I guess energy could be OK. Not that I have anything to spend it on, so it's kind of whatever. Inner peace sounds like not a good enough description to know whether it'd be a good thing, and joy feels like it'd be kinda - I dunno. I don't need more pointless feelings that don't reflect anything.

It seems pretty likely that your current feelings, uh, reflect something. 

Nothing's even worse than when I landed here. Technically. Except the hell thing. And the feelings.

Your child is dead.

Yeah. Well.

It didn't, like, do anything to me, though? Like, - she's fine, she's in heaven now, she ran her very short race, she's happy and a hero and it'd be selfish to take either of those away from her, and if we landed back home tomorrow it's not like anyone could tell, it's not like anything would be different -

I don't want to, like, talk you into feeling worse about this than you already are, or anything, but, if you are upset and just think you shouldn't be -

I don't know.

I feel horrible all the time for no specifically discernible reason and I'm locking all of my other feelings in, like, combination-lock feelings boxes so they don't get any amorphous horrible on them, and normally when there's a bunch of amorphous horrible I just kind of keep doing things and eventually replace some of it with other stuff, or else talk to someone relevant about whatever the problem really is and get it sort of semi addressed, but you can't really address anything that happened because it didn't actually leave anything super obviously broken, it just made me feel like - a broken container that used to hold something really awesome and it's done with that now and its story is over and there's nothing more for it but it was cool enough once upon a time that we're going to keep it around as a museum piece, or something, which is stupid, because everything I think right now is stupid.

- because you're grieving, because your baby is dead.

Well, it sucks.

- yes!

Losing Mom and Dad didn't feel like this.

So, like -

Elves in Valinor conceive of separation from a child who is underage as the greatest and most tragic harm imaginable. Because it's the only thing that can't be fixed, eventually, with more time or patience or character growth -- the child will grow up, they'll be different, your chance to have been present for their childhood is gone forever.

And I guess humans don't have that thing in particular because there are so many things wrong in human worlds. But - 

I feel like it's. Different. If you wouldn't have created them in the first place.

I don't think so?

Humans kill their babies that they didn't want all the time and if one of them was sad afterwards I wouldn't be like "well you didn't even want them so get over it".

It's not that I didn't want her, exactly? I feel like that's different, too.

Sometimes I have the thought that I want her back. And then I remember that I - also really really don't want her back because if I had her I'd get horrible on her and maybe drag her down to hell with me.

That seems kind of unlikely but I guess maybe a sure thing's better than not? And we're not going to let - we're going to figure out how to make you immortal and then God can never have you and it doesn't matter what he thinks of you.

I kinda don't believe you? But - thanks for trying. A lot. 'S really good of you.

Do try. 

I guess you do a lot of dangerous things. Probably you should stop that at least until we've got it straightened out. But - I don't think it'll take that long, there's so many kinds of magic and probably some way to exploit how some worlds run faster than others.

I guess Wishbone is kind of a proof of concept. Like, he's a dog, but.

But it shows it's possible. And - for as long as we've known about the human afterlives we've known we had to do it. 

Settin' some real ambitious goals for yourself, there, man. But they're good goals. I guess.

I tried the thing where you go around living your life knowing that someone you care about is being tortured and I'd had enough of it for a immortal lifetime by about...day three.

Makes sense.

I've never really met anyone who was mad about hell before. I've met some people who were mad about death. Nobody else who was mad about hell, though, I don't think. Or at least nobody who said so.

I mean, they don't know, right? Like, maybe someone told them but that's not the same thing.

I guess. Maybe all the people who'd bother being mad about it don't believe in it in the first place.