"That seems like a bit of a stretch, but okay."

"I observe that you have never met Melkor."

"I am just pretty sure you couldn't talk me into not trusting my own family. I trust you."

"... You do? Why?"

"Am I wrong?"

"Your conclusions are not wrong. I do not know if your reasoning is wrong because I don't know what it is."

"You're my sister. You're sort of me. You haven't done anything wrong. So you're trustworthy."

"...I grew up in the service of Melkor," Shirask reminds her. "I have done wrong things."

"You said. But he made you, it doesn't count. It's not like you did it willingly."

"That is true. But I did have choices. I chose to wait as long as I did to betray him, even though waiting involved doing wrong things, because I wanted to damage his ability to do evil as much as I possibly could."

"That sounds like it makes you more trustworthy, not less."

"I think that's a valid perspective," she says. "But I also think that if I had been born a different person, one who was more easily turned to evil, you would not be well served by your instinct to trust your family."

"But you're me. If I were more easily turned to evil I could just as easily also be less trusting of family."

"I am as much you as if you had had a twin, I think. That is different from being as much you as if you had been copied with your personality included."

"Okay. Well, you're trustworthy and I trust you. So it works."

"I am trustworthy and you do trust me... and there is no direct benefit to worrying about how easily you trust me because there isn't another of me for you to wrongly trust... but I think I am worried anyway."

"I feel kind of good about you worrying about me, but I really think it's okay."

She smiles slightly. "Why do you feel good about me worrying about you?"

"Usually people worry about someone because they care about them."

"I... it would be imprecise to say I care about you," she says. "I can't directly care about things, or want things, or feel things, the way my mind works now. But I can construct a version of myself who has no such impairments, and do what she would do, and that works very well for practical purposes. And that person does care about you. She cares about you very much. So in a sense, I do as well."

"I'm glad you have something that works."

"It's very useful. I prefer being able to do things over not being able to do things."

"So when you worry, is that constructing a model that worries? Or worrying and then constructing a model to figure out what it is you are worried about?"

"More like the first one. The model is always active. Worrying about you is partly a matter of my own direct thoughts and partly a matter of imaginary emotions accessed through the model."

"I don't think I'm the worrying one."