"And her expression when you pull off your revised version of her scheme is going to be amazing."

"She'll have to treat me as a foreign head of state. In front of people. It will be amazing."

"I broadly cannot stand politics but I am going to enjoy seeing you pull that off."

"I'll invite you to the treaty signing."

"A little bit. Insofar as circumstances and Maitimo being traumatized and thinking everything was a hallucination allowed."

"Well, he doesn't think everything's a hallucination anymore, he's convinced of my general personality and that I had free-will-granting magic and that the two wouldn't coexist with me working for the Enemy and that clinched it."

"Of course that'd be what would do it. Fair enough."

"Anyway him and Findekáno were pretty obvious if one does not have the default assumption that a couple of well-behaved and socially-acceptable people of the same gender cannot be carrying on a tragic love affair. And then I got to be the only person they could talk to about it for a while, which was nice, sort of paid forward Sigyn doing the same thing about my sorcery."

"They're blindingly obvious in hindsight. I just couldn't see Maitimo having preferences on a smaller scale than 'rule the world'."

"And yet."

He shakes his head. "And yet. Well, maybe someone needs to put Maitimo back together now that there are a lot of worlds."

"I think they're adorable regardless of the mental health benefits but yes."

"They're happy, and that counts for a lot, but Findekáno's my cousin." He wrinkles his nose. "Have you found them a planet?"

"I have not yet gone looking through vacation brochures. Why, do you want to help?"

"I am going to spend the next few centuries planet-hopping. Not out of sexual adventure, to see where we're needed and how to help most."

"Well, I can take you to the major transit hubs I'm planning to shake down for ad copy, if you like. They'll have the most comprehensive - to the extent that there exist comprehensive - lists of places."

"That'd be a good start, thanks. Lots of places with real need are probably uncontacted, will they be listed?"

"Not in the transit hubs. You'll want to find explorer and scientist and anthropologist types to learn what there is to be had in that department. Or find them yourselves, but getting your information from galactics means you won't miss facts along the lines of 'Midgard is technically one of the Nine Realms, sort of' or equivalents."

"..still have an instinctive flinch at talking with actual academically qualified people. I guess they won't even find me particularly stupid anymore, I can read now."

"In any language, even. I'm sure you will meet people who think you are a poorly educated hick but that will be because you're from a planet without its own locally developed spaceships, not because you used to have trouble reading."

"We may never bother with spaceships, teleportation seems better. And I am quite alright with people judging me for whatever they like, that one thing's just a sore point."

"One time I met a woman from a planet," says Loki, stretching, "where print is considered obsolete, it's all audio books. On Asgard you would've got tapped on the head with the wand when you were a kid and caught right up. 'S all context. Time to find the best bits of the galaxy and spread them around."

"And see it. Oromë's going to envy me, if I ever go home."