"I should hope so. Anyone who's looked at your soul for ten seconds should be able to figure that out."

"Sometimes it takes more than that," says Corino thoughtfully. He thinks he saw Taliar react strangely when Aeleva mentioned his soul, and his first guess about the reason behind that is... unsettling. But ultimately none of his business, as long as Taliar is happy, which Taliar clearly is.

If you're not telling them more to protect me, you don't need to worry about that, he says to Taliar. If you just feel like that's enough, I understand.

I mean, is there anything left my father hasn't guessed? I was sort of assuming there wouldn't be.

He's very insightful. I like him. But if we're going to be putting Findekáno's family here that bit'll require some explanation.

Yeah... I should bring that up with Esarkan while I'm here, probably. I agree that some explanation is required and I have no idea how to give it.

Corino glances between the two of them and says, "Would you like to tell me whatever it is that Taliar is having trouble figuring out how to say?"

I think a little history of my world might be required as context. We don't have soulbearers - I should try while I'm here, I don't know if the difference is that it's impossible for us to manifest our souls or impossible to manifest souls in our world or what. We have the Valar, fifteen extraordinarily powerful entities who made the world. By the time the Elves awakened - I know some people who were there, it was about eight thousand years ago - fourteen of the Valar had made themselves a cozy and carefully cultivated paradise continent and left the rest of the world to the fifteenth, Melkor, who was delighted to have Elves to work with for miscellaneous torture and experimentation and forcible breeding programs to create races of monsters. But some of the people he kidnapped he would send back, later, and always the trajectory of the rest of their lives would be to bring great ruin into the world.

Eventually the other Valar ran across the Elves, felt bad about having ignored this, and had a continent-shattering war with Melkor and then invited the Elves to come live in their paradise. Some Elves accepted. It was a disaster. The Valar could not comprehend how anyone could fail to abide by their rules except out of willful defiance of creation, and they started trying to tamper with peoples' heads, fixing them, making them more compliant and more selfless and more concerned with the will of Eru and more virtuous. And attracted exclusively to the opposite gender, that was a priority of theirs for some reason. That is the world I was born into, and I found a way around their mental tampering by tampering with my own head. Elves can swear binding oaths that alter our very psychology; I swore myself exactly the person the Valar wanted, every time I might come under their purview, humble and obedient and a shining beacon of virtue, and then I had an expiration built into the oaths so afterwards I could have my head back. 

And then the Valar decided to pardon Melkor. He promised that he regretted everything he had done, he swore that he had no desire to do such things again - I knew, but I couldn't say, not without making them aware of the loophole that kept some Elves from being their compliant sheep - and Melkor spent a thousand years tugging our society apart at the seams. Spreading rumors, poisoning people, planting evidence, learning everything about us and exacerbating every trace of conflict or suspicion or mistrust that he could. It worked slowly, but it worked. By the time he murdered the King everyone was in the habit of carrying swords, and when the King died we had a civil war. 

My father has four half-siblings by the King's second wife. He never liked them, but before the tampering they were all on civil terms. After - 

- in the middle of the civil war my father's half-brother had him assassinated. I learned what had happened, and I killed my father's half-brother and eleven other people and I claimed the kingship of the Noldor. My father's half-brother had a son. We'd been close, before everything went to hell. I needed him. So I kept him. I knew it wasn't virtuous, but that was the entire point, I hate virtue, I find it contemptible, I am terrified of being forced into it, everything about what I did was something that should have been edited out of me and that was why I could not give it up. Taliar found out, and told me he could not possibly win a war for me until I let him go. And I did. And we wanted to let him and his family settle here, where their presence won't start another civil war and where he doesn't need to be afraid of me.

Corino listens to all of this, absorbs it, considers it, refrains from making any hasty judgments.

And then he looks at Taliar. He doesn't need to actually ask the question. The question is 'what are you going to do about the Valar' and it is perfectly obvious. The Valar need to stop.

"Stole a bunch of dead Elves from them, to start with. I don't want to be impulsive about whatever I do next. It can wait until I've had a chance to really sit down and think about it for a while without being distracted by other concerns."

Aeleva is troubled by this story, but she's keeping her thoughts to herself and doing no damage to the furniture.

We'll figure something out, he says. Some people will want to live in Valinor even once we untangle their heads, we can't just kill them all.

"Yeah. And the question of how to untangle people's heads is itself kind of tricky - if someone's been living for hundreds of years as their tampered-with self, and doesn't want to go back, but wouldn't have wanted to be changed in the first place... I don't know what would be the best thing to do. Anyway, what do you think about Maitimo's cousin's family settling here?"

"I think it's a fine idea," says Corino. "And I'm sure Esarkan will come around on it even if he doesn't like it right away."

"It can come out of what he owes Taliar."

"I'm not sure either Esarkan or Taliar would agree that he owes Taliar anything," says Corino.

I don't expect they'll be troublesome subjects. Or does Esarkan object to immigration in general?

"Esarkan has no defined opinion on immigration because until recently there was nowhere for anyone to immigrate from," says Corino. "I think he will be fine with it, and I think there's a chance he might grumble about the disruption for a while before settling on being fine with it."

Taliar looks at his mother thoughtfully.

"Okay, I have to ask. Did you actually kill him?"

She sighs.

"Yes. Not my proudest moment, but yes. I - was very afraid for you."

"I'm fine. I'm very resilient."

"It could have gone a lot worse than it did."

"Bet you I'd still have been fine."

...well, that look on Taliar's face is very informative. Corino has now guessed at the existence and nature of Taliar's bad days.