

"I was led to understand that jobs provided you with food. I can sleep under a bridge or something if I'm not allowed to sleep here. I have no idea what school is."

"...you need someone to help you - I - look, the Protectorate will let you join them as a cape, that's a job."

"I don't want to work with or for the locking-people-up people."

"They lock up dangerous capes who would otherwise kill a lot of people. And being locked up doesn't hurt people, uh, here."

"But you also said they would lock me up if I hurt people and that I was likely to accidentally hurt people."

"They will explain how not to and it will be much better if they know in advance that you don't know basic things like not eating leaves."

"I know that one now."