"What were they thinking -"

"Probably went something like 'we are Valar and we can do no wrong let's react to this upsetting event with the first idiocy that pops into our heads it'll be fine consequences aren't real'."

"Oh, no. So - then what -"

"So the boats are successfully stolen with enormous losses all around. Batch of people sail across and disembark. And then - this one is like the oath close to indefensible even in context, sorry - decide to leave everybody else behind instead of making more trips. Reduced infighting, is the idea, some of the people are Nolofinwë's or have other reasons to be mad at Fëanáro. So to make it clear that this is what's going on he sets the boats on fire."

Bella-cling.

"And then the war gets underway. Fëanáro dies, somewhere around here the youngest one of his kids dies too I'm not actually clear on how, but they just about clear the continent of orcs and settle in to get underway on besieging Angband.

Meanwhile everybody who got left behind is still Doomed, exiled, and unclear on how to build seaworthy boats.

They cross the Ice and a ton of them die on it."

"Oh no."

"Yeah.

This is when Loki shows up. She lands in 1500 when they're almost across, lands near the front edge of the host in the Helcaraxë, first person she meets is Nolofinwë's eldest. She's got a really good healing spell. Nobody else dies after she lands. She's not in time to save everybody but she can do that much. ...Loki tells her story better than I can, she does illusions with it, it's really dramatic-looking, you could wait for her. They might find a way into this world soon, they've had a while... lemme check my mail..." Cam checks his mail. "...search is in progress, they're halfway through the uninteresting stuff next to Edda right now."

"They're checking whether any other worlds are adjacent to this one? They could also check whether they're adjacent to our Arda..."

"The teleport spell isn't polished up to Loki's usual standard - she got it as far as she needed to in order to grab the Tesseract and end her war, then switched to working on all-purpose resurrection - so they need osanwë or a good picture or a really good description of the destination. If they can't find a way here, I'll ask you to drop me in your Arda, and then I will take pictures of it, and then they'll try that."

"And if that doesn't work we can bounce around from here to all the worlds adjacent to us. We'll find some eventually, unless worlds are on a line or something - how does adjacency work -"

Cam pulls up the maps so far. "Not linearly. It's all branchy. No loops so far except the daeva neighborhood."

"If we can't find anything what'll we do?"

"If we can't find a connection through the known worlds then we both keep looking for new ones and I hang out here till then, I guess. I'm useful!"

"I want to meet the grownup mes and my kids."

"And everybody will want to meet you too. They're going fast as they can."

"While you are stuck here I am sure there's lots of things our new colony planet would tremendously benefit from having - and Bella and T'Mir took astonishingly little time to get on the same page, I expect that to apply here too. If Loki wants to tell her story herself, can we hear - the way it would have gone without her?"

"Yeah. So, sans Loki -"

And he goes on with the history of Luster in all its disastrous glory.

And he clings.

Clinging is reasonable and responded to with swaying and squeezes.

"- and then Gem showed up and the Maedhros there wished the Enemy gone and she fixed up everything else, we don't know what happens after that."

"It doesn't sound as if there are concrete paths to victory, though, without external intervention."

"It kind of does not seem like there are, no. Erus: do not take good care of their toys."

"Bella, all the Maitimos-"

"We'll see if they want me to do anything."