The aliens are talking among each other in Quenya.

          "Um."

"I suppose as long as they're happy -"

          "Do they seem happy?"

"We might miss some cues, they're aliens."

          "They seem nervous and like they're very accustomed to high-conflict unpredictability, but they don't seem happy about it."

"It's like when the royal family are squabbling if they decided to escalate it as much as possible and ruin everybody's day and just give directions they expected other people to countermand as a dispute resolution mechanism - and did that when there were important things at stake."

         "We wouldn't do that," Fëanáro says, sounding horrified.

"I know! ...if you did I think after a while we'd just all settle on obeying somebody who wasn't doing that but maybe things just started falling apart and they've yet to adjust around it."

         "Or maybe it mostly works and is just poorly equipped for unusual circumstances."

"Or maybe the aliens just suck," Tyelcormo says. "They might in fact just suck. There's no reason to expect aliens don't suck."

        "I suppose as long as they're happy."

They come in.

The capitol building is busy with blue and yellow haired people. A yellow haired person bumps into a blue one and starts scrambling to tearfully apologize as the blue looms over her angrily. The soldiers march the Elves by like that's normal.

- Elves don't think that's normal and are suddenly not amenable to being marched by, at all.

"Hey, move it," says a soldier.

Elves are not moving. "Is everyone all right? What's the problem -"

"She didn't watch her step, now move along."

She's bawling. The blue she bumped into is muttering darkly about reviewing her employment and finding out where her husband works.

Elves continue not to move along. "She's upset," someone tells the guard angrily. 

"It's not your concern, now come on."

"- oh, see, you misunderstood," someone else said. "It is our concern. We are concerned."

"Leave it alone, we're bringing you to the committee."

A soldier breaks off to shoo the yellow lady. She runs, sobbing.

Elves look at each other. 

        "We need Maitimo, I can't do it," Fëanáro says in Quenya.

- Elves agreeably walk on with their guards.

They are brought to a committee with no further incident. The committee wants to know how to build lightleapers.

...Elves suddenly have a vastly worse grasp of the local language. They give halting explanations, switching to Quenya every thirty seconds for a long string of technical babble.

...they dig up and haul in the first linguist they met.

Well, if she can interpret all this Quenya technobabble she is welcome to!

"Come on, I know you learned Oahkar better than that."

No they haven't!

(Fëanáro can't bring himself to speak mediocre Oahkar and is just not talking at all, except to corroborate or expand on some of the Quenya explanations.)

"I heard you! You learned it like -" snapped fingers.

...Elves giggle. Elves continue to not have nearly enough Oahkar to be helpful to this committee.

The blues are now angry at the linguist who has clearly lied to them.

...that was not intended! Angry like saying frustrated things or angry like acting threatening?

Well, the linguist is sort of reduced to panicked babbling. "No they did I have recordings I can prove it they were conversant by the time the soldiers came by they were -"

"- yes, we were. We were just curious how you handled miscommunications. You handle them by abusing your own staff. This is useful information."

The green relaxes. The blues are now annoyed at the aliens instead.

"I anticipate that with some resources brought from back home we could in the space of a few years teach engineers in this society to design starships. It is not obvious to us that we should do that, rather than conveying you places in our ships. You seem to, uh, have some challenges in management and treatment of your citizens which would perhaps be exacerbated by a massive technological advantage over your neighbors. Please feel free to reassure us; we would be delighted to learn that our concerns are mistaken."