"Hi!" Edie, there's a new you! "Close the door behind you, time stops while you're here."

...She closes the door. "What do you mean? And--do I know you, you look weirdly familiar but I can't place it..."

Ooh! I'll be right down!

"Maitimo, I go by Circle, you might know an alternate universe version of me? This is an interdimensional bar, and there are alternate universe versions of people. The versions of you so far are named Edie and Idaia, either of those fit?"

"...My name is Odette. Odette Zavier. You have both your hands, d'you have some kind of magic here?"

"There are three of me here and none of them are short hands, should they be? And we have a couple different kinds of magic, at least one of which can give people hands."

"I was short a hand before I died. Didn't mention it because it hardly seemed relevant."

"...Died. Alternate versions of people. Okay, please start at the beginning and explain what's actually going on. You said interdimensional bar, but--"

"There are a lot of dimensions. Not infinitely many, but 'I'm wondering if your world has enough math that I can mathematically describe what a big number it is' many. Sometimes people in a dimension get a door that lets them in here, it's called Milliways, we have no contact with the entities that decide who gets a door. Most people who find a door hang out for a little while and then leave, but my world happened to find a door in the middle of a war, and decide to stay here until we were powerful enough to win the war, and in the meantime more people - mostly versions of us - have kept showing up."

"Okay, but I'm wondering how much similarity between worlds containing the same person there is--it sort of seems like he's," she nods, "a straight up would-have-been of the Maedhros I know if I hadn't shown up, however far in the future, and you're--you're weird, I'm not sure what-all's going on but you don't feel like an Elf, but you definitely look like one--and it seems like you were never in Angband."

"You're from another Arda? Another shiny tree Arda? Also, what does 'feel like an Elf' mean -"

"I'm not from Arda, originally, I'm from the Free City of Genosha in my birth universe, and I have magic senses, essentially. I mean, they're not exactly that, but in my case it amounts to the same thing. And Elves have some...stuff...going on that humans don't and you don't."

"Can you bounce Matt what it is that you're sensing, and he can bounce it to me -"

"...I'm not sure the pure sensory data would do you much good, you don't know how to operate my magic system. A, and B the Enemy is supposed to be really good at illusions and I'm not yet sufficiently convinced you're who and what you say you are to give you access to sensory data concerning my magic system because that's how my magic is transmitted."

"Oooh, transmissible new magic. The kinds we've got so far are less so. So, shiny tree Arda still in the middle of its war? What year is it?"

"455. And the shiny trees have been dead for a while, as I gather."

"Yes, I mean by contrast with the Ardas that run on physics, in which the Sun is a flaming ball of gas instead of a fruit towed in a chariot."

"The sun is a what."

"In most places the Sun is a flaming ball of gas. In shiny tree Ardas it is a fruit in a chariot. I have no idea how that works or why it's true but we've verified it with our magic."

"The sun is a flaming ball of stardust in my universe. And my magic is really good at organic things."

"Stardust?"

"Uh. The element with the smallest atomic number?"

"Yes, that's standard for suns. Shiny tree Ardas either don't run on ordinary physics at all or else it's the incompetence of their gods."

"I'm going to go with 'the incompetence of their gods.'"

"Quite possible. Anyway, there are two normal Ardas so far - Singularity and Abaddon - and two shiny tree Ardas - Mirror and Ozymandias - and we have no idea why everyone we meet keeps being from Ardas, there are four hundred million of them but they're still a fairly small share of the multiverse -"

"Are Edie and Idaia from Ardas?"

"No, but they ended up in them."

"Huh. One in each of yours?"

"Edie and Emily in Abaddon, Idaia and Imliss in Ozymandias."

"My sister's name is Illia. Which of you is from which?"

"I'm from Abaddon, Matt's from Ozymandias, Midnight who hangs out upstairs because everyone hates him because he is evil is from Mirror, my Singularity alt isn't here because they were on a different planet when Cam got the door."

"...Okay. Why is he evil?"

"Do you mean 'why is it the case that he is the sort of person who does evil things' or 'what evil things has he done such that I'm comfortable calling him that'."

"Mostly the latter, although any insight you had into the former would probably help."

"Well, his world is by far the most fucked up of any of them, so perhaps he just had bad influences, but he kidnapped someone and kept them as a personal slave for three hundred years mostly by using mind-altering oaths."

"Oh. Kay. Noted."

"The bar has security, you get kicked out if you attack him."

"Also noted. So what are Ozymandias and Abbadon and Singularity like?"

"Ozymandias had a war against their Melkor. They lost. Eventually the Valar stepped in. Thirty thousand years later the Feanorians got released from the Halls of Mandos and reintegrated with the human world; unknown to them, Imliss and Idaia, who had died very early in the world, reincarnated."

"Wow. That's awful."

"Yes. Abaddon found the door very early in our war with Melkor and are staying here with ten of my father until we figure out how to win it cleanly.

...Singularity won their war, it's over, but that door's staying closed until we figure out how to bring back the dead, because it was won by feeding an inhabited planet into a black hole."

"Uh."

"I am the person to ask if you have questions about that."

"What's a black hole, and how does feeding the planet to something constitute a victory?"

"A black hole is an astronomical phenomenon. The relevant information is that the planet and everything on it was instantly destroyed. Counts as a victory because we can rebuild it and almost everyone on it, and Melkor can't ever hurt anyone again, and he was torturing over a hundred million people using - technology you probably haven't heard of but which makes that even worse than you're imagining."

"Gotcha."

"He's doing the same thing in Abaddon but we're going to find a better way to stop him."

"Good."

"And yours, assuming you have one."

"Well, I was already going to kill him, but yeah, much better to do sooner than later."

"Shiny tree Arda Melkors can't torture people as much because they lack the relevant technology but they still do a lot of torturing people. Keep time stopped, and then we'll start it again when we're ready to kill him."

She sighs. "Yeah. I'd better at least find someone to hold my door for a minute so I can grab my sister first, though, I don't know how long it'll take me to get strong enough. Good thing I just got teleportation figured out."

"That's useful. We don't have that."

"It's faster than flying and I've been wandering thither and yon over Beleriand for a while dealing with assorted things and I decided I needed to do that more efficiently."

"How do we satisfy you we're not the Enemy and should get the transmissible magic?"

"Well, I haven't been in Arda all that long or spent all my time there interacting with Maedhros, whereas the Enemy had him for decades, so realistically there isn't some display of Maitimoness that the Enemy couldn't fake but that I could verify. But he never got his hands on me. Yet, anyway. Let me interrogate my and my sisters' alts for a bit and we should be fine.

Although I don't necessarily expect you to be as good at my magic as Maedhros is and I would naively expect him to be," she says, gesturing at Matt.

"Oh?"

"My magic hurts to use. In order to do anything really big you need either an extreme pain tolerance or fantastic masochism."

"Ah. ...wonder how it works for daeva."

"Not knowing a thing about the meaning of that word I couldn't begin to hazard a wild guess."

"One of your alts is one. Nothing can harm them past 'inconvenience'. I don't know if that applies to magic pain."

"Huh. No idea."

"I invited her to come join us, she should be here any minute."

In a particularly blatant example of landlordly meddling, Edie chooses that precise moment to come out of the stairs.

"New alt! Hi!"

"Oh! Hi! Dunno why I assumed there wasn't anyone here who hadn't already been mentioned to be, but I guess I did."

"Oh, is Nelyo ashamed of me? Nah, we're a right circus at this point, there's all seven of us and my dad from Ozymandias, me and Circle and ten Curufins and ten of Dad and our cousin Findekáno and a bunch of technical people from Abaddon, and Cam and a bunch more technical people from Singularity. And evil Maitimo and his Findekáno."

"I wouldn't say ashamed? He just didn't happen to mention you."

"I wasn't worried, I just give him a hard time because he's going to be emperor of the multiverse and so we all need to pool our efforts to keep him humble and so forth."

"Good for him. You're good at that kind of thing."

"At what, keeping emperors of the multiverse humble? What world are you from?"

"I am originally from a world you haven't heard of but my sister and I ended up in an Arda due to a magical accident. My nickname for the version of you I know is Best Impromptu Therapist."

"I wouldn't have expected that to appear on one of my alt's resumes, but okay. Guess it's better than having an evil one."

"Well, maybe not for normal people. Forms of impromptu therapy include telling me that they legitimately don't miss the time in their lives when--dunno if this'll make sense to you, probably make sense to your alt--when there were--no analogues of Grandmother being dead."

Edie nods.

"Yeah, don't follow."

"Uh, explaining the context would be complicated, but the relevant part of what she's saying is that he's not Best Impromptu Therapist because impromptu therapy is a general skill that he has, but because the things he says are disproportionately helpful with her issues in particular."

"Okay. That does make more sense. Anyway, you're in another Arda? Regular or shiny-tree?"

"The Trees are dead. Anyway, wouldn't it make just as much sense to ask, 'regular or Space?' As far as I can tell we outnumber you."

"I mean, yeah, but you've got fruits on chariots flying through the sky, that's not regular no matter how many there are. And there's way more people on the technologically advanced Ardas, so most people in Ardas still live in one of ours."

"Hey, Maitimo, you named a figure earlier for number of Ardas, didn't you?"

"There are four hundred million."

"How did you get this number?"

"Asked Bar. You can't ask directly about worlds but you can ask about published works - so in this case 'Bar, of the worlds that have published works in Quenya referring to a Melkor, how many also have published works discussing interplanetary travel between Valinor and Endorë?' That won't catch all of them, there might be some regular Ardas that haven't gotten to interstellar travel yet, but it should catch most..."

Odette goes to interrogate the Bar in a fashion intended to determine the ratio of Space Ardas to regular Ardas.

Shiny tree Ardas outnumber Space Ardas by a factor of thirteen to one.

She presents this figure to Abbadon Tyelcormo.

"Okay, we can call them 'Common' and 'Space' but I'm still not yielding 'regular' to planets lit by fruit on chariots. And we might still have the population edge."

"You realize now I have to call 'em regular just to tweak you, right?"

"Watch out, I'm going to call them Fruit Ardas."

"Oh, you think that's going to bother me? My magic is great with organic shit. If the Sun is a fruit that suggests I could conjure a cup of juice in the middle of Angband when I get strong enough to work my way past Morgoth's Morgothness and watch good things happen."

"Stone Age Ardas? Have they gotten around to inventing indoor plumbing?"

"Yes. Although Illia did have to import the printing press."

"Good for her. Electricity?"

"What's that?"

"Edie can show you - darling?"

What exactly are you asking me to make, electricity isn't--well, usually--a visible phenomenon.

Lightbulb? Circuit board, like the kind they use to teach kids? Computer?

I'm not really sure any of those constitute "showing someone what electricity is" when they don't know anything about it. Not obvious enough what's going on.

Showing what cool stuff you can do with it, then, whatever. You could also just make lightning unless Security'll be mad at us.

Probably not unless I try to lightning at anyone. "Electricity is lightning," she says, creating a pair of small metal discs attached to her hands with enough charge to make a flash of static electricity jump across it. "Except how it actually works is really complicated and you can make it go through metal wires and make stuff do stuff." She makes a flashlight and flicks it on.

"Darling?"

"Is the 'conjuring out of thin air' part not weird?"

"No, I can do that. Back up to the part where you called her darling."

"We're engaged, other set's married? Nelyo, dear, what did you tell her -"

"About the Melkors, as it happens."

"Oh."

"Doesn't mean you have to like your version or anything, Maitimo's romantic adventures are very unpredictable."

"I like him fine. He's the best friend I have, besides Illia. Don't tell any Nolofinweans I said so, they'll panic or something."

"Really?"

"It was like that for a while in my Arda as well."

"I guessed. Anyway, he's my friend and that matters to me a lot and is an end in and of itself and, yes, I have an increasingly difficult to ignore crush on him, but the friendship matters to me, it's not just--an intermediate step or consolation prize."

"...really don't think he'll be upset by that? If that helps?"

"By the fact that I have a crush on him?"

"I dunno, you sounded like you felt like you had to phrase really carefully to avoid a misunderstanding of some sort and you probably. Don't have to do that."

"I am perpetually annoyed by society's assumption that romantic relationships are inherently more meaningful than platonic ones."

"Fair. Also, like, he's a shiny tree Elf so they've got the batshit-crazy sex rules."

"Those don't automatically work with humans."

"Worked exactly as expected for Idaia's Tyelcormo."

"Andreth says Aegnor said that he was sure it would work if he said marriage vows and stuff but, um, it definitely doesn't work by default with humans."

"This sounds like a story."

"You'll probably find it a horrifying one and honestly it's probably worse from a perspective of 'it's far, far too late to do anything about it.' Which is apparently the case in Ozymandias."

"I really doubt it's more horrifying than everything else."

"Depressing but fair. So when I originally showed up in Arda, it was near Himring, and I ended up talking to Maedhros, and when I told him how old I was he asked if I needed chaperones, and I said I had better things to do with my time than pander to people who thought I might be having illicit sex. He was shocked and horrified that that was what chaperones were for and it came out that he didn't know humans didn't do the sex equals marriage thing with each other, let alone Elves. Fast forward a bit later and I've met and am talking to Celegorm, and the thing comes up, and Celegorm says that his oldest brother needs to get out more because it's blatantly obvious if you spend time around Men that they don't do the thing. And then he mentioned that some of his people had sex with humans in order to avoid the marriage thing and it worked. And then fast forward some more and I found out Caranthir was married to a Dwarf--"

"Wait, what?"

"The kids died when Doriath went to war with Tumunzahar."

"Did anyone tell him or you that Dwarves and literally only Dwarves in Ozymandias have an afterlife. Unless you count Mandos, which, fuck Mandos."

"I'll tell him. Not sure what we can do with it, but - I'll tell him."

"It exists physically enough that it has conjurable written stuff, which suggests that it might be possible to get there once we've got interdimensional travel down."

"That would be lovely."

"...Anyway. I discovered that Caranthir was married to a dwarf and they had children and that at least the first child had been a surprise and then I was like, 'um, if Elf not-having-babies-ness doesn't extend to Dwarves, maybe it doesn't extend to humans,' and so I checked out Estolad and there were a bunch of half-elf kids there."

"By accident?"

"I told you you wouldn't like it!"

"We're going to prevent it everywhere, but I'll admit being appalled it happened routinely among our own people -"

"Don't look at me, my magic does birth control and I've been teaching it everywhere I can."

"Good for you."

"I mean, I've mostly been teaching it for the de-aging and the disease prevention and stuff, and I'm not getting pushy about the birth control part if people aren't interested, but yeah."

"This sounds like terribly useful magic."

"It is! It has its limitations, though, it doesn't do magic objects the way yours does. I mean, there's enchanted stuff, but that works differently."

"My world's actually not magic at all, except summoning. And I suppose parlor tricks, which are completely useless."

"Summoning? Parlor tricks?"

"Summoning's how we got Edie-who-can-make-arbitrary-stuff and also Emily-who-can-change-arbitrary-stuff-into-other-stuff, it grabs people - willing people - from nearby dimensions where everybody has magic."

"Cool. So what're parlor tricks?"

"If you concentrate really hard for a long time you can make something change color. Or similar."

"Huh."

"Singularity has no native magic, and shiny tree Ardas all have the same."

"Do any of them even have shiny trees anymore?"

"Well, no, but it's the principle."

"If you're making fun of us for our vegetative light sources can't you just poke at the fruit?"

"The fruit is slightly less ridiculous than the trees."

"But also less dead."

"In Ozymandias everybody's dead and there are no signs remaining it ever existed."

"So obviously I need to grab my sister; should I invite any of you guys's alts while I'm there?"

"I would prefer you leave mine."

"...Okay. I can probably grab anyone I end up regretting not grabbing first time 'round, anyway."

"You probably don't want to, every second of time passing in worlds with a Melkor is -"

"I mean, yes, but on the other hand I can teleport and it's not going to take me significantly more time to make a second trip than it would have to grab them the first time."

"Fair enough. Do you know exactly enough where everyone is?"

"That's not exactly how it works but I won't have any trouble."

"Okay."

"It wouldn't be any more difficult to teleport to a person than to a place," she clarifies, "or at least it shouldn't be."

"That's very useful."

"Magic's great."

"I am very excited to get to try it."

"Uh huh. Let me get--Illia and Celegorm, I think, maybe Andreth, anyone else...?"

"Curufin will be able to help his alt and my father on figuring out how to use the Silmarils to destroy Melkors."

"Illia, Celegorm, Curufin and Andreth, okay. 

Oh, I should really mention this before I fetch these people, I ended up building a city in Nevrast because seriously, there are zero actually human kingdoms on your continent, that needed fixing. Illia's Queen. Andreth would give me such a look if she came in and none of you knew that."

"Are Elves bad at governing humans?"

"Some of them are. And it was--the principle of the thing? There were a whole bunch of monarchs and all of them were Elves, there was an inherent species-related power imbalance. There was this one woman, Lady Hareth, who was reluctant to leave my sister alone in her room with an Elf on the grounds that the power imbalance meant that regardless of whether they would, an Elf could get away with doing things to a human, until my sister reassured her that if he tried anything she was perfectly capable of cracking his skull open. Because magic. ...That reminds me," she addresses Matt, "do you know what happened to Huor and Hurin, they disappeared during the battle--the Dagor Bragollach, that was what they called it, and I can't find them and the two most likely options proposed thus far are 'captured by the Enemy' or 'somehow managed to stumble on Gondolin'."

"The latter."

"Thank Aten."

"Aten?"

"I'm a Shemeshite. Theoretically. I don't think it's especially likely that Aten exists, mind, but..."

"Weeeee don't have that. Where I'm from. We have Hebrew--shemesh is Hebrew for sun, where you're from, right--"

"Yeah."

"And we had this one pharaoh who tried to introduce monotheism to Egypt under the name of Aten the sun-disc, but that. Didn't last. Like, at all."

"...Okay, but you just said you have Hebrew, after the Hebrews came to Egypt..."

"They did that and then they left after a different pharaoh made terrible life choices at them."

"Weird."

"Edie, what does Odette's world look like, Earth with an earlier divergence in history or not..."

Edie conjures a tiny Earth. "Looks like it," she says, examining the scale model critically.

"Huh."

"We should probably go over the histories for details at some point after I've grabbed relevant people."

"That sounds interesting."

"Yeah."

She opens the door and calls urgently for whoever's closest.

Whoever's closest is one of the young men from Ladros.

"Hi, I need you to hold this door for a minute while I grab some people, there's new weird magic stuff going on," she tells him.

"...okay." He takes the door.

And then she is in her sister's throne room, and both Illia and Andreth are there--New magic thing happened, there's some kind of interworld locus that stops time in the world you come in from while you're there, there's alternate-world copies of Illia and me and for some reason the Feanorians there. Do you want to come?

What -

- um, yes, sure -

Great. 

And then all three of them are just inside Milliways and then Odette is in Himlad.

Good news and better but more surprising news. I can teleport now, and there's a time-stopping interdimensional bar. It was recommended that I grab you and Curufin before shutting the door and not letting another minute pass before I can kill Morgoth.

You sure it's not a trap?

There was an alternate universe me there and Morgoth doesn't know enough about me to simulate that.

Okay.

Is he doing anything I really shouldn't interrupt?

I think he'd want to be interrupted for something this important.

I was thinking in terms of 'warn him before grabbing him so he can put down something that would be dangerous to have spontaneously unattended,' not 'leave him behind.'

Yeah, that you should definitely do.

Hey, Curufin, I can teleport and there's a magical interdimensional bar that stops time, you're on the shortlist of people to grab before closing the door and not letting another minute pass before I can kill Morgoth.

- are you sure -

There's alternate universe versions of us in there and Morgoth doesn't have enough information to simulate me that well, I tested my alternate.

...okay.

And then she and Celegorm and Curufin are right outside the door to Milliways. "In there," she says, and darts through.

They follow her.

"Thank you," she says to the young man from Ladros, and takes the door and closes it.

"Hello! Curvo, you will want to quiz the Bar, all the yous have wanted to quiz the Bar."

"...I should probably have warned you two about the untraumatized Maedhros," she realizes belatedly.

"Oh. Hi."

"Hi. Are not-traumatized mes something to warn for?"

"Bit unexpected."

And, um, your alt over there. Was also kind of a surprise, she tells him privately.

Oh?

Apparently he and the alt of me with the inexplicable wings are, um, engaged.

Aww. They don't have a war on?

I didn't ask. ...You're less surprised than I was expecting.

You were very surprised?

The closest you've come to expressing any interest in me--like that--was blushing when I grew my hair, which, I had no reason to think that was about me and not just the hair thing. Of course I was surprised.

I mean. Unlike them we do have a war on, and you're twenty-one, and Elf-human relationships are more complicated than winged-whatever-thingy - I am not surprised.

Fair 'nuff. Oh, and I think they said there was another pair upstairs that was married.

Really? Awww. Did this occur separately, or did they inspire each other?

I didn't ask!

We should but I kind of want to ask the okay Maitimo for a hug.

Yeah, I can imagine.

"Um," he says. 

Hug. "You guys got handed a nearly impossible situation and seem to have held it together astonishingly well. I'm so proud of you."

"I'm planning to be emperor of the multiverse. I kind of sort of did it to impress a boy but only kind of sort of."

"Um."

"Weren't you going to do less of the incidentally outing your alts to their families by virtue of your own gayness?"

"Yeah but then I considered how that'd mean spending the next century lying to my family and his brother's not even here. And he needed to believe I was actually okay not just better at faking it."

"Why would you have to fake it? You've never been through Angband."

"It's - complicated? He's not in the habit of distrusting certain forms of reassurance because of their source, he's just in the habit of not trusting them, and the ways a healthy me is different than a perfect-liar nightmarishly traumatized me are important -"

"Ah.

Well, um, I can personally vouch that he hasn't been to Angband. Um, he did die that one time, but his kind of Elf is different from yours and I fixed it after a couple hours."

"Is there, like, a song to help people keep this all straight."

"Uh, I don't actually know, I'm not an Elf so that's not my memory aid of choice--dear?"

"The computer can read it out to you."

"What is a computer."

"Magic box thing that contains information about all our exploits and can read it aloud to you."

"Not actually magic," she clarifies. "Just way more advanced nonmagical technology than you probably have yet if Illia also had to introduce the printing press."

"Also?"

"Your alt Imliss introduced the printing press to Valinor."

"In non-Stone-Age Ardas my father invents it when he's forty."

"Writing hadn't even been invented by then."

"Because you are a Stone Age Arda!"

"Iron Age at least," she scoffs.

"Not helping."

"In my world Valinor and Endorë orbit different suns and you need spaceships to go between them and instead of magic indestructible souls we have chips in our heads that record the contents of our brains."

"And the kind of daeva that I am can create arbitrary matter and therefore new bodies around chips. I have no idea if it works with magic soul Elves."

"I'm betting not because of the souls part."

"So there's that. Um, Curufinwe, there's eleven each of you and your dad upstairs, I thiiink the pair from the other Magic Arda is currently working on human immortality and is going to be working on using Silmarils to kill shit when that's done."

"Odette's got human immortality. They have the Silmarils?"

"Two of 'em. We're probably going to have to summon a fairy--someone who's as indestructible as me but telekinetic instead of conjuring stuff--to get the third, it's kind of on another planet."

"...what?"

"You explain this one, Matt, I don't know how to explain the Venus thing to a Magic Ardan who didn't die for three thousand years."

"Thirty thousand. Eru intervened directly in the world a few thousand years after we died."

"...okay. Can I see the versions of my father -"

"They will probably grouse about being interrupted, but I can get you room numbers if you want to chance it, or message them and wait for them to notice - they usually run faster than us -"

"I don't want to interrupt him, a message is fine."

"Okay."

"I'm sorry for your loss. Imliss is upstairs, too, working on seeing if she can do anything about resurrection with her magic system."

"Odette's can definitely do it, she's just not there yet."

"Oh, that's good, Idaia and Imliss's parents are dead. ...Mine sort of are too but my world has an afterlife and all we need to fetch them back is reliable interdimensional transit."

"Uh, maybe don't get her hopes up too much, human resurrection is a persistently intractable problem for reasons no one's been quite able to figure out, I just expect Elves to be different because of the soul thing."

"Yeah, sorry. Elven resurrection is just a question of grabbing and body-making."

"...you might be able to get somewhere if you could start from basement dwellers, if the problem is information loss..."

"...Might be."

"I am still eager to hear how this magic system works."

"D'you wanna hear a short summary or the lecture I gave the Dwarves?"

"Either one - why the Dwarves in particular?"

"Oh, because the Dwarves were the first time I actually organized it into a lecture instead of just haphazardly describing things and answering questions."

"Ah, okay."

She explains things!

They are fascinated and start trying to do magic! The Fëanors write back and would love to see their son!

Yeah the thing where the different Feanors refer to each other in the first person is still really weird.

It turns out daeva indestructibility does interfere with pain-from-magic--but the magic refuses to go any farther than the hurting does.

That's annoying.

It is! Edie at least has the consolation of proof in the form of an alt that she can do very well indeed in this magic system without any form of cheating at all.

He doubts Cam will have much ego riding on it but he'll probably be very motivated..

Yeah.

"...Have the Ozymandias engineers been let know human immortality is apparently a solved problem?"

"Yep, they're straight on to daeva-inconveniencing and other Silmaril functions."

"And this way they don't need to risk missing any of the baby's childhood if the timefuckery isn't convenient enough."

"They are delighted."

"The. Baby?"

"No, the engineers."

"...No I mean what baby, no one had previously mentioned a baby."

"The other Tyelcormo and Idaia are expecting."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

We should probably talk about. This. In more detail than just how surprised we are or aren't. At some point.

Yeah, agreed. Sounds like we've got time.

I'd rather it be sooner than later but yeah.

Mmmm?

...I'd rather have things clarified? And I'm a human and you're an Elf and I don't wanna bet that if I say 'later' you won't interpret that as 'later on an Elf scale' and then we don't talk about it for years.

Okay but there are alternate dimensions and travel between stars and stuff - 

Yeah, sooner than later doesn't have to mean, like, now or anything.

Okay.

The baby's pretty exciting, though!

Honestly I'm a tny bit overwhelmed, in my head it's still wartime and - well. We get to help with a baby without having to worry about that ourselves. That's good.

Yeah, I'm probably having an easier time adjusting because I haven't been dealing with the war as long.

I'm glad. 

She hugs him.

Yeah. And now while everyone is practicing magic a computer can tell them about all the other worlds and so on?

Abbadon: Is Space, and daeva. Singurity: Is Space, and no daeva, and also there was a black hole. Ozymandias: Is really horrifying/depressing, he should probably be glad Odette didn't show up a week or two later. Or not at all. Mirror: Is Mirror, ew. Don't let Midnight at the new magic.

That might be challenging, but yeah, in principle, yeah.

...The notes on Ozymandias include the information that Idaia and Imliss originally showed up in Valinor before being reincarnated to now. After dying on the Ice.

More hugs.

Yeah. Wow. ...thirty thousand years.

Yeah. And he and his brothers spent most of their time dead, too, that sounds--not fun.

Yup. He is really really glad his world got Odette.

Yeah. She pokes at the notes again. ...I am not going to let your niblings die in a war with Doriath, that's another reason to be glad.

What the fuck does Thingol do -

She looks it up.

She growls.

Sends one of my people--well, I suppose he wouldn't be, there, no relevant Illia, no Beth Miqlat--sends someone who would have been one of my people on a suicide mission to retrieve a Silmaril because he fell in love with Luthien and then when that somehow worked he apparently got in an altercation over the price of setting it in a necklace that ended with Thingol stabbed and every Dwarf in Doriath wiped out and all the other Dwarves marching to avenge them--

The fuck. 

The guy who falls in love with Luthien is the guy I had holding the door while I fetched you. That's. Going to be fun. To explain.

We can just make sure they never meet -

...Yyeeeah but he's literally right on the other side of that door and I don't want to surprise them with him when I open it again, if they're nearby, that seems like it could end badly.

Would they even recognize him?

I don't want to stake anything that they won't.

I can't imagine they'd attack him,  it's not like it's his fault that Elu Thingol needs to die in a fire - a fire that is obviously not the fault of any Dwarves -

I guess. But--yeah, ugh. I don't know if I've literally ever heard anything that makes him sound good.

I hear Doriath's a nice place to live if you're allowed in.

Didn't say I'd never heard anything nice about Melian.

Maiar don't make good rulers on their own, don't have the people stuff.

Yeah.

...Speaking of Maiar I should have grabbed Huan while I was fetching you.

Yeah. How long are we going to be in here?

Probably a while. I can pop out again.

I"d appreciate it but maybe not right away.

Let me know.

Will do.

Have you heard what happened to Ozymandias Huan yet--

No -

She's read about it. She sends it.

So I'm thinking that after I get done with human resurrection I should see if I can figure out an angle to resurrect Maiar.

...yeah.

I mean, it'll be a while before it comes up, human resurrection be hard.

Would your alt want--

Of course.

Okay, I thought so but I wasn't sure--considering how--

Anyway.

He'll be upset but he won't - want him to have been dead -

I'll fix it.

Good.

"Can I have my other alt's room number? I wanna meet her."

Edie tells her.

"Thanks!"

So Imma meet our other alts, wanna come? she asks Celegorm.

Sure.

Odette spends some time frustratedly examining room numbers when they reach the right floor. "What kind of system," she mutters, before finding the right door and knocking on it.

Should we get that?

Probably, yeah.

Sigh. Clothes. Door.

"Hi! New alts! My name's Odette, I have incredibly useful magic, I showed up a week before the Dagor Bragollach and tore Glaurung's heart and throat out at the same time."

"....that's good. Did you win - do you know how to kill one -"

"One what? Balrog? Probably I do it differently than you but I can do it."

"No, I mean a Melkor, there's like five of them."

"Oh. Haven't gotten there yet but I expect to."

"Cool. Uh, nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you!

Me'n mine are just friends, I was actually kind of surprised that you and the other pair--aren't."

"We got married, what was it dear, six days after meeting?"

"It was a whole week," she says, kissing him on the cheek.

"If you say so." Kiss.

"Wow."

"That, um, doesn't entirely sound like something I'd do..."

"Yeah you're probably in a better place emotionally than I was when I met him."

"Does sound like something I might've done, in Valinor when it didn't matter -"

Five hundred years younger and stupider and confused by her high regard?

Nah, just thinking what a hassle a Tirion royal wedding would be.

Ah. I suppose that makes sense.

All the same politics, none of the same reasons to give a shit about any of it.

Yeah.

She's human, not a winged person.

Yeah, I should ask him about that but I'll have to think how to phrase it-