"It still might not work for adjacency reasons. Wait till somebody who's already a human falls off a ladder or something before you invest the effort, huh?"

"I wanna be able to make anything."

"It sounds very convenient but he's right."

"What's Space Arda, is it a science fantasy world like this one?"

"Except for Materia and what sounded like most of its immediate environs everywhere is a 'science fantasy world' but Space Arda is high-tech, yes, your alt there invented faster than light travel and stuff."

"We have been teleporting but Warp doesn't have any magic so everyone thinks we just have faster than light travel. ...I did invent the interdimensional teleport to go fetch Bella?"

"I am sure all the other yous will be very impressed by the things you've done," Rúmil says, and grabs him mid-hop for a hug.

"Anyway, I like Boots's chronological Arda might have beens idea. There's three other standard Ardas - Shine, Elentári, and Luster." Point point point. He pulls up some notes. "Reached in years 1444, 1500, and then they start counting over again because Arda gets a sun, year of the sun 438. Respectively."

"1179."

"And then you went native?" He gestures at her hair.

"I liked it there! I grew up in Materia!"

"Everything was wonderful until the stupid Valar got scared."

Nod nod. "So - grew up in Materia, went to college, therapy track subtle arts, planning to be low-key productive and not get up to much of anything, and then I walked into the wrong classroom and wound up in Valinor. Where I was of course disposed to be terrified of the Valar and the Maiar and the royalty and so on, because Materia, but I adjusted, and it turned out to be a science world, so I reinvented wizardry out of high school curriculum, and also I was the only subtle artist around, so I saw patients."

"As I imagine you're familiar with, Fëanáro's mother had become very unwell shortly after he was born and the Valar had been unable to help her."

"Yeah, I've heard that. So you're a good therapist?"

"I was at the time completely untrained in therapy, working out of textbooks and guesswork! I did my best."

"She's a good therapist, she fixed everything."

"Well, there weren't any disasters, at any rate. Anyway, I invented a bunch of stuff. And I noticed the Valinor time effect, but only after I'd been there a Year, so I went to an outlying island which is outside the effect to work on a wizardry counter, and made magic necklaces and started handing them out, and then the Valar broke all of them except mine because they were worried about soft pressure to use them if Valinor as a whole started moving that fast. I shared with Fëanáro though, they let me do that much. Invented more stuff. I got arcane healing working and fixed Rúmil's eyes - what's the story with the other Rúmils -?"

"Dunno, this is the first one I've met, actually."

"I am not surprised that Fëanáros make a splash in every Arda."

"That they do."

"...huh. I mean, I guess I did meet Rúmil in the context of him showing me around and helping me acclimate, maybe the rest of you didn't need that as much... anyway. I was following all the rules I'd been told about what to invent - no generic teleportation so people wouldn't go popping all over Valinor stepping on the plants, nothing to do with golems or the undead, no combat applicable spells - I did launderers and crystal balls and earwires to let people talk to their loved ones in Endorë, stuff like that. Some reembodied people started popping up kind of - different - I can't go into much detail for patient confidentiality reasons but, uh, I'm a better therapist than Mandos..."

"The average chinchilla is a better therapist than Mandos..."

"...probably, what with the mental health benefits associated with keeping pets and petting soft things and such... uh, anyway, some people did not want to have been Mandosed and I could do a few things about that, and I gave a passive aggressive lecture on therapeutic ethics but that was all, and even though I was doing all this harmless prosocial wizardry and being very restrained about complaining about Mandos, the Valar summoned me to Taniquetil..."

"They're stupid and evil. You know, Melkor was a Vala."