I hated Tirion. Same reasons - he sends it, stunningly pretty and shining and white and full of people and obligations and rules and stares and rumors -

She shudders. It's only partly because that's overwhelming.

I didn't spend much time there even before we left Valinor altogether.

Yeah.

(So that's where gods live. She's going to have to think about that, there being gods.)

She goes to speak and can't quite remember how to do it, then remembers that osanwë is a thing. Better now?

We traded one set of problems for another, but better in a lot of ways, yeah. 

Yeah, that sounds like how the world is. What problems? She can help with things, sometimes.

I'm not allowed to say, sorry. Not a problem that'll affect the people here, and I'll let you know if I do think of a way you could help. But unless you have a very self-sacrificing and experienced mage who we can trust completely...

Headshake. The mages here are mostly kind of jerks.

Most people are kind of jerks, he agrees resignedly. It's okay.

And here she was hoping people would be better if they didn't have a ridiculous religion to follow. Oh well.

I'll help, anyway. If I can. Within limits, she's not willing to seriously disrupt her life over it, but he can definitely ask favors.

We mostly just want suggestions on how to get the elves to stop killing other people.

It's a hard problem.

...literally gods, that's worth suggesting: If you can make them unaging, that might do it. Thinking it doesn't matter if other kinds of people die sooner because they're going to die anyway is pretty absurd in her opinion, but that's the general thought process.

The gods could do that, yeah, but they were mad at us for leaving and we can't ask their help now. I'll ask our engineers to work on figuring it out faster - they'll definitely get it eventually -

 - you nearly drove the kobolds extinct. That wasn't going to happen anyway, that's different than just killing someone who's dying anyway....

Yeah, that's the logic she used to save them...

Good job.

Thanks.

We're going to make sure it doesn't happen again. And we don't die either, and we've met the gods, maybe they'll listen to us.

Good.

Not your fault, any of it.

...yeah. (But if only she'd been faster... nope, nope, not a productive line of thought, she's going to believe him on this one, he could hardly be wrong... She takes a deep breath and buries her hands in Ila's fur.)

The thing that finally got us to leave was an evil god doing horrible things. We tried to stop him. We did. He's mostly stopped now. But he's still got prisoners he's torturing and we're not going to do anything about it for fifty years, because being sure not of endangering anyone else is more important. It's hard to make calls like that and it's horrible but you only hurt yourself, not the evil people, if you blame yourself for not being good enough at stopping them.

...an evil god who takes prisoners, well that's fucking terrifying.

She wasn't as slow as she was by choice, though. Or, not like that; she could have pushed herself harder and it would've been kind of awful - already was kind of awful, pushing herself as hard as she did - but she could have pushed herself harder and fewer kobolds would have died.

Hug?

Yeah. Hug. (And instructions from Ila, once she realizes what's about to happen, on how to do it right; squeezy hugs, no petting, shift like this to warn her if you're going to move... It's not hard but people do it wrong a lot and Tyelkormo should not.)

She doesn't really feel better about the whole kobold thing, not really. But she does feel like she might, as a person, be okay anyway; like this might be a forgivable failure.

Well, he's not good at guilt and responsibility and stuff. 

 Hug. Exactly like Ila says, except with more care not to touch her hair.