"Is that a common expression?"

"Yeah. Usually without the 'a little', I added that for, I don't know, dramatic understatement or something."

"Did Maitimo explain how Lórien works?"

"Nnno, not really. I know it can be different places."

"Lórien is the Vala of visions and dreams, and his wife Estë is the Vala of healing. The gardens of Lórien are suggestible, and if you want them to be a particular way they usually will be, but by default they'll be whatever they think you need."

"I tested if it was Lórien by telling a leaf to taste like chocolate."

"Oh. Huh."

"It's generally a good place for injured people but I'm less confident with aliens."

"That makes sense. I'm not sure the rescued people are just injured. But it sounds like maybe a good place to be keeping them anyway."

"There're survivors of Utumno here. The ones who wanted to be alive, which wasn't most of them."

"I dunno what that is."

"It's the place Melkor set up in our world to torture his captives, until he was stopped."

"Oh. Yeah, that sounds plausibly kind of similar. I didn't see a lot, though."

"How many dead humans are there?"

"Order of billions. Uh, ten by ten by - " she counts zeros on her fingers. "I think a billion is if you multiply ten by ten... nine times?  I don't expect that anywhere near that many are in Lorien right now but I'm not really sure how many there are."

"Well. All right then."

"I would apologize for dropping us all on you, but I think I regret... approximately nothing. Apart from everything I have ever done before this week."

"If you could have asked Maitimo, he would've come.

Of course if you could've asked him we could probably have done better than that and you should not ask him, not for a long time."

"Yeah. Not planning to. Not actually making a lot of plans in full generality right now. Apart from - I guess I have to figure out how much it is possible to talk over custody stuff with Connor and Zana's grandparents. - do you guys figure you can bring dead humans back?"

"I mean, it sounds like dead humans are somewhere. And interdimensional travel is straightforward for the Valar. So - eventually?"

"Eventually's better than never." It probably won't solve any immediate logistical childrearing challenges, though. Which means she either needs to kidnap her children or talk to her parents. Both of these options are terrible but what can you do.

"What's wrong with them?"

" - with who?"

"Your parents - sorry. People here mostly don't float thoughts like that if they don't mean to - I'll stop listening."

"Oh, I don't know how to - Maitimo said it could be done but I don't know how to turn it off. Uh, my parents are fine, they just - correctly believe that I make terrible decisions across several different domains."