Thirty years.

Yeah.

Whatever help you need making that place stop existing, if I can do it, I will.

Is he back home? 

No. They're staying with me for the moment, it's not very clear whether they're going to go back at all. One of the things is... in Angband, the Enemy can give people hallucinations, and does. They already had four where they escaped, or were rescued; they think this is another one, and that if they agree to go home it'll give the Enemy information. Their siblings want them to, though.

And Fëanáro?

I don't know who that is.

Maitimo's father, he's in charge of their people...

Hasn't been mentioned or introduced to me, and Maitimo's said they'd be in charge if things were less complicated.

Is he dead?

Seems likely. I can ask.

He shakes his head and looks exhausted. All right. Well. If it's Maitimo in charge that's something, he's less reckless.

She looks sympathetic. Yeah. Except they're not so much in charge. They aren't there; they aren't well enough to go or even write. And their siblings are still figuring out what to make of this - we just got in touch with them yesterday, and I only worked out that that wording was safe for me to maybe swear like half an hour before they spotted you; they've mostly been assuming that it was some kind of trick.

Maitimo wants to do right by you. It's very, very obvious. But they're not in a position to make that happen.

Maitimo has had lots of opportunities to do right by us. I'm very sure 'wants to, and can't make it happen' is in fact exactly where he likes to present himself.

They aren't that good at people, any more. Angband is really fucked up.

I can't really imagine anything that wouldn't leave Maitimo good at people.

I don't know most of what happened, just some of the results. And I'm not sure you want to know the details. She shudders.

I just - can't imagine someone being Maitimo at all, and not being good at people.

They want to be. They're working on it. I can tell they used to be, some of the skills are still there even if the things they originally built them on aren't, and they're frustrated to have trouble doing things that used to be easy. But, yeah. For someone who spent thirty years in those conditions, I think they're doing really well, but they still spent thirty years in those conditions. It's hard to come back from that kind of thing.

Yeah.

I need to know if Fëanaro's dead.

Nod. I'll go ask. Shouldn't be long.

Hey. Going okay so far; they'd like to know what happened to your parent, Fëanaro.

He is dead.

All right. Thank you.

Yeah, dead.

So Macalaure's regent for Maitimo, and he's sorry but can't do anything, not in charge at the moment, definitely isn't a manipulation I don't even know how anymore...

Yeah. We're hoping you might have an idea for something we can do. I'm almost tempted to go steal the things back but that'd definitely cause problems.

We weren't expecting the things back. A portal to a safe place to settle will do it.