"That explains it."

There are vendors! They greet him cheerfully and wave and her and shove food at both of them. "You might want to tie your hair back," he says while they are doing this. "Elves don't wear it loose except if they're alone. Or married."

"Oh. I only have these pins."

He goes up to a random vendor and gets a hair clip and hands it to her.

She clips her hair back into a ponytail.

That is okay since she is still little like him.  He nibbles on savory snack cakes and fruit. "I think maybe the Valar will just go to the Oakh Empire and tell them they have to stop immediately. Will they listen?"

"...I don't think so. Who are they?"

"The Valar are the gods here."

Blink. "What does that mean?"

" - do you not have gods?"

"I guess not."

"They made the world and can change the rules about how it works as much as they want and they only have a physical form if they want to and they can pay attention to a thousand things at once and they are very strange and not exactly like people."

"We don't have those."

"They are mostly nice, they make things nice. They teach us magic and science and they stop any wars from happening in Valinor. If we didn't have them we would have to be afraid of the Oahk Empire coming here if electricity is more useful for war than magic, but we do have them so if the Oakh Empire stormed in with all their soldiers the Valar could just turn them into trees or something - part of what I mean about being very strange is that the Valar would think of something like 'turn them into trees' instead of something like 'send them home'."

"That would be a lot of trees."

"A whole big forest. I think maybe you could give the Valar advice on how to talk to the Oakh Empire so they don't go there, tell them to stop, get told 'no' and turn everyone in the Empire into trees because that is kind of the sort of mistake Valar make."

"Maybe they could just turn the blues into trees. It's probably not the other ones' fault."

Nod. "Is it all the blues' fault."

"It might even just be the emperor's fault. - And the soldiers who did what he said."

"So maybe we can suggest to the Valar that they just turn the emperor and the soldiers into trees and then go ask the soldier-trees if maybe they were scared for their family if they disobeyed the emperor or something like that and untree them if they had a reason like that."

"Maybe. If you can talk to trees. But the emperor should stay a tree."

"He sounds like he is doing a lot of harm as an emperor."

"Yes." She nibbles on a bread.

"Will whoever replaces him be better or will the Valar probably have to keep treeing them."

"I don't know very much about his heirs."