Doing all right?

I can keep it up long enough. I'm probably going to need a vacation planet stint myself after it's over, but I can do it.

I should have saved half the girls for this stretch, or something.

I should've. I'm not used to rationing. It's all right, I'll drag Sigyn off and emerge four days later.

Shame we didn't get you both. And a bit mysterious.

You know what I half-hope half-suspect?

What?

Tesseract did it. Which, I would like to know why it sent me alone, but if it sent me at all that suggests that insofar as I may anthropomorphize it, it finds me interesting. It would explain why the Bifrost did this unprecedented thing and couldn't be used to fetch me back.

And makes it likelier it'll be amenable to helping us when we need it.

Exactly. It probably didn't send me on an extradimensional adventure just to toast me when I try to pick it up. But this is wild guessing.

I shudder to think where we'd be without you.

- I don't know.

I think Macalaurë and Nolofinwë would have avoided going to war. I don't think they'd have done anything more constructive than that.

Well, 'not war' isn't the worst case scenario.

I have a nearly unparalleled capacity to think up worse. But they'd have eventually lost the war.

How long an eventually?

Too hard to say. Thauron would probably have spent a century with the Men if you hadn't disrupted him, if he was trying to make them powerful enough to sway fate. It might have been peaceful up until the day it ended; it might have been a slow and bitter defeat. Perhaps he'd have taken some of them alive as presents for me; it was one of his favorite things to offer me.

Also one of his favorite hallucinations, you know, very low effort.

Osanwë: useful for sighing while a bird. Nicest vacation planet. All expenses paid. Inadvisable amounts of - I was going to say dessert but for all I know that's still screwed up too.

I can't actually think of things I'd enjoy. Some are much more endurable than others, moment-to-moment, and I go with that. I think eventually that'll change.

Hopefully.

If not, the current plan is that if I decide I want to kill myself I will instead touch your Tesseract and see if it's willing to either do the job or change something.