Welcome to Gaia! ::

Amanya smiled at them. "So I understand. My assistant has told me of a few of these events."

She tapped her fingertips lightly on the edge of her desk. "I presume that you are here for the list of names of those who have gone to other lands," she said thoughtfully. "Unfortunately, they are not written in your script, but I can go through them with you if you would like."

"If it's not too much trouble," Earendil smiled gratefully.

The woman laughed softly. "Not at all, not at all." She opened a drawer of her desk and pulled out a thick leatherbound book. "Come, let's find a place to sit," she invited them, motioning towards the reading room to which she had taken them the last time they'd been there.

Amanya motioned for them to take a seat in the reading room and resumed the seat meant for the storyteller once again. She settled into it and opened the book, then looked up at the others and waited for them to be ready.

Earendil once again made himself comfortable on the pillows, making sure that there was space beside him for Lin as well.

"How shall I go through the names?" Amanya asked, looking at them over the top of the book.

"Why not most recent to furthest in the past?" Earendil suggested. "And perhaps only those who have been sent to the countries we've been to and met people in. Amon Darthir, Nauros, Southland, Eastland, Westland ... we never met anyone in the Southland aside from Emile, and he was from the Human Southland ... and other names wouldn't mean much to us, I think."

Amanya nodded and flipped through the book, looking for the final page of entries. The book wasn't filled to the end, so it took her about half a minute to find the page that she was looking for.

"Any particular country you'd like me to start with?" she asked, peering over the top of the book at them again.

"Dark Elves, then," Amanya nodded, flipping the page again. She began by listing those who had visited and then returned to Caras Galadhon, but even after she had listed all of the names from the last five hundred years - about five per century - Earendil had to admit that he had not met or even heard of any of them.

From there, the librarian began to list those who had gone but not returned, and she was about three hundred years into the past when Earendil asked her to stop and repeat a name.

Amanya looked at him curiously before she nodded and repeated the entry.

"Elurin," she read, "left Caras Galadhon in Winter of 28 735, sent word that he would not return because he had found and married a woman there."

Earendil nodded at Lin. "I think so ... do you think Aranhil knows? That his father is from here, I mean?"

It was one of those things that a person might keep to themselves, if the people here wanted to keep their existence as secret as they claimed.

"It's possible," Earendil admitted with a chuckle. He turned back to Amanya and grinned. "Please continue," he requested politely. "This is proving to be most enlightening."

Amanya nodded and continued. She listed off another few pages of names, but again, there were none that Earendil recognized.

"There certainly are a large number of them," he had to admit. "I would never have dreamed that so many people in our land would be from somewhere else."

"Ah, but don't forget," Amanya reminded him, "these are simply people who did not return. They might not have even made it to your land, or if they did, they might simply have not made it back here. The ocean is a dangerous place, after all."

"Or you might have met people who simply came at an earlier time," Amanya added, "but we don't have the time to cover thirty thousand years of history, at least not in a single day."

"Very true," Earendil nodded. "Please, continue. Perhaps Light Elves who visited the Westland next?"

Amanya nodded and flipped a few pages again. Once more she listed names and dates of people who had gone and returned, but of those she named, Earendil did not recognize any names. That came as no surprise, really: they had been in the Westland but a few short months, and the odds of meeting someone from here who was visiting there at the same time were very poor indeed.

Then Amanya began the list of those who had gone and stayed, and Earendil was less surprised - but just as pleased - to recognize a name from that list as well.

"Harna and Calima," the librarian repeated, again at Earendil's request, "left with their daughter, Jacinthe, in the year 28 945. They were never heard from again."