"Excellent."

"So lucky he got you."

"I'm sure Cam and I aren't the only excellent demons in all of our Hell but yes."

"Lots of people are good but not on something like this where being good is this complicated."

"I dunno, 'save people, kill Melkor,' it's not that hard."

"Let's hope."

"Not that ethically hard," she amends. "I'm not saying pulling it off won't be difficult."

"I mean, now we've got better options, but Cam's solution involved holing Valinor."

"...I wonder how he dealt with all the less-than-three-year-olds."

"Worth it, but Eru. Won't seem that way to people who lost someone."

"I don't think I could kill every toddler on Valinor."

"Don't think I could. Maitimo could. He could also probably draw a hundred circles and find himself a daeva that'd do it but it'd fuck him up forever."

"I'm really glad we're not going to have to do that--but--how many were there, do you think--"

"Elves don't have kids that often. And I don't know if their population was the same as ours. But - probably a couple hundred thousand."

"Fuck."

"Yeah."

"Maybe your dads can invent a meat version of the chip-reader thing."

"Probably. There shouldn't be anything they can't do."

"Okay, then I'm going to stop worrying about it."

"Good idea."

So she kisses him, because this is both what they originally came up here for and an excellent distraction.

And possibly vaguely unhealthy but whatever. Such a nice distraction. Anyone showed you how to send emotions - distracting, lot of fun -

Don't think so.

Edie: learning to sail! Thinking about hard problems! Excited about getting telepathy! Excitedly using her new telepathy!

Oh.

Oh.

Oh.

Tyelcormo hugging her after she brought back Maitimo, Tyelcormo getting pissed off about gags--