"You think you'll be able to reembody the dead? That requires a lot of delicacy and if done wrong can do them psychological harm." Finrod is frowning.

"Well, I won't do it if I don't think I can improve on 'being dead' by doing so."

"If they're better off being alive they already get reembodied."

"If Mandos thinks they are better off being alive."

"And he has a lot more individual information, even if you have some differences with him."

"One of my differences with him is how he comes by that information, but yes, he does have it."

"I have many dead loved ones I would rejoice to see alive again," he says. "I'm just confident that will happen eventually and would grieve to see it done wrongly."

"I don't yet know how much finesse I'll have. It is loosely possible I'll come to some amicable arrangement with Mandos and won't feel obliged to rescue anyone from him while I'm wielding my galactic trinkets, even, I've never met the guy, maybe it's just that most of the things I hear sound horrible."

An awkward silence. "With all due respect," he says, "the house of Fëanor's opinions and experiences are not representative of anyone else's."

"Feel entirely free to relate an alternative perspective on Mandos's custody of dead people. I've gotten as far as 'I told Vár to go there and not to Morgoth when she died' and that's not a high bar."

"Most people are reembodied quickly and are cheered, more powerful, more capable, a little wiser for the experience but not strongly altered by it. People who were in the Enemy's custody are hard because many of them refuse reembodiment, and Mandos rightly will not oblige them. People who killed others or who forced others to take their life in self-defense have a long period of waiting in the Halls, but I don't think you want to bring them all back either. At least, I hope not."

"Not carelessly. Except the orcs, I'm planning to fix their oath problem."

"If that can be done then I think Mandos will be overjoyed."

"I hope you're right."

"I have come to my conclusions on my own, but thank you for your concern about my, what, intellectual integrity, Finrod."

"Your sources," he says.

"Would you like to contradict them on whether Mandos reads the entire mental history of dead people?"

"He does do that. You object?"

"Strenuously. I freaked out when I discovered I was leaking thoughts by osanwë and that only covers the present and came with a defense mechanism once someone told me about it."

"Perhaps it is a species difference. It would be intolerable for frost giants but affects none of them."

"I admit to being very poorly educated on the subject of frost giants, but I think there are rather generic ethical problems to being completely and involuntarily inspected down to the most private thought and it's worse done by a being who gets to decide if you live or die depending on whether he likes what he sees."

"I understand how you'd see it that way."

"Thank you."

The meal concludes and Finrod and Lúthien are comparing composition notes and Galadriel is watching Maedhros and he stands and tells Lúthien he is going for another walk with Loki.