Kib is welcome to come hold the baby or hang around generally but neither twin is interrupting their parents on his behalf.

Kib does not really know how to hold a baby. Think this is an interruption-grade visit? he asks Maitimo.

...he's probably likelier to start off in a bad mood if we interrupt, honestly. Maitimo knows how to hold a baby. Maitimo is happy to hold the baby and sit and chat with his brothers.

Gosh. The baby. She's such a baby. What's the topic today?

Everyone is extremely charmed by Kib's distaste for babies. They're mostly talking about the restaurants, which are newly off the ground, and attracting lots of attention none of which has yet been disastrous. How long does Kib think they should wait before announcing they are portal aliens who plan on ending death?

Well, 'portal aliens' is gonna come out sooner than later, there's too many ways for people to notice they are alien and portalsome. 'Immortal portal aliens' is probably a good stepping stone, otherwise people are not gonna believe they could get anywhere on ending death.

Anyone likely to be tempted to test the immortality of the portal aliens?

Maybe some nutcase. Perhaps they should go with 'unaging portal aliens'.

That'll be easy to convince people of, because none of the portal aliens will look older than mid-twenties.

It's true! It's sort of weird but Kib is getting used to it.

Kib is himself going to be eighteen pretty much forever, right? Assuming immortality doesn't take Father ten thousand years?

One thousand. In one thousand years he will look nineteen, then twenty, etcetera. Ten thou would have him looking older than Elves wind up looking.

"Immortality," says one of the twins, "is not going to take my father even ten Years."

"That's good to hear."

"What age should Lári freeze herself at? Eighteen? Twenty-five?"

"Anywhere in there is probably good! I am happy with eighteen but I don't know exactly what I'd look like at twenty-two or whatever, maybe I would have liked that better if I'd decided to wait and see. If anybody comes up with a way to roll my husband back I'm pushing for twenty."

"Was he pretty at twenty?" says one of the twins, and then glances nervously at Maitimo.

"Yes he was!" says Kib, not looking at Maitimo nervously or otherwise. He osanwës them an image. "That's how old he was when we got married."

He is very pretty! They both exclaim over his prettiness and then hesitantly say Kib has good taste.

"Thank you! Although personally my favorite things about him are not his prettiness."

"Father says that marrying for prettiness demonstrates astonishingly bad judgment and he'll be ashamed of us if we do it."

"We met because we needed the same sort of books for our ambitious public-good golem projects. Being pretty was just a perk. Especially on his end, he's really not wired to care about how people look that way."

"That's probably a human thing. Elves might not marry for prettiness but it'd definitely be a thing we care about."

"It's pretty convenient that Elves are all pretty, then, otherwise then where would the ugly ones be?"

"People say my mother's not pretty enough for my father. But he thinks she is."