Maybe.

I used to get sad about it, when I was younger? But I guess it never really occurred to me that someone might be angry about it. Although I guess being angry about stuff doesn't occur to me that much in general.

Seems like it'd be hard to be angry about the same way it was hard to be mad at the Valar in Valinor.

Yeah. Maybe.

I spent more time with Oromë than I did with my parents. He loved me. He trusted me. He thought I mattered. I - I didn't expect to have to pick, right, but if you'd told me as a kid I'd have to pick him or my father someday -

Yeah.

That - makes sense.

Honestly half of what I'm sad about - well, not half, there's a lot of sad, but some of it - is just that I don't have - I mean I kind of have God? I guess? Taking care of Ender is better than nothing? But - I don't have him anymore, you know? And - I'm not really mad about that because, like, I know what the deal is, you know? But it bites. It bites a lot. Like - whatever else happened I was always supposed to have him, right? And I don't.

Yeah. And - it's not that I couldn't possibly have it back, but - I'd need to believe things I just don't really believe anymore. And that feels stupid, being sad about something you could have if -

Yeah. Yep. That's the feeling.

It - bites a tiny bit less having it named. I think.

It gets better eventually. Not all the way, but - some.

Yeah. Probably eventually. Being immortal probably helps, I guess.

Dunno. I think humans are maybe better at getting over things even if they don't have as much time for it. Probably being an immortal human is the best for getting over things, really.

Well. I'll report back if you get me the first half of that.

Everything still kind of feels tremendously incredibly horrible right now, but I dunno how seriously to take my likelihood-of-getting-over-this estimates because I have been told approximately a million times that teenagers frequently think the world is ending over stuff that they end up recovering just fine from. I have no idea whether that is applicable to this situation, but I sure have heard it a lot of times.

Teenagers also get trauma a lot. 

I guess. I'm abstractly aware of this but nobody's told me a million times.

I would not really go off the thing where teenagers who are upset usually recover fine but I think humans whose kids die usually do recover.

I guess.

Elves don't. Elves whose kids die usually die themselves of sadness. That's because Elves aren't really equipped to live in the real world, though.

I keep thinking I'm sort of prepared for the real world and then the real world keeps turning out to be way more of a mess than I thought it was. Like, in ways that are totally not connected to anything that I expected from the growing up process, even.

It's usually not this bad. I have murdered a lot of innocent people and it's still really usually not this bad.

I am - kind of simultaneously expecting that my story has kind of wrapped up now and that dramatic things are just going to continue happening to me all the time until I die, I think. At this point.

How about things keep happening but once we've had a bit of recovery time, and also you don't die.

I'm not optimistic about following this plan, but I'm not gonna, like, object to it.

Well, at some point we'll figure out how to send you home, and then that'll be things happening.

I guess. I kinda just wanna watch Star Trek episodes for a week. Or five.

Also you owe me cookies. I don't know how many but it's some very large integer.

Only proper cookies from after refined sugar has been invented? Because I can probably do some starter cookies here.

Yeah. OK.

Thank you.