Once the Enemy's dead and my family alive I bet you I will be okay.

Good.

Odette's going to also be absurdly powerful at that point. Solves lots of problems, that.

Yes, he agrees, lips tugging upwards. Alternate versions of his children having large amounts of power is a good thing. Especially if she's grown out of her vindictive streak, or at least grown up to aim it better. And apparently her sister is to be a queen.

Yeah! I think my cousin offered it because he decided that was the easiest way to stop Odette basically joining our banner but if so it's at least the kind of political shenanigan I'm not going to raise my eyebrows at too much.

I find I cannot object to the action, whatever the motivation.

Yeah exactly. If you don't give people credit for doing good things just because there's a hundred crazy schemes beneath the surface then you'd be being very unfair to Nelyo, too.

He tilts his head, possibly communicating with his daughter. Your brother?

Yeah. He's great but has ulterior motives for literally everything. The one underlying motive is 'destroy the Enemy', though, so we forgive him for it.

Family is important.

Yep.

I'm glad you can rely on yours. A hint of wistfulness accompanies the thought.

Odette mentioned that both of her parents had a very hard time of it in that respect.

Erik's family were wonderful, when he had them. And I had Raven, which it seems like her father didn't.

She's gonna be able to do resurrection someday.

It would be lovely if we happened to meet again when that happened, but I'm glad for your sake and hers regardless.

Once we can do it we'll find every single world where it'd needed.

I'm not sure there are a finite number.

We've got time.

You know, when you go around saying things like that you make it much harder to believe you're not a good person.

I don't believe in goodness. Like, I want to bring back all the dead everywhere, so I'm gonna do that, but if I meet someone else I'm not gonna say 'didn't you realize that what you ought to be doing is bringing back all the dead everywhere? It's the right thing to do'.

It's interesting that your model of a good person implies that behavior.

The being bossy, maybe not, but the thinking in terms of 'ought' - a good person basically has to. If it turned out to be wrong to bring back all the dead everywhere, I'd still do it. 

Or, it came up with your daughter, our gods take issue with men sleeping with men. As far as I know they haven't got a reason beyond 'it's Wrong' but even if they did, even if they count more than us so that doing whatever they want really is the right thing to do, I'd still tell them to fuck off. It's like - Odette's goals are basically the same as my family's goals, but she's not a Feanorian. She wants what we mostly want but if that changed, her loyalty is to her. I am not Good. I want basically what Good wants but if that ever changes, my loyalty isn't with Good. 

I think you have a different idea of Good than I'm used to, but that seems like a sensible way of doing things.

I think you might be underestimating your ability to influence what she wants, though.

She doesn't think that my loyalties are stupid, or that they'll ever stop mattering to me the way they do. And I think she'd stick with us as much as she possibly could even if things got really bad. We couldn't make it work, otherwise, I don't do well if I feel like I'm being judged or expected to improve.

But if some idiot goes and claims a Silmaril she's not gonna take on 'kill him' as her mission.