I do not think you can claim credit for Findekáno and I getting along but the rest you can chalk up to excellent taste.

Yes I can.

Or maybe 'magnetism' is a better word than taste. Excellent people are drawn to you. You didn't do much seducing, even if it felt that way...

Like I said way back when I don't have to be trying to be brilliant and vain, I'm just like that all the time.

Love you.

Love you.

They get married. It is - inimitable, or feels like it ought to be. Being married is like having Findekáno in his arms all the time, on some level. It's tremendously soothing. It's also distracting, seems to almost involve having three extra senses that swirl entirely around Findekáno. He has more attention, more memory, but not more of it to spare, because the new bits are rather single-minded in their focus. When they want to they can think together, inferences are now so easy.

Findekáno can now feel his emotions. Findekáno can feel the wanting-to-die. Findekáno doesn't say anything but Maitimo still knows how he feels about it, because.

And when they're making each other happy there's a feedback loop that they have to experiment with a few times so they stop having a problem where a single kiss leaves them gleeful and giggly and anything more than that leaves them uselessly glazed with bliss for several hours.

"You can do the filtering so sex is wonderful but not mind-wiping, I assume, or our society would look quite different," Findekáno grumbles after the effects of one of those is fading.

"Maybe straight people are bad at sex."

"Darling, I love you, but this is pretty far from the best we've had. If straight people are this bad at sex -"

"There's probably a way to do the filtering."

They figure it out.

They decide to stay married.

They pop over to where the reembodied orcs are being given free will. That is - inimitable, or ought to be.

They ask for the free will to be reversed, marriage being rather delightful. "Are you sure now?" Findekáno says. 

"Not - completely sure. Maedhros seems certain.  Played out differently for him. I am almost sure."

"Okay."

"I'm sorry, this has been so hard on you -"

"Don't apologize."

"Want to get back to -"

"Yeah."

Loki doesn't even complain about the extra picking-up-the-Aether this requires.

Cam puts her sleeve back and hugs her.

Kib gets his eidetic memory necklace - it doesn't directly cover Aly memories, but it does cover the moments right after waking up when they're clear and crisp and so it's nearly as good, just a little fuzzier. He picks up Loki's spells and Allspeak. He catches up on Stork culture - mostly just the culture, not the politics, not the advances in servantmaking, he and Aydanci quietly work out a division of labor they can live with that doesn't put anything strategic in Kib's lap and doesn't overwhelm Aydanci with too many things, once they're running the place. He talks to his alts, visits all their worlds.

He visits his honeymooning boyfriends.

His honeymooning boyfriends are giggly and can't stop looking at each other! Marriage is pretty great! I'm glad no one told me or I might have been tempted to get straightened or something. How's it going.

Going all right. Loki designed me a crown but I don't have as much experience as she does holding mental images properly so I can't quite get the illusion right. What's so temptingly nice about being Elf-married that you might have wanted to go and do a thing like that?

Loki's a bit ahead of herself, I don't have a planet for you to rule yet and expect it'll take a few years.

And we can, to the degree we mutually please, feel each others' emotions, and if we are both having a lovely time this creates these ridiculous little feedback loops - he sends a very toned down version of the effect. And marriage gives you three new senses! Apparently everyone parses them a little differently but mine feel like 'constant vague awareness of Findekáno's wellbeing, something like a physical impression of being cuddled, and a sense of how on-the-same-page we currently are.'

Mine are a sense of changes in Maitimo's mood, very detailed synaethetic experience that'll translate to 'what Maitimo wants' once I understand what everything corresponds to, and the cuddled thing.

Awwww, that sounds lovely, I'm jealous.

Once we find someone who the Aether likes the way the Tesseract likes Loki, maybe they can give people marriages without taking away their free will. The free will I'd be neutral on without the marriages - it's discomfiting losing it, it feels like being cut off from something you didn't know you were connected to - but it's not necessarily something I'd miss - and oaths are awfully double-edged...

I like my free will, I'm using it! Anyway, Loki says she only uses the Aether for free will because the soul and mind themed rocks would hate her and it's really clumsy for the application, they'd probably be able to do more finessey stuff like "Elf marriage without any other side effects" if somebody who could use those turned up.

They should really be looking, sounds like the magic rocks are by far the most useful powers we have. And we can try with the space Elves so if they die it is not a disaster.

Are we sure their marriages are similar, what with the running on chips thing? And the Tesseract is in a pissy mood because it found out there are worlds it can't reach and won't do anything as personable as interview people to evaluate their compatibility with rocks. Loki hasn't tested Tesseract-versus-daeva yet because she's worried the Tesseract would lose and then it would get even crankier. Apparently death is not even the worst case scenario, especially with mind and soul.

Cam could let the Tesseract win so it's in a better mood?

She thinks it could maybe tell.

Maybe we should set a couple of my father to the project of either extending the Tesseract's reach or making worlds that weren't previously adjacent adjacent, so we can bring everyone near Edda. It'd be tremendously useful quite aside from cheering the Tesseract up.

It would! Have you seen a 'map' of all the adjacencies we know?

No, though I've been told the general principles....

Kib is at least competent enough with illusions to put up a map. Edda with a lot of unnamed minor worlds and three Ardas branching off of it; Evil Arda connecting to Aurum, Space Arda hooked up through a buffer of daeva worlds to Limbo and Revelation, Space Arda branching off over here also to Hex which connects Stork which connects Shine. And presumable snake world, he adds, branching off from Stork again.