"That probably reduces the risk slightly."

"Not by that much, if I land somewhere without air I'm still fucked, but yes."

"You can move your - target site - to here before you go if you're willing to hook a local up to it."

"Magic is actually complicated, it would not be super useful without instructions."

"Instructions would also be very much appreciated. If there are other worlds it'd be a terrible loss to be stuck without the means to reach them."

"My point is that would take a while."

"Could we maybe get the four-hour summary and then have something to work off in rederiving the rest ourselves?"

"Post-war-evaluation."

Nod. "Decided what you need for that?"

"It's probably impossible to do responsibly without learning the language but I really don't have the time. I'm not yet sure what to settle for. I guess if I pick up the thought structuring thing so I can telepathically talk to more Elves without going 'aaaaaaa' that would help."

"Considerably but it usually takes almost as long to pick up as the language. I could give you the idea?"

"Yes please."

"Thought structuring works by -" internally distinguishing things you intend to be public and things you intend to be private, and then developing with practice the habit of automatically sorting your thoughts that way. People usually pick a metaphor or visualization - public thoughts as ones abovewater and private thoughts below water, or public thoughts as if spoken and private ones as if written on the inside of your skull -"the hard part is actually structuring off it, and maintaining the habit."

"It doesn't sound that hard..."

"I've never heard of anyone not being able to do it, it just takes lots of practice. I can leave you to it?"

"I'll need to be able to do it while doing other things, I might as well keep - teaching, if you call this teaching - my language while I work on that."

"All right. Is anyone expecting you back?"

"I sent people letters, but they did account for the possibility that this was a suicide mission."

"And should we be gathering, uh, sheep - is it sheep in particular - or anything else for you -"

"It doesn't have to be sheep in particular but it does have to be a mammal and the blood has to be pretty fresh."

"And do you need that or do you have enough to get back -"

"I can use my own blood and I would have enough to get back but one doesn't make a habit of that."

" - right, I can imagine. We can arrange livestock."

"That's why I didn't bring a sheep along, though, having the option is handy."

"You might have better human medicine than we do, I think our humans often die of relatively minor injuries and I wouldn't want them to risk it."