"But you'd already have gotten here and I wasn't in Valinor so you could've gotten me, I suppose, it'd just - leave everyone else in Arda stuck. I guess unless they went to the Outer Lands."

"Until the Valar realized the error of their ways, which may take them a while as you count time." He nodded. "I was afraid they'd do it when they noticed Fëanáro'd brought you back, that seemed likelier to provoke them into it."

"Yeah, that was nerve-wracking."

"I did tell him I was working on it. He was just disinclined to be patient. Or didn't believe me - I can understand that -"

"- why wouldn't he have believed you?"

"We told you that you were safe in Valinor. I told you that."

"But you were there, you saw, you heard me -"

"But the way he saw it, the last time I said something I was wrong, so how could he trust it to me? I understand that way of thinking, I've been there myself."

"- mm?"

"Other people can't be relied on, if I actually care about anything I shall have to just be the one to do it".

"It is a little tempting, sometimes - I think T'Mir has more of it than me."

"I think depending on the situation it can be a necessary tool or a serious handicap. Needing other peoples' eyes helped me refine my sense of it..."

"It did?"

"Well, most people won't just be ordered around, you have to convince them that whatever you're doing is worth their attention, and some people are much more convincible than others but also some attitudes of mine made it easier for me to make the value of my work apparent, and less impatient, and better able to ask help when I needed it even when my needs were less obvious."

"You had the hang of it by the time I was there, I think."

"I am coming up on a thousand years old, you know."

"Years or Years?"

"No no no, just years. We weren't in Valinor until recently ourselves."

"Just checking. It still feels weird that I'm pushing forty. I don't look it, I don't feel it..."

"Have all the Ages of all the worlds ahead of you. Is forty a milestone for humans?"

"Round numbers in general are, we count by tens and only get so many divisible by ten. Forty's early middle age."

He nods. "We could try to christen the planet as a birthday gift."

"Oh, we haven't even started thinking about what to name the planet."

"The list of things to do is really getting a bit absurd. It's so exciting."

"I know, right? It's like the opposite of the time slide in the best possible way."