He didn't follow Cor to the balcony but said he could just ask the guards to fetch him - "or think at me -"

Testing

You got it! Supernaturally fast, by the way, the training program for local humans takes three months and lots of people do it twice. 

It doesn't really seem that complicated but I suppose that might be what I'd expect to see if I were super good at it.

I seem to have a wait here, what else should I know?

I've mostly played things the same way as last time aside from managing a situation that threatened civil war three hundred years ago a little better. I'm hoping that was the thing I was supposed to fix - I went back to right before it. Your magic system works for Elves too if we get hooked into it. We were exploring for additional worlds but hadn't found any by the time everything started over.

Okay. Thanks.

Of course. I'm happy to answer anything you're wondering about, too.

I mean, I don't want to pry.

I wasn't sure that you'd arrive like last time. I'm glad you did.

Me too.

What would've happened if I didn't?

We have native magic. It can't do anything as powerful as this but it can do some stuff, we're trying to invent what we can. Valar are really, really slow, it's possible we'd have something by the time he has his counterattack, whatever it might be. We looked into getting out of our world but we haven't gotten anywhere with that, yet. We have a lot of people down south in places that might be beyond his reach. Some people want to petition the Valar to reconsider their decision not to intervene. - I prohibited that, but I'd have reconsidered if you hadn't arrived.

Is there a reason you're avoiding talking about why you missed me so much, I don't want to dig into it if it's going to upset you.

I did in fact spend a month sulking but that was a while ago. We were dating. I don't want - that's a lot to throw at you, when we've barely met, and I didn't want you to worry that you needed to make sure it worked out again, or anything like that. We can talk about it if you'd like but it can also wait until fewer things are on fire and you've accepted all the honors your world wants to throw at you and Angband has been knocked to the ground and replaced with a playground.

We were dating for I presume less than four months and it's been three hundred years for you.

I think Elves and humans are different in this way. 

How so?

Uh, the Elven concept of romance involves a lot of waiting for centuries. The human concept really couldn't, you'd go extinct. 

Yes, that does seem like it'd be the obvious result.

Okay. I'm curious but maybe it is in fact so complicated and strange that I should wait till I don't have anything important on my plate?

I think the worst-case scenario if we talk through absolutely everything right now is that you decide you want nothing to do with any of this and then I have someone else liaison while you work on the important things. I don't think you'll get too distracted to deal with the war. It is pretty complicated and strange, though.

Would it be bad to interrupt in a place not of our choosing if Thuringwethil has bad timing? - How long did she take to show up last time?

The next day. Seems like the kind of thing that could be highly path-dependent, that. I would be less than delighted to be interrupted in the middle of explaining everything, but the worst case scenario is still just that you want nothing to do with this and get a different liaison, so if you'd like me to start I will.

Yeah, if you don't mind.

All right.

Elves do not consider relations outside a marriage between a man and a woman acceptable. In Valinor they corrected it; here they'll just think that's kind of terrible, and that's after centuries of effort to convince everyone to calm down. I had someone, for about a thousand years, secretly back in Valinor with both of us doing all kinds of mind-editing to ensure the Valar couldn't do it for us.

The civil war was arranged by Melkor. He posed as certain people to pass false information to other people, he planted lies, he arranged for people who'd previously trusted each other to end up suspecting each other, and then he killed the King. My boyfriend and I ended up on opposite sides of the civil war. Ended up leading opposite sides of it, actually. In this timeline I won, he left, and I - well. I accomplished all of the things I set out to accomplish and waited here for you to come and end the war.

In the first timeline, I didn't expect outside help, and I didn't think I could win the war alone, and I didn't want to be alone, and so instead of breaking up I kept him. As a prisoner. When I met you I realized - that there was actually something to being a good person that wasn't the thing the Valar were doing and trying to make us do. And I - fixed it, mostly, because I had something I could draw on to show me how. I'm good at predicting people. I hadn't told you, but I knew what you'd think and more importantly than that I knew what you'd have done instead. He left, and I explained everything to you, and - 

- everything would make more sense to me on some level if you'd said you were leaving and then I'd had the chance to do it over. But that wasn't what happened. You stayed, and we fixed things and started exploring universes, and then I had to do it over. I had everything I wanted, last time. But - but it wasn't that I changed because you'd wanted it, it was that I'd changed by knowing you, and so I couldn't just - retrace the steps that I remembered making me the happiest man in the world. 

That's a lot to take in; Cor doesn't answer right away.

This isn't surprising, and he's not in the same room so he can pace anxiously without that making Cor feel rushed.