Nod.

Huan's probably unusually good at those things but that's because he's a dog and if he were instead trying to be a deity I expect he'd run right into the pitfalls the others do.

Pity. Well, he was enormously useful when I fought Thauron, both times.

Yep. And he's very good for Tyelcormo.

Nod.

The Maiar always drove Father batty. That much power, such broadly useless things done with it. One of the strongest Maiar drives the Sun across the sky every day.

That's useful... but usually suns aren't supposed to require sapient maintenance at all... because they're supposed to be balls of plasma that burn for billions of years and have their spherical planets orbit them for sensible gravitational reasons...

He laughs. Our world is run by idiot gods patching their own past idiotic mistakes with resources they really really should not have.

It's really exasperating!

How nice would the world be if you were a Vala?

Depends, do I have to run everything through committee?

We will stipulate that you do not, but Melkor still exists.

Have I created anything yet? This might be a very boring universe if I know he's going to terrorize anybody I wake up.

As I understand it they spent the first few million years having proxy battles with lightning and lava.

Oh, and I'm being a Vala, not Eru, so I don't get to customize the population, do I. Maybe I'd try to customize it indirectly. Make sure the place was categorically and instantly unsurvivable for anything that couldn't put up with Morgoth's crap reasonably well. Populate that, Eru.

Dwarves! All Dwarves! I approve.

Dwarves are great!

No mind control.

It's not a panacea but it'd be a fucking improvement. I may also flatter myself to think that if I had a few million years to fuck around with physics I might have noticed you can do low-maintenance suns and spherical planets, but... I think it anyway.

He snorts. I bet you would have. It can get that way by accident, according to your books! It cannot be that hard to notice!

'Hey Morgoth, let's set a few nonillion kilos of hydrogen on fire, doesn't that sound fun. Oh look at that.'

Perhaps Eru will be so impressed with you for saving the world he'll reward you with one of your own, seems the kind of thing he'd do.

Ooh.

And after a while he says, We should head back in.

Long way or short way?