"Indeed."

"See you soon."

"See you soon." Click.

There's an email from Carnistir ten minutes later.

She opens it with no little trepidation.

"Short version: Telvo tried to take a boat back. No one knew he was in it. It was lit afire and he suffocated. The continent was besieged by orcs, the local population in dire straits, and the Enemy threw everything he had at us. We hadn't even built walls yet. We built them out of bodies, slept behind them, kept fighting. Took back the whole continent. It was not easy but it made us overconfident, there were a million orcs dead at our feet - Father charged Angband. There were giant fire demons we later called balrogs. We drove them off too late, he died in our arms. We had been there three weeks. 

Enemy offered to parley. A year to evacuate the continent and a Silmaril to found our Noldorin kingdom, and in exchange we'd let him war with the Valar unimpeded. Maitimo went to the parley, thought if we could surprise the Enemy with enough force we could get the Silmaril without negotiating and on the off chance they were sincere we could learn a lot from talking. We surprised the Enemy, but not with enough force. They took Maitimo alive.

The host crossing the Ice arrived. They marched right up to our camp and we retreated to avoid a war. Spent five years not doing much of any lest it make them nervous, they were doing the same. Findekáno got sick of it, hiked off to Angband, and got Maitimo out. He apologized for the boats - he hadn't had anything to do with it in the first place, he didn't know Father was planning it and he tried to stop him - surrendered the crown to Nolofinwe, pledged his fealty. It was sickening. He was still broken by Angband and trapped in his own head and didn't even believe any of it was real, and Nolofinwe was delighted."

She closes her laptop and puts her head in her hands and focuses on breathing.

"What's the matter?"

Everything, she wants to say and doesn't, not even over osanwe.

"Bad things happened after I died." She opens the laptop again and shows him the email.

"May I -?"

"Right, English text, yeah."

"What a mess."

"No kidding. As far as I can tell Nolofinwe's best trait is his kids."

"Maitimo moved us across the continent because the peace was still fairly fragile. There were two local kingdoms standing, and one of them was Olwë's brother's and he turns out to be a pompous jackass with a Maia wife who regards himself as ruler of the continent and makes it known that we'd better consider ourselves his subjects. I accused Artanis and company of being the shitbags they are, they went to him and told him about Alqualonde, he banned the speaking of Quenya on the continent.

Enemy tried something. We were stronger, faster, had better communications. Won. Besieged Angband except to the north where it's inaccessible, mountains. Built some kingdoms. Fought some brave battles. Four hundred fifty years, before he was strong enough to end it. The mountain ranges all erupted as volcanos, blotted out the Sun. Most of the kingdoms fell, though not Maitimo's, because he was a terror in a fight. Cáno sheltered with him, I and my people fell south, Tyelcormo and Curufinwe ended up in one of our cousins' kingdoms. Findaráto's. Both his brothers had died in the onslaught.

This mortal man wanders into Olwë's brother's kingdom and falls in love with the princess. The King, being a jackass, tells him he can have her hand if he brings him a Silmaril from Morgoth's crown."

"Silmarils," mutters Bella darkly.

When they get to the part about Artanis she comments "I never really met Arafinwe but I'd be surprised if it wasn't the case that his daughter is his worst feature."

"He goes to Nargothrond and asks the King to help him steal a Silmaril. The King is indebted to his father and thinks this is a lovely romantic way to die - he wasn't thinking very clearly, his brothers had just died, it was becoming apparent the war was lost - and decides to go for it. So Tyelcormo and Curufinwe give speeches trying to persuade his people not to follow him. They're very convincing. His people decide to stay. The King, the mortal, and a party of ten go off on a Silmaril suicide mission.

And the princess of Doriath gets word when they are inevitably and predictably captured by the Enemy, decides that she has to rescue them - she's half-Maia - and heads to Nargothrond herself to try to rally an army to the cause of saving their King. Tyelcormo and Curufinwe detain her there and write to the King of Doriath asking, I take it very rudely, what the fuck he's doing using Father's work to send mortals on suicide missions. Doriath mobilizes to attack Nargothrond. Huan decides that the princess's cause is very romantic and that she stands a chance with his help, and he goes off, fights one of Morgoth's lieutenants, helps the princess rescue her boyfriend. Then Huan comes home but Tyelcormo's a wreck and furious with him, and more furious when he learns that the princess and boyfriend have gotten Manwë's help getting out of Angband after sneaking in and stealing a Silmaril. Huan leaves again to try to rescue Doriath from the catastrophic fallout of this - a werewolf of Angband swallowed the Silmaril and had superpowers, it was killing everyone - and dies in the fighting, as do Princess and Boyfriend. The King of Doriath ends up with the Silmaril and asks the Dwarves to make him a necklace with it."

"Oh no," she says softly when she gets to the part about Huan dying.

"After the Dwarves do this, he accuses them of getting designs on the Silmaril, refuses to pay them, and starts shouting threats and racial slurs. One of them stabs him. He dies. In retaliation the people of Doriath kill all of the Dwarves in Doriath. There are two survivors, and when they get home their people decide to march on Doriath and demand accountability for the massacre. The demand of accountability sort of falls by the wayside when the two sides meet, and the Dwarves end up sacking Doriath, and then all getting murdered by a retaliating Doriath host, including all of my children, who were shot while fleeing. No survivors, the second time. 

We'd been trying to rally all of the free peoples of the world together for one last offensive against the Enemy. If not for that mess, it might have been enough. As it was, it failed catastrophically. We lost everything. Everyone who survived retreated far south. 

And we wrote to Doriath explaining that we'd sworn to retrieve the Silmarils. Even then we could have used it to keep some people safe inpenetrably, we offered to share that safety with them. They did not send our messengers back. We attacked. I died, Tyelcormo died, Curufinwe died. We won, but they smuggled the Silmaril out and to a refugee camp on the southern coast. 

Maitimo wrote to them, too. Messengers shot on sight. And then they stalled, as long as they could. Oaths gradually wear away all the other things you care about that aren't the oath, and if they'd stalled too long they'd have fallen on Sirion after losing their capacity to care about anything other than the Silmaril. They attacked. Pityo was killed. The Queen of Sirion jumped with the Silmaril into the sea rather than let them have it. Ulmo turned her into a bird and she found her husband and they went to Valinor, to plead for the Valar to intervene. 

The Enemy swept up the leftovers. 

And fifty years later the Valar marched in, overthrew him, declared the two remaining Silmarils theirs by right of conquest. Maitimo and Macalaurë wrote to them. The Valar said that by their deeds they'd forfeited their claim to the Silmarils and should turn themselves in and face justice. Instead they fought their way into the camp of the victorious host of the Valar, and took the Silmarils and prepared to die there, fighting. But the herald of Manwë told no one to stop them from leaving.

They left. The Silmarils burn the hands of evil things. Burned theirs. Oath was over. Macalaurë threw his into the deepest reaches of the sea. Maitimo jumped with his into a chasm that had opened in the earth as the continent crumbled."

Imliss turns to smol Feanaro seriously. "We need to invent resurrection for non-Elves. Particularly dwarves."

"...yeah. Yeah, we do. Bella's world has it, right, Bella?"

"My world can, as extremely advanced and inherently expensive divine magic, resurrect people who go to one of my world's afterlives. If the Dwarves don't have one similar enough..."

"Then we'll have to invent an arcane magic way of doing it that's better."

"It is maybe not impossible but it will definitely take a long time."

"That's okay. We can't be epic until this is fixed, all of it."