The explaining things that worked such wonders on the Valar?

It's sort of generalized communication magic, specialized for things that are true as she understands them. Apparently she's really hard but not actually impossible to disbelieve when she makes statements, and the Bells think I'd probably resist believing her and find the effect disconcerting. They're probably not wrong.

Does she leave you convinced that she is representing the truth as she understands it, or that whatever she said is actually true?

She attaches - metadata, kinda - about how good her evidence is. So, really high confidence she's not lying and decently-calibrated confidence that she's right.

Maybe I'll go meet her now that I'm persuaded enough.

You are? How far's 'enough'?

An Enemy who had the power to imitate marriages or make oaths stop working and give people free will is certainly an Enemy capable of fully general mind control.

So it's kinda a 'if this is not real I'm just fucked, let's assume it is' situation?

If the Enemy had fully general mind control there's no reason anything would have looked the way it did up to the war starting. I suppose I could be skeptical of all of those memories, or suppose he figured out how to do it at some later point, but - the hallucinations don't make sense for someone with those capabilities, they're strategically entirely without value and they're not optimized for sadism either.

Nod.

I don't know what'd get you to that point. Maybe familiarizing yourself enough with the technology. I'm sorry.

Not your fault.

I'd contest that but we were having a really good run of honeymoon days in which more than half the time was spent on activities other than moping and self-recrimination.

I have no wish to discourage this allotment of your time.

Well, see, nowadays self-loathing hurts each other. It's this lovely incentive to appreciate ourselves properly. 

You are both lovely, Kib asserts.

They stare at each other adoringly for a minute and then he shakes his head, laughing. I understand how Melian and Thingol took twenty Years now.

Twenty Years is still really overdoing it.

Oh, definitely, but it wouldn't have been deliberate - assuming the feedback loop with a Maia's stronger - there's no way you'd even realize twenty Years had passed.

Less jealous now!

The feedback loop is not like that with Elves! We lost a few hours the first few times and then figured it out.

Well, I suppose you must have since here you are talking to me. ...Still.

You and Aydanci can worry about it once someone with enough finesse over the soul stone is around, it might be quite a while.

Yeah.

How long are you stopping by?