Is he. Okay. Walk walk.

Sorry to volunteer you.

It's all right. How are you?

Eight weeks farther along on what I'm trying to do. You?

Six months, otherwise same.

Alas that diplomacy can't be magically accelerated. Well, there's Lúthien's trick, but I hesitate to let her use it on me more than sparingly.

I don't let her at all, but I have my hangups and less reason to compromise them.

I am trying to steamroller all my hangups, them being themselves consequences of mind control. The person I was before Angband wouldn't have minded at all; liking people isn't how I set my goals anyway so liking Lúthien would just make me better at working with her.

That's sensible.

And I think the song goes both ways.

It does? Really?

Hard to be certain, but yes. Both because that's the default way songs work and because Lúthien likes everyone and not all of them are very likable.

I think she likes me and she hasn't sung to me, but I suppose I might just be likeable.

She's vaguely distraught whenever you don't seem to like her. I think she looks up to you.

It's my princessiness.

It's that you matter. I respect that in her, honestly.

Respect that she cares about the opinions of people who matter?

Respect that the thing she wants and looks up to is 'ability to effect my goals in the world'. There are a surprising number of people who don't get that.

Some people are a little short on goals.

There are a lot of people who, if they like yours and believe in you, will do anything to help you realize them. That's always pretty nice.

I've found lots of strategic cooperation here. Less of the personal loyalty kind Quendi monarchs wind up with, but I'm not sure I'd even want it.

Really? It's pretty nice. And compatible with people stopping you from wrongdoing and so forth.

That's not my problem; I actually don't worry very much about needing to be stopped from wrongdoing. It's... I don't have quite your memory for people's names and traits, so I'd find it lopsided? I don't mind being in charge of things but I'd mind being at the helm of that level of, I want to say 'fanaticism', without a deeply personal understanding of who I was commanding it from. I could manage maybe five or ten person-accessories well and from there it would get intractable and discomfiting, not that I'd consider it priority one to disband them if I needed them for something.

Ah. That makes sense. Yes, Father's like that. People being utterly reliable is great, but he doesn't have the energy to value the weight of someone making their life your instrument.

And yet people go around saying things like 'my life is my King's'...