"Thank you for mentioning it, though. We might not have thought of it."

She nods. "Sorry for forgetting. I'll let you know if I remember anything else?"

"That sounds good. You can ask any of the staff to send a message to us, if you think of something when we're not around."

"Oh. OK. Thanks." This is fine and good and she should remember to do it, she tells herself, because they wouldn't tell her to do it if they didn't want to know stuff. "I'm - not really sure what I'm supposed to be doing right now?"

"  - relaxing? Decompressing? This all must be stressful - you could go to concerts -"

" - I don't know what a concert is. Uh, if there's nothing I can do then that's fine, we didn't have much to do on the way to Earth, so I'm good at filling time? I just - don't know what I'm supposed to be aiming to be able to do."

She thinks maybe crying in bathrooms is not actually the most efficient use of her time, but she's not actually sure.

"Talk to Eru, if you still want to do that. Think of problems with our plans when we describe them to you. Concerts are where people sing and play music and you go to watch."

"I can talk to Eru. Not right this second, I have to finish thinking of a thing first. And I have to know more about his narrative sensibilities. And I have no idea how to get to the moon. And I know there was some disagreement about when it should happen for strategic reasons anyway. But I can do it."

"I guess going to perfornances is a ...good way to learn Eru's narrative preferences? But you should do some things for your own sake, too, no one can be a hero all day."

"...I don't think I've done anything heroic? Ever? I've arrived in a foreign star system and complained about my life and tried to answer questions and taught you some languages and composed some poetry. Heroism is like... when a random alien gets dropped on you and you immediately drop everything in an attempt to save her species from eternal servitude. Or something."

" - but you haven't been doing anything that sounded like fun because you wanted to do it."

She considers this.

"...it probably says something about me as a person that figuring out how to do that sounds astonishingly stressful."

"Well, if you'd rather stay in your room no one will stop you."

This also sounds kind of terrible. Most things sound kind of terrible. Everything being terrible sounds like maybe not an immediately fixable problem.

"...OK. It'd be nice to have some paper or something?"

"Sure. Do you draw?"

"Not very much. We don't have paper very often. The Alteri use it sometimes - they prefer computer interfaces, but sometimes they want paper. It's harder to monitor and it doesn't go out when the power does."

"Someone's bringing it now. The power sometimes goes out in your cities?"

"Not usually! Sometimes the equipment breaks down. On some planets the weather causes problems and a bunch of people can lose power at once, though Yahi doesn't even really have weather. I was thinking of, like, on ships in deep space sometimes you budget your generator output wrong and then you have to cut nonessential power use for a while. But probably most people who use paper just like that it's - simple."

"You can have all the paper you want."

"OK," she says, smiling. "Thank you. I - want to say I'll see about seeing performances tomorrow, but I don't suppose any of them are in Etra La or Yahivi."

"Not really. They could try to translate but I bet it wouldn't work perfectly. I could translate for you but that has the same problem. Concerts are easy, though, you don't need to be able to understand music for it to work."

"Makes sense. Maybe tomorrow. I suppose flying mostly blind is dramatic, anyway. He likes tragedies?"

"The story he wanted for Arda was awful, though I don't know if he thought so. Most of the things that win his poetry concerts are terribly sad."

"Huh. It probably would be better if I knew something about your narrative traditions. I don't feel like the stuff I've been writing for you is very sad."

"Everything about your world is very sad, I think. I could go try to get a book of recent winners of Eru's contests."