Nods. 

We should probably tell people on the other side something, too...

Yeah. Damned if Kib knows what, though. He pans his clock shines around until he finds a courier and calls it over and looks for paper. What are we telling Taniquetil.

Melkor attacked, destroyed the palace, Fëanáro's house, killed your husband...you've sent off to find his reincarnation - we're not clear on who's supposed to have the command here, please send orders...

Kib writes it out, shine moving to follow his pen.

His reincarnation if he has one. If a stork to whom the instruction has propagated finds him before one that doesn't know to look does it.

Do you need anything?

If a stork finds him and brings him here he'll need to be fed.

Okay. We'll go find food. How long might it take -

Liquid food. Milk, juice. Could be a couple days. If it's too long they've got instructions to stop at a creche and get him fed there and it's possible the creche won't give him back.

Well, if they tell you that we can go and get him, probably?

Storks can understand people, they can't talk. I have no way to tell the difference between him being at a creche that won't let the stork take him away again and him not having reincarnated after all.

...I'm sure when everyone comes back they'll think of something.

Yeah.

And hey, maybe he'll come back as a girl!

Kib turns slowly to the speculator.

I'm sorry, he says, I must be mad with grief or something, I could have sworn I just heard you escalate to a status of significant enough to say the possibility that my murdered spouse could reincarnate in a way that you'd find more personally palatable without regard to how either he or I would feel about it, but that can't be, can it.

...you'd rather a boy again?

I want him alive. If he's alive he's currently a baby and whether I'd find him sexually appealing is the last thing on my mind.

Sorry.

Sure you are.

Kib doesn't say anything. Clock shines swirl around on the desk in front of him.

People bring him food. His clocks still track time. They keep singing.

And eventually a stork comes.

The stork reaches its beak into itself. The baby's swaddled, it must have stopped somewhere but managed to take him away again.

The stork places the baby in Kib's arms.

Kib calls over his magpie, tells the magpie to find Aydanci. Thief lands on the swaddled bundle, looks at him as if to say 'he's right there, dolt'.

Everyone looks very slightly relieved.

I never learned how to handle babies. And I should not be trying to bring up someone who's going to inherit Aydanci's memories in a decade and a half. Help.

So someone who had several children of her own takes this one, starts rocking back and forth patiently until the baby is sleeping contentedly. We should probably wait on orders from the King to figure out a long-term solution...I'm sure he'll know what to do....

Maybe.

It takes eight days for the courier to reach Taniquetil and the Noldor to return from there, on exhausted horses. Maitimo and Findekáno are both in the vanguard.

Did you find him?