"I will add this to my list of reasons not to fly to Valinor and yell at them all. Well, anyway, that's encouraging if he's simply not very bright; and if the other Valar are also not very bright it explains how he fooled them."

"They're not. They can, as you said, brute force it, but we can outthink them, or I'd despair of ever pulling this off. Don't fly to Valinor, you'll never leave."

"It's a long list," she assures him. "I have sufficient self-control."

He nods. "And I would have advised, unwisely in hindsight, that you not attempt to fly to Angband either."

"I'd been there once already, unnoticed," she points out.

"I hope you realize that Moringotto at this point almost certainly wants you dead more dearly than he wants anything else."

"Seems possible. Well, if he manages it, maybe my family will turn out not to have been trying to kill me, and find themselves very upset over my loss, and you'll have your Asgardian allies anyway."

"I wasn't considering your death primarily as a strategic setback. As Maitimo correctly observed, I am not in any respect planning on you."

"I am given to occasional flippancy. I assure you I will seek to avoid my own death for unstrategic reasons as well. I simply am not risk-averse enough to regret mixing myself up in local business instead of living alone somewhere to work on getting home without further ado."

"Your mixing in local business saved my son. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"Let's accelerate the building of our first fortress," he says, "but not at the expense of everything else, Macalaurë, I think our current priorities are justified even given the necessity of finding a place for Maitimo to live safely."

"Is there anything else I should convey to him next I see him?"

"There's nothing here that urgently requires his attention, so he should take as long as he needs without feeling that, if he's wrong, he'll have let us down. I love him."

Loki writes that down, glances at the brothers in case any of them have something to add.

"Are you sharing this with the other host," Curufinwë says, leaning forward.

"I am not giving them messages which were personally intended for you, but Findekáno wants news of Maitimo very badly and it was Irissë's idea to ask for information on the Enemy's capabilities in the first place," says Loki. "Should I be withholding something in particular from them?"

"Probably the bit where Maitimo explains how he'd manipulate everyone into getting along," Curufinwë says, smiling faintly. "They ought to know as much as possible about the Enemy's capabilities, certainly."

"I will take that under advisement."

"I think we should start looking at our schedule for expansion, see what we can move up without major sacrifices," Fëanor says, "you are welcome to stay for that but do not need to, and I don't want it known to anyone who wishes us ill."

Nod. "I'm supposed to talk to one of you about economics but that seems to call for no hurry, and may as well run through my preliminary list of technology with someone, which might."

"I'll hear that," Curufinwë says, "probably in the workshop, which has drawing paper and more tools for making prototypes."

"Oh, speaking of paper. I don't need to hoard it the way I thought I did, who wants a piece of my treated paper to see if they can reverse-engineer it?" She pulls out her notebook, slurping back transcripts into it but flipping to a blank page at the end and making to tear it off.

This catches everyone's attention; they stare at it near-rapturously. "That would be useful," Fëanor says. "I take it you don't know what it's treated with?"

"I have absolutely no idea, but I have the actual stuff and you might be able to get somewhere with it. I don't know if its deterioration would be visible to you after some distressingly short amount of time but it doesn't get far; it's supposed to remain clearly legible and strong enough to handle for at least a few thousand years."