The inhabitants of the architecturally stunning music hall notice the sudden absence of the bustle of a city around them - and the splash - and all look up at once in alarm.

(The inhabitants of the narrow house have worse senses, notice nothing at all, and go on with their argument until they notice the wi-fi is out.)

- Elves check if anyone outside the music hall is in range. They aren't.

Elves are very concerned. 

"- what, what's wrong?"

" - everyone's gone. Or possibly we're somewhere else -"

"I think we're somewhere else." People go to the windows and warily look out. " - yep. - somewhere else that is flat or much bigger than Amenta or Valinor or Endorë -"

"Flat? How did we get somewhere flat?"

"How did we get anywhere at all -"

"- there're people on the shore, and two other islands in the lake. Shore people are Elves, one island is maybe Amentan the other one I've no idea -"

- from a place called Earth. Uh, hello. This is Lake Mithrim, I'm Nelyafinwë Maitimo -

- is that so.

If you introduce everyone I will explain from the beginning.

- all right. I'm Nelyafinwë Maitimo and this is - or this afternoon was going to be - my brother Macalaurë's wedding to Peka Atan - sending faces - and our parents Fëanáro and Nerdanel are here and my brothers Tyelcormo and Carnistir and Curufinwë and Ambarussa and my cousin Findekáno and the catering staff - who he introduces -

" - is this really the most important first topic of conversation," he asks the King.

"Yes," says the King irritably.

"Are you going to introduce the entire host."

" - it'd be horribly rude not to unless he already knows them which I suspect he might."

They can compare notes on that!

" - Maitimo is this really the most important thing -" he asks his brother.

"I would otherwise find the claim he's me more implausible. He, uh, knows a Peka but she's dead -"

- he squeezes his. 

"This is weird. Did she have a Katin -"

" - yep, name of Kat, and she is...staying with the third Peka who is alive and well and on the island that does not look Amentan. They don't know anything about the island that looks Amentan."

" - if the island that looks Amentan gets upset about Peka -"

"Yeah they will probably not want to leave their island what with all this unacceptable touching we're doing. More's the pity. My - uh - alternate universe selves, plural - have magic and an army respectively so I don't think we need to worry about the Amentans if they are even Amentans -"

 - I am unfamiliar with Amentans but they look like this -

- and he bounces everyone an image of a dinner table full of colorful-haired people, blue and green and purple and white and orange - distinctly familiar colorful-haired people -

- how are you doing that? 

- you can't do that?

- no I can't do that they're Amentans they're not chipped.

- chipped?

- concept -

- oh, we're just magic.

" - just magic?"

"Are we getting distracted from the thing where there's, like, us but Amentans."

" - we're not getting distracted from that we're doing parallel channels. There are four of us - Amentans, something called humans, magic Elves who are like us but without chips and with magic that does all the things the chips do - and they have magic music apparently. I am explaining Amentans. The Amentans who are us presumably won't care that our Peka's red -"

"What's their Peka -"

"Grey! - can a magic Elf bounce the image again so everyone here can see it -"

Yep here is the dinner table full of colorful people again. Peka with white hair is snuggling Macalaurë with green hair and she is bouncing a light-green-haired baby. Katin is still orange! The Maitimo is - (the Maitimo has his arm around his cousin, he does not send that) - strikingly blue and the cousins are also blue and surrounded by baby blues.

"Wow, grey me. Weird. Maybe I'd learn to dance."

"It doesn't seem very likely you'd be a police officer. - huh, the cousins are married, I wonder if we should tell our versions to go pick up their respective spouses -"

"We would have to get home first. Also it's not clear to me that blue Amentans would want to marry Elf versions of the same people who they want to marry if they're blue Amentans."

"If there are several kinds of magic flying around I'm sure we can get home. If the you is old enough to be an adult why haven't they developed electricity yet -"

" - oh, it's 1503 or so here they just got sidetracked into magic and had a much smaller starting population and haven't invented electricity yet - neither have the humans -"

"- huh. I should go find my alternate universe version."

"The magic Elf one is dead, the human one will presumably be delighted to meet you."

" - if they don't have backups -"

Mandos can still do it but not so co-optably. Shall we meet face-to-face -

"I think that's a good idea."

"I am in a living flower cape and do not fancy swimming -"

Pop. "Yeah we can give you a ride."

"Yeep!"

" - hi Peka - hi Katin - Katin there are two more Katins about your age - you missed all the excitement, there was a war -"

"There was some on our end too. We had a Melkor. He has been rearrested."

"I am glad to hear it. Ours is in stasis while we figure out how to cause him to be dead. I hear contacting the remaining island is complicated?"

"Since they're us it's probably okay but if they were generic Amentans I would recommend an Elf who hasn't been near Peka go, Amentans have a bad case of collective insanity about people who incidentally have red hair."

" - that's a new one. Okay. But it is us."

"I like to think that being Amentan would not give me hair-related insanity but I don't understand the hair-related insanity well enough to be totally sure."

"I wonder how a grey me winds up with a Katin. - The Katin isn't dyeing her hair grey too?"

Nope, orange. She's an adult, would that be relevant?

"Well if I'm grey she would be too, it's matrilineal, most people dye to match."

This is a very weird sort of collective insanity.

"It's obnoxious."

"Do you want a ride to the mainland? - or to my house, so you can meet Rebecca and this Katin can meet both her alts -"

"I bet she would love that. I mean, assuming it turns out they get along with themselves."

"They get along splendidly with themselves." He holds out his hand. "Katin you've got to hold on to me to Apparate safely, okay -"

"You're like a short Uncle Maitimo," she says.

"I am your uncle Maitimo in a different species. My niece is named Catherine and she looks much like you but her hair is blond."

"Why," says Katin, holding his hand.

He takes Peka and Macalaurë too. Pop now they are on Way Island. He switches to English, asks his alt to bounce translations - "Rebecca, Kat, Catherine, there's someone you should meet!"

"Who is it?" calls Rebecca.

"Another alternate universe version of you and Michael and Catherine!"

"This is getting ridiculous!" She shows up, carrying Jeremy and trailing curious little girls.

"Wow you're ugly," says Katin to Kat.

"Well you're stupid."

"No I'm stupid she has to be something else," says Catherine.

"Like what?" says Kat.

"I dunno."

He squeezes Peka. "Uh, hello."

"Hi!" says Rebecca. "I'm Rebecca. Michaaaaaael c'mere -"

He comes through the door looking a bit tired. "Again? Really? Did someone try to kill you also?"

"Seems unlikely."

"We think someone tried to kill us and that's how we got here. You got your Rebecca? That's good. The other Macalaurë had killed his before we got here and he's been so so sad."

"Killed -"

"Uh she was being horribly tortured forever by weird Elf magic, not, like, randomly murdered her -"

He squeezes Peka.

Squeeze. "Elves have torture magic?"

"Yeah if they swear to do things they have to and she got her Catherine out of a really bad place and didn't remember anything she swore there and then swore to not hurt anybody here and stuff and then remembered what she said in the bad place and couldn't do all the things."

"Kat knows to never ever swear anything no matter what reason anyone gives her, the rest of us don't have to worry because we aren't Elves."

"Kat's not an elf she's an orc, and Beka was an inbetweeny thing."

"...okay."

"It's, uh, nice to meet you all."

"You too! The Catherines get along real well, it'll be fun to have three around." (The Catherines are debating between "smelly" and "old" for Katin, who does not really smell of anything but is older than them chronologically because Valinor.)

"Maybe save 'old' for the grownup one."

"Okay," says Kat, "so you're smelly."

"Did you already have a yelling contest."

"Yeah!"

"Who won?"

"Me!" says Kat.

"I bet -"

"Outside," says Rebecca, "if you're having a rematch."

"All the Elves'll still be able to hear them."

"Even we will be able to hear them it just won't be deafening. So are we going to meet the last island -"

"Yes but we should maybe send someone other than Timothy because of the collective insanity."

"Collective insanity."

"They have this absolutely loony taboo about touching people who have touched people who are hereditarily unclean as indicated by red hair, they're horrible and it's horrible."

"Uh, yeah, okay. I can head over and offer them a ride to the mainland?"

"Maybe you could head over and explain everything and then once the Catherines are done with their yelling contest we could all meet at the music hall, I think it's prettier than the mainland."

"- sure, okay."

And he Apparates on the final island and knocks.

The wi-fi is out and the phones are out and the windows now appear to open on a foggy lake and they're terrified.

Katin is pacing and Peka's trying to keep Elemi from picking up on the agitation in the room and Ana and Hala have decided to make a pillow fort because that is what you do if there is something scary is hide in a pillow fort. Imeles is clinging to his mother and pretending he's doing it to reassure Asame. Ladah is sitting in a corner trying not to get in the way of anyone who can do something productive about this and Kaloa is destroying progress on the pillow fort.

Knock knock.

They all glance at each other.

Aitim gets the door. 

"Hi blue Timothy!"

He helpfully telepathically relays this.

He flinches a little. " - I am unfamiliar with that form of communication."

He waits until this is relayed. "Nah that's okay we've gotcha it's magic. Can I come in and explain?"

"Of course," he says. This is more of a factual observation about the current state of affairs than an invitation but he manages to smile anyway.

"Cool.  - we'd have sent a you but they have red hair and there were concerns about your sanity."

"I am not quite sure what you mean. - is everyone else getting the translation effect -"

"Yeah should be." He walks in. "Wow. Are you all Catholic or something?"

"Uh, what's that."

"Religion with theological objections to birth control."

" - no. How does that work, wouldn't they all just get sterilized -"

"Uh, by who."

" - whatever government had to deal with them -"

" - why would the government care - I mean I think the government oppressed them but for unrelated reasons?"

"I feel like this is perhaps a side issue," says Shasali, "unless the Catholics are declaring war on us to have more room for their fifteen children apiece -"

"- the war's already over, you missed it. We won."

" - the war between the - Catholics and Anitam -"

"- no the war was with Melkor. I think maybe I should start at the beginning."

"That sounds like a great idea."

"So! I was born on a planet called Earth, where humans live, humans being my species. On Earth some people are normal and some are wizards, meaning we can do magic." He waves his wand and sends sparks flying. "By law we don't bother one another."

" - what kind of magic -"

"Lots of combat-oriented stuff, utility stuff like summoning things to me -" he demonstrates - "and giving magical properties to objects and brewing potions and so on. So some people disliked the rule that wizards and muggles leave each other alone - including my family, we didn't like it - and started lobbying to allow wizards to help muggles - they don't have clean water and they die of preventable diseases and they're mostly desperately poor, we wanted to be able to help with stuff like that - but of course some of the people on the lobby for letting us interfere with muggles just wanted to conquer them."

"Does this have anything to do with why we are in a lake and you look like Makel with alien hair," says Isama.

"It does, I'm getting to it. So we got on the bad side of a faction that wanted to conquer all the Muggles and she used a magic spell that was supposed to - and did, as far as anyone on Earth will be able to tell - erase the targeted area of land from existence. Instead it appears to have dropped us intact on another planet. That's this place. It's called Arda. So we find ourselves in the lake and we go out to meet the locals, who are a species called Elves, and it transpires that - they're us. I mean. Their King is called Nelyafinwë Maitimo -" he nods at Aitim - "and he has six younger brothers and a genius father who'd died in the war and his brother Macalaurë had a tragic fling with a woman who looks like my wife Rebecca, and who came with a daughter who looked like my Rebecca's Catherine. - in neither case did they think much of the father -" he glances at Peka.

"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 -"

"But before it it's a big deal? In that case I think you had all better stay on your island because I don't think we're gonna tell the bride that she'd better not touch anything, it offends Amentan sensibilities -"

"- I really don't think she'll object to arranging something so we can source food."

"This is unbelievable."

"Aw I wanna go to the me's wedding -"

" - yeah, we'll go, it's not - if we're stuck here indefinitely it sounds like we'll want to collaborate with the other communities here -"

"Are you saying here that if her hair was pink you wouldn't have married her -"

" - I'd have paid to get her cleaned up."

" - is there, like, disease-risk or something -"

" - no, it's cultural -"

"'collective insanity', the Elves said."

"The Elves who apparently do without most social institutions because they're just that law-abiding. I - don't think any less of your Peka but please do understand that it's not really something we can just -"

"Insanity isn't usually a diagnosis for which the recommended treatment is 'get over it', no."

Sigh. 

"Katin asked what Azkaban is?"

"Oh, yeah. Wizards are hard to imprison but unlike Elves occasionally require it so they made a deal with these monsters called dementors. Dementors make you incapable of happiness and in their presence you just replay the worst moments of your life over and over and over. They guard wizard prison and the prisoners can't escape because they're trapped in their own heads."

"Wow."

"Why don't you just kill them," says Shasali, "that sounds kinder -"

"I don't think they're aiming for 'kind' in particular."

"Cheaper too."

"I think dementors need something to feed on, so if you don't give them prisoners they'll go for something else?"

"Oh." Shasali makes a face. "I see."

"This is all on the planet we can't get to in any event?"

"Yeah for now we're stuck on Arda though we expect we'll figure it out eventually. There's probably a way to kill dementors but no one's found one. I don't know any of you," he adds to Shasali, "my cousin Zachariah isn't married."

"Shasali Aven, pleased to meet you."

"Pleased to meet you too. And, uh, the Timothys'll want to know everyone else, so if you're not coming to the wedding you should introduce yourselves so I can tell them -"

People look at each other. "- it's not like we couldn't just take showers afterwards," says Isama. "If - oh, damn, do they even have decent soap here -"

"We have plenty in the house," Nertel says. "- well, not if we're going to do it all the time, but for a special occasion -"

"I think Mama's - alternate universe version - getting married to Papa's alternate universe version is a special occasion, just the once," says Katin. "...and I want to see the tiny me trio."

"Yes, I think so." Sigh.

"We can probably magically duplicate your special soap."

"Cool," says Ladah, who hasn't spoken till now, "can you duplicate everything -?"

"There're limits on doing it with food but most other stuff yeah."

"Is the food you lot have clean?" Isama asks. "I remember having to pay ridiculous amounts to get food that wasn't out of Voa - shit, what's going to happen to my sister if I just evaporate, I have a will but -"

"I have no idea if the food is clean by your standards. Peka sure hasn't been growing it. Do house-elves count as clean?"

"Not if they've been doing unclean tasks," says Shasali, "but maybe if they just do it by magic..."

"Hey Niblet," he says.

Niblet appears! "Master Michael is needing something?"

Asame starts hollering about the noise. Shasali bounces her.

"Yeah! These are Amentans. They are suffering from a very serious psychological malady where they can't eat food unless ridiculous food-handling procedures are observed. I don't know exactly what those entail but can they ask you some questions to figure out if we're doing enough for them?"

"Of course," says Niblet, "what is the procedures being, please?"

Amentans can explain in great detail!

All of the stuff about sourcing is hard to guarantee because the original ingredients were grown by Muggle humans and in some cases the local Elves who do not follow these procedures. The house elves themselves are exquisitely tidy though.

Amentans make faces. There don't seem to be red Elves, are there red humans?

"There are not."

"Then we can probably make do."

"I'm so proud of you! Niblet, pick three of you to stay here and take care of our alternate universe family, okay?"

"Do you, like, have to give them orders, even if you can't just free them -"

" - Niblet, would you please if you would like but not at all if you wouldn't pick three of you to stay here and take care of our alternate universe family?"

"Yes Master Michael," says Niblet, possibly bowing a bit pointedly, and disappears again to be joined a moment later by two other house elves.

"Thank you! Can you only if you happen to feel like it bring them all to the wedding venue - it's the really pretty island with the music hall - when they're ready?"

"Of course Master Michael," says Niblet.

And he pops over to pink Peka. "So they were in fact kind of upset about the pink hair thing but after we promised to resupply their magic soap they want to come to the wedding."

"As long as they make it their business to shower and not my business to not touch things that's fine by me."

"I was clear about that. They initially wanted to ask that you not-touch enough things they can have food but I think the house-elves have that covered now and you can touch whatever you please."

"Good. I've gotten all used to it."

Her fiancé kisses her. 

Magic Elves are so delighted about the music hall and relevant ones are very pleased to attend a wedding.

And Peka and her living flower cape held at the end off the ground for her by her bouncing child can get married!!!

To her husband who adores her so so so much!!

"The Amentans asked how you two met!!"

The Amentans gather around to listen. 

"Oh, I was walking through the city - in Tapa, after we'd been there a few weeks - and I heard her muttering rude things about Elves from a truck across the way -" Kiss. "And I think she thought I couldn't hear her, because Elves have much better than Amentan hearing, but then I stopped singing and turned to stare and then she had more, louder rude things to say about Elves -" Kiss.

"Wow, what did you say -"

"Uh, I was in the army for the money for Katin's child credit -" Space Peka looks at Grownup Katin - "Wow that's surreal mine's been slowed down by Valinor lookit you all grown up - uh, and the Elves were trying to end the war and I was worried about money, but I don't remember exactly what I said -"

"- oh all that and they have super hearing! Of course they do! Yeah I'm talking to you, Elf, fuck you and the ships you rode in on, flailing around like it doesn't matter where you step -"

"Wow," says Grey Peka.

"I know, right, I knew better, but it worked out! He paid off the credit and took us home."

"I didn't realize it was - a big deal - in your country," he says to Aitim, "presumably people do not get beaten to death in the street for being rude to visitors -"

" - I mean," Aitim says, "I wouldn't, personally, call the police in if a red said that to me, but -"

"But -"

"I would in fact kind of assume they were suicidal." He shakes his head. 

"Ah huh."

"And if there were alien visitors with FTL who some red offended -"

"The thing that offends me is the way you all treat reds!"

"Well, we don't even have any of them anymore."

"Uh why not," says Pink Peka.

"Oh it's nothing bad," says Grey Peka, "in Anitam anyway, there's a decontamination thing, they all got to pick new castes."

"Even blue," says Shasali, "we're the only country that allowed that even when others picked up the decontamination protocol."

"My mother came up with it. Cleaned and integrated them all, it went pretty smoothly - we're honestly pretty progressive for our society," he says to Macalaurë -

"Am I supposed to be impressed. 'I wouldn't personally have someone beaten to death for being rude to me' - but you know, you would hardly judge someone for being less progressive on that front -"

"I got beat up," says Tiko, "after I switched castes, though, and I wasn't yelling at anyone - anyway the judge went easy on her and Aitim leaned on her about it."

"Hmmph," he says to Aitim, and, "I'm sorry, that's horrible," to Tiko. "Well, I guess I might be glad the judge went easy on her because your disaster of a planet executes people left and right -"

"Yes, Michael mentioned that you disapprove of executions and prisons. I'm glad it works for you."

"We took the prisoners off the hands of anyone who'd let us have them and it mostly went fine."

"Uh, what'd you do with them?" asks Rebecca.

"Set them up on Endorë."

" - just...let them go?"

" - yes? They fucked up once, that doesn't mean they should be permanently erased from existence, or - or locked in a cage -"

"Lots of places don't execute people for first offenses, they still execute some people -"

"What if they hurt somebody else?" says Isama.

"Then whoever they hurt would get healed or resurrected?"

"I guess if you're totally impossible to long-term harm in any way then you can go extreme-mercy on everything."

"Wow," says Grey Peka.

"We didn't super get along with Amentans. I do think it's mostly because Amentans suck. - not you," he tells grey Peka. "- I'm presuming you have never beaten anyone to death for being rude -"

He puts an arm around his Peka protectively. "No - and you shouldn't be self-congratulatory about having solved much easier problems -"

"I'm not a cop, I was in the army and then after Telkam helped me desert and bring Katin I moved to Anitam and sex work is grey there and I did that and now I'm just cheating the system by being married instead."

"You were a whore?" titters Rebecca nervously.

"I was good at it!"

"Catholics don't go in for that!"

"I suppose if they don't believe in birth control it's ill-advised."

"I'm sure there are some people who've done it but -" helpless giggling.

"Well, we have birth control and it was fun."

Pink Peka is looking at Grey Peka a little thoughtfully.

Makel is petting his grey Peka fondly. 

"I guess I technically deserted too," says Peka, "I'm not actually sure how it all shook out officially, maybe I'm down as 'kidnapped by aliens'."

"I'm legally dead in Tapa!" chirps Grey Peka.

"I told the Tapai government that my brother had got it into his head to run off with you did they mind and I'm sure they minded but probably not on your behalf and they certainly didn't say anything -"

Pink Peka giggles.

"I do vaguely regret that we don't have the credibility to suggest cleaning - the Valar could probably do it but I don't see how we'd ever get buy-in -"

"Yeah the going around calling it collective insanity makes you not credible when proposing solutions. People believed us that it mattered to us, that's why they gave us a chance when we said we could solve it."

"And there's Miolee," says Shasali. "Evalee was frightening its reds, they took some blue children hostage and demanded passage to Anitam and decontamination there, and then they got some rainforest nobody wanted and built a country on it."

"Wow!" says Pink Peka.

"We put everyone in Endorë and I think they're doing pretty well there but that's - resourceful, given you only had the one very spoken-for planet -"

"Yeah, no kidding," says Peka. "Even if it had to be in the rainforest - I don't mind permaspring very much but most people would -"

"I've never tried it," says Grey Peka.

"It's not so bad! At least not with a slowed down Katin, I might be having trouble once she's older."

"And we can't have kids," he says regretfully.

" - I mean if you want -"

- Pink Peka giggles.

"Maybe you'll get an Ana and an Elemi, since Rebecca did," says Grey Peka.

"It's really weird how that worked out."

"The whole thing is really weird."

"Are there more of any of the rest of us or is it just Kantil's blood relatives plus Peka and kiddos for some reason," says Isama.

"My kingdom has, as far as we can tell, a superset of the magical Maitimo's kingdom's Elves. It doesn't have a you, I would have noticed, but it's possible there's other overlap I haven't picked up yet."

Ladah is looking slightly curiously at Other Dads.

They are so pleased to meet him! They are impressed Telkam is okay honestly his world sounds like it would really suck for him in particular.

"He doesn't super like being green, that's how he met Aunt Peka."

"It's the worst caste, hands down - I guess being blue woulda been worse."

"Yeah, Oromë kind of kept me sane."

"At least people are safe now. It's been kinda okay since the massacres stopped."

"Massacres?"

Oh boy can he give a detailed account of the fiascos in Olvala and Biyan and Evalee.

They are so horrified.

"Blue Maitimo what were you even doing with your life -"

"Everything I could - Anitam doesn't have a royal family I didn't have absolute power and wouldn't have won if I'd started wars everywhere -"

"And, like, they're kinda gross, wouldn't touch them, wouldn't start a war over them -"

"You've all made it very clear that you don't think the pollution thing has anything at all to it."

"He was helpful," says Tiko.

"And Isel, Isel's great, Miolee's going to build her a statue," says Shasali.

"Oh, did she - did she issue resolutions condemning the massacres? Suggesting that the next place spare the children?"

"She," Telkam says, "helped me pass on to the resistance in Evalee information about which children to take hostage."

"Uh. I did not know that."

Aitim sighs heavily.

"Uh, wow," says Isama, "I did not know that either, what the fuck."

"They were all going to die."

"I am not sure it's - useful to hash this out -"

"It seems pretty distinctly not-useful, really."

"You knew?"

"I had far too little information to reasonably make the inference."

"Sure you did."

"...I don't see what the big deal is? A million people are going to be horribly slaughtered, you give them information so they can instead get out alive and found their own state and be happy, that seems like kind of a moral no-brainer -"

" - uh one thing that is going on is that telling people you've committed a ton of capital crimes is impolite because then they could get in trouble also - the executed kind of trouble not the Elf kind of trouble - and even though we are presently nowhere near avenues of getting in trouble it's a kind of sticky norm?"

"We fought a god. It is hard to come up with words for how irrelevant you should consider your government."

"We want to get home as quickly as possible. If it is possible, I think what people want to do once they're home will vary but it would be very unfair to them to deny them avenues to continue their lives normally -"

" - yeah okay so go about your lives normally and have Timothy or Michael Confund the courts if there're any problems."

"What does that do exactly."

"- it's not ethical and I'd really rather it not be relied on - just makes people really really malleable in their impressions of what they did with the last five, ten minutes. In a court case you'd usually just leave the judge with a strong impression they'd thoroughly reviewed the evidence and found nothing to it -"

"You could potentially end up having to do it to a lot of people. There is actually already someone blackmailing me over the whole thing -"

" - wait, really?"

"Yeah," says Ladah, "we had to randomly flee to Uncle Makel's island."

"I wasn't sure if it was an actually dangerous situation or not - it was not."

"There are non-dangerous kinds of being blackmailed over crimes your government shoots people for?"

" - blue and green can take poison - and yes, there are - I suppose if Elves never commit crimes you never blackmail people either -"

"I can't say it has ever come up."

"I can't help but think your job sounds awfully boring. Governing people who will just uncomplicatedly do exactly what you say?"

"Well, there's figuring out what to say, that part's challenging."

"Do they really uncomplicatedly do whatever you say -"

"I mean, I have no idea what would happen if I tried to have someone beaten to death in the street for being rude to me - yes I do, I would be very kindly carted to the hospital and other people notified they should make decisions while it was determined what had caused my temporary insanity -"

"So then maybe you can model 'treat reds like everyone else and forget about pollution' as an order that would be received about as well in Anitam as 'beat that person to death because they offended me' would in Valinor - Voa tried it, there was a war -"

"Yes, I know, we got there in the middle of it, Voa explained to us at length how hard it would be to treat their citizens better -"

" - I can't really think how I'd improve Voa -"

"The first Voan we met was a purple kid who'd built a radio dejammer out of spare parts and radioed to talk to the aliens and hit it off with my father and told us to come visit Voa and hear their side of the story on the war. When we arrived Voa had executed him for treason."

" - I mean. You really can't be building radio dejammers to circumvent ceasefire terms in wartime."

"So you take the dejammer away!"

" - and then Tapa thinks you're not treating the ceasefire terms very seriously, wink-and-nod at your citizens who break them -"

"The whole problem here is that Amenta just agreed on killing children when game-theoretically appropriate but if you instead agreed on not doing that it would be equally game-theoretically appropriate - Tapa wouldn't take a non-execution as provocation - they could've at least delayed what with aliens arriving -"

"You don't stop the workings of the justice system because of aliens arriving, people'd pile up in jail -"

"There is something very wrong with you."

"This is like a weird TV show," says Ladah, "if we ever get home I'll pitch it to my screenwriter friend."

"People yelling at alternate universe versions of themselves?"

"She'd probably think of a catchier title."

"I just - you've gotten in the habit of thinking about executing children in strategic terms instead of thinking how to make that never happen -"

"Anitam has separate courts for under-fours that don't hand down death sentences - and we set up to allow for stays of execution for pregnancy -"

" - what -"

" - you literally kill babies. I don't even know what to -"

"Tapa kills babies, that's why I ran to Anitam, where they don't do that."

" - Elves consider life to start before birth -"

"Do you also object to abortion?"

"That being?"

"Deliberate termination of a pregnancy?"

" - oh good lord."

" - I guess since you can get pregnant by accident it's better if - if someone didn't want to be -"

"Long as it's, like, 'I'm pregnant and I don't want to be pregnant' instead of 'I'm pregnant but I can't afford a child credit'' -"

"And what should one do if pregnant and unable to afford a child credit?"

"What happens to 'em if they have the baby?"

"They get sterilized and the baby adopted out."

"Your world is in fact pretty horrible."

"If you let them keep the kid everyone'd do that."

"I gather Elves just. Don't want babies as much," says Shasali. "I actually managed not to for ethical reasons even though I could have afforded it, before I got decontaminated, and it was horrible." She snuggles Asame.

"Our birthrate's pretty high but we're so slow to grow up that we had lightleapers long before we felt pressed for space."

"Managed not to for ethical reasons?"

"I was red. I didn't want to - I didn't endorsedly want to - have red children - and now I have blue ones." Snuggle snuggle snuggle.

"Because of Aitim's government treating reds so badly?"

"Anitam has been the most consistently humane government towards reds and ex-reds on the planet," she says firmly. "I don't appreciate you all on what I can only assume is sort of my behalf denigrating his efforts, I think you aren't clear on what the counterpressure was like. Transition era was a very worrying time and I just had higher standards for the life I wanted to provide to my children than I could realize before Aitim's government, at no cost to me, got me out."

"I wonder if our Amenta has a you."

"If it doesn't have Inlad's family, I suppose she'd be in Lakla's red neighborhood still."

"No, we got them all out, she'd be on Endorë somewhere. I could look it up by district of origin if I had access to a computer - I am really going to miss the internet -"

"Save me," sighs Isama, quietly, "a world of no Internet."

"Is the Internet not the kind of thing three Fëanors can put together."

"I mean, I have done it once, but - hmm maybe we could disassemble existing computers for raw materials and then have the wizards make more of them, faster than mining -"

" - oooooh good idea. You won't have the main benefit of the internet which is the billions of people using it but we could have it."

"The billions of people using it is important," says Isama.

"I know that!! But something's better than nothing and it sounds like all the possible avenues home involve magic rather than engineering."

" - there might an engineering angle. But internet first - internet and then immortality for all the mortals present and then interdimensional transit -"

" - and then we go fix everything everywhere!"

"Without assuming that the fix is 'pretend your populace is made of Elves'!"

"I want to go home," says Isama, "my sister will be all alone, I think this is higher priority than making us immortal -"

"Apef will wonder where I am but -"

"Apef isn't like Klimati, Klimati needs help and she's going to miss Hala and Kaloa desperately."

"Unless the Valar here are cooperative I really don't see any way of getting us home quickly -"

" - they're really angry at us for massacreing a lot of people, actually."

" - this is inconsistent with what I have heard of Elves!"

" - it is in defense of Elves the only atrocity in Elven history. Uh, we were trying to get out of Valinor to land our army in Beleriand before the cities were lost and all their inhabitants captured for Melkor to torture, and the Valar told us to relax and stay home and trust that things would work out, and the Teleri controlled the port and boats to get out of Valinor and we asked to borrow them and asked for help building our own and asked for access to information about boatmaking and they turned us down and so we tried to secretly steal the boats and they fought back."

- nod. "And when was the massacre -"

"Uh, that."

" - we don't conventionally employ the word for 'two armed sides fighting' - no one, like, got the boats and then got carried away and flung their unarmed crews overboard?"

"No!"

"No one was trying to deal with a sniper firing on their position and accidentally called in an airstrike on an elementary school being used as a bomb shelter?"

" - I don't know those words but I really don't think so."

"In that case it does sound an Elfy massacre."

"It's not funny - thousands of people died -"

"And have since been resurrected?"

" - well, yes -"

"And did you get here in time -"

"Took the whole continent back in twelve days and there wasn't a civilian death after that though it took us decades, and help, to actually win."

"Congratulations, then."

"Beka died."

"She's resurrectable too. In theory."

"Mandos would have to get significantly better at his job."

"Yeah." He glances at Aitim. "I'm sorry our massacre doesn't meet your standards."

" - I'm more - when you declared war were you under the impression that this would not involve killing any people."

" - not any Elves."

" - uh, okay."

"Um," says Grownup Katin, who has been watching her small alts all hold hands and spin around in a ring till they fall down giggling.

" - not any people who were not presently magically bound to slavery to the Enemy, if you'd rather. And not anybody in Valinor."

"I wonder if maybe with no one having had any wars before there was just no way to derive 'this is exactly the kind of thing that is pretty much guaranteed to happen in war'."

"Except for the resurrections part, that's all you guys," says Isama.

"We've looked into chipping other species but don't have it worked out yet."

"Anyway even if it was predictable the Valar are furious and have cut us off and so we can't ask them for aid in returning you home."

" - we could maybe ask, being massacre-free."

"You, uh, could be mistaken for me."

" - the Amentans can ask -"