Lovely.

Demonstrations, huh? What did Men look like?

Ugly, by Elven standards, but pretty normal, by hers. The demonstrations mostly show them unleashing horrible violence on each other in various ways.

...

She goes to find Maitimo.

His office is full of people. Hey, Imliss, he says, may I grab a late dinner with you?

Sure. When should I be back here?

Ah, after the Mingling probably, I am not sure I'll be able to disentangle myself any faster.

Right.

She goes off and reads books, somewhat distractedly, and is back after the Mingling.

Hey. I am very sorry. The city's in a bit of an uproar. Damn him. The Valar will be worried, but assuming he did not lie they'll hesitate to ask him to stop speaking. What's up?

That's my species.

...I thought you two were fifty-something? He said they barely live to eight.

We use a solar calendar. Involving a sun. That you don't have. I haven't brought it up yet because it's been advantageous to let people believe we're fifty-three of your years old but I'm pretty sure we're way younger than that.

Charming.

I'm trying to figure out what his goal is here. Obviously people want to go stop the world being overrun by billions of Men, but they also know perfectly well how prophecies work.

I don't know how prophecies work. Please explain to me how prophecies work.

You can't change them. They happen exactly as described. If you would act to change them you can't by any means learn them in the first place. The fact everyone's heard that Endore'll be overrun by billions of Men means that that's what will happen.

Are you sure being unable to change prophecies isn't one of those things you have and we don't, like coming back when you die or making binding promises or having metaphysically substantial marriages?

No.

No, I'm not sure of that.

Think you can prevent whatever horror's currently on display - the Men are herding other Men into camps and killing them en masse, I think -

Maybe. Probably? I have no idea what would cause it. I don't think I've heard of anything that bad even in my own universe and--not gonna lie--we've done some nasty stuff to each other.

Orome made Idaia and I age a thousand times slower. I think we can figure out a magic solution.

Good. 

They run into Fëanáro a minute later. Maitimo does not look startled but his greeting is a little strained. "Father. What are you doing here?"

"Imliss," he says. "I want to leave Valinor and start over, now."

"Because of the stuff Melkor's saying? He's not lying but he is cherry-picking, I know, that's my species he's talking about."

"Yes, I figured that out. And there might be some fixed bad things but lots of the general misery he's discussing seems way less likely to be a problem if they don't start the way the Elves did, alone, beside Cuivienen, with nothing to protect them or teach them. What do Men need to know?"

"I--I'm not sure, I only just heard about this a few hours ago--can you get a Vala over there, Orome slowed my and Idaia's aging--I don't know if they'll dreamshape or not--we can have accidental children, Orome fixed that too, those two things together seem like a reasonable chunk of the problem--"

"We can petition them. I am going to guess they will not do anything, if that is correct what do we do?"

"...I don't have all the information I need yet. Find everyone who's willing to help who was at the talk, have them osanwe me everything they can remember, Maitimo too, he's a genius with people and I don't know if Valar are close enough to count but he might be able to figure something out from that or from the Men in the visions--how long do we have until they show up, that's an important question, and where if we can finagle it. How long we have affects how long we want to sit down and think because the value of showing up sooner in comparison with having better plans goes down if they're not going to show up for years or decades anyway."

"Maitimo," Fëanáro says impatiently, and he nods. 

"Working on it."

"That's not my angle," he continues. "Engineering problems. What do we need?"

"Birth control and not dying of old age, those are the big ones. Disease prevention, robust crops or something to prevent starvation."