"Yes, this is sort of a chronic problem of interacting with Eru."

"Yeah. So. Probably best I stay away."

"Perfectly understandable."

Nod.

"Some people used to find it expedient to avoid the Valar, too, before they understood things like keeping confidences."

"Hmm?"

"Oh, like, they'd straighten living people, too - with consent only but in a rather technical sense - and no one could ask for details about the procedure and expect to keep it secret."

"Ah."

"But now they understand incentives and try very hard to make sure no one is made worse off by asking them for help."

"Oh, that's nice. Well done."

Giggle.

"It was your doing, wasn't it?"

"I had help, especially after they got better at holding conversations! They have much more attention than an incarnate and can talk to many people at once."

"Well, fair enough."

"Plus once one had understood a concept they could propagate it to all the others."

"Still. I think I'm right in suspecting the accomplishment is substantially yours."

"You caught me."

"Yeah." He smiles.

And - hesitates -

"...Since we were talking about my interesting mental architecture..."

"Hm?"

"...Mercy feels evil," he says. "To have the power to hurt someone, and want to, and not do it, feels to me the way I imagine most people feel about, I don't know, rape or something. Like I'm doing something actively, terribly wrong. A lot of the... arranging my life to be better for everyone in it... that I've done over the years has been finding ways to think of things as something other than mercy so I can do them. It... seemed like you might want to know that."

"Yes. That's - interesting."

"If there's such a thing as an objective definition of right and wrong, I'm pretty sure mine isn't it. But - that doesn't make it stop feeling that way."

"That sounds - I was going to say 'really hard' but I suppose it isn't if you just do as the described feeling says."

"Yeah. Did that for a while, early on. But - if I want a functioning empire, I have to pay some attention to its needs, and that means things like buying slaves instead of abducting every attractive person I pass on the street. So I had to learn to think my way around that."

"Do you prefer to continue having this feature?"