He sighs. "Maybe someday someone will invent something better."

"Yeah. Maybe. You wanna pick the next animal?"

"Gazelles are cute."

She doesn't know which one that is, but she is totally willing to follow him to the gazelles, and is totally willing to take turns picking animals to visit for the next long while.

He isn't the one who will get tired first, being an Elf.

She's going to feel really weird about wasting time before she gets tired, per se. Fourteen-hour workdays, after all, and this isn't exactly intellectually demanding work.

"We should probably wait until tomorrow for the caves. Any word on what we should be doing with the star charts?"

"They had some clarifications and questions when you'd like to take a look at them again."

"OK! I can do that now."

They'd like any more details on this planet if she has it and they're curious why this star is in the gateway system given what she explained about how systems are chosen for that and so on.

She can answer some stuff but not all of the stuff. She does what she can.

Then she will quickly exhaust all the work Elves care to give her.

This is somewhat disappointing but not, like, a kind of disappointing thing she can complain about. 

She'll fill the time with language lessons and walks and VR games and music lessons and trying to make friends with non-Ettelië Elves, at least until the Elves have anything else for her to do. She will ask about whether they have anything else for her to do rather more often than is strictly necessary.

Elves - well, they might be fast by comparison to their Valar but they are slow by comparison to anyone else. For several months there is no indication that they're doing anything in particular. Ettelië tells her that they're planning contact with a colony planet far away from everything, so if they mess it up they can attempt it again. 

"I'm sorry," says one of the Elves who is teaching her music, worriedly. "I know that we need to get you back to the baby's father as quickly as possible."

She's pretty sure they do not actually need to do this, but she would like to have any way of knowing whether Ves has gotten herself killed in the past few months, independent of wanting to start working on the various very important things on her to-do list.

"Thank you. I'm sure your leaders are doing everything they can. I just hope the situation doesn't become more complicated before they're able to take action."

"Is that likely, do you think?"

"I'm really not sure. I know things were moving quickly when I was in Earth space; it wasn't clear what was going to happen to the balance of power in the near future. And there's no guarantee that they won't eventually get the gate working consistently."

It's actually super weird that they haven't gotten the gate working consistently yet. At least, she assumes they haven't. She's pretty sure Ettelië would have told her if an Alteri warship had suddenly appeared in orbit at some point.

No Alteri warships have appeared in orbit. "That would definitely change our planning significantly."

"I can imagine. But I'm sure the people making decisions are moving as quickly as they can."

She is not sure of this at all, but they're probably, like, trying. Ettelië's probably right that most people are, and they have more reason than she has to want things to move along quickly. Millions of Elves being tortured for years every second, and all that. 

She doesn't want Elves to be tortured. She doesn't want anyone to be tortured. She wants things to move. But she's used to not getting what she wants, and the Elves have otherwise been pretty lovely, so she's trying not to hold it against them.

Ettelië eventually notices that she seems stressed, and asks about it.

"Mostly we've been waiting here for, like, months? And I get that planning first contact with aliens and preparing complicated military operations is something that takes time, and it's something you want to get right, and I'm sure the people in charge are trying, and I don't want to hold it against them that they want to be careful. But also most of my friends are enslaved right now, and I keep kind of wondering if Ves has done something extraordinarily dumb and gotten herself killed, and there are millions of Elves being tortured somewhere, and - there are just a lot of horrible things that are continuing to happen, and I understand that taking a cautious approach to these things may lead to better results overall, but knowing the horrible things are happening and knowing that something could be done and it isn't being done yet is sort of frustrating. Not wrong, but - frustrating. Especially when I can't do anything about any of it right now."

"That makes sense. I'm sorry. I know they care about those things too, they're not ignoring them."

"Yes. I'm sure they're not. I just - it's dumb to say I'm not used to waiting for things to happen, I am, it's just more frustrating when I know the things I'm waiting for are actually really important."

"That makes sense. I'm sorry." Hug.

Hug. "It's OK. It's not your fault. It probably isn't anybody's fault."

"It's not. They're making the right decisions. But that doesn't make it - not terrible. It's terrible. And I'm sorry."