leave of absence | Glowfic Constellation

"Time in Valinor does not pass at the same rate as time in the Outer Lands. The Valar can alter the subjective experience of time in their realms, and they all do it, to varying degrees. The Halls of Mandos are even farther off. Even after five Ages of the Earth he will not be able to be sure that the Enemy isn't bored, because only a few minutes need have passed for the Enemy."

purposeful_glory

"Fuck."

"So there are two possible approaches. One is to find the means by which he can have a happy life. I don't know what that would look like. Alone with abundant food, maybe. Maybe after a while he will be willing to meet some people who have no conceivable strategic value for the war, and he won't have to be lonely.

The other is to drag him back in. Tell him that I and my father are marching on Mithrim and his father and brothers are preparing a defense and he had better fix everything immediately, and sure the Enemy can use this to get a better model of his family but if he's wrong that this is a hallucination, everyone he cares about dies on the point of each others' swords. He'll fix things. He'll tell himself it's so laughably implausible that we all survived the ice, that his father survived that injury, that it isn't particularly useful information anyway. And we will have a very valuable person back on our side and he will believe for the rest of his life that any second he will wake up in Angband.

I want to do the first. Maitimo would want me to do the second."

purposeful_glory

"He'd want you to lie to him about an imminent war - I hope you aren't suggesting he'd want you to actually generate one -"

"Apparently he doesn't actually have any qualms about lying. I thought he did last time I knew him. What he'd want is for me to figure out whichever words and actions will get him usefully working towards his family's interests again, whatever that happens to involve him believing or experiencing."

purposeful_glory

Um

"I haven't told the Fëanorians yet because they were in the middle of having a festival and I didn't even know for sure that either of the people I rescued was Maitimo so I didn't interrupt before I came here," she says. "Maybe they'll have ideas."

"Yes, I imagine Fëanor will be both good at and immediately committed to the project of getting Maitimo back in motion on their side of things. I am not sure you should tell him because I am still not sure that's what we should do."

purposeful_glory

"I object to the plan of leaving Maitimo's family thinking that he is dead or worse for any significant length of time."

"I am not suggesting we deliberate on it for a week."

purposeful_glory

"Three days. I'm due back for another batch of orcs in three days."

"Not even necessarily that long. They do deserve to know. But what Maitimo deserves really ought to be at the forefront here, no?"

purposeful_glory

"I wouldn't phrase it as being about what he deserves, but I use the concept less - I agree, anyway, but even if he's an order of magnitude more introverted than I am five hundred years alone in the middle of nowhere with surreptitiously supplied food after which he still couldn't be confident he was safe isn't going to do him any good, is it? Solitary confinement is considered torture in its own right in most realms..."

"I know. Maybe we can send him an Elf-baby to raise. He'd do a good job at it, he was an adoring big brother."

purposeful_glory

"...This seems cruel to him and to the baby both. He won't think the baby exists. Not conducive to attachment of the sort I think children in general ought to have."

"It was a slightly facetious suggestion. If he doesn't think anyone else is real then he can't have meaningful interaction even if he's surrounded by people."

purposeful_glory

"Solitary confinement is not principally unhealthy for intellectual reasons, I think; and adult interlocutors could better handle being considered fictitious while still providing - faces and voices."

"Sure, fine. So refined best-for-Maitimo plan is to ask him if he's okay occasionally having civil conversations with people he thinks are pretend, and who know he thinks they're pretend, about harmless topics and then sending him some of those every century for the next few Ages."

purposeful_glory

"I'd expire of boredom, but I probably have an atypically low tolerance for it..."

"I'm sure he'll do something interesting with himself, constrained by it having to be uninteresting to the Enemy and not useful if they want to impersonate him. He also has an atypically low tolerance for boredom, but absent pressing reasons he's not going to do anything that gives his enemies an advantage. Not under ordinary torture and not under boredom-torture either.

What do you think about the second approach?"

purposeful_glory

She shrugs. "I could propose it to him and wouldn't have any particular qualms about carrying it out; but I still don't want his family to think he's dead-or-worse."

"If you decide you want cater-to-hermit-Maitimo as our plan, you can always tell his family that we're doing that and not where so they don't interfere. I'm more worried about whether we should be doing plan cater-to-hermit-Maitimo!"

purposeful_glory

Other Quendi could hear this conversation and bail her out aaaaaaaany minute now. "I understand."

They are quite clearly listening, but no one looks inclined to save her.

"If it was you," Findekáno says, "what would you want?"

purposeful_glory

"It's not me. It is very clear to me that Maitimo and I do not react in the same way to - things."