instead of Tapa having the prettiest buildings, Calado does
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"Well, any country on the planet will welcome you, but Calado will be reluctant to give you up."

"You promised," says one of the yellows who is sharing the credit for having brought her.

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"You can come back to Valinor with us," he confirms. "I think I'll have the ship go back tonight, if no one impedes that - if the aliens impede us, who expects they could get back from Mandos quickly -"

        "I think I should," a woman says. 

"- all right, so if the aliens impede us then we'll have backup in a few weeks."

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"You're taking immigrants?" the ambassador asks.

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"Some immigrants. Valinor has - fairly strict expectations for conduct and we have reservations about taking too many lest it turns out Amentans have a hard time complying and find themselves in trouble frequently. Endorë can take more immigrants, but I don't speak for them."

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"I see. We're always under too much population pressure here to do that except via swap."

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"We take one hundred and twenty five of your years to come of age, and we rarely have children until substantially later than that. We had lightleapers before we had meaningful population pressure."

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"That is very fortunate."

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"I hope population pressure relieves some of the - problems your societies face."

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"I think you will find it does."

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Nod.

 

After a while they ask if they can get a guide back to the ship, or go themselves.

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The would-be immigrants confuse some guards and smuggle them out.

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...that works. 

 

They prepare the ship to depart. Some Elves will stay behind to plan colony things.

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The yellows are caught and arrested for circumventing security procedures.

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- nope, those are their yellows now and they are allowed to be here. The arresting people can also have four kids if they would like to come live in Valinor.

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...really?

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Yes. He is the Crown Prince of the Noldor and he can take immigrants if he likes.

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Does it have seasons? Are there jobs or will they wind up starving in the streets?

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It has both seasons and jobs! Tirion is equatorial but there are lots of lovely cities farther north and south.

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Good news yellows you are not under arrest.

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What good news. The ship can leave with everyone who wants to be aboard. He's staying because he wants to bother the Tapai ambassador about her language.

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The yellows and cops run and get spouses and in a couple cases other relatives (uncles nieces sisters parents two preexisting children).

She is willing to teach him Tapap. She knows a few others too. She threads a fine line between talking up Tapa and being flawlessly diplomatic about Calado.

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Tapa sounds much more competently run than Calado. Honestly he thinks Maitimo might be tempted to do something about Calado and it doesn't seem like Tapa would similarly tempt anyone. Diplomacy more subtle than that flies right over his head. He picks up Tapap absurdly quickly and clearly has the time of his life at it and then wants another one.

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She also speaks Voan. And Anitami. And is fairly competent with the Leen language family, which has a lot of similar but not quite mutually intelligible unless they try really hard dialects.

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He is so fascinated and so delighted and speculates about common ancestry of Tapap and Anitami and sings things to himself in flawless whatever-he's-presently-speaking and will evidently do this all night unless someone stops them.

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Tapap and Anitami do have a common ancestor! She doesn't speak it but she knows what it's called and some popular works that were originally written in it. She is perfectly happy to monopolize the alien doing whatever amuses him and to pull an all-nighter to do it.

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