"Oh, good."

Rúmil smiles worriedly at him. "So in Kib's Arda they have boats and go off to fight Melkor."

"They have boats! They go off to fight Melkor! This is in fact the nicest, tidiest war with Melkor on record, because they've got servantmakers, and accordingly dinosaur cavalry and war golems and lightspeed communication with shines and stuff. Compared to the other wars it's a cakewalk, the casualties are nearly all expendable hardware. However, it still sucks. Finwë dies - everyone is agreed it would be a waste of Fëanáro's talents to make him spend time on Kinging so Maitimo does that, Maitimos have very kingly skillsets - Maitimo gets lured into a trap by what is by all reports a very convincing facsimile of humans awakening on Endorë but nope - he gets captured - Maitimo's cousin flies on on a pterodactyl to rescue him once the pterodactyls are grown up - Kib gets captured -"

"Should I be expecting to...?"

"Kib probably not but wait till you hear it from him, dunno about other cases."

"Rúmil was a prisoner of the Enemy, he's okay. Right?"

"I think it's a hard thing to generalize about. But yes, I'm okay."

"Well, the problem isn't so much that it's traumatizing as that the Enemy has a thing for causing people to hallucinate being rescued. Over and over and over. So when they are..."

Bella-squeeze.

Squeeze. ...Glance at Rúmil.

I don't think it's particularly likely that this is a extended hallucination. The possibility doesn't change my actions much but it is an explanation for why I do not seem to have been a participant in any of these wars. 

Oh.

"Anyway, they rescued Kib too, but it turns out Bells can mentally self-destruct under the right kind of stress. Just sort of - stop thinking. Which was in some ways a very constructive response. Also it turned out that when Kib's memories were erased he'd dream them back same as he got his past life, so he was tough to keep in a state of not-aware-that-he-ought-to-self-destruct for any period of time. He got rescued and was - passive, non-participatory, fairly easy to keep comfortable but not present. His husband was incandescently enraged, as though he hadn't been already. Aydanci and Fëanáro collaborated on the Shine version of the Silmarils - they're different from the regular kind, they're made of shines, usually they're made with Treelight but Shine's Trees were already dead. This kinda Silmaril can command automata. They made a massive army of automata and sent them in with the Silmarils and killed the Enemy with them. Beleriand collapsed into the sea when he died, except for one civilian city Ulmo was looking after - yaaaaay Ulmo he has ever been useful in his life - and Doriath, which has a Maia queen. Surprising number of survivors, though, what with the knowing how to boats. Everybody moved to the south continent."

"I am very deeply impressed. Congratulations, Fëanáro."

"They're probably epic! They killed a god!"

"Possibly. I'm not sure there's actually a safe way to verify that, is there a form you can file with Materia to requisition a formal report on your epic status...? Anyway, they brought Kib to Lórien, who could roll him back pre-capture just fine but couldn't actually interfere with the memories dreaming back. So they restored all his memories so he would at least not have nightmares about them and figured they'd work on something to make him not need to sleep. But before they got anywhere with that, peal found the world. Me and Iobel snapped him out of it by standing around narrating the thoughts he was not having, because, Bells, and he freaked out and was very annoyed but did turn his brain back on again. He is now almost completely functional but he won't servantmake or get too close to certain strategic matters."

He nods.

"In Luster and Elentári, the Silmarils are invented out of Treelight in Valinor in 1450. They're very shiny, people go kind of stupid over them. Melkor sort-of-behaves on parole until 1495, but he's low-key exacerbating political fracture points, till Fëanáro and his half-brother Nolofinwë are each convinced the other is plotting against him and that escalates, Finwë completely fails to handle this gracefully in any way shape or form, etcetera. And in 1495 Melkor stops pretending to behave, kills the Trees, kills Finwë, there's a giant spider involved here for some reason, and he runs off to do overt evil."

Bella-cling. 

So many snuggles.

"Oh, and Melkor steals the Silmarils. And then Fëanáro and sons all swear an incredibly stupid oath to retrieve them that is only defensible as long as the Enemy continues to hold them, which I have no justification on record for that, but I do want to kind of put the mass murder thing in context here. The Teleri have boats. They have the only boats. Melkor's Melkoring it up across the ocean. The Ice is a deathtrap. The Teleri will not loan out their boats. The Teleri will not help build new boats. The Teleri will not explain how boats are made. The Teleri think the Noldor should stay put and calm down and let the Valar handle it, which I have on good authority would in fact have taken centuries, because Valar.

So you try to steal the boats, and the Teleri stop thinking that calming down is such a good way to handle things, and they try to stop you."

More Bella-squeeze. Rúmil looks agonized.

"Bunch of people wind up dead. The Valar do one of the stupidest, evilest things they ever do, which is curse everybody who's trying to leave. This is called the Doom. It is hazardous to your health. I have the text of it if you want."

"Yes, please."

So Cam looks up and reads aloud the Doom.