"It doesn't interfere with real light, only perceived light, so plants don't know any different, although I didn't explain that to the river Maia who wanted the illusion that intersected with her river tweaked." Follow follow.

If I were Thauron I'd wait until you had ten thousand birds and then try to kill those.

Possible. I wouldn't send them all at once. Maybe a couple hundred at a time. And I don't think he's out yet.

It's hard but I'm pretty good at psychological self-maintenance.

I regret asking you not to speak to me unless it was strategically necessary. Clear channels of communication even outside times of dire need are strategically necessary, there's trust and mutual knowledge that cannot be reestablished the minute that they're needed. It was good for my sanity. It probably wasn't worth it.

I've been bad about keeping in touch with everyone, actually, Findekáno scolded me about it.

Did he? What did he say?

She pulls up the transcript.

When the war is over I'm going to take him to a planet far away from here and far away from both our families and figure out how to set things right.

There are in fact entire planets that specialize in being nice vacation destinations as their principal industry.

Oh? Well, in your abundant free time, scout out one that caters to Elven sensibilities, in one of the progressively-minded cultures, and I'll figure out how to pay for it.

Vacation planets have to be progressively-minded. People do not go there to be tutted at about their choice of vacation companions. I'm hoping magic songs work in my world, I'd make a mint, but they might not, the place is not habitually sung to.

What would universes run on, if not music? Your magic works here, it seems only fair that ours would work there.

Well, I'd hope, it'd sure be convenient, but my universe runs on... y'know, physics.

Which is made out of music. At least, it is here.

I'm pretty sure in my world that's not even a coherent concept, physics running on music. And there are a lot of civilizations and physics is pretty commonly studied.

Well, this universe supposedly has other planets. If needed I shall terraform one of them into a progressively-minded vacation destination myself.

Loki laughs.

I wouldn't have given my father city-melting weapons just so I could do absolutely as I pleased without people talking and hurting everyone I care about, but given that this is a predictable consequence of him getting city-melting weapons and that there are lots of reasons to give him them -

Soon. Well, by Quendi standards, soon.

Five hundred years as measured by Macalaurë's compositions. I don't want to see Findekáno again while I don't believe he's real, even though he wouldn't be able to tell. In five hundred years either this is real or the situation has changed enough there's no strategically interesting insight to get from me.

...one of my more 'desperate emergency' responses to finally getting out of this dimension to go on errands, if the shorter-term plans don't cut it, involves taking a risk which if I'm going to take it anyway I might as well just outright install free will on all the orcs and Elves there are. That wouldn't do it either?

...you think you might be able to do that? I - that'd be fascinating, and if I could make an oath and break it that would confirm you'd done it, but I would be reluctant to make and break an oath on your assurances, to put it mildly. You should do it anyway if you can.

The thing that gave me my sorcery alphabet's part of a set. All the individual things in the set are so stupidly powerful that mostly you can do any given medium-sized thing with whichever you have on hand. And handling them is a risky proposition anyway. It's dangerous to even keep two of them on the same planet for long periods of time, I think this is half of why Asgard has possession of one. But the Tesseract is 'space' and it has a sibling that does 'soul'.