Yeah, given what did happen having children in Valinor would have been a disaster.

She's going to be beautiful and amazing and the happiest, most loved child anywhere and it's kind of sad we won't get more of her childhood than we will but--it'll be amazing, every minute of it.

Yeah. And, hey, we can go here and close the door until they've got immortality sorted so my family doesn't miss a thing. 

We're sure we'll be able to get back in, after?

I mean, we'd need Imliss to stay in, or someone else.

I'm not sure I feel comfortable risking Imliss ending up several years older than me and I doubt she will be either but it's hard to say that's worse than having your family miss the baby's childhood.

I mean, it's not risking anything exactly, she could decide how long she feels comfortable doing it and then open the door after that long.

I am honestly not sure I trust her right now to open the door when she feels uncomfortable instead of being self-sacrificing about it.

Really? Why not -

Because she's decided to react to everything that happened to you guys by--raising her standards for various thresholds of suffering. Well. I say decided. She thinks I haven't noticed and I'm letting her because it helps her cope.

That doesn't sound helpful at all.

I'm not sure that she won't go into an awful spiral of self-loathing if she thinks that something she did made me unhappy. She--

She died first and I--didn't last long after that. It's. Hard. To get her not to blame herself for my dying.

Uh, if you'd made it across you'd. Have died anyway. Everyone died. She does realize that?

People blame themselves for other people dying when this shaves a handful of decades off their lives. She and I lost five hundred years. I'm not saying I agree with her, it's obviously not her fault, it's just that she has a boatload of different traumas rubbing each other the wrong way.

Okay. So we don't close the door, it's fine.

We could ask Circle to find someone trustworthy to be in Milliways and just have Imliss on this side of the door with us.

That works too.

Yeah. Snuggle. I am very much in favor of no one having to miss any of Artemis's childhood.

As best as we can, yeah.

Yeah.

Let's go ask Circle about it.

Hey, do you have people cleared to hang out in Milliways?

"Says it's fine," he murmurs a minute later.

Good. Squeeze. Of course, this way it'll be a while before I want to use the immortality thing. But that's no great hardship.

Why does it change when you'll want it?

I'm assuming it freezes my age? I mean, I won't want it for a few years regardless, but like, if it's a ring or something I need to hold onto it for a few years without losing it or wearing it if it's finished now.

What age are you waiting for -

Twenty-one. That's when I stopped last time, and I'd rather have as close to my old body back as I can.