...what? How?

He knew about me and Maitimo, so it's not so inconceivable to begin with, and honestly flying off on a pterodactyl to rescue someone is a hint, sighs Kib.

Oh.

Well in that case I suppose I should be thanking him. Being aggressively unreasonable looks less annoying when he could have easily had me arrested.

Do you want me to talk to him? Mind, I'm not sure what I'd say that wouldn't tell him if he didn't actually guess and is being unreasonable for other reasons.

I'm pretty used to him being, well, himself. And he's less than a mortal year out on immortality, probably the wrong time to aggravate him. 

If it is that he probably won't be unreasonable about it being one of my golems in particular, as far as I know he likes me fine...

I am impressed that you pulled that off. Anyway, I'll tell people what we're doing and assuage various worries and we'll hope Maitimo doesn't get killed or at least does it in public.

Yeah.

He rests his head on Kib's. We're doing the best we can. 

I can't decide if it'd be worse or better if he was angry with us for it. It'd be disturbingly not-Maitimo but at least it wouldn't be 'whatever you want, dear, though you're probably Sauron'.

Well, optimistically we can get "that seems sensible given the premises" instead of "whatever you want dear"...

Yeah.

And he goes and persuades people. That Maitimo should be able to take part in the running of the war doesn't require much persuading; here he is all recovered, after all.

So recovered. All better. Yay.

They settle on a more careful wording. You want to take it to Maitimo or you want me to?

Not sure how to guess who he'd take it better from. I'll have to update the golem either way, though, if you'd rather not.

Not particularly. We have entirely pleasant superficial interactions over sparring and then sometimes he'll come in looking like he's cracking into pieces and ask me to fill in some missing memories and I love him more than anything but I'd hardly call it something I'd rather be doing more often.

Squeeze. I got it. I dwell on him about the same amount whether we interact or not on any given day.

And Kib brings the draft to Maitimo.

"I'm trying to think how these will contradict with whatever they get me to swear next iteration."

"Didn't actually think of that. It probably won't include that you mustn't yell some implausible phrase, though?"

"Might be forbidden from speaking aloud at all or something..."

"If you need more variants on the 'implausible phrase' option you could also, I don't know, knock on the golem in some pattern or something, it won't be able to respond to osanwë though..."

"And I'm assuming it won't be present next iteration. You could cover it with 'if oaths contradict I discharge this one by saying that to the golem if it's present and yelling it over osanwe otherwise'."

"Sounds okay to me, I'll run it by Findekáno..." He bounces this notion.

Can he order the golem away from him?

Not far. It'll give him a few feet but not leave the room or get out of rapid lunging range.

Then seems safe.