Ambela waits.

After a few minutes a man with sharp cheekbones and long hair appears with a soft but sharp cracking noise.

"Hello."

"Hello. My name is Atennesi Cohen. It's a pleasure to meet you, although given the circumstances I shan't be offended if you don't feel the same way."

"I think it can be a pleasure to meet you even in an irritating broader context."

He smiles. "I often feel the same. Your command of our language is impressive."

"Thank you."

"So, what would you say your immediate priorities are?"

"I would like to assess the plausibility of going home using resources from this end, and if that seems intractable I'll wait for assistance from home and will want to pass the time looking for things to share that will be useful to you - it seems likely that we have more technology, for instance, though I'm not an engineer to tell you the entire tech tree."

"The most likely way of finding out if I can send you home would be to try sending you home and see if it works," he says.

"Would you be able to elsewise travel if so, or would it just be a sudden anticlimax?"

"It is possible I would be able to follow you; it is also possible that without you to serve as a connection your place of origin would be subsequently inaccessible."

"Can you bring someone else here? Then send only one of us back?"

"I would have to try."

"Maybe give them a couple days first. Valar are slow by nature."

"Alright. I doubt the time zones match; are you tired? Hungry?"

"I don't sleep on a daily basis but I've been having language lessons long enough to be a little hungry if it's no trouble."

"It's no trouble--although it does occur to me that I shouldn't simply assume you share human dietary tolerances and requirements."

"If I don't recognize anything you have I'll taste a little bit and see if it tries to kill me. I can go without food for a few days without a problem."

He nods, and teleports away again, and then teleports back with a tray with a wide variety of small nibbley foods on it.

"Well, they smell good." Taste taste taste. "- seems harmless." Nom nom.

"I'm curious how you can tell so fast, some toxins are slow-acting."

"Elves have very good control over our bodies and I could tell if mine were beginning to attempt to do something it shouldn't. There could be things I might have missed but they'd take long enough to do anything that I'd get genuinely hungry waiting to find out."

"Ah, I see. It seems your species has many advantages."

"It does. And the Valar have patched up the drawbacks."