- have you considered getting over it.

I don't have an instinctive problem with it. I used to be red. I've just cultivated very rigid habits so I can't be accused of laxity because I'm in a very vulnerable position if I'm perceived as overly influenced by my background.

We could go a couple miles south, I am sure Peka and Katin and things they've touched haven't been there.

That sounds fine.

So he goes a couple miles south and sings magic songs for the kids and is so delighted to meet Shasali and hear about her life. 

The kids are enchanted by the magic songs! Shasali is happy to tell him about her life!

" - and presumably you're not still in a vulnerable position if someone decided you were too influenced by your background - I mean, you're here now, my cousins have had many songs written about their shortcomings but I wouldn't expect them - and I take it it's not in Amentan blue and green character - to attack you -"

"I wouldn't expect it of anyone here if I cut corners, but I'm hoping to go home eventually."

"And you're worried they'd spread rumors when you did?"

"No, I'm worried that I'll have eroded my - patterns of care."

Nod. "Did you like what you did there?"

"I find my work interesting and challenging."

"We don't have anybody in that line of work!"

"It sounds like you have much less need. Fewer people and a stunningly reduced per capita crime rate."

"I think it's the living forever and wanting for nothing. If you have an orderly way to get things and you know that the benefits of misbehavior would be temporary - why try a disorderly way to get less of what you want -"

"Impatience, mental illness, fits of emotion, revenge, confusion, thinking of a temptingly clever scheme, errors in judgment of all sorts, disagreement with the nature of the order imposed, expecting to evade consequences, anticipating the ability to make up for long-term problems after reaping short-term gains..."

" - maybe Elves are just different."

"I think so."

And he sings to the kids more and then home they go.

"It's sad that he doesn't have a Mom," says Imeles.

"It's so sad! I would recommend him one but I don't know where to find her. Peka was a red and a poor grey and a prisoner and a non-magic human in the magic world, and my family can be blues or Elf Kings or a powerful old wizard family, so I expect if there are more of Mom she wouldn't be an Elf."

"Would she be an orc?"

"Maybe. I don't know how we'd find her if so, and she'd be a magic slave of the Enemy so I don't know if she'd want him. Maybe we can give one of him the one who is now on Endorë if she hasn't already married and had babies but she might've done that right quick once she was convinced Endorë was safe."

"Yep," says Shasali. "I don't think I'd ever marry someone I couldn't have children with, are Elves remotely likely to be interfertile -"

"I think the chip ones are pretty sure they are not and the magic ones have no idea. So probably not."