"Oh, and something that must never, ever be written down--someone in Cam's version of your world figured out a way to turn daeva-made chips into viable-for-forking versions."

"...should have inferred that from the crowd of my fathers running around. We may want to hide that until we have the Silmarils back, so we can claim it's the Silmarils making it possible to do. Does Cam's version of our world still have Melkor, does it have an exploitably different magic system..."

"Ah...weird magic Valar can make oaths. He's under some extremely tight ones, now, but not dead."

"So not a strategy we can emulate. Okay." He sits down. 

"Yeah."

"He offered Cam the oaths in exchange for putting Valinor in a black hole. He didn't do it until he had some really fucking tight wording on the oath and a way of confirming that Melkor had actually sworn it and the forking-to-resurrect thing, but. That was a thing. While he's not in time-paused bars he's literally not doing anything else until everyone retrievable from Valinor is resurrected."

"Do we have counterparts in that world -"

"Yes."

"Do you happen to know if Cam's resurrected that world's version of my mother -"

"...Hadn't been aware your mother needed resurrecting at all."

"Well, she lives in Valinor, so if Valinor got fed into a black hole she'd need resurrecting."

"Ah. Didn't realize she hadn't come with. No idea if he's gotten to her yet."

"I could really, really use her here but don't feel comfortable forking her. But if she's dead and hasn't been brought back yet -"

Use her for what?

She and my father balanced each other out really well, he can get very singleminded and also let his priorities get a little divorced from humanitarian ones and I honestly think he'll arrive at something better if she's around to - well, a couple centuries alone is not going to be good for his sanity - 

Why'd she stay behind?

Thought the project was totally hopeless and someone had better stick around to get us resurrected someday. 

Ah. Well. Can't really blame her for that.

Other problem is I'm not sure Cam would remember if he'd brought her back already. He's brought back a lot of people and he never got chipped, let alone the memory blessings.

Is there something you can conjure - Nerdanels extant on whatever planet Cam's putting them on -

Yeah, okay.

She tries it.

It goes.

Sorry.

It's all right. I can figure it out. 

I hope they're coping okay. 

Tyelcormo and I keep dragging them downstairs to take breaks and learn demon languages and stuff. So far the shortest time-between-breaks has been more than two weeks when they had two weeks worth of food.

So no, not really. 

I can do about a third of it and Tyelcormo can do about a third of it but one's wife isn't the same thing as one's children...

Maybe we'll get lucky and find a way to magically teleport off and onto a mid-leap leaper and you can fetch your mom.

Yeah, maybe. 

Dunno what else to say.

...How d'you think she's going to cope with there suddenly being ten of your dad?