Yeah, I'm fine.

He likes you and is planning to ask you on a date again but if you'd rather he not do that I can tell him.

And it's okay with you? I took his word for it before but the look on your face was fairly awful.

I was planning to hold out for monogamy myself and only reevaluated this in the local context, I don't blame you. Thanks for the heads up.

Fëanáro's sent some books by the time they arrive at the palace.

"Hmmm?"

Kib picks the book up. "This one's in Harthanic. Why'd he send one in Harthanic, has he deciphered it already?"

"...probably. Particularly if the subject matter has enough in common with the books in the common."

"I thought I was making it up - I still can't read most of this but the alphabet's - if she was real -"

"You're having dreams of someone's memories."

"She's not just 'someone', though, I told you, she's exactly like me. Once I catch up - or even get close - to having her whole life it'll just be sort of - prepended onto mine, there's not an underlying personality distinction or anything - did I tell you that when I wake up the dreams are really clear for a little bit but then they don't fade away like normal dreams and they don't stick clear they fade back like they happened that long ago -"

"...is it possible that people on your world - don't die forever?"

"It's not a known phenomenon. - and the stork dropped me right about when I think she died, not, not a hundred years later or anything, people would have noticed, they would have been able to check. But... maybe Aly didn't die forever."

"Not much, fractionwise. I get - three to six hours total a night, maybe, average midway between those? I don't think I get anything before she's about four, maybe almost four, so assuming she died at - would've been twenty-four - and I only get her awake, so two-thirds of twenty years is like a little more than thirteen years of total time to get through in random order a few hours at a time. But I could catch up even if the Valar don't make me immortal."

"But then - if you died, would there be a double stack of memories -"

"Yeah, if I - reincarnate - next person can't catch up in a human lifetime."

"Well by then hopefully 'human lifetime' won't be a meaningful concept. Huh. How common could this plausibly be without being publicly known?"

"I didn't exactly go around telling everybody I had weird dreams but it's not a secret, you knew, and some people would have more obvious tells, things they'd run across sooner... Not very."

"There are no communities that claim their leaders are the reincarnations of old leaders, even if you wouldn't have been inclined to take that claim seriously..."

"Nope. Concept doesn't appear in religion, I don't think I've even seen it in a novel - not the way I'm doing it, there's a word for 'reincarnation' but it doesn't involve memory continuity and usually involves looking the same."