I should say so. The argument we had while you were gone mostly boiled down to whether we can build ourselves a pretty city before we try to save everyone in the galaxy who wants saving or whether we're obligated to fix everything first.

...the galaxy is very big and I'm not sure what would happen to you if you could not live in a pretty city.

Yeah, we're not sure either. We are building a pretty city. It is just constantly awful to know that there's a galaxy of people who we could instead be helping.

Well, they're mostly not going anywhere and the ones that are I'll be able to scoop back up once I've had a nice break from staring at sorcerous alphabet and churned out another spell.

Your break is very very thoroughly deserved. We're just - we are still used to Valinor. We grew up in an environment where there was absolutely nothing we could do to make anyone's life any more than trivially better.

Speaking of which, I'm probably going to move the Men out of Valinor, probably back to Beleriand. Dwarves'll probably want to go back too and don't have their own teleporters... And I need to find the Men a biologist. No idea where the everybody else in Valinor will want to go.

Our immigration policy is 'getting everyone in the galaxy artifacts so they can come here at will is really really important', if that's any help.

...you cannot fit everyone in the galaxy on your planet. You cannot fit everyone who is actively trying to find somewhere anywhere to live on your planet.

Then I'm not going to get a honeymoon for a while, am I? Though helping people is very soothing in its own right, perhaps it counts a little bit as therapy...

You're putting off your honeymoon until the galaxy is fixed?

Elves don't marry in wartime.

...There are more galaxies.

He closes his eyes. Maybe a marriage is rather like a pretty city in that it'll make us more effective at turning the universe into a socially liberal Valinor.

That's what I'm thinking. Also you might have a personnel problem if you're trying to fix the whole galaxy with who you've got, although maybe you're just planning to get better at integrating disparately capable labor you haven't already known for centuries.

I have no excuse for not having done that faster.

Well, there's a few million kinds of people around to give you lots of practice.

I am sure I will like them all.

I bet you will.

I believe you now, by the way. The Enemy couldn't have given us free will.

I thought you were already convinced I was definitely Loki, Asgardian import, and just weren't sure if I was working for him or not.

If you had been, you'd have stopped doing so by the time you had the power to give people free will.

Well, that's gratifying. Shall I consider you completely rescued now?

Were you not considering me completely rescued? I shall consider myself completely rescued once no one can ever hurt me again but you are welcome to consider me such right away.

I was considering you physically but not mentally rescued.

I switched out my regular eidetic memory necklace for retroactive eidetic memory, once I confirmed that I in fact now had free will, and unfakeably. I think I am as much of a whole person as I am going to be.