"They picked me up and I explained I wasn't there and they put me down again."

"Because no one has ever lied to a cop, it just failed to cross their mind that you might be doing that."

"I wasn't there. But maybe they figure it isn't such a big deal if somebody puts trash back where it belongs after somebody gives it ideas."

"Yes," says Macalaurë. "I agree that's what they were thinking."

"Look. Just get out of my home. We don't need to make this a whole thing."

"The time to avoid making this a whole thing passed a long time ago. Peka tries to avoid leaving her home because it could happen again and I haven't seen the slightest sign it won't and no one believed for a second that you're innocent and no one cares."

"I wasn't there and it wouldn't matter if I was."

"It wouldn't, would it."

"Get out."

"No."

He raises his voice - "Nata, call the cops!"

"Mrr?" says his sleeping wife.

Macalaurë breaks his neck. It's easy. Amentans are very fragile. Fragile and tiny and all of them very young, though everyone who works with them has long since stopped thinking of them all as children.

He collapses to the floor.

His wife stumbles out of her room in her pajamas, dialing the police on her everything.

He heads for the door.

"Honey, who - what the - honey?! Did you - honey!" And then sobbing.

He'd thought about finding all of them. He doesn't really want to. 

I killed one of them. I'm going to go to Endorë.

You shouldn't have done that.

You should have built a better justice system. You should have made it a choice between 'they go to jail' and 'I stop them', not 'they go free' or 'I stop them.' I'm not going to do it again, though. The rest of them can just wonder. 

You're under arrest.

That sounds really productive. Calado can execute me and then I can catch my flight to Endorë from Valinor instead of from here. I'll stick around for that if you like but I'm really not sure what it serves.

We built a system because it is too big, and the people in it too different from us and in need of predictability. The benefit of a system like that is only realized if you take it seriously -

I'm not actually sure how you got the impression I'm in the mood to debate political science right now.

I've called an ambulance.

Too late. Call an undertaker. Call Peka.

Leave my country and go somewhere with laws you respect enough you'll abide by them.