"And the power levels, to some degree, with Loki's spells we can worry less that we could accidentally invite through something we couldn't handle."

"They're not really optimized for the purpose..."

"They're a lot better than what we had, and not mana-constrained."

"I'll give you that." Kib reaches out to scritch Cricket. Cricket purrs.

"Hi," Rúmil says to Cricket. "And," he adds to Kib, "it's lucky it's a space Maitimo that glued himself to Ferardrin because the space ones have disclaimed all political ambitions and will not make living on Bella and T'Mir's planet weird."

"I wouldn't do that," Island objects.

"You wouldn't choose to live there."

"Yeah.'

"I mean, I'd hope we could work something out, Iobel and Mitros are sharing just fine."

"Sure, but this is your planetary project. I think it should be closely allied with Vanda Nossëo but not particularly subsumeable."

"Subsumption is not currently the plan."

"Good! The current plan is lovely and impressive."

Cricket looks suspiciously at Rúmil.

Rúmil smiles at Cricket. "If only the Valar could have given you infinite mana. Or just given you all the powers of a Maia, that'd be just compensation for what they did."

"As long as I didn't then require retraining on how incarnates work from Elspeth..."

He shudders. "I assume the personality isn't a consequence of the powers, seeing how much they vary."

"They vary, but around a much different distribution!"

"True! And I never did get a good sense of whether that struck-by-love-for-twenty-Years thing was voluntary -" he shudders. "No, indestructible human with Olórin on hand is clearly the way to go."

"I'm having fun with it," nods Boots.

Cricket is still peering at Rúmil making catly facial expressions.

I'd ask Cricket if something's on his mind but it almost never turns out that anyone wants to know what's on Cricket's mind.

Oh? See, now I'm sort of curious.

Cricket hates everybody except Bells. And the standard parent set, he'll put up with those.

"Have I caused you offense?" he asks Cricket.

"No," says Cricket. "I can't figure out what's wrong with you."