"We are equally confused."

"Who are other people? How different to Adûna?"

They look at each other. "There are Elves," Gimlith says cautiously. "They do not die and are very old. They eat the same as us, though. There are other Men, who live far away. They die like us. But they eat the same as us too. There might be gods, but I don't believe in them personally, I think they're a lie told by the ruling aristocracy to justify their absolute power."

Some people die and some don't?

"Why do you die? Why do Elves not die? Can you grow to not die like Elves? What are gods? Do they die?"

Laughter. "We are trying to grow to not die like Elves," she says, "it's hard. Do you die? Gods do not die, if they exist at all."

"I can die. I can hurt, like with poison. If no hurt, I don't die. Why do you die? Do you all die? Do you die if no hurt?"

"So you don't age. This is - a question of great significance to us as a people. We have a span of two hundred years. Some a little more, many a lot less. Then we die even if we are not hurt. We die this way because it is considered the nature of our kind of being. It is not the nature of your kind, or other kinds, and we do not intend to leave it the nature of our kind for very long either. Does no one on your world die if they are not hurt? Has it always been that way? Do you have legends or stories of other kinds of beings?" She also wants to ask about their political structure but that can wait.

"The Zifarti legends are of beings who grew my people's knowledge. Gave knowledge of G-d many many years ago. None of my people age. Even far people who are not Zifarti and do not know Zifarti legends. Not in any story we age. We were like this always. Why you age? Can you grow to better nature?"

They laugh again. "We're working on it. Can you grow to a better nature? What's a better nature for you?"

"For you would be not ageing. For us, we are ending..." She makes a coughing sound.

"We will not-" *cough* "-or-" *sneeze* "-or-" *retch* "-when done."

"Nice. How are you working on that? How close are you?"

"We are doing with..." She grasps at the words in her limitted vocabulary and finds them all wanting, so she curses in her native tongue instead. "I don't have enough words. I can't say the things. Do you know how I can learn more language?"

"Yeah, definitely. I'm not supposed to crash here, because I'm on the list of troublemakers and Izindal's family has something to lose, but I'm sure he'd be happy to sit here saying words all night so you can pick them up while I go find a dead animal for you to suck on. Two dead animals? They can be dead, right? You don't have to eat them alive?"

"Not dead too long or blood is..." Another retching sound.

She wants to tell Gimlith thank you but, as far as she can tell, no one has said that phrase around her yet. She instead holds up the crossed fingers of gratitude. At least body language is universal, right?

"Welcome. Okay. Recently dead. How long is too long?"

"Drink as dying is best. Less than day is not too long."

"Okay. I can definitely get you slaughtered-today, probably not still-alive. Done, Carmen."

"Okay!" Crossed fingers again.

Izindal sits down with her and cheerfully starts listing words; he seems quite willing to do this all night.

She works at the edge of her ability to associate these words with concepts via context and visual cues Izindal gives her. Vampires are flexible about when they sleep, once it happens frequently enough, so she can also do this all through the night.

Gimlith returns around dawn with a dead pig. "The butcher said 'aren't you a vegetarian'? And I said 'aren't you supposed to pretend not to know me?' and he shut up but it wasn't really very satisfying."

Carmen now understands enough Adûnaic to find this amusing. She gratefully drains half the slaughtered pig's blood, filling her stomach to maximum capacity - far beyond what a human could hold.

When she's done, she slumps to the floor happily. "Pig. Pigs are big and sweeeeet. Why don't you eat meat, Gimlith?"

"I believe that the treatment of animals by Men replicates and perpetuates the ideological structures of violence under which the upper classes oppress the lower ones and the nobility oppress the commoners and Numenoreans oppress outlanders and the Elves and Valar oppress men."

"Oh, I don't know how your people treat animals," Carmen admits. "But that's reasonable. My people treat them badly. This is why we are making more and more of our blood with machines - so we can stop hurting animals soon. I support this. I just don't think I can make blood with machines here and I prefer not to die, so I'm stuck like this."

She sits up a bit. "Actually, do you know if I can go home? Or how I got here?"

"I thought you stowed away on a ship, is that not what you did? And you can make machine blood?? How?"