"I don't have a useful cheat in mind for artifacts, unfortunately."

"The accelerated perception might make their crafting faster, though it's still on the scale of years."

Go ahead, Macalaurë says.

So she osanwës him the relevant parts of transcript including the remark about what Maitimo wants for his birthday.

Thank you. A sigh. Moving is going to be a great deal of effort and a setback of years.

You're going to do it? Because he wants it for his birthday?

Hmm? No. I have absolutely no intention of doing it. But if he's decided he wants it, watch, somehow events will transpire such that suddenly we are.

Your phrasing tripped me up. I will be enthralled to watch events of that nature considering the bottlenecks he has to work through.

Laughter. I doubt he's confident he can pull it off, but if he could be confident that any of this were real he'd be quite sure of it, and so am I. Though I can't think quite how. If I tell Father now he'll say 'I have expended enough effort on putting distance between us and them'. So I won't tell him now, because it'll pain me to hear that, and I'll tell him once the assassin drama has been settled and then his answer will just be that it would be very practically costly and difficult.

But it'd put you closer to those trade-happy Dwarves that Maitimo is going to charm for you?

There is that. I don't think that's itself sufficient. I could just ask him what the rest of the play is but I think it'd distress him if we start talking in his head, and he also might not tell me because it'll spoil the fun, or because I'd react in a way that's not useful to him if I knew.

Do you want me to redact this when I next talk to him?

No, of course not. Why?

Just making sure.

You must have gotten something of his reputation from our cousins.

Yes.

Holding Valinorean politics together for as long as he did wasn't good for him, or for anyone else who played a major role in it, but it did give them interesting sets of strengths.

And now you have plumbing. Hurrah.

Within five years of arriving here we'll have fully modern living standards for everyone and regular meetings and a few arranged marriages with every local community that is interested in being part of a war effort or having the protection of groups so committed. And that's with no engineers helping at all because they are developing electricity and guns.

You object?

I find the idea sort of distasteful even when there's no war-related pressure and the process doesn't involve permanent soul alteration in what appears to be a totally monogamous society. None of those things are helping.

Huh. By Cuivienen that was the primary thing marriage was for, that and parenting; you pursued love and companionship and so forth through other avenues. I can communicate your distaste but I'm not sure it'll move people.

Avoiding this distasteful thing is not a demand or anything as long as everybody has a way to gracefully back out should they be disinclined. A way which isn't "hastily marry elsewhere", preferably. But it seemed to bear mentioning.