"I worked it out against Midgardians once, we're... fifty times slower than them, about, but we slow down dramatically past about eight hundred and loiter there for several thousand years before noticeably aging again. I don't know how Quendi age to compare."

"Much faster than that, oddly. Fifty years to young adulthood in the Outer Lands, and fifty Valian years to it in Valinor - Valinor has time-dilation, too, they don't exactly pass ten times as slowly. We're considered fully grown at a hundred, and then like this forever."

"That sounds like a better deal, really. I don't have very clear memories of my first three hundred years. After that I started keeping a diary."

"We have very precise memories, usually. You tampered with mine and I now have a couple centuries-long blank stretches, though I've been mostly able to piece things together."

"...Look, even in the scenario where I'm working for the Enemy I did think you'd concluded I was not literally the same individual you'd been dealing with previously, I had, what, different strengths from Thauron or something like that? I don't want to mess with whatever psychological grounding you're doing by periodically inserting this opinion but does it really have to be in the second person when you are referring to events that happened before I, be it in or out of the sole province of your mind, got ahold of you?"

"Does it bother you?"

"I know why you're doing it, I don't consider it unreasonable, I'll drop it if you prefer to go on saying 'you', but, yes, it does."

"I'll stop. Why does it bother you?"

"How would you like it? You go rescue somebody from horrific atrocities and you're having a civil conversation and maybe not everything's all better but at least they're not dangling from a cliff anymore and suddenly mid-chat they're talking about the time you did this or that horrific atrocity? I've got a good grip on reality, thankfully, I'm not going to lie awake at night going 'but what if he's right', but it gets old."

"If I rescued anyone from Angband they would ask me to kill them and I would, and it would not bother me at all that they probably thought I was the Enemy as I did it."

"You didn't actually ask me to kill you. I just objected when you announced plans to commit suicide. Rodyn didn't talk to me at all, he just ran. Anyway, imagine some other horrific atrocity if it's necessary to your empathy here."

"My life isn't mine, in the unlikely scenario I'm somehow actually living it. If it were I wouldn't have announced my plans or been dissuaded from them. I think I am bothered less than you by being accused of crimes I didn't technically commit, because being a son of Fëanor rather inures one to that."

"I don't view my non-commission of horrific atrocities as a technicality. ...what do you mean, your life isn't yours?"

"There are a lot of people who put themselves in this danger at my request and because they trusted me and were sworn to me, and I have obligations to them and to my King."

Sigh. "Anyway, thank you."

"You are welcome. Do you find my obligations somehow objectionable?"

"I find the concept of them rendering your life not your own objectionable, but since your life is not mine either I can hardly attempt to rearrange its ownership for you to accord with my aesthetics."

"I believe that people in general have the right to end their life if they so desire, but that people who have accepted commitments that put the safety and wellbeing of others in their hands do not if it can be avoided and an avenue to fulfill those commitments still exists. Is that a less objectionable phrasing? No talk of ownership."

"Yes, that is less objectionable."

"And so here I am, seeing you in a week. May the trial be nonlethal for all parties and all hopes of their future cooperation."

"Hear, hear. Do you want me to bring some food in case you progress on that in this time?"

"I doubt I'll have difficulty finding any, there are lights in the sky here."

Eight people she doesn't recognize are bringing the would-be assassin to trial, all of them armed but not armored and moving anxiously through the mountains. Tyelcormo is flying overhead.

She falls into wingbeat near him. Having fun with flying?