"I really don't," says Peka.

"...I'm Katin," says Katin.

"Hi Katin! And Rebecca and I have two more children together, our daughter Joanna and then our son Jeremy - she is Catholic but we're not yet up to fifteen -"

"Ana's in the other room making a pillow fort and this is Elemi."

"It's really uncanny. We don't know how it works. So, Arda: was in the middle of a war. There was this asshole extremely powerful magic thing called Melkor, who was exploiting local magic to make himself massive armies of magically bound slaves, and capturing people and torturing them horribly for centuries on end pretty much just because he thought it was fun. Beka - that's the you in this world - was born in one of his torture factories and appallingly tortured all the time. She should have been one of the magically bound slaves but she had a bit of a loophole. She still didn't have anywhere to go, though - if any of the Enemy's servants approached the Elves' territory the Elves would kill them because they were almost certainly magically bound to serve the Enemy. She had her Catherine, named Kat. Maitimo got captured at a parley and the Enemy set to torturing him horribly and Beka figures that's her way out - if she brings the Elves him they'll maybe keep her and Kat alive. So she breaks him out and escapes with him and Kat and hands him over and the Elves keep 'em as prisoners - and she likes the me but he won't go for it because that's pretty sketchy really - and then the war escalates and the Enemy manages to close the loophole in her magic slavery thing and Macalaurë kills her and then we get dropped on them."

"Uh, wow."

"And with our magic on top of theirs the war was more winnable so we worked on it for three, four years and we won it. And now we've been trying to figure out interdimensional travel so we can get home, and figuring out something to finish the job on Melkor, and then two more islands dropped on us and that's you guys and an additional batch of Elves.

And the other batch of Elves are a starfaring advanced civilization with fancy chip backups in their heads so if they die they can be retrieved, and they ran across an Amenta. And didn't think very highly of it, I get the impression, and they recommended we not send a Timothy over to do the explaining, even though a Timothy would be better at it, because except for you all Timothys have red hair and apparently that'd freak you out."

"If you're aliens the hair doesn't matter," says Isama. "It barely matters anymore anyway, Shasali and Asame've got red hair under there, and - I forgot your name I'm sorry that's like the sixth time I've forgotten -"

"Tiko," says Katin's fiancé.

"Him too, they got cleaned up."

"I am sure they will be pleased to hear it! Possibly in their Amenta no one had yet gotten cleaned up."

"If none of us were born yet then yes, it'd be well before we had the means."

"Nah Peka and Katin exist just not the rest of you. The Macalaurë from the spacefaring Elves is marrying her."

"How'd they meet?"

"You'd have to ask them, I just met them myself. Their Katin ran off with Catherine and Kat - they're all around the same age - to have a yelling contest and then we figured we'd better explain things to you guys before you got nervous."

"It is a little nervewracking to realize you've been transplanted by apparent magic."

"Yeah, I remember. Okay, so, Amentans who will not fuss about anyone's hair color or be appallingly rude to whoever maintains the outhouses! Great!"

"One presumes they wash after maintaining the outhouses."

"Honestly I can't say I've ever given it much thought. Wizards have magic for all that. And house-elves, we have house-elves. House-elves are a distinct species of magically bound slaves - I know it sounds terrible but they like the work and get really upset if you try to let them go -"

"You have slaves and you're on our case about pollution?" says Isama.

"No the Elves are on your case about the hair thing, the Elves object both to prisons and to executions and they barely have the concept of private property and their military barely has any rules because it doesn't need them because they are universally selfless bleeding-hearts. My world doesn't have electricity and does have Azkaban and we're not on your case about anything on, like, a societal scale but if you're rude to alternate universe versions of my wife then we'd have a problem."

"What's Azkaban?" asks Katin.

"Alternate universe versions of your wife," says Isama, "meaning..."

"The other Peka's hair's all pink."

"Gosh that must be interesting," says Peka.

"- are you in fact gonna all be rude."

"We wish her a blessed and happy marriage."

"Wow."

"Nertel developed a decontamination procedure," says Shasali, "the, uh, this house doesn't contain the facilities but I've been through it and so has Tiko and afterwards we're all right -"