"I'm not sure. I wasn't talking directly to them much."

"Okay. Want to go out flying for a bit?"

"Yeah."

Flying. Quiet singing. Fëanáro can be seen a hundred miles off making clouds spell 'Fëanáro is a demon'.

"I wonder how long he's going to be enthralled with demonhood."

"I was a little worried he'd wish it and regret it. Or be even more careless with it - he checked with T'Mir what kind of atmosphere tolerances we have for the planet and what gases it'd be most useful for him to make the clouds out of -"

"Hopefully he doesn't get cavalier about it over time."

"Yeah. I don't know, considering how disastrous the other ones' childhoods were I find it fairly reassuring that it still took a thousand years of Melkor meddling to get them to make terrible choices."

"I hadn't actually thought about it that way but you're right."

"Ours is going to be such a wise, mature, emotionally stable young adult!"

"His alts will be jealous, and then he will defuse that with empathy and tact!"

"And if he ever does have kids - they'll be safe -"

"Best defended children in the multiverse."

He flies quietly for a while.

It is a few days later when Kib turns up on Shine to visit his boyfriends and remarks apropos of nothing, Incidentally, if you were planning to surprise me with any surprises that might require use of my full faculties please tell Boots the schedule, I asked her to do something weird.

Oh?

Decided I'm fucking sick of background uncertainty and if the range of her powers is what it's purported to be there's no fucking way this is a setup. Told her to use her altly comprehension to pick something that won't scar me for life in the genre of 'horrible Materian college students think this is a fun prank probably' and spring it on me in my sleep so I don't accidentally cooperate somehow, and I will wake up with hilarious temporary deficits and freak out and think my way through it and then be fine and she'll clear it out but if I sit up one morning and I can only speak in rhyme it'd be a bad time to present me with rulership of Stork or anything.

Noted.

You doing okay?

I have had pleasanter weeks.

Hug. 

Hug. 

Kib nestles himself thoroughly between the pair of them and doesn't quite start crying.

You found us in time.

How very heroic of me, Gem meanwhile where does she get off calling herself a Bell surrounded by all these old shitty Ardas, she should've been born sooner -

A choked sigh. Game's rigged. Universe's rigged. I don't - I don't understand - but there it is -