"I really should visit. It's still relatively close to summer and I've been working on my--cryophobia? My aversiveness to cold--anyway."

"So if I offered to heat the place up to 'sweltering' would that be beside the point?"

"...Disliking the cold would not actually make that comfortable. But I appreciate the thought."

"I'm so sorry."

"I mean, out of all of you I think you might have even less reason to apologize than Tyelcormo."

"Not sure that's true. It wasn't enough."

"Well, in that case I apologize for not doing enough to not die on the Ice."

"Oh, sis, don't be ridiculous."

"I married Tyelcormo," she points out, "I was always going to be at least a little ridiculous." She sighs. "But you're right. It's just--difficult not to feel guilty, when I haven't had to deal with thirty thousand years of interim like you have."

"They were pretty terrible! Good thing we're Elves, and, like, can only feel a fraction of the sense of wasted time that it deserves."

She laughs softly. "I'm pretty sure a fraction of thirty millenia is still too much."

"It might take thirty more to stop, ah, missing it. Feeling like part of our selves were stolen."

"Is it arrogant of me to think if I had lived I could have saved you?"

"...probably? How were you going to do that?"

"I dunno. Magic."

"If Dad hadn't died we might have won the war. Maybe. Dunno."

"I don't know if I could bear to think we were never, ever going to win no matter what happened. Not if there's an alternative."

"Not a believer in the Doom?"

"Humans have free will, right? Besides magic that was the other reason I thought me being there might've made a difference.Although given the accuracy with which Melkor's prophecies played out who the fuck even knows anymore."

"Humans have free will but prophecy still sorta works, just - less absolutely so. I think."

"Well, that's something. I dunno if the Doom had an expiration date but if I didn't have free will I'd kinda be panicking that us coming back meant something really terrible was about to happen just to counterbalance it or something."

"I have been kind of panicking about that! Tyelcormo has plans for a nuclear apocalypse, though."

"Really?"

"Seemed important to plan for."

"The Cold War wasn't fun for anybody, it seems."