"They've been acting sort of weird around me, I don't know what it is."

"Helpful as ever, but managing to constantly give off the impression that it's a chore, insisting if pressed that everything's well and the only reason they want you to go away is so they can do you another favor?"

"...pretty much. Which, I mean, I don't need all these people to be my personal friends but I'm getting tired of not being able to tell."

"That is what I call 'being Feanorian at you'. And it is annoying and you're justified in feeling annoyed. I don't think they do it manipulatively, if that's any help. I first saw them do it towards the Valar, once the Valar announced that leaving Valinor was wrong and agitating for it was antisocial and disruptive behavior. It would have been to their advantage to be civil, really, but instead they all withdrew. Maedhros will stop it if you indicate you've noticed."

"What will he do instead?"

"Uh, probably not what he did with me. So I'm not sure. Be your best friend, maybe."

"Position's occupied," she snorts. "By someone who does not be Fëanorian at me even if I don't indicate I've noticed."

"In that case he'll probably just revert to being warm and likable and so open with you that you end up feeling like intimates." There's a bit of an edge in his voice. "They may just be stressed by the war."

"It hasn't been particularly stressful of late, or anything..."

"Irissë- ah, Aredhel's favored approach was always to get drunk enough she had social cover and then slap them in public at a festival. That usually worked."

"I don't want to hit them."

"What do you want? They are clearly wholeheartedly dedicated to winning this war, they are clearly happy to share everything they develop towards that end, they are being annoyingly themselves and will stop if asked. I know how unpleasant it is to be on the receiving end of, but there isn't much to be done. If it's clarification about whether they like you that you want, I think the answer is 'no, they don't'. I apologize on their behalf. They're idiots."

"They didn't use to do it to me, though. It's fine if they don't like me, but it's confusing if they used to and stopped. Since I didn't slap any of them or anything."

"Slapping them wouldn't do it anyway. Did you do something that made them feel that their goals weren't compatible with yours?"

"I wouldn't expect that to - what did you say, just 'my magic is private thanks' or something?"

"I can't give out the spells I have in a usable form without giving out the means to invent more."

"...and you're worried about them having a kind of magic that can be expected to work outside this dimension?"

"No? If I had standard issue sorcery to hand out I'd give it to them. My kind just gives extremely fine-grained ability to turn time into any infinitely usable power you care to design."

"And you got it by accident, in your world, by touching a powerful artifact as a small child. I assume that's not the only way that kind of power can conceivably be acquired?"

"I'm pretty sure my exact thing is unique, but there are indeed a variety of ways to acquire power. Also the artifact is supposed to be sapient so I'm not sure 'accident' is the word."

"So, for the record, I wholeheartedly endorse you not teaching your magic to them and would be horrified if you had done. But 'Loki is willing to handicap us in this war because us having potentially limitless power is an unacceptable outcome to her' and 'we are predictably inclined to seek limitless power and have other avenues and she'll surely notice this at some point, or already has and is just using us to take down the more immediate problems before she stops us' is a more than sufficient explanation for you getting Feanorianed at."

"...I fully expect the Fëanorians turned loose on my galaxy to be a force to be reckoned with, but my galaxy can sort of... absorb it? That kind of power level is a known, balanced factor; I am not the strongest thing around; I might not be even if I collected all the infinity gems and they did whatever I asked. And I can't bring them there to be absorbed yet."

"So then just tell them that. Because I doubt they know enough about your galaxy for it to have occurred to them. Their reference point for power is the Valar. We were all in the habit of making ourselves smaller to fit into Valinor."

"Oh. Okay. Will this cause Maedhros to act insincerely syrupy at me?"