"Yeah, we aren't going back because the Valar might attempt to have opinions about what worlds we should live in, again, and that would be troubling. We've got earwires so Fëanáro can call his parents."

"If you want to hug them or something they're here," he says, "my set, they'd probably be happy to meet you since they respectively missed or mismanaged my childhood and it was a long time ago anyway."

"Not really."

He nods approvingly.

"Me and Rúmil have been sort of surrogated in."

"If you're much like Loki that should be adequate, I think. Just let him do things."

"They do."

"Then they're fine. If they stop you can always stay here."

Adequate, huh.

"I think we turn out all right no matter what," he says. "Probably not in the world that hates science, but anywhere else. We're smart enough."

"You killed a lot of people."

"And won a war and saved a lot more."

"There is room for improvement."

He sighs.

They enter an astonishing building that appears to have been designed by Elves introduced to steel for the first time. "Maitimo," he says, "there's a dimension where it's still the Year of the Trees 1180 or so, and Loki's counterpart already found me and apparently decided to mother me."

And someone emerges from around a corner, eyebrows raised so high they're lost in his shockingly red hair. "That's a new one," he says, and then sees Bella and Feanaro and - "you know, I was all prepared to bet he was not serious."

"No, here I am," Bella says. "Hi. I'm Bella."

"Maitimo. It's a pleasure," he says, very sincerely. "I expect you'll be happy to hear that your counterpart known to me is a very capable and absurdly powerful person who, to keep her diverted while she invents resurrection, has been ending a millenia-old war between her adopted and birth civilizations. I've been helping. They call her Loki Godslayer."

"That is impressive enough that I will forgive her taking hundreds of years to get around to it."

"No one threw any gods that merited slaying at her for the first few centuries, and I think it's commendable that she waited to find one who really really warranted it. And then ensured no two molecules of him shared the same cubic parsec. Do you want to come in and have something to eat? Miss anything from Tirion? Feanaro, you are going to grow up to be a great man and I think given a little support you will also be a very very good one. Do you want to hear what your counterpart did for the war, beyond being the only one who was willing to call it necessary and call on us to fight it?"

He nods. 

And Maitimo leads them into a brightly lit sitting room that looks out - over a enormous drop - at the countryside.

"I do miss a couple things from Tirion, actually -" She names her favorites of the things she didn't manage to replicate in Materia.

And a few minutes later someone brings a teetering pile of them in, and Maitimo settles himself facing his beautiful countryside view and tells them a child-appropriate history of his world.

Bella takes notes.

He reaches the end of the story and tells, smiling, how Loki made Arda round and fixed all orcs ever.

"I'm not sure why the flat planet bothered her so much. My home planet's round but just sort of incidentally."

"Where she's from there are lots of planets, and all of them round, and also I think to her it reflected the incompetence and excessive power of the Valar."

"I guess that'd do it."

"Anyway," he says, "we'd desperately gathered on the crumbling continent and waited for my father to attempt something impossible again, and then suddenly there was Loki sizzling with Tesseract power and explaining that she'd won the war, was relocating us to a nice planet, and was going to get back all the dead. And then she did. Went home herself, threw a feast in her honor, talked us down from saving the whole galaxy immediately, booked me a honeymoon, and started on her next project.

And you," he says to Feanaro, "Said to your brother 'ruling this planet would be a waste of my time, Father can have the title back and you can have the paperwork', helped us build this city, and then got to work on I think eight different avenues of ending aging everywhere, making a hundred paradises superior to Valinor and getting people there, and possibly evacuating the galaxy if it's ever needed.

What are you two up to?"

So Bella replies with her own history - subtle arts major, subtle arts are this thing, she had a magical accident and landed nearly on top of teeny Fëanáro, got sorta used to Valinor eventually, became a science wizard, discovered the time slide and made necklaces but the Valar broke most of them and she and Fëanáro had to share, invented all these other things, practiced unlicensed therapy because there was no one else available, eventually was kicked back to Materia and kept her head down and finished her degree and got her license and saw patients until her rescue, now they're exploring a science fantasy world which doesn't seem to come with its own magic per se.

"That's lovely," says Maitimo, but a little as if suddenly distracted. "Loki thought I should see a therapist but I've been deflecting her on it; I'm doing my job well, so I have rather little motivation."

"...well, functioning at work is only one reason to want to see one but it's up to you, of course."

"I have a hard time justifying bothering other people for no measurable benefit," he says. "My functioning matters."

"If you don't think there would be a measurable benefit even to you, I can see why you wouldn't invest the time."