"Politics can matter a lot at home. Less here, I suppose."

"How do they end up mattering at your home?"

"We have material scarcity, and that means everyone is competing, all the time, to have the stuff they need, and there have to be rules about how they can do that, and a way to enforce them which serves as a deterrent but isn't too inhumane to be borne. We don't have Valar, but we do have various contradictory religions many of which have intrusive beliefs about how their neighbors ought to live, and there have to be rules about how far that has to be accommodated. Some places practice debt bondage or slavery and solving that is a political problem. There are wars, and politics about how to decide who has to fight them and how to settle the dispute when it's sufficiently clear who's going to win. There isn't parenting, creches are all run on public funds - what they teach and how they're run is political. There are things some interest groups want literally illegal to say and how much to bow to those interests with censorship is politics. Getting everyone coordinated on public health efforts so people don't have incentives to skip out of quarantine or pretend they've been vaccinated against something when they haven't is politics."

"Alright. In your world politics would be a good use of Maitimo's energy."

"I think he may intend to visit at some point."

"That's a good idea," Fëanor says.

"I'm not sure if at some point the Valar will lose patience with ferrying tourists - and things to sell, the idea for supporting a baby boom associated with mass produced storks is to have the storks show up at creches with money obtained by selling local stuff in my world's economy - it'd be easier if they just made a gate."

"You should ask Maitimo to make that suggestion."

"Is he good at suggesting things to Valar in addition to more conventional politics?"

"Better at it than I am. I have some profound disagreements with the Valar I make no effort to disguise."

"Wouldn't expect you to but it is indeed potentially impolitic. I'll ask him. Worst case scenario is somebody decides it sounds like lots of fun to invade Valinor, which can probably be solved by having some this-side filtration of who can go through."

"That would indeed be a tragedy, but only for the attackers. The Valar would just instantly kill them all."

"I agree. It'd also be good to know if Elves killed in your world come to the Halls of Mandos, but that's not easily evaluated."

"Yeah, that experiment should be put off as long as possible."

"I think a gate with some filtration is worth petitioning for in any event."

Nod nod. Kib writes this down.

And they return to practicing Harthanic.

And eventually Kib goes back to the palace and looks for Maitimo.

"Hello. Find a clever way to test language acquisition?"

"Nope, but what I get out of dreams is almost exactly the stuff it's most difficult to get out of books alone, so now we're both much better at Harthanic. He says you're the person to ask to petition the Valar for some kind of gate - a filtered gate, so as to not have them indiscriminately slaughter an armed incursion should anyone come up with such a plan - so that they don't have to be bothered every time someone wants to do tourism or sell a violin at the stork fund store or something."

"I think that's very wise and I will petition them to that effect." If you were wondering what was important enough to make me so cautious, it's not the Kingship.

...What was it? "And he says politics in my world does in fact get important enough that it wouldn't be a waste of your talent there."

"Aww, that's good of him." Petitioning the Valar is indescribably easier if they like you.

Makes sense. "Lots to do. I'm excited."