Good.

I have to say delegating that particular task makes things easier.

I managed without being managed, but I'm particularly good at knowing how much I can push myself and I don't forget to eat or anything.

It's actually not just the fact that I don't have to worry about it as much myself, it's--easier--to stop what I'm doing and sleep or eat something if I have "make this person I care about happy" as a motivation to do it on top of abstract self-care. And it's easier to overlook hunger pangs when you're also in several other kinds of pain because magic.

Ah, that makes sense. I'm glad you have people, then, and I will assume Tyelcormo nets positive in spite of how much time you probably spend thinking about how soft his hair is.

Well, I don't know how soft his hair is, but. Yes.

Do you want to know? Or would this be a problem?

I think I would like to know.

Gimme the necklace back and I'll produce higher-fidelity memory.

She hands over the necklace.

Tyelcormo's hair is so soft.

Ooh.

Anything else you want while I've got this on? Maedhros smiling for real? Angband going up in a mushroom cloud, which was really satisfying for a short time until we realized? Happy un-oathed orcs?

Yes. Please.

Loki can provide all these things. (Maedhros's smile is a little cropped of context. How the fuck is she supposed to hang out with this person long enough to transmit all her spells and not out the maudlin gay Elves.)

(It's a pity she doesn't know Lady Hareth already did that.)

"I think I was right. About him actually being happy for a moment when I gave him magic."

"It's possible. It happens occasionally before he believes things are real, it's just easier after that."

"I wish I knew how to prove that."

"Well, if you can convince the oath not to exist..."

"Well, there's that."

"That plus having a conspicuously Enemy-antagonizing personality should do the trick, worked for me - I don't think it's a necessary ingredient that he also thought I was orchestrating his hallucination personally, which he probably doesn't think of you if he's been out for a long time and you didn't personally rescue him."

"Here's hoping."

Inside she's trilling with delight. I can fix it, I can fix it, it'll always have happened and that's not okay but I can fix it!

"And there's - gradations, within 'thinking it's a hallucination' - he bumped up the percentage over time, a bit - that might require identifying the self-insert hallucination character though."

"The self-insert hallucination character?"

"He was dangling from a cliff, I turned him into a bird and hauled him out claiming to be from another world, I kept showing up, my presence was obviously the premise of the rescue and the storyline and so on, and he could tell I wasn't Sauron. He thought I was a Maia for a while, but then I produced enough stuff - ideas and books and stuff from my own world, especially once I had the eidetic necklace - that he updated to me being a real person whose pretense extended probably only as far as pretending not to be working for the Enemy, orchestrating a hallucination, etcetera. We got to know each other quite well and eventually he was convinced that the real person I was wouldn't work for the Enemy, especially and not tell him at that point, unless slightly different and fantastically bribed, some kind of 'give relatively pleasant hallucinations to prisoners who'd otherwise be horribly tortured and I stop hurting orcs' deal. And then I gave everybody free will and he knew no bribery would survive the point at which I had that kind of power to sling around."