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[inafadingcrown]

[The video feed flips on, focusing (after a few seconds of jostling around) on Galadriel, sitting on the steps of the Initiative Hold, her sheathed sword beside her. Having just finished training, she’s attired appropriately, wearing a simple dress and with her hair braided and wound about her head- displaying those pointed ears quite prominently for those who might have missed them before.]

I grow weary of the constant grey here. It is overlong since I have heard a running stream or seen the sunlight filtered through the forest canopy.

Tell me, those of you who have journeyed outside this city: does greenery yet remain in this world? It would do my heart well even to hear of it.

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[toldyouso]

[Pete shrugs again.]

There's always a war somewhere.

[The Kree wage war for kicks.]

[inafadingcrown]

It is more true than I would like. And yet I remember a time when it was not so. [That's because you are older than the sun, Galadriel.]

[toldyouso]

[Pete looks...less skeptical than he would if it weren't Galadriel on the other end.]

Don't take this the wrong way or anything, but I find that hard to believe.

[inafadingcrown]

I do not blame you; it is beyond the memory of most, before the creation of Men and first risings of the sun and moon.

[...yep. She sure did just casually throw that out there.]

[toldyouso]

[Eh, he was there when Death herself vaporized an insane Avatar of Life. Also he has an artifact basically equivalent to the One Ring in his pocket. You get jaded.]

How long ago was that?

[inafadingcrown]

[Goddamn it, and the One Ring is here too. Initiative people what were you thinking?!]

Ages ago. [Come on, Galadriel, you can do the math.] Over seven thousand years, at the least.

[toldyouso]

Huh.

[He's trying to remember what was going on with Earth then. He knows it was the same old, same old with the Kree and the Skrull trying to exterminate each other in space.]

So your universe is pretty young, then?

[inafadingcrown]

I have little basis for comparison.

[toldyouso]

Mine's about 14 billion years old.

[They have it on good authority from a guy who was there when it was created.]

[inafadingcrown]

[A little pause]

Quite likely so, then, yes. Of course, I know not how long Arda existed before the creation of Elves.

[toldyouso]

You're an elf?

[He points at one of his rounded ears, clearly meaning to contrast it with the points on hers.]

[inafadingcrown]

[She smiles and absentmindedly runs her fingers over the tip of one of her ears.] I am. We have other names for ourselves, but I have found that is the term familiar to most.

[toldyouso]

We have stories, but before now, all of the people I knew with pointed ears were aliens.

[It's cool. Some of his best friends are aliens.]

[inafadingcrown]

It seems there are a great many places in which my kind are but the stuff of myth and legends. [But she doesn't seem bothered by it.]

We are all alien here, in a sense, are we not?

[toldyouso]

I'm actually the alien in my universe, too. At least in the parts of it where I spend all my time. I'm from a place nobody'd heard of until maybe 50 years ago.

[He snorts.]

You get used to the hick jokes after a while.

[inafadingcrown]

"Hick jokes?" [Said in that tone used mostly by people's grandparents when encountering slang- which...actually is precisely what is happening here.]

[toldyouso]

[Oops. He takes a second to consider how to explain it without using any more slang.]

Do people from cities make fun of people from the countryside for being unsophisticated where you're from?

[So...Pete is saying...he's a hobbit? Not that he realizes it.]

[inafadingcrown]

Some do, yes. [/insert a joke about the Mirkwood elves here] And that is a "hick?" One who is unsophisticated?

[toldyouso]

It's got a connotation of being ignorant and provincial, too.

[Pete clearly isn't bothered. "Earth sucks" jokes are some of the mildest flak he takes, and he doesn't identify with the planet, anyway.]

If they weren't picking on one thing, it'd be another.

[His team is very functional.]

[inafadingcrown]

I had the problem in reverse, it seems. When I first began to spend time among the Sindar, I was often accused of arrogance or believing myself above those around me.

[Oh, the woes of being an exile from literal holy lands. It didn't help that a lot of her family were assholes.]

[toldyouso]

[Hang on, he's getting his tiny violin.]

Did you?

[inafadingcrown]

[Eh, not bothered by it now. Then? Yes, she was.]

Not at all. I suffered, I believe, from association with some of my kin.